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<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>WASHINGTON &#8212; The two American investigators felt a sense of foreboding that Sunday as they headed to an emergency meeting with their boss on the Iraqi air base. But they didn&#8217;t expect to be surrounded by armed guards, disarmed, detained against their will &#8212; and fired without explanation.</p> <p>It was March 12 &#8212; less than two months ago. Robert Cole and Kristie King were in Iraq working as investigators for Sallyport Global, a U.S. company that was paid nearly $700 million in federal contracts to secure Balad Air Base, home to a squadron of F-16 fighter jets as part of the U.S.-led coalition to annihilate the Islamic State.</p> <p>Cole and King had spent more than a year together in Iraq investigating all manner of misconduct at Balad and beyond.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>They&#8217;d uncovered evidence that Sallyport employees were involved in sex trafficking , they said. Staff on base routinely flew in smuggled alcohol in such high volumes that a plane once seesawed on the tarmac under the weight. Rogue militia stole enormous generators off the base using flatbed trucks and a 60-foot crane, driving past Sallyport security guards.</p> <p>Managers repeatedly shut down Cole and King&#8217;s investigations and failed to report their findings to the U.S. government that was footing the bill, the investigators said.</p> <p>Right before they were fired, Cole and King had opened an investigation into allegations of timesheet fraud among Sallyport employees. In a call with Sallyport lawyers, they said, they were advised to keep two sets of books about potential crimes and contract violations.</p> <p>&#8220;One for the government to see and one for the government not to see,&#8221; King told The Associated Press.</p> <p>The company said that the investigators misinterpreted the instructions.</p> <p>In a statement to the AP, Sallyport said it follows all contracting rules at the base, home to the F-16s that are a key to the fight against the Islamic State.</p> <p>&#8220;Sallyport has a strong record of providing security and life support services in challenging war zones like Iraq and plays a major but unheralded role in the war against ISIS,&#8221; Chief Operating Officer Matt Stuckart wrote. &#8220;The company takes any suggestion of wrongdoing at Balad very seriously.&#8221;</p> <p>More than 150 documents obtained by AP, as well as interviews with more than a half-dozen former or current Sallyport employees, show how a contractor ran amok after being hired for lucrative and essential combat support operations. The investigators and other witnesses describe grave security breaches and illegal schemes that went unreported until the government asked about them.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The point behind requiring contractors to employ their own investigators was to limit the waste and corruption that has marred federal security contracting going back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.</p> <p>The Pentagon&#8217;s own auditors, who were frequently on the base 50 miles north of Baghdad, were not told of the serious problems until early this year, a potential violation of law. The Pentagon auditors&#8217; reports, obtained by the AP, detail dozens of more minor infractions. That gap illustrates the limits of U.S. oversight for billions of dollars in contracts run by companies that have cashed in on the fight to protect Americans from extremism.</p> <p>The Defense Department declined to comment.</p> <p>The morning of March 12, King had gone to church and was still carrying her Bible when she and Cole walked into the office foyer for the meeting with the boss. To their astonishment, they were immediately surrounded by armed security guards and forced to turn over the 9 mm pistols they both routinely carried on the job.</p> <p>The boss, David Saffold, informed them they were being fired but wouldn&#8217;t say why.</p> <p>&#8220;We knew too much,&#8221; King told AP in an interview at her home in Amarillo, Texas. &#8220;They want to cover it up and move on because it&#8217;s a huge amount of money.&#8221;</p> <p>____</p> <p>BODYGUARD OR TERRORIST?</p> <p>In 2004, Rob Cole was a retired California police officer and licensed private investigator when he decided to go to Iraq for a series of contracting jobs. Like many U.S. contractors working in hazardous regions, he went because the work paid a lot more than he could make back home.</p> <p>Americans have been at Balad on and off since 2003. Sallyport&#8217;s parent company, Michael Baker International, announced in 2014 its subsidiaries had been awarded $838 million for work on the base.</p> <p>Cole&#8217;s first job at Balad was cut short in June 2014, a month after he arrived, when the Islamic State group began sweeping across Iraq and Syria. The extremists ultimately made it to the gates of Balad, which was evacuated.</p> <p>When the Americans went back, they found a looted base largely under the control of Iranian-backed Shiite militias that were supporting the Iraqi government, according to former employees. A former senior manager told the AP that Sallyport reached an understanding with the militias that they would not enter the flight and residential areas. He declined to be named because he wasn&#8217;t authorized to discuss the matter and didn&#8217;t want to be blacklisted from future jobs.</p> <p>Cole, now 62, returned to Balad in May 2015, as Sallyport was preparing for the arrival of American F-16s sold to the Iraqi government. Sallyport&#8217;s mission, along with its parent company, was to keep the base operating smoothly, train the Iraqis, and most importantly maintain security on the base, where thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of contractors work.</p> <p>The federal contract required investigations into potential crimes and violations involving the company&#8217;s work at Balad. That was Cole and King&#8217;s assignment.</p> <p>&#8220;They wanted someone to be competent enough to process an investigation, if there was a crime, or if someone turned up dead,&#8221; King said. &#8220;The way it was put to me: If someone turned up with a knife in their back, who are you going to call?&#8221;</p> <p>From the start, it was clear that much was awry on the base. Despite the urgency of fighting IS, the delivery of the F-16s had been delayed by months amid security concerns. It would be catastrophic if IS seized the base and its multimillion-dollar jets.</p> <p>On July 13, 2015, four F-16s flew in from Arizona, the first of 36 fighter jets that the U.S. planned to deliver.</p> <p>Brett McGurk, then the U.S. deputy envoy for the international coalition against IS, hailed the arrival in a tweet .</p> <p>&#8220;After years of preparation &amp;amp; training in the U.S., Iraqi pilots today landed the 1st squadron of Iraqi F16s in #Iraq,&#8221; he wrote.</p> <p>The first security breach came in less than 24 hours: A long black skid mark on the tarmac was reported. It stopped about 45 yards from the nose of one of the fighter jets. A truck had plowed through a rope barrier in the &#8220;no-go&#8221; zone, where lethal force is authorized to protect the planes. For more than 10 minutes, no one even responded as the vehicle drove away, according to reports citing surveillance video.</p> <p>That turned out not to be a terrorist. But Cole says the out-of-control truck was a harbinger. He noted the lax protection for the F-16s in his report and forwarded it to the chief of security, Steve Asher. Under the requirements of the contract, Cole&#8217;s report should have then made its way to the Pentagon. But he says Asher kept a lid on the incident.</p> <p>Three months later, in October 2015, Cole reported another security breach, the theft of a Toyota SUV that Sallyport had assigned to bodyguards to drive VIPs around the base. Cole eventually uncovered a plot by three Iraqi Sallyport staff working with a dangerous Iran-backed militia, known as Kataib Imam Ali.</p> <p>The Shiite militia was an ongoing headache, politically connected and operating outside the law, with sidelines in theft and gunrunning. It has ties to the leader of the umbrella militia Popular Mobilization Forces, which is on the U.S. list of designated terrorists.</p> <p>To Cole&#8217;s astonishment, the prime suspect threatened to join the militia during his interrogation. He was a Sallyport bodyguard. In fact, the investigators later found a photo of him on his Facebook page, dressed in black militia garb and a patch indicating his allegiance to the group.</p> <p>He is &#8220;viewed by the Investigations Unit as a hard-core recruit to become a terrorist who poses a serious threat to all personnel on this base,&#8221; Cole wrote in another report.</p> <p>The Toyota was recovered within a few days, but Cole was ordered off the case. In an interview with AP, the former senior manager defended the company&#8217;s order, saying negotiations with the militias were highly sensitive and had to be handled with Iraqi cooperation. Still, the suspect was supposed to be banned from the base, and Cole later saw the man walking around freely.</p> <p>___</p> <p>GUMMY BEARS SOAKED IN VODKA</p> <p>The longer Cole was on the base, the more he suspected that management was turning a blind eye to criminal activity.</p> <p>On the books, Balad is a dry base, where alcohol is restricted. But in reality the booze was everywhere and everyone knew it. Finding out how it got there led to more troubling questions.</p> <p>A Sallyport employee who worked in the air terminal reported in late 2015 that co-workers were involved in a smuggling scheme. They were bringing in cases and cases of water bottles filled with liquor that they&#8217;d sneaked onto planes flying in from Baghdad.</p> <p>According to investigative documents and people who watched the smuggling in action, three empty suitcases would routinely be loaded onto a flight to Baghdad. Each time, the bags came back with plastic water bottles filled with liquor. When they were unloaded, the bags were not searched but taken directly outside to be picked up &#8212; a serious security risk in a war zone.</p> <p>&#8220;You could be putting a bomb in there,&#8221; said one former employee who witnessed the smuggling. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got people just going rogue.&#8221; He spoke only on condition of anonymity because he didn&#8217;t want to imperil his new job with a different overseas contractor.</p> <p>Steve Anderson, who worked on flight logistics, says he was pressured to sign off on faked flight manifests that omitted passenger names and falsified the weight of cargo to cover for the alcohol smuggling and other infractions &#8212; a violation of international flight regulations. The planes were getting so weighed down he was worried about flight safety.</p> <p>&#8220;They were playing Russian roulette with the passengers&#8217; lives &#8212; including mine,&#8221; Anderson said.</p> <p>Once, he watched a plane that was being unloaded tip nose-forward on its wheels onto the tarmac because it was so overloaded.</p> <p>&#8220;I could hear the people inside the aircraft yelling. I never seen anything like that in my entire life,&#8221; he recalled. &#8220;It was like a seesaw.&#8221;</p> <p>Then out came the telltale bags that he watched get shepherded around security.</p> <p>When Anderson aired his concerns to management and refused to sign the falsified manifests, his boss said he didn&#8217;t want to hear about any more problems.</p> <p>&#8220;He said, &#8216;If you don&#8217;t like the job that you&#8217;re doing maybe you ought to find somewhere else to work.'&#8221;</p> <p>Anderson went on a medical leave and was told his position had been filled when he sought to return.</p> <p>Rumors of the alcohol smuggling reached Cole and King separately. Informants told them that flight line staff, who directed airplanes on the runways and handled cargo, were showing up drunk. In one instance they had passed around a bowlful of gummy bears soaked in vodka .</p> <p>The investigators got a tip that the bootleggers were working out of two hotels in Baghdad.</p> <p>Thinking they were undercover, King and an Iraqi investigator on the team went to one of the hotels, the al-Burhan, five minutes from Baghdad&#8217;s airport. She said informants told them the smuggling was run by the hotel manager and a number of Sallyport employees.</p> <p>During their interviews, they discovered an even more alarming scheme.</p> <p>The hotel had been running a prostitution ring, and Sallyport employees were among the customers, informants said. Four Ethiopian women who had worked as prostitutes at the hotel were later hired in housekeeping by Sallyport, and were still sending money back to a pimp in the al Burhan.</p> <p>The evidence suggested, the investigators told the AP, that Sallyport managers had either knowingly or unwittingly abetted human trafficking involving vulnerable female immigrants in a war zone, a revelation the company would be required to report to the U.S. government under federal law.</p> <p>In the hotel&#8217;s courtyard, a prime smuggling suspect, who was a Sallyport employee, angrily confronted King and said that a senior manager at the headquarters in Virginia, Roy Hernandez, had tipped him off about the investigation.</p> <p>On Feb. 15, 2016, Cole and King were ordered by Sallyport&#8217;s Balad program manager, Kim Poole, to shut down the investigations into both the bootlegging and the prostitution on Hernandez&#8217;s instructions, according to the investigators.</p> <p>The following day, Sallyport sent out an email to staff warning that they might be audited over trafficking and noting that they were required to report violations.</p> <p>But Stuckart says the prostitution allegations were not substantiated.</p> <p>&#8220;It is absurd to suggest that the company would shut down an inquiry into a matter of such gravity,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>A statement after publication acknowledged that the investigation was shut down for a period.</p> <p>&#8220;When the company&#8217;s new management learned that the company&#8217;s own investigators were supposedly told to shut down their investigation into alcohol and prostitution, the new Corporate Ethics and Compliance Officer instructed the investigators to complete those investigations,&#8221; Stuckart said.</p> <p>His statement referenced an investigative report from Oct. 2016 into rumors of another group of prostitutes on the base. Stuckart noted that those reports were found by the investigators to be unfounded. But the investigators say that inquiry was separate from their original probe that found evidence of prostitution occurring on the base. They say they were never allowed to follow up on that probe.</p> <p>More than a year later, two of the Ethiopian women were still working on the base, Cole said, and the alcohol smuggling had started back up, according to a report obtained by AP dated May 28, 2016.</p> <p>___</p> <p>&#8220;IT WAS MIND-BLOWING&#8221;</p> <p>Late last year, it became clear that little had changed after the earlier security breaches. On Nov. 15, Cole got a report that three large generators had been stolen from the base for a total loss of $1 million.</p> <p>According to surveillance videos, just before 2 a.m., militia had driven two flatbed trucks and a crane onto the base, driving right past the security gate. Cole estimates the crane, when extended, was at least 60 feet tall. After successfully loading the three generators and partially covering them with burlap, the militia drove off the base unchallenged. The episode lasted three hours.</p> <p>Cole said they passed within about ten feet of the Sallyport security guard force. &#8220;Nobody reported anything. It was a disaster and it was covered up. That is absolutely covered up,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What if the intent was not to steal but to commit a terrorist act?&#8221;</p> <p>According to Sallyport&#8217;s Stuckart, the theft occurred when the Iraqi base commander &#8220;granted local militia members access to the base&#8221; and said the generators weren&#8217;t located in his company&#8217;s security zone. &#8220;Sallyport had no authority to keep these militia members from taking the generators.&#8221;</p> <p>It was after that incident that a Defense Department auditor, who normally concerned himself with bin tagging, trash collection and the accounting minutiae of base life, began asking questions.</p> <p>Cole and King had kept all their reports in an investigative log. They had also flagged the important cases to management and they had assumed that the company informed the government.</p> <p>It became clear from the auditor&#8217;s question that he knew nothing about it. &#8220;When we finally got the idea that they were hiding all of the stuff from the U.S. government, it was mind-blowing,&#8221; said King.</p> <p>By then, clouds were looming for Cole and King. They had begun yet another investigation into timesheet fraud after getting a tip that Sallyport employees were systematically collecting salaries but not working.</p> <p>They say the company stalled the investigation, ordered every step to be approved by its lawyers and finally told Cole and King in a conference call to keep two sets of books.</p> <p>The implication for Cole was that they should omit from the government&#8217;s copy anything that would &#8220;be controversial and would reveal any failure or embarrassing detail.&#8221; The lawyers explained that that information was covered under attorney-client privilege. The two investigators, sitting together on the other end of the call, looked at each other in disbelief and shook their heads</p> <p>&#8220;We realized right away that that&#8217;s fraud, probably a crime, and we weren&#8217;t going to be a part of it,&#8221; Cole said.</p> <p>Shortly after they notified Sallyport that they wanted to interview managers who were suspects, their boss, Saffold, asked them to come to his office. It was Sunday morning, and King left church early.</p> <p>At an interview in his family home in Georgia, Cole recalled the fine sand that stuck to his sweat as he walked across the base to the meeting. Saffold ordered armed guards to take their pistols and detain the two at their work stations. King burst into tears, and the guards apparently thought better of restraining her when she said she wanted to bring her Bible back to her quarters, the investigators say.</p> <p>Cole and King said their termination paperwork was signed by the human resources manager they were investigating as part of the timesheet fraud.</p> <p>In an interview in Texas, where King has returned to work as a reserve deputy in Armstrong County near Amarillo, she expressed regrets.</p> <p>&#8220;It hurts me that I had to leave and not correct issues that were occurring, and it hurts me that they want to cover them up,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It&#8217;s so painful to me, it makes me lose sleep at night. Something&#8217;s wrong and did not get right.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>Hinnant contributed from Paris. Susannah George in Baghdad and Jack Gillum in Washington contributed. Follow Butler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/desmondbutler and Hinnant at https://twitter.com/lhinnant .</p> <p>___</p> <p>Online: Read documents about Sallyport&#8217;s activities in Iraq at <a href="http://apne.ws/2p87fqZ" type="external">http://apne.ws/2p87fqZ</a> .</p> <p>____</p> <p>Have a tip on government contracting? Contact the authors securely at https://www.ap.org/tips</p>

US company turned blind eye to wild behavior on Iraq base

https://abqjournal.com/997634/us-company-turned-blind-eye-to-wild-behavior-on-iraq-base.html

2017-05-03

2least

WASHINGTON 8212 The two American investigators felt a sense of foreboding that Sunday as they headed to an emergency meeting with their boss on the Iraqi air base But they didn8217t expect to be surrounded by armed guards disarmed detained against their will 8212 and fired without explanation It was March 12 8212 less than two months ago Robert Cole and Kristie King were in Iraq working as investigators for Sallyport Global a US company that was paid nearly 700 million in federal contracts to secure Balad Air Base home to a squadron of F16 fighter jets as part of the USled coalition to annihilate the Islamic State Cole and King had spent more than a year together in Iraq investigating all manner of misconduct at Balad and beyond ADVERTISEMENT They8217d uncovered evidence that Sallyport employees were involved in sex trafficking they said Staff on base routinely flew in smuggled alcohol in such high volumes that a plane once seesawed on the tarmac under the weight Rogue militia stole enormous generators off the base using flatbed trucks and a 60foot crane driving past Sallyport security guards Managers repeatedly shut down Cole and King8217s investigations and failed to report their findings to the US government that was footing the bill the investigators said Right before they were fired Cole and King had opened an investigation into allegations of timesheet fraud among Sallyport employees In a call with Sallyport lawyers they said they were advised to keep two sets of books about potential crimes and contract violations 8220One for the government to see and one for the government not to see8221 King told The Associated Press The company said that the investigators misinterpreted the instructions In a statement to the AP Sallyport said it follows all contracting rules at the base home to the F16s that are a key to the fight against the Islamic State 8220Sallyport has a strong record of providing security and life support services in challenging war zones like Iraq and plays a major but unheralded role in the war against ISIS8221 Chief Operating Officer Matt Stuckart wrote 8220The company takes any suggestion of wrongdoing at Balad very seriously8221 More than 150 documents obtained by AP as well as interviews with more than a halfdozen former or current Sallyport employees show how a contractor ran amok after being hired for lucrative and essential combat support operations The investigators and other witnesses describe grave security breaches and illegal schemes that went unreported until the government asked about them ADVERTISEMENT The point behind requiring contractors to employ their own investigators was to limit the waste and corruption that has marred federal security contracting going back to the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks The Pentagon8217s own auditors who were frequently on the base 50 miles north of Baghdad were not told of the serious problems until early this year a potential violation of law The Pentagon auditors8217 reports obtained by the AP detail dozens of more minor infractions That gap illustrates the limits of US oversight for billions of dollars in contracts run by companies that have cashed in on the fight to protect Americans from extremism The Defense Department declined to comment The morning of March 12 King had gone to church and was still carrying her Bible when she and Cole walked into the office foyer for the meeting with the boss To their astonishment they were immediately surrounded by armed security guards and forced to turn over the 9 mm pistols they both routinely carried on the job The boss David Saffold informed them they were being fired but wouldn8217t say why 8220We knew too much8221 King told AP in an interview at her home in Amarillo Texas 8220They want to cover it up and move on because it8217s a huge amount of money8221 ____ BODYGUARD OR TERRORIST In 2004 Rob Cole was a retired California police officer and licensed private investigator when he decided to go to Iraq for a series of contracting jobs Like many US contractors working in hazardous regions he went because the work paid a lot more than he could make back home Americans have been at Balad on and off since 2003 Sallyport8217s parent company Michael Baker International announced in 2014 its subsidiaries had been awarded 838 million for work on the base Cole8217s first job at Balad was cut short in June 2014 a month after he arrived when the Islamic State group began sweeping across Iraq and Syria The extremists ultimately made it to the gates of Balad which was evacuated When the Americans went back they found a looted base largely under the control of Iranianbacked Shiite militias that were supporting the Iraqi government according to former employees A former senior manager told the AP that Sallyport reached an understanding with the militias that they would not enter the flight and residential areas He declined to be named because he wasn8217t authorized to discuss the matter and didn8217t want to be blacklisted from future jobs Cole now 62 returned to Balad in May 2015 as Sallyport was preparing for the arrival of American F16s sold to the Iraqi government Sallyport8217s mission along with its parent company was to keep the base operating smoothly train the Iraqis and most importantly maintain security on the base where thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of contractors work The federal contract required investigations into potential crimes and violations involving the company8217s work at Balad That was Cole and King8217s assignment 8220They wanted someone to be competent enough to process an investigation if there was a crime or if someone turned up dead8221 King said 8220The way it was put to me If someone turned up with a knife in their back who are you going to call8221 From the start it was clear that much was awry on the base Despite the urgency of fighting IS the delivery of the F16s had been delayed by months amid security concerns It would be catastrophic if IS seized the base and its multimilliondollar jets On July 13 2015 four F16s flew in from Arizona the first of 36 fighter jets that the US planned to deliver Brett McGurk then the US deputy envoy for the international coalition against IS hailed the arrival in a tweet 8220After years of preparation ampamp training in the US Iraqi pilots today landed the 1st squadron of Iraqi F16s in Iraq8221 he wrote The first security breach came in less than 24 hours A long black skid mark on the tarmac was reported It stopped about 45 yards from the nose of one of the fighter jets A truck had plowed through a rope barrier in the 8220nogo8221 zone where lethal force is authorized to protect the planes For more than 10 minutes no one even responded as the vehicle drove away according to reports citing surveillance video That turned out not to be a terrorist But Cole says the outofcontrol truck was a harbinger He noted the lax protection for the F16s in his report and forwarded it to the chief of security Steve Asher Under the requirements of the contract Cole8217s report should have then made its way to the Pentagon But he says Asher kept a lid on the incident Three months later in October 2015 Cole reported another security breach the theft of a Toyota SUV that Sallyport had assigned to bodyguards to drive VIPs around the base Cole eventually uncovered a plot by three Iraqi Sallyport staff working with a dangerous Iranbacked militia known as Kataib Imam Ali The Shiite militia was an ongoing headache politically connected and operating outside the law with sidelines in theft and gunrunning It has ties to the leader of the umbrella militia Popular Mobilization Forces which is on the US list of designated terrorists To Cole8217s astonishment the prime suspect threatened to join the militia during his interrogation He was a Sallyport bodyguard In fact the investigators later found a photo of him on his Facebook page dressed in black militia garb and a patch indicating his allegiance to the group He is 8220viewed by the Investigations Unit as a hardcore recruit to become a terrorist who poses a serious threat to all personnel on this base8221 Cole wrote in another report The Toyota was recovered within a few days but Cole was ordered off the case In an interview with AP the former senior manager defended the company8217s order saying negotiations with the militias were highly sensitive and had to be handled with Iraqi cooperation Still the suspect was supposed to be banned from the base and Cole later saw the man walking around freely ___ GUMMY BEARS SOAKED IN VODKA The longer Cole was on the base the more he suspected that management was turning a blind eye to criminal activity On the books Balad is a dry base where alcohol is restricted But in reality the booze was everywhere and everyone knew it Finding out how it got there led to more troubling questions A Sallyport employee who worked in the air terminal reported in late 2015 that coworkers were involved in a smuggling scheme They were bringing in cases and cases of water bottles filled with liquor that they8217d sneaked onto planes flying in from Baghdad According to investigative documents and people who watched the smuggling in action three empty suitcases would routinely be loaded onto a flight to Baghdad Each time the bags came back with plastic water bottles filled with liquor When they were unloaded the bags were not searched but taken directly outside to be picked up 8212 a serious security risk in a war zone 8220You could be putting a bomb in there8221 said one former employee who witnessed the smuggling 8220You8217ve got people just going rogue8221 He spoke only on condition of anonymity because he didn8217t want to imperil his new job with a different overseas contractor Steve Anderson who worked on flight logistics says he was pressured to sign off on faked flight manifests that omitted passenger names and falsified the weight of cargo to cover for the alcohol smuggling and other infractions 8212 a violation of international flight regulations The planes were getting so weighed down he was worried about flight safety 8220They were playing Russian roulette with the passengers8217 lives 8212 including mine8221 Anderson said Once he watched a plane that was being unloaded tip noseforward on its wheels onto the tarmac because it was so overloaded 8220I could hear the people inside the aircraft yelling I never seen anything like that in my entire life8221 he recalled 8220It was like a seesaw8221 Then out came the telltale bags that he watched get shepherded around security When Anderson aired his concerns to management and refused to sign the falsified manifests his boss said he didn8217t want to hear about any more problems 8220He said 8216If you don8217t like the job that you8217re doing maybe you ought to find somewhere else to work8221 Anderson went on a medical leave and was told his position had been filled when he sought to return Rumors of the alcohol smuggling reached Cole and King separately Informants told them that flight line staff who directed airplanes on the runways and handled cargo were showing up drunk In one instance they had passed around a bowlful of gummy bears soaked in vodka The investigators got a tip that the bootleggers were working out of two hotels in Baghdad Thinking they were undercover King and an Iraqi investigator on the team went to one of the hotels the alBurhan five minutes from Baghdad8217s airport She said informants told them the smuggling was run by the hotel manager and a number of Sallyport employees During their interviews they discovered an even more alarming scheme The hotel had been running a prostitution ring and Sallyport employees were among the customers informants said Four Ethiopian women who had worked as prostitutes at the hotel were later hired in housekeeping by Sallyport and were still sending money back to a pimp in the al Burhan The evidence suggested the investigators told the AP that Sallyport managers had either knowingly or unwittingly abetted human trafficking involving vulnerable female immigrants in a war zone a revelation the company would be required to report to the US government under federal law In the hotel8217s courtyard a prime smuggling suspect who was a Sallyport employee angrily confronted King and said that a senior manager at the headquarters in Virginia Roy Hernandez had tipped him off about the investigation On Feb 15 2016 Cole and King were ordered by Sallyport8217s Balad program manager Kim Poole to shut down the investigations into both the bootlegging and the prostitution on Hernandez8217s instructions according to the investigators The following day Sallyport sent out an email to staff warning that they might be audited over trafficking and noting that they were required to report violations But Stuckart says the prostitution allegations were not substantiated 8220It is absurd to suggest that the company would shut down an inquiry into a matter of such gravity8221 he said A statement after publication acknowledged that the investigation was shut down for a period 8220When the company8217s new management learned that the company8217s own investigators were supposedly told to shut down their investigation into alcohol and prostitution the new Corporate Ethics and Compliance Officer instructed the investigators to complete those investigations8221 Stuckart said His statement referenced an investigative report from Oct 2016 into rumors of another group of prostitutes on the base Stuckart noted that those reports were found by the investigators to be unfounded But the investigators say that inquiry was separate from their original probe that found evidence of prostitution occurring on the base They say they were never allowed to follow up on that probe More than a year later two of the Ethiopian women were still working on the base Cole said and the alcohol smuggling had started back up according to a report obtained by AP dated May 28 2016 ___ 8220IT WAS MINDBLOWING8221 Late last year it became clear that little had changed after the earlier security breaches On Nov 15 Cole got a report that three large generators had been stolen from the base for a total loss of 1 million According to surveillance videos just before 2 am militia had driven two flatbed trucks and a crane onto the base driving right past the security gate Cole estimates the crane when extended was at least 60 feet tall After successfully loading the three generators and partially covering them with burlap the militia drove off the base unchallenged The episode lasted three hours Cole said they passed within about ten feet of the Sallyport security guard force 8220Nobody reported anything It was a disaster and it was covered up That is absolutely covered up8221 he said 8220What if the intent was not to steal but to commit a terrorist act8221 According to Sallyport8217s Stuckart the theft occurred when the Iraqi base commander 8220granted local militia members access to the base8221 and said the generators weren8217t located in his company8217s security zone 8220Sallyport had no authority to keep these militia members from taking the generators8221 It was after that incident that a Defense Department auditor who normally concerned himself with bin tagging trash collection and the accounting minutiae of base life began asking questions Cole and King had kept all their reports in an investigative log They had also flagged the important cases to management and they had assumed that the company informed the government It became clear from the auditor8217s question that he knew nothing about it 8220When we finally got the idea that they were hiding all of the stuff from the US government it was mindblowing8221 said King By then clouds were looming for Cole and King They had begun yet another investigation into timesheet fraud after getting a tip that Sallyport employees were systematically collecting salaries but not working They say the company stalled the investigation ordered every step to be approved by its lawyers and finally told Cole and King in a conference call to keep two sets of books The implication for Cole was that they should omit from the government8217s copy anything that would 8220be controversial and would reveal any failure or embarrassing detail8221 The lawyers explained that that information was covered under attorneyclient privilege The two investigators sitting together on the other end of the call looked at each other in disbelief and shook their heads 8220We realized right away that that8217s fraud probably a crime and we weren8217t going to be a part of it8221 Cole said Shortly after they notified Sallyport that they wanted to interview managers who were suspects their boss Saffold asked them to come to his office It was Sunday morning and King left church early At an interview in his family home in Georgia Cole recalled the fine sand that stuck to his sweat as he walked across the base to the meeting Saffold ordered armed guards to take their pistols and detain the two at their work stations King burst into tears and the guards apparently thought better of restraining her when she said she wanted to bring her Bible back to her quarters the investigators say Cole and King said their termination paperwork was signed by the human resources manager they were investigating as part of the timesheet fraud In an interview in Texas where King has returned to work as a reserve deputy in Armstrong County near Amarillo she expressed regrets 8220It hurts me that I had to leave and not correct issues that were occurring and it hurts me that they want to cover them up8221 she said 8220It8217s so painful to me it makes me lose sleep at night Something8217s wrong and did not get right8221 ___ Hinnant contributed from Paris Susannah George in Baghdad and Jack Gillum in Washington contributed Follow Butler on Twitter at httpstwittercomdesmondbutler and Hinnant at httpstwittercomlhinnant ___ Online Read documents about Sallyport8217s activities in Iraq at httpapnews2p87fqZ ____ Have a tip on government contracting Contact the authors securely at httpswwwaporgtips

WASHINGTON/PROPN 8212/NUM The/DET two/NUM American/ADJ investigators/NOUN felt/VERB a/DET sense/NOUN of/ADP foreboding/NOUN that/DET Sunday/PROPN as/SCONJ they/PRON headed/VERB to/ADP an/DET emergency/NOUN meeting/NOUN with/ADP their/PRON boss/NOUN on/ADP the/DET Iraqi/ADJ air/NOUN base/NOUN But/CCONJ they/PRON didn8217/PROPN t/PROPN expect/VERB to/PART be/AUX surrounded/VERB by/ADP armed/ADJ guards/NOUN disarmed/VERB detained/VERB against/ADP their/PRON will/NOUN 8212/NUM and/CCONJ fired/VERB without/ADP explanation/NOUN It/PRON was/AUX March/PROPN 12/NUM 8212/NUM less/ADJ than/ADP two/NUM months/NOUN ago/ADV Robert/PROPN Cole/PROPN and/CCONJ Kristie/PROPN King/PROPN were/AUX in/ADP Iraq/PROPN working/VERB as/SCONJ investigators/NOUN for/ADP Sallyport/PROPN Global/PROPN a/DET US/PROPN company/NOUN that/PRON was/AUX paid/VERB nearly/ADV 700/NUM million/NUM in/ADP federal/ADJ contracts/NOUN to/PART secure/VERB Balad/PROPN Air/PROPN Base/PROPN home/NOUN to/ADP a/DET squadron/NOUN of/ADP 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<p>Photo Icon: Holly Lindem</p> <p /> <p>&#8220;It is a recurring theme in history that in times of war, armed conflict, or perceived national danger, even liberal democracies adopt measures infringing human rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate to the crisis.&#8221; Lord Johan Steyn, lecture to the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, November 25, 2003</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s law lords, who make up the country&#8217;s highest court, are by tradition a secluded lot, avoiding comments on matters outside of their court. But last November one of them, Lord Steyn, broke those bounds in a dramatic way. He gave a lecture condemning the U.S. government for keeping hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in what he called a &#8220;legal black hole&#8221; &#8212; unable to challenge their imprisonment before any court. Speaking, he said, as a lifelong admirer of American ideals of justice, he called the treatment of the men held at Guantanamo a &#8220;monstrous failure of justice.&#8221;</p> <p>It is not just for Guantanamo that the alarm bells of American liberty should be sounding. Civil liberties are more broadly in a perilous state, wounded in the historical pattern noted by Lord Steyn: repression in times of perceived national danger. In the name of fighting terrorism, President Bush and his administration have abruptly overridden rights protected by the Constitution and international law. Ideas foreign to American principles &#8212; detention without trial, denial of access to lawyers, years of interrogation in isolation &#8212; are now American practices.</p> <p>The danger of what is happening is more profound than the denial of justice to some individuals. The Bush administration is really attacking a basic premise of the American system: that we have a government under law. It was a novel idea when James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the rest laid it down at the end of the 18th century, and ever since it has been a distinctive feature of our polity: Political leaders are subject to the law, responsible to legal constraints on their power as well as to the vote of the people. &#8220;A government of laws, and not of men,&#8221; John Adams first said.</p> <p>The administration&#8217;s policy, in one instance after another, has been to avoid any accounting before the law. It has tried to prevent the prisoners it holds as possibly connected to terrorism, in Guantanamo and elsewhere, from testing in court whether in fact they have anything to do with terrorism. It has covered its actions in secrecy, which is the enemy of legal and political accountability. Aliens have been the most numerous victims of the administration&#8217;s methods, but not the only ones. Oppressive tactics used against aliens have been directed against American citizens, too.</p> <p>In the weeks after September 11, 2001, FBI agents arrested more than 1,000 aliens, most of them Muslims, on suspicion that they might have something to do with terrorism. Many were held for months without charges, in painful conditions. In the words of a New York Times legal writer, Adam Liptak, their treatment &#8220;inverted the foundation principles of the American legal system.&#8221;</p> <p>They were arrested essentially at random, without any probable cause to believe they had terror connections. They were treated as guilty until proved innocent &#8212; detained until a lengthy FBI process concluded that they &#8220;posed no danger to the United States.&#8221; Many were held for months after judges ordered them released, or after they had agreed to leave the country because they had overstayed their visas or otherwise violated immigration rules. Some were subjected to abuse in prison, verbal and physical: At the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, guards slammed detainees against the wall, hurt them by stepping on their leg chains, kept them in cells with fluorescent lights on 24 hours a day, and told them, &#8220;You&#8217;re going to die here.&#8221; Of the thousands detained, only two have been charged with a connection to terrorism.</p> <p>One of the Bush administration&#8217;s programs that has drawn widespread international criticism is the holding of alleged Taliban fighters and terrorists in prison cages at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There are more than 600 prisoners. The general impression is that they were almost all captured by U.S. forces during the war in Afghanistan. But it is now clear that that is simply not true. Over the past six months, several dozen detainees have been sent home after being held for as long as two years, and none were charged with any offense.</p> <p>A substantial number of the detainees were arrested by governments in places as remote from Afghanistan as Gambia, in West Africa, turned over to American authorities, and taken to Guantanamo. So it appears from a brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in January by 175 members of the British Parliament. The brief describes what was known about nine British subjects and two others with British connections who were being held in Guantanamo.</p> <p>One of the British citizens, Asif Iqbal, lived in Tipton, in the British Midlands. His parents, who came to England from Pakistan decades ago, went to Pakistan in July 2001 to find a bride for him. Iqbal, who was 20, followed in September. The marriage was arranged, and he told his parents that he was going to the city of Karachi to meet friends. He telephoned them from there &#8212; and was not heard from again.</p> <p>Two friends of Iqbal&#8217;s from Tipton followed him to Pakistan in 2001 &#8212; and similarly disappeared. The brief said they all were apparently seized in unknown circumstances in Pakistan and turned over to Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance in turn handed the three to American forces, who were offering cash rewards for possible terrorists.</p> <p>Jamal Udeen, 35, a web designer, lived in Manchester, England. His parents had moved there from Jamaica. In 2001 Udeen was, he said, traveling through Afghanistan to Iran when Taliban soldiers saw his British passport and accused him of being a spy. He was taken to a prison in Kandahar and tortured. British officials found him and said he would be sent home, but he was sent to Guantanamo instead.</p> <p>Martin Mubanga is the son of a former Zambian official who moved to Britain in the 1970s. He was arrested, also for unknown reasons, in Zambia in 2002, turned over to U.S. agents, and taken to Guantanamo.</p> <p>The brief that describes the British detainees is a remarkable document. It concerns one aspect of the Guantanamo detentions: the determination of the Bush administration to keep the prisoners from having their situations reviewed by any court. The Third Geneva Convention, which the United States has signed and ratified, provides that an independent &#8220;competent tribunal&#8221; must decide any dispute about a prisoner&#8217;s status &#8212; whether he is, for example, a regular prisoner of war or something unlawful such as a spy or terrorist. The administration declined to follow this convention and declared unilaterally that everyone held in Guantanamo was an &#8220;unlawful combatant,&#8221; not entitled to the rights of a prisoner of war.</p> <p>The right of a prisoner to challenge his detention before a tribunal of the kind required by the Geneva Convention is not a legal abstraction. It has acute human consequences. That became clear when the United States, at the end of January, released three teenagers who had been held in Guantanamo for more than a year. One of them, 15-year-old Muhammad Ismail Agha, was interviewed on his return to Afghanistan. He said he was looking for work in 2002 when he was arrested by militiamen and turned over to American forces. His family did not know what had happened to him; it was 10 months before he was able to send them a letter from Guantanamo. &#8220;He was innocent,&#8221; a cousin of Agha&#8217;s said, &#8220;and kept in prison all this time.&#8221;</p> <p>When some of the prisoners brought legal actions for habeas corpus &#8212; the ancient writ that allows anyone imprisoned to test the legality of his detention &#8212; the Bush administration argued that federal courts could not hear the case because Guantanamo is outside U.S. sovereignty. Though the United States has complete control of the area under a perpetual treaty with Cuba, a lower court agreed with the administration. But then, in something of a surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court last November agreed to consider the habeas corpus issue. It did so despite a warning from the Justice Department that this was not the court&#8217;s business but should be left to the president to decide as commander in chief.</p> <p>It was Guantanamo that led Lord Steyn to speak out about wartime civil liberties in a lecture last fall. It was a remarkable speech from a sitting judge, passionate in its condemnation of the U.S. policy. &#8220;As matters stand at present,&#8221; he said, &#8220;the United States courts would refuse to hear a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who produces credible medical evidence that he has been and is being tortured. They would refuse to hear prisoners who assert that they were not combatants at all.&#8221;</p> <p>There is no reason to believe that Guantanamo prisoners have been tortured in, say, the horrifying ways that Saddam Hussein used in Iraq. On the other hand, endless interrogation, isolation, and harsh conditions of confinement are said by medical experts to take a heavy psychological toll. At least 21 prisoners have attempted suicide.</p> <p>Americans may feel safe from the tactics used in John Ashcroft&#8217;s sweep after 9/11 and in Guantanamo, but they are not. The Bush administration has used similar methods against U.S. citizens, and its lawyers argue that citizens have no greater protection of their freedom. Two citizens have been held without trial for more than 20 months, imprisoned in solitary confinement in Navy brigs, subjected to unending interrogation, and denied the right to consult lawyers. In January, the U.S. Su- preme Court agreed to decide whether the administration has the power it claims to detain citizens without trial.</p> <p>One of the American detainees, Yaser Esam Hamdi, was seized in Afghanistan during the war there. He was in Guantanamo until it was learned that he was born in Louisiana and is hence an American citizen, whereupon he was moved to the United States. President Bush declared Hamdi an &#8220;enemy combatant&#8221; and ordered him held indefinitely.</p> <p>A federal public defender, Frank Dunham, acting on behalf of Hamdi&#8217;s father, sought Hamdi&#8217;s release on a writ of habeas corpus. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, in Richmond, Virginia, held that the president had the power he claimed when a citizen was found, like Hamdi, on or near a foreign battlefield. The court said specifically that it was not deciding what the president could do with someone arrested inside this country.</p> <p>That is the case of Jose Padilla. He was born in Brooklyn, was a gang member, and served several jail terms. In prison he converted to Islam. In May 2002, federal agents arrested him at O&#8217;Hare Airport in Chicago and took him to New York as a material witness before a grand jury looking into the 9/11 attack. A judge appointed a lawyer to represent him. But then the Justice Department declared him to be an &#8220;enemy combatant&#8221; and transferred him to a military brig in South Carolina. His court-appointed lawyer was not allowed to see him after that.</p> <p>In the Padilla case, a federal trial judge said the government had to show &#8220;some evidence&#8221; for its description of him as an enemy combatant. The evidence was a statement by a Pentagon official, not subject to cross-examination and without any firsthand witnesses to anything Padilla had allegedly done. The judge said that was enough to satisfy him that there were adequate grounds for his detention.</p> <p>But on December 18, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in New York, rejected that claim by a vote of 2-to-1. Even the dissenter said Padilla should be allowed to consult counsel and argue against his designation as an enemy combatant. The administration has taken this decision to the Supreme Court.</p> <p>The administration has argued that in the Padilla case, any visit by a lawyer might hurt the process of interrogation by destroying the necessary &#8220;atmosphere of dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator.&#8221; In other words, it might inhibit the effort to overbear the detainee&#8217;s will. It is precisely because a prisoner alone in the hands of his jailers may be overborne that we have the Miranda rule in the criminal law and the constitutional guarantee of the right to counsel.</p> <p>Another noteworthy point in the story of Jose Padilla is the way that it was brought before the public. Attorney General Ashcroft, who happened to be in Moscow at the time, made an announcement on television on June 10, 2002. &#8220;We have captured a known terrorist,&#8221; he said. &#8220;While in Afghanistan and Pakistan, [he] trained with the enemy. In apprehending [him] we have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive &#8216;dirty bomb.'&#8221; Ashcroft thus publicly convicted Padilla without a trial. Any prosecutor who so grossly prejudiced a defendant would be called to account for his ethics.</p> <p>Both in the Padilla case and that of Yaser Hamdi, the administration claimed the right to decide on its own not only the law, but the facts. It asserted the legal power to detain American citizens without any specific congressional authorization, and it argued for habeas corpus proceedings so narrow that the detainees had no real ability to contest the finding that they were enemy combatants. Again, the administration claim runs counter to the American idea of government under law &#8212; in particular that it is the courts that decide the facts of legal issues, not the executive.</p> <p>The Bush administration has often been charged with unilateralism abroad, notably in its rush to war on Iraq without the support of the United Nations. The Hamdi and Padilla cases show that it is just as determined to act unilaterally when it wants to at home, even if the most profound rights of Americans are overridden.</p> <p>The attempt to avoid any meaningful review by the courts is especially alarming. Judges are the last line of defense for citizens against abuse of government power. The British parliamentarians&#8217; brief in the Supreme Court makes the point well. &#8220;The United Kingdom and the United States share an unshakeable commitment to the rule of law,&#8221; it says. &#8220;Recourse to an independent and impartial tribunal is required by the rule of law, especially when the justification for detention is contested or uncertain. Independent judicial review is the product of over three centuries of constitutional development in both our countries&#8230;. [We] respectfully submit that this Court should preserve the judiciary&#8217;s vital role to insure that executive actions violate neither the Constitution of the United States nor the international rule of law and human rights.&#8221;</p> <p>The British lawmakers&#8217; interest in the Guantanamo situation raises a question: Why are they so much more concerned about this abuse of rights than we are? If someone tried to file a similar brief on behalf of members of the U.S. Congress, he would have little chance of finding 175 senators and representatives willing to sign it. There is not much public outcry about the Bush administration&#8217;s attacks on civil liberties. The press has only latterly begun to pay serious attention.</p> <p>It is not that the British are more sensitive about these matters. Hardly. Lord Steyn, in his lecture, mentioned a dark time in Britain&#8217;s history. In World War II, the British government detained nearly 27,000 people in Britain as suspect aliens, some of them German Jews who had found refuge in Britain &#8212; and the courts did nothing to hold the government to rational standards.</p> <p>The basic reason for the lack of American public response now must be fear. Fear has brought repression before in U.S. history. It led to savage prison sentences in World War I for people who criticized President Wilson&#8217;s policies. It led to President Roosevelt&#8217;s removing 120,000 people of Japanese descent from their homes on the West Coast and confining them in desert camps during World War II.</p> <p>Americans were traumatized by the attacks of September 11. We felt more vulnerable than we had in living memory. And the truth is that there was more reason to fear further terrorist outrages than there was to think free speech would injure the war effort in 1917 or to fear disloyalty by Japanese Americans in 1942. In times of fear and stress &#8212; the times mentioned by Lord Steyn &#8212; we want to put ourselves in the hands of a leader. That means the president.</p> <p>What is especially dangerous about the present fear is that it has no visible time limit. We cannot imagine the &#8220;war on terror&#8221; coming to a defined end, as the two world wars did. The terrorists are not going to surrender.</p> <p>President Bush chose to define the struggle against terrorism after September 11 as a war. It might have been better described as a worldwide law enforcement effort against a criminal gang. But the idea of war has stuck, and that makes the need for watchfulness against abuse of power the more acute. If we allow our liberties to be trampled, as is rightly said, the terrorists will have won. The great American contribution to political theory has been the idea of a government of laws, not men. We rely on the law to protect our system of government and our freedom. We abandon that faith in the law at our peril.</p> <p>The president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Ahron Barak, a judge much respected around the world, has addressed the subject of terror and the law. He speaks from experience, given Israel&#8217;s unending struggle with terrorism.</p> <p>&#8220;Terrorism does not justify the neglect of accepted legal norms,&#8221; Justice Barak wrote in 2002. &#8220;This is how we distinguish ourselves from the terrorists themselves. They act against the law, by violating and trampling it, while in its war against terrorism, a democratic state acts within the framework of the law and according to the law. It is, therefore, not merely a war of the state against its enemies; it is also a war of the Law against its enemies.&#8221;</p> <p />

Anthony Lewis: Destroying Democracy, One Liberty At a Time

https://motherjones.com/politics/2004/05/are-we-better-one-liberty-time/

2018-05-01

4left

Photo Icon Holly Lindem 8220It is a recurring theme in history that in times of war armed conflict or perceived national danger even liberal democracies adopt measures infringing human rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate to the crisis8221 Lord Johan Steyn lecture to the British Institute of International and Comparative Law November 25 2003 Britain8217s law lords who make up the country8217s highest court are by tradition a secluded lot avoiding comments on matters outside of their court But last November one of them Lord Steyn broke those bounds in a dramatic way He gave a lecture condemning the US government for keeping hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay Cuba in what he called a 8220legal black hole8221 8212 unable to challenge their imprisonment before any court Speaking he said as a lifelong admirer of American ideals of justice he called the treatment of the men held at Guantanamo a 8220monstrous failure of justice8221 It is not just for Guantanamo that the alarm bells of American liberty should be sounding Civil liberties are more broadly in a perilous state wounded in the historical pattern noted by Lord Steyn repression in times of perceived national danger In the name of fighting terrorism President Bush and his administration have abruptly overridden rights protected by the Constitution and international law Ideas foreign to American principles 8212 detention without trial denial of access to lawyers years of interrogation in isolation 8212 are now American practices The danger of what is happening is more profound than the denial of justice to some individuals The Bush administration is really attacking a basic premise of the American system that we have a government under law It was a novel idea when James Madison Alexander Hamilton and the rest laid it down at the end of the 18th century and ever since it has been a distinctive feature of our polity Political leaders are subject to the law responsible to legal constraints on their power as well as to the vote of the people 8220A government of laws and not of men8221 John Adams first said The administration8217s policy in one instance after another has been to avoid any accounting before the law It has tried to prevent the prisoners it holds as possibly connected to terrorism in Guantanamo and elsewhere from testing in court whether in fact they have anything to do with terrorism It has covered its actions in secrecy which is the enemy of legal and political accountability Aliens have been the most numerous victims of the administration8217s methods but not the only ones Oppressive tactics used against aliens have been directed against American citizens too In the weeks after September 11 2001 FBI agents arrested more than 1000 aliens most of them Muslims on suspicion that they might have something to do with terrorism Many were held for months without charges in painful conditions In the words of a New York Times legal writer Adam Liptak their treatment 8220inverted the foundation principles of the American legal system8221 They were arrested essentially at random without any probable cause to believe they had terror connections They were treated as guilty until proved innocent 8212 detained until a lengthy FBI process concluded that they 8220posed no danger to the United States8221 Many were held for months after judges ordered them released or after they had agreed to leave the country because they had overstayed their visas or otherwise violated immigration rules Some were subjected to abuse in prison verbal and physical At the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn guards slammed detainees against the wall hurt them by stepping on their leg chains kept them in cells with fluorescent lights on 24 hours a day and told them 8220You8217re going to die here8221 Of the thousands detained only two have been charged with a connection to terrorism One of the Bush administration8217s programs that has drawn widespread international criticism is the holding of alleged Taliban fighters and terrorists in prison cages at Guantanamo Bay Cuba There are more than 600 prisoners The general impression is that they were almost all captured by US forces during the war in Afghanistan But it is now clear that that is simply not true Over the past six months several dozen detainees have been sent home after being held for as long as two years and none were charged with any offense A substantial number of the detainees were arrested by governments in places as remote from Afghanistan as Gambia in West Africa turned over to American authorities and taken to Guantanamo So it appears from a brief filed in the US Supreme Court in January by 175 members of the British Parliament The brief describes what was known about nine British subjects and two others with British connections who were being held in Guantanamo One of the British citizens Asif Iqbal lived in Tipton in the British Midlands His parents who came to England from Pakistan decades ago went to Pakistan in July 2001 to find a bride for him Iqbal who was 20 followed in September The marriage was arranged and he told his parents that he was going to the city of Karachi to meet friends He telephoned them from there 8212 and was not heard from again Two friends of Iqbal8217s from Tipton followed him to Pakistan in 2001 8212 and similarly disappeared The brief said they all were apparently seized in unknown circumstances in Pakistan and turned over to Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan The Northern Alliance in turn handed the three to American forces who were offering cash rewards for possible terrorists Jamal Udeen 35 a web designer lived in Manchester England His parents had moved there from Jamaica In 2001 Udeen was he said traveling through Afghanistan to Iran when Taliban soldiers saw his British passport and accused him of being a spy He was taken to a prison in Kandahar and tortured British officials found him and said he would be sent home but he was sent to Guantanamo instead Martin Mubanga is the son of a former Zambian official who moved to Britain in the 1970s He was arrested also for unknown reasons in Zambia in 2002 turned over to US agents and taken to Guantanamo The brief that describes the British detainees is a remarkable document It concerns one aspect of the Guantanamo detentions the determination of the Bush administration to keep the prisoners from having their situations reviewed by any court The Third Geneva Convention which the United States has signed and ratified provides that an independent 8220competent tribunal8221 must decide any dispute about a prisoner8217s status 8212 whether he is for example a regular prisoner of war or something unlawful such as a spy or terrorist The administration declined to follow this convention and declared unilaterally that everyone held in Guantanamo was an 8220unlawful combatant8221 not entitled to the rights of a prisoner of war The right of a prisoner to challenge his detention before a tribunal of the kind required by the Geneva Convention is not a legal abstraction It has acute human consequences That became clear when the United States at the end of January released three teenagers who had been held in Guantanamo for more than a year One of them 15yearold Muhammad Ismail Agha was interviewed on his return to Afghanistan He said he was looking for work in 2002 when he was arrested by militiamen and turned over to American forces His family did not know what had happened to him it was 10 months before he was able to send them a letter from Guantanamo 8220He was innocent8221 a cousin of Agha8217s said 8220and kept in prison all this time8221 When some of the prisoners brought legal actions for habeas corpus 8212 the ancient writ that allows anyone imprisoned to test the legality of his detention 8212 the Bush administration argued that federal courts could not hear the case because Guantanamo is outside US sovereignty Though the United States has complete control of the area under a perpetual treaty with Cuba a lower court agreed with the administration But then in something of a surprise the US Supreme Court last November agreed to consider the habeas corpus issue It did so despite a warning from the Justice Department that this was not the court8217s business but should be left to the president to decide as commander in chief It was Guantanamo that led Lord Steyn to speak out about wartime civil liberties in a lecture last fall It was a remarkable speech from a sitting judge passionate in its condemnation of the US policy 8220As matters stand at present8221 he said 8220the United States courts would refuse to hear a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who produces credible medical evidence that he has been and is being tortured They would refuse to hear prisoners who assert that they were not combatants at all8221 There is no reason to believe that Guantanamo prisoners have been tortured in say the horrifying ways that Saddam Hussein used in Iraq On the other hand endless interrogation isolation and harsh conditions of confinement are said by medical experts to take a heavy psychological toll At least 21 prisoners have attempted suicide Americans may feel safe from the tactics used in John Ashcroft8217s sweep after 911 and in Guantanamo but they are not The Bush administration has used similar methods against US citizens and its lawyers argue that citizens have no greater protection of their freedom Two citizens have been held without trial for more than 20 months imprisoned in solitary confinement in Navy brigs subjected to unending interrogation and denied the right to consult lawyers In January the US Su preme Court agreed to decide whether the administration has the power it claims to detain citizens without trial One of the American detainees Yaser Esam Hamdi was seized in Afghanistan during the war there He was in Guantanamo until it was learned that he was born in Louisiana and is hence an American citizen whereupon he was moved to the United States President Bush declared Hamdi an 8220enemy combatant8221 and ordered him held indefinitely A federal public defender Frank Dunham acting on behalf of Hamdi8217s father sought Hamdi8217s release on a writ of habeas corpus The US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond Virginia held that the president had the power he claimed when a citizen was found like Hamdi on or near a foreign battlefield The court said specifically that it was not deciding what the president could do with someone arrested inside this country That is the case of Jose Padilla He was born in Brooklyn was a gang member and served several jail terms In prison he converted to Islam In May 2002 federal agents arrested him at O8217Hare Airport in Chicago and took him to New York as a material witness before a grand jury looking into the 911 attack A judge appointed a lawyer to represent him But then the Justice Department declared him to be an 8220enemy combatant8221 and transferred him to a military brig in South Carolina His courtappointed lawyer was not allowed to see him after that In the Padilla case a federal trial judge said the government had to show 8220some evidence8221 for its description of him as an enemy combatant The evidence was a statement by a Pentagon official not subject to crossexamination and without any firsthand witnesses to anything Padilla had allegedly done The judge said that was enough to satisfy him that there were adequate grounds for his detention But on December 18 a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York rejected that claim by a vote of 2to1 Even the dissenter said Padilla should be allowed to consult counsel and argue against his designation as an enemy combatant The administration has taken this decision to the Supreme Court The administration has argued that in the Padilla case any visit by a lawyer might hurt the process of interrogation by destroying the necessary 8220atmosphere of dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator8221 In other words it might inhibit the effort to overbear the detainee8217s will It is precisely because a prisoner alone in the hands of his jailers may be overborne that we have the Miranda rule in the criminal law and the constitutional guarantee of the right to counsel Another noteworthy point in the story of Jose Padilla is the way that it was brought before the public Attorney General Ashcroft who happened to be in Moscow at the time made an announcement on television on June 10 2002 8220We have captured a known terrorist8221 he said 8220While in Afghanistan and Pakistan he trained with the enemy In apprehending him we have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive 8216dirty bomb8221 Ashcroft thus publicly convicted Padilla without a trial Any prosecutor who so grossly prejudiced a defendant would be called to account for his ethics Both in the Padilla case and that of Yaser Hamdi the administration claimed the right to decide on its own not only the law but the facts It asserted the legal power to detain American citizens without any specific congressional authorization and it argued for habeas corpus proceedings so narrow that the detainees had no real ability to contest the finding that they were enemy combatants Again the administration claim runs counter to the American idea of government under law 8212 in particular that it is the courts that decide the facts of legal issues not the executive The Bush administration has often been charged with unilateralism abroad notably in its rush to war on Iraq without the support of the United Nations The Hamdi and Padilla cases show that it is just as determined to act unilaterally when it wants to at home even if the most profound rights of Americans are overridden The attempt to avoid any meaningful review by the courts is especially alarming Judges are the last line of defense for citizens against abuse of government power The British parliamentarians8217 brief in the Supreme Court makes the point well 8220The United Kingdom and the United States share an unshakeable commitment to the rule of law8221 it says 8220Recourse to an independent and impartial tribunal is required by the rule of law especially when the justification for detention is contested or uncertain Independent judicial review is the product of over three centuries of constitutional development in both our countries8230 We respectfully submit that this Court should preserve the judiciary8217s vital role to insure that executive actions violate neither the Constitution of the United States nor the international rule of law and human rights8221 The British lawmakers8217 interest in the Guantanamo situation raises a question Why are they so much more concerned about this abuse of rights than we are If someone tried to file a similar brief on behalf of members of the US Congress he would have little chance of finding 175 senators and representatives willing to sign it There is not much public outcry about the Bush administration8217s attacks on civil liberties The press has only latterly begun to pay serious attention It is not that the British are more sensitive about these matters Hardly Lord Steyn in his lecture mentioned a dark time in Britain8217s history In World War II the British government detained nearly 27000 people in Britain as suspect aliens some of them German Jews who had found refuge in Britain 8212 and the courts did nothing to hold the government to rational standards The basic reason for the lack of American public response now must be fear Fear has brought repression before in US history It led to savage prison sentences in World War I for people who criticized President Wilson8217s policies It led to President Roosevelt8217s removing 120000 people of Japanese descent from their homes on the West Coast and confining them in desert camps during World War II Americans were traumatized by the attacks of September 11 We felt more vulnerable than we had in living memory And the truth is that there was more reason to fear further terrorist outrages than there was to think free speech would injure the war effort in 1917 or to fear disloyalty by Japanese Americans in 1942 In times of fear and stress 8212 the times mentioned by Lord Steyn 8212 we want to put ourselves in the hands of a leader That means the president What is especially dangerous about the present fear is that it has no visible time limit We cannot imagine the 8220war on terror8221 coming to a defined end as the two world wars did The terrorists are not going to surrender President Bush chose to define the struggle against terrorism after September 11 as a war It might have been better described as a worldwide law enforcement effort against a criminal gang But the idea of war has stuck and that makes the need for watchfulness against abuse of power the more acute If we allow our liberties to be trampled as is rightly said the terrorists will have won The great American contribution to political theory has been the idea of a government of laws not men We rely on the law to protect our system of government and our freedom We abandon that faith in the law at our peril The president of the Israeli Supreme Court Ahron Barak a judge much respected around the world has addressed the subject of terror and the law He speaks from experience given Israel8217s unending struggle with terrorism 8220Terrorism does not justify the neglect of accepted legal norms8221 Justice Barak wrote in 2002 8220This is how we distinguish ourselves from the terrorists themselves They act against the law by violating and trampling it while in its war against terrorism a democratic state acts within the framework of the law and according to the law It is therefore not merely a war of the state against its enemies it is also a war of the Law against its enemies8221

Photo/PROPN Icon/PROPN Holly/PROPN Lindem/PROPN 8220It/NUM is/AUX a/DET recurring/VERB theme/NOUN in/ADP history/NOUN that/SCONJ in/ADP times/NOUN of/ADP war/NOUN armed/ADJ conflict/NOUN or/CCONJ perceived/VERB national/ADJ danger/NOUN even/ADV liberal/ADJ democracies/NOUN adopt/VERB measures/NOUN infringing/VERB human/ADJ rights/NOUN in/ADP ways/NOUN that/PRON are/AUX wholly/ADV disproportionate/ADJ to/ADP the/DET crisis8221/PROPN Lord/PROPN Johan/PROPN Steyn/PROPN lecture/NOUN to/ADP the/DET British/PROPN Institute/PROPN of/ADP International/PROPN and/CCONJ Comparative/PROPN Law/PROPN November/PROPN 25/NUM 2003/NUM Britain8217s/ADJ law/NOUN lords/NOUN who/PRON make/VERB up/ADP the/DET country8217s/PROPN highest/ADJ court/NOUN are/AUX by/ADP tradition/NOUN a/DET secluded/ADJ lot/NOUN avoiding/VERB comments/NOUN on/ADP matters/NOUN outside/ADV of/ADP their/PRON court/NOUN But/CCONJ last/ADJ November/PROPN one/NUM of/ADP them/PRON Lord/PROPN Steyn/PROPN broke/VERB those/DET bounds/NOUN 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<p>Dr. Sami Al-Arian, one of the earliest victims of the &#8220;war on terror&#8221; within the U.S. itself, continues to languish in jail, where he has been since his February 2003 arrest for the &#8220;crime&#8221; of speaking out on behalf of the Palestinian struggle against Israel&#8217;s apartheid.</p> <p>Al-Arian&#8217;s daughter, Laila Al-Arian, is the author, with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, of <a href="/dp/1568583737/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Collateral Damage: America&#8217;s War Against Iraqi Civilians</a> [1]. A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, she recently joined Al-Jazeera English as a producer.</p> <p>I spoke with Laila on her recent visit to Burlington, Vt., where she sought a meeting with Sen. Patrick Leahy, a leading Democrat and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. So far, Leahy has refused to investigate the circumstances and conditions under which Dr. Al-Arian is being held.</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>IN 2006, after a Florida jury refused to return a guilty verdict on any of the charges that the Bush Justice department had brought against him, your father signed a plea agreement with federal prosecutors to secure his release from prison. Why wasn&#8217;t your father released and deported as agreed? What&#8217;s happened since?</p> <p>MY FATHER signed a plea agreement, and we thought that was that, and he would be released just a few months later. Then, this federal prosecutor, Gordon Kromberg, tried to bring him to Virginia. Kromberg has been on a six- or seven-year witch-hunt against Muslim organizations in the Northern Virginia area.</p> <p>To describe where he&#8217;s coming from, he&#8217;s blogged about trips he&#8217;s taken to Israel and his fear of Palestinians. He&#8217;s made anti-Arab and anti-Muslim statements on the record that he&#8217;s never apologized for. During one trial in Virginia, he said &#8220;all Arabs lie&#8221;&#8211;that&#8217;s what he told the jury&#8211;and he said &#8220;don&#8217;t believe anything they tell you.&#8221;</p> <p>This is a person with a lot of power and authority. Not to say that he&#8217;s the only one driving the ship&#8211;I think his bosses are supporting what he&#8217;s doing. But we know Kromberg wasn&#8217;t happy with the Florida jury&#8217;s verdict, and this was his way of trying to retry the case in Virginia.</p> <p>Kromberg succeeded in getting my father moved to a Virginia jail, and for the next 18 months and more, he brought my father to the grand jury and tried to force him to testify. But had my dad testified, they would have charged him with perjury, maybe even obstruction of justice.</p> <p>So he was held in civil contempt. During the 12 months my dad spent in civil contempt, he went on two different hunger strikes. He was trying to make a point that &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to testify. It&#8217;s against my principles, it&#8217;s against my plea agreement.&#8221;</p> <p>Finally, when my dad was removed from contempt, there was a period where his sentence had run out. He had been removed from contempt, and yet he still wasn&#8217;t being deported, when one of the promises the government made in the plea agreement was to deport him expeditiously. They used that language, which is very important in this case. But of course, that never happened, and it&#8217;s been more than two years.</p> <p>WHAT HAVE those two years been like for him, and how has he endured?</p> <p>I WOULD say the completely lowest point was when he was in Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Virginia. He was on a hunger strike, and the authorities there went completely ballistic. They put him on suicide watch. They took away all his clothes and put him in a paper-thin white gown. They took away his pillows, blankets, even his water&#8211;his cup of water.</p> <p>We had a huge campaign at the time to call the prison and demand that he be treated with humanity and respect. A few days later, they removed him from isolation, and they started treating him better. I think that&#8217;s a really good example of the power of the people. It&#8217;s heartening to see that it actually does work.</p> <p>WHAT ARE the most recent developments?</p> <p>IN LATE June, my dad was indicted on two counts of criminal contempt. Now we&#8217;re awaiting the trial, which will take place August 13. A lot of lawyers have said it&#8217;s really unusual for someone to be placed in civil contempt, and then be charged with criminal contempt, because you&#8217;ve already punished the person for not testifying.</p> <p>The scary thing about the criminal contempt charge is that it&#8217;s the only so-called crime on the American law books that has no minimum or maximum sentence&#8211;so it could range from less than five years to 10, 20, 30 years. We really have no idea.</p> <p>The other thing&#8211;and this is a law that was passed post-9/11&#8211;is that the government can ask for terrorist-enhancement charges, which they tack on to charges to increase the prison time.</p> <p>A JUDGE recently granted bail for your father. Why wasn&#8217;t he been released?</p> <p>THE BAIL hearing for my father took place after my father finished his sentence, which ended on April 7, and before his indictment, which came down on June 24. So at the time of the bail hearing, he was in jail illegally&#8211;because you&#8217;re not allowed to just hold someone indefinitely for no reason. I think that&#8217;s still not allowed in this country.</p> <p>But at that time, he was being taken from one ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] prison to the next. He was under ICE custody. At the bail hearing, when the judge decided to grant him bail, it was a really good day for us. She said on the record that he was neither a flight risk, nor a threat to any community. She did impose some restrictions, which we were okay with, so long as it meant that my father would be released.</p> <p>But everything in my dad&#8217;s case is always the exception to every rule. Even if something good happens, somehow the government always finds a way to prevail. In this case, because he&#8217;s not a citizen, even though he was granted bail, ICE can detain him. The judge even said during the bail hearing, &#8220;I don&#8217;t have the authority to order ICE to release him. It&#8217;s going to be up to them.&#8221;</p> <p>My brother and I went to the courthouse the following week&#8211;my brother had to sign some paperwork because he was the custodian if my father were released&#8211;and the woman at the courthouse who works in the clerk&#8217;s office told us, &#8220;Oh yeah, whenever the court says for a person to be released on bail, ICE 99 percent of the time will release a person.&#8221;</p> <p>Of course, we&#8217;re that 1 percent exception.</p> <p>WHERE IS your father now?</p> <p>I JUST found out this morning that my dad has been moved from the U.S. marshal&#8217;s custody to ICE, and he&#8217;s now 75 miles away from Arlington, Virginia. He&#8217;s now in Winchester, Virginia, in ICE custody. It&#8217;s obvious they&#8217;re not planning on releasing him.</p> <p>YOU CAME to Vermont hoping to meet in person with Patrick Leahy. What reason did the senator give for refusing to meet with you?</p> <p>FROM WHAT I understand, his response is that it&#8217;s illegal for a representative or a senator to get involved in pending litigation. Well, we&#8217;ve been asking him to get involved way before there was any pending litigation.</p> <p>The pending litigation [on the charge of criminal contempt] only happened last month, so Leahy had a chance for almost the past two years to get involved, and he didn&#8217;t. We know for a fact that he&#8217;s received hundreds of letters, faxes, e-mails and phone calls from people all over the world who are concerned about what&#8217;s happened to my father, and unfortunately, he hasn&#8217;t responded to any of these calls, including calls from his own constituents here in Vermont who I know are very concerned about the case.</p> <p>There was a big window of time when he really could have taken the initiative to investigate the abuses going on in this case&#8211;and there are grave abuses. I think that as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has the responsibility to oversee what the Bush Justice Department is doing.</p> <p>Leahy&#8217;s committee has taken the right step of investigating the politicization of the Justice Department under [former Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales, but what&#8217;s the flip side of that coin? They&#8217;re looking into the issue of attorneys being fired during that time when Gonzales was ordering attorneys he didn&#8217;t agree with to be fired, but they should also be looking at who was being promoted. It&#8217;s people like Gordon Kromberg.</p> <p>YOU&#8217;VE DEDICATED <a href="/dp/1568583737/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Collateral Damage</a>, featuring interviews with more than 50 U.S. soldiers about the wretched treatment of Iraqi civilians under occupation, to your father. What are the connections between how your father is being treated and what the Iraqi people are being subjected to?</p> <p>I THINK it&#8217;s just the same policies of this Bush administration. Bush went out of his way to say that this isn&#8217;t a war on Islam and Muslims, but I think the past almost eight years have shown otherwise.</p> <p>They targeted someone like my father, who was an activist who just spoke his mind. I know that&#8217;s what the jury in Florida concluded, because that&#8217;s what they&#8217;ve told us, and that&#8217;s what they&#8217;ve told journalists on the record: that my father&#8217;s only so-called crime was exercising his First Amendment rights.</p> <p>It&#8217;s the same in Iraq&#8211;this whole misguided notion of who Arabs and Muslims are, invading a country based on lies, lying to the American people just like they lied to the jury about my father&#8217;s case. Except, thankfully, the jury saw through that.</p> <p>HOW DO you respond to Barack Obama&#8217;s recent arguments for reducing troops in Iraq to boost troop levels in Afghanistan?</p> <p>I THINK you just need to look at the recent incidents in Afghanistan&#8211;we bombed civilians, there was an air strike on a wedding. But I also think few American people know about the effects of the war on Afghan civilians.</p> <p>I met a veteran of the Afghanistan war, and he told me about one experience where he actually gave the people who were about to [conduct an] air strike in Afghanistan the wrong coordinates because the metal in the vehicle next to him interfered with his [Global Positioning System]. He said they bombed a village of Afghan civilians, and then they went to the village and told them, &#8220;We&#8217;re sorry the Taliban did this to you.&#8221; It&#8217;s really telling of how failed our policies are, how destructive occupation is to the people.</p> <p>I think sending more troops to Afghanistan will also hurt our own military and our own troops who don&#8217;t want to be there. From what they&#8217;ve told me, they want to be back home here with their families; they&#8217;ve already served years in Iraq&#8211;enough is enough.</p> <p>It&#8217;s also going to have long-term consequences on our own country when we&#8217;ve had all these young men and women serving in all these war zones, and under extremely difficulty circumstances.</p> <p>OBAMA HAS also reaffirmed the U.S.&#8217;s &#8220;special relationship&#8221; with Israel while suggesting he would negotiate an agreement between the Israeli state and the Palestinians. What do you think of the prospects for peace under an Obama presidency?</p> <p>I THINK the only way to be a credible peace-broker, if you will, in the Middle East is to actually consider both sides, and that&#8217;s never happened. Even at the Camp David Accords, the only thing the American negotiating team was doing was copying and pasting Israeli demands, and offering them to the Palestinians.</p> <p>So if it&#8217;s just a matter of repeating that history, then no, I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;ll get very far. I think America does have a very important role as being one of Israel&#8217;s staunchest allies, and for that reason, I hope more Americans will inform themselves about the conflict and really dig deep and learn both sides of the narrative, because right now, the media is only offering one side. You very rarely get a glimpse of the actual history. They&#8217;ve done polls where a majority of Americans think it&#8217;s the Palestinians who are occupying the Israelis.</p> <p>There&#8217;s such little depth to the coverage of this conflict, and yet seeing how much of our tax money goes to sustaining Israel, I think people really have a responsibility to learn as much as possible.</p> <p>RECENTLY, HUNDREDS of Vermonters turned out to protest the attempt by Burlington&#8217;s municipal cable company to drop Al-Jazeera English from its offerings. What&#8217;s the significance of people rallying to keep Al-Jazeera on the air?</p> <p>FIRST, I should say I&#8217;m not a spokesperson for Al-Jazeera, but I work there, and I obviously have tremendous respect and regard for the network. Al-Jazeera English is a refreshing change from what we&#8217;re offered here in this country, and it&#8217;s really encouraging to be in the one city in the United States that actually offers the network.</p> <p>I think it&#8217;s great that people turned out in support of it&#8211;in support of free speech and also the opportunity to be exposed to more than one perspective. I hope that more cities in the U.S. follow that lead and insist that their cable companies provide Al-Jazeera, because how can we say we live in a democracy when we can&#8217;t even get a TV station?</p> <p>HOW SERIOUSLY should we take right-wing, anti-Muslim groups like the &#8220;Vermont&#8217;s Defenders Council,&#8221; which has very few members but almost succeeded in suppressing Al-Jazeera?</p> <p>I THINK we should take them very seriously. Even though they&#8217;re small in number, they&#8217;re very vocal, and they have a lot of influence. In Burlington, free speech and dialogue triumphed, but all over the country, suppression, censorship and fear-mongering have triumphed more often than anyone would like.</p> <p>When I was in southern California recently, a theater agreed to screen a documentary about my father&#8217;s case called USA vs. Al-Arian, and they came under a heavy campaign by a right-wing group in the area and the theater decided to cancel it at the last minute. Thankfully, another theater stepped up to screen the film and didn&#8217;t capitulate to this fear-mongering campaign, but the first theater did, and that&#8217;s an example of where these groups do triumph.</p> <p>We have to make sure our voices are louder than theirs. We have to stand up against them.</p> <p>YOUR FATHER has been imprisoned for more than five years. What has been the impact on him and on your family, and what can people do to continue to stand up for him?</p> <p>THERE HAVE been so many times when we thought this nightmare was finally over, and it wasn&#8217;t. It just continues.</p> <p>It&#8217;s been devastating for our whole family&#8211;to see our father imprisoned, to see the sustained campaign by the U.S. government to put him through as much psychological&#8211;and sometimes even physical&#8211;torture as possible.</p> <p>Being placed in complete isolation&#8211;that would drive anyone to a breaking point. Being cursed out and subjected to racist comments by prison guards and the marshals who transport him from prison to prison. Being taken from prison to prison. This is something that&#8217;s really a deliberate attempt to try to break someone, by constantly isolating them from their loved ones and their families. And for what? What did my father do to deserve the treatment he&#8217;s gotten?</p> <p>Throughout this experience, we&#8217;ve learned so much more about the prison system than we ever imagined learning: just the way families themselves are humiliated; the way that guards talk to regular people visiting their families, yelling at them, turning people away who have driven 15 or 20 hours to visit their loved one, just because they&#8217;re wearing the wrong thing. It&#8217;s really heart-breaking. It&#8217;s terrible, too, seeing that the vast majority of prisoners in this country are minorities&#8211;Blacks and Latinos&#8211;the disproportionate numbers and the selective enforcement of laws.</p> <p>But along the way, we&#8217;ve also had so much support from people, all over the country, all over the world, especially with the documentary [USA vs. Al-Arian]. It raised so much awareness throughout Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries, because it&#8217;s a Norwegian-produced documentary. In the Middle East, it screened on both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the two Arab networks.</p> <p>It&#8217;s been tremendous. I think that without all of the support from people, this would have been a much more difficult experience to go through than it already is.</p> <p>Locally, in Florida, the Arab and Muslim community were so terrified. They were scared of the government. A lot of them were being visited by the FBI in this campaign of intimidation. So a lot of them really wanted nothing to do with us and shied away, and we felt very isolated&#8211;like our family had to deal with this whole thing by ourselves.</p> <p>But&#8211;and this is probably one of the most beautiful parts of this whole nightmare&#8211;there&#8217;s this progressive Christian community and this community of local Tampa residents that stood by us. They would hold signs every single Monday during the trial saying, &#8220;Charity to orphans and widows is not a crime&#8221; and &#8220;Free Sami!&#8221;</p> <p>And the jurors saw these people who looked just like them, just average Americans supporting the rights of this stateless Palestinian professor, and I&#8217;m sure that had a big effect on them.</p> <p>NANCY WELCH writes for the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.org" type="external">Socialist Worker</a>.</p> <p>What you can do</p> <p>The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace is asking Dr. Al-Arian&#8217;s supporters to call Pamunkey Regional Jail to protest the further unjust treatment&#8211;a 23-hour lockdown, held in complete isolation&#8211;that Dr. Al-Arian is being subjected to. Call 804-365-6400, press 4, then 3001, and ask to speak to the superintendent&#8217;s office; press 0 after business hours.</p> <p>Visit the <a href="http://www.freesamialarian.com/home.htm" type="external">Free Sami Al-Arian Web site</a> to get regular updates about his case and learn more about what you can do to protest his continued imprisonment.</p> <p>You can send donations to help the Al-Arian family defray the costs of more than five years of legal defense to: Liberty Defense Fund, P.O. Box 1211, 24525 E. Welches Road, Welches, OR 97067.</p> <p>Laila Al-Arian&#8217;s book, co-authored with Chris Hedges, <a href="/dp/1568583737/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Collateral Damage: America&#8217;s War Against Iraqi Civilians</a>], exposes the patterns of the U.S. occupation of Iraq through interviews with 50 American veterans of the war.</p> <p>The documentary film USA v. Al-Arian can be viewed on the Internet at the LinkTV Web site.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

"What Did My Father Do to Deserve Such Treatment?"

https://counterpunch.org/2008/08/05/quot-what-did-my-father-do-to-deserve-such-treatment-quot/

2008-08-05

4left

Dr Sami AlArian one of the earliest victims of the 8220war on terror8221 within the US itself continues to languish in jail where he has been since his February 2003 arrest for the 8220crime8221 of speaking out on behalf of the Palestinian struggle against Israel8217s apartheid AlArian8217s daughter Laila AlArian is the author with Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Chris Hedges of Collateral Damage America8217s War Against Iraqi Civilians 1 A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism she recently joined AlJazeera English as a producer I spoke with Laila on her recent visit to Burlington Vt where she sought a meeting with Sen Patrick Leahy a leading Democrat and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee So far Leahy has refused to investigate the circumstances and conditions under which Dr AlArian is being held IN 2006 after a Florida jury refused to return a guilty verdict on any of the charges that the Bush Justice department had brought against him your father signed a plea agreement with federal prosecutors to secure his release from prison Why wasn8217t your father released and deported as agreed What8217s happened since MY FATHER signed a plea agreement and we thought that was that and he would be released just a few months later Then this federal prosecutor Gordon Kromberg tried to bring him to Virginia Kromberg has been on a six or sevenyear witchhunt against Muslim organizations in the Northern Virginia area To describe where he8217s coming from he8217s blogged about trips he8217s taken to Israel and his fear of Palestinians He8217s made antiArab and antiMuslim statements on the record that he8217s never apologized for During one trial in Virginia he said 8220all Arabs lie82218211that8217s what he told the jury8211and he said 8220don8217t believe anything they tell you8221 This is a person with a lot of power and authority Not to say that he8217s the only one driving the ship8211I think his bosses are supporting what he8217s doing But we know Kromberg wasn8217t happy with the Florida jury8217s verdict and this was his way of trying to retry the case in Virginia Kromberg succeeded in getting my father moved to a Virginia jail and for the next 18 months and more he brought my father to the grand jury and tried to force him to testify But had my dad testified they would have charged him with perjury maybe even obstruction of justice So he was held in civil contempt During the 12 months my dad spent in civil contempt he went on two different hunger strikes He was trying to make a point that 8220I8217m not going to testify It8217s against my principles it8217s against my plea agreement8221 Finally when my dad was removed from contempt there was a period where his sentence had run out He had been removed from contempt and yet he still wasn8217t being deported when one of the promises the government made in the plea agreement was to deport him expeditiously They used that language which is very important in this case But of course that never happened and it8217s been more than two years WHAT HAVE those two years been like for him and how has he endured I WOULD say the completely lowest point was when he was in Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth Virginia He was on a hunger strike and the authorities there went completely ballistic They put him on suicide watch They took away all his clothes and put him in a paperthin white gown They took away his pillows blankets even his water8211his cup of water We had a huge campaign at the time to call the prison and demand that he be treated with humanity and respect A few days later they removed him from isolation and they started treating him better I think that8217s a really good example of the power of the people It8217s heartening to see that it actually does work WHAT ARE the most recent developments IN LATE June my dad was indicted on two counts of criminal contempt Now we8217re awaiting the trial which will take place August 13 A lot of lawyers have said it8217s really unusual for someone to be placed in civil contempt and then be charged with criminal contempt because you8217ve already punished the person for not testifying The scary thing about the criminal contempt charge is that it8217s the only socalled crime on the American law books that has no minimum or maximum sentence8211so it could range from less than five years to 10 20 30 years We really have no idea The other thing8211and this is a law that was passed post9118211is that the government can ask for terroristenhancement charges which they tack on to charges to increase the prison time A JUDGE recently granted bail for your father Why wasn8217t he been released THE BAIL hearing for my father took place after my father finished his sentence which ended on April 7 and before his indictment which came down on June 24 So at the time of the bail hearing he was in jail illegally8211because you8217re not allowed to just hold someone indefinitely for no reason I think that8217s still not allowed in this country But at that time he was being taken from one ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement prison to the next He was under ICE custody At the bail hearing when the judge decided to grant him bail it was a really good day for us She said on the record that he was neither a flight risk nor a threat to any community She did impose some restrictions which we were okay with so long as it meant that my father would be released But everything in my dad8217s case is always the exception to every rule Even if something good happens somehow the government always finds a way to prevail In this case because he8217s not a citizen even though he was granted bail ICE can detain him The judge even said during the bail hearing 8220I don8217t have the authority to order ICE to release him It8217s going to be up to them8221 My brother and I went to the courthouse the following week8211my brother had to sign some paperwork because he was the custodian if my father were released8211and the woman at the courthouse who works in the clerk8217s office told us 8220Oh yeah whenever the court says for a person to be released on bail ICE 99 percent of the time will release a person8221 Of course we8217re that 1 percent exception WHERE IS your father now I JUST found out this morning that my dad has been moved from the US marshal8217s custody to ICE and he8217s now 75 miles away from Arlington Virginia He8217s now in Winchester Virginia in ICE custody It8217s obvious they8217re not planning on releasing him YOU CAME to Vermont hoping to meet in person with Patrick Leahy What reason did the senator give for refusing to meet with you FROM WHAT I understand his response is that it8217s illegal for a representative or a senator to get involved in pending litigation Well we8217ve been asking him to get involved way before there was any pending litigation The pending litigation on the charge of criminal contempt only happened last month so Leahy had a chance for almost the past two years to get involved and he didn8217t We know for a fact that he8217s received hundreds of letters faxes emails and phone calls from people all over the world who are concerned about what8217s happened to my father and unfortunately he hasn8217t responded to any of these calls including calls from his own constituents here in Vermont who I know are very concerned about the case There was a big window of time when he really could have taken the initiative to investigate the abuses going on in this case8211and there are grave abuses I think that as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee he has the responsibility to oversee what the Bush Justice Department is doing Leahy8217s committee has taken the right step of investigating the politicization of the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales but what8217s the flip side of that coin They8217re looking into the issue of attorneys being fired during that time when Gonzales was ordering attorneys he didn8217t agree with to be fired but they should also be looking at who was being promoted It8217s people like Gordon Kromberg YOU8217VE DEDICATED Collateral Damage featuring interviews with more than 50 US soldiers about the wretched treatment of Iraqi civilians under occupation to your father What are the connections between how your father is being treated and what the Iraqi people are being subjected to I THINK it8217s just the same policies of this Bush administration Bush went out of his way to say that this isn8217t a war on Islam and Muslims but I think the past almost eight years have shown otherwise They targeted someone like my father who was an activist who just spoke his mind I know that8217s what the jury in Florida concluded because that8217s what they8217ve told us and that8217s what they8217ve told journalists on the record that my father8217s only socalled crime was exercising his First Amendment rights It8217s the same in Iraq8211this whole misguided notion of who Arabs and Muslims are invading a country based on lies lying to the American people just like they lied to the jury about my father8217s case Except thankfully the jury saw through that HOW DO you respond to Barack Obama8217s recent arguments for reducing troops in Iraq to boost troop levels in Afghanistan I THINK you just need to look at the recent incidents in Afghanistan8211we bombed civilians there was an air strike on a wedding But I also think few American people know about the effects of the war on Afghan civilians I met a veteran of the Afghanistan war and he told me about one experience where he actually gave the people who were about to conduct an air strike in Afghanistan the wrong coordinates because the metal in the vehicle next to him interfered with his Global Positioning System He said they bombed a village of Afghan civilians and then they went to the village and told them 8220We8217re sorry the Taliban did this to you8221 It8217s really telling of how failed our policies are how destructive occupation is to the people I think sending more troops to Afghanistan will also hurt our own military and our own troops who don8217t want to be there From what they8217ve told me they want to be back home here with their families they8217ve already served years in Iraq8211enough is enough It8217s also going to have longterm consequences on our own country when we8217ve had all these young men and women serving in all these war zones and under extremely difficulty circumstances OBAMA HAS also reaffirmed the US8217s 8220special relationship8221 with Israel while suggesting he would negotiate an agreement between the Israeli state and the Palestinians What do you think of the prospects for peace under an Obama presidency I THINK the only way to be a credible peacebroker if you will in the Middle East is to actually consider both sides and that8217s never happened Even at the Camp David Accords the only thing the American negotiating team was doing was copying and pasting Israeli demands and offering them to the Palestinians So if it8217s just a matter of repeating that history then no I don8217t think we8217ll get very far I think America does have a very important role as being one of Israel8217s staunchest allies and for that reason I hope more Americans will inform themselves about the conflict and really dig deep and learn both sides of the narrative because right now the media is only offering one side You very rarely get a glimpse of the actual history They8217ve done polls where a majority of Americans think it8217s the Palestinians who are occupying the Israelis There8217s such little depth to the coverage of this conflict and yet seeing how much of our tax money goes to sustaining Israel I think people really have a responsibility to learn as much as possible RECENTLY HUNDREDS of Vermonters turned out to protest the attempt by Burlington8217s municipal cable company to drop AlJazeera English from its offerings What8217s the significance of people rallying to keep AlJazeera on the air FIRST I should say I8217m not a spokesperson for AlJazeera but I work there and I obviously have tremendous respect and regard for the network AlJazeera English is a refreshing change from what we8217re offered here in this country and it8217s really encouraging to be in the one city in the United States that actually offers the network I think it8217s great that people turned out in support of it8211in support of free speech and also the opportunity to be exposed to more than one perspective I hope that more cities in the US follow that lead and insist that their cable companies provide AlJazeera because how can we say we live in a democracy when we can8217t even get a TV station HOW SERIOUSLY should we take rightwing antiMuslim groups like the 8220Vermont8217s Defenders Council8221 which has very few members but almost succeeded in suppressing AlJazeera I THINK we should take them very seriously Even though they8217re small in number they8217re very vocal and they have a lot of influence In Burlington free speech and dialogue triumphed but all over the country suppression censorship and fearmongering have triumphed more often than anyone would like When I was in southern California recently a theater agreed to screen a documentary about my father8217s case called USA vs AlArian and they came under a heavy campaign by a rightwing group in the area and the theater decided to cancel it at the last minute Thankfully another theater stepped up to screen the film and didn8217t capitulate to this fearmongering campaign but the first theater did and that8217s an example of where these groups do triumph We have to make sure our voices are louder than theirs We have to stand up against them YOUR FATHER has been imprisoned for more than five years What has been the impact on him and on your family and what can people do to continue to stand up for him THERE HAVE been so many times when we thought this nightmare was finally over and it wasn8217t It just continues It8217s been devastating for our whole family8211to see our father imprisoned to see the sustained campaign by the US government to put him through as much psychological8211and sometimes even physical8211torture as possible Being placed in complete isolation8211that would drive anyone to a breaking point Being cursed out and subjected to racist comments by prison guards and the marshals who transport him from prison to prison Being taken from prison to prison This is something that8217s really a deliberate attempt to try to break someone by constantly isolating them from their loved ones and their families And for what What did my father do to deserve the treatment he8217s gotten Throughout this experience we8217ve learned so much more about the prison system than we ever imagined learning just the way families themselves are humiliated the way that guards talk to regular people visiting their families yelling at them turning people away who have driven 15 or 20 hours to visit their loved one just because they8217re wearing the wrong thing It8217s really heartbreaking It8217s terrible too seeing that the vast majority of prisoners in this country are minorities8211Blacks and Latinos8211the disproportionate numbers and the selective enforcement of laws But along the way we8217ve also had so much support from people all over the country all over the world especially with the documentary USA vs AlArian It raised so much awareness throughout Europe especially the Scandinavian countries because it8217s a Norwegianproduced documentary In the Middle East it screened on both AlJazeera and AlArabiya the two Arab networks It8217s been tremendous I think that without all of the support from people this would have been a much more difficult experience to go through than it already is Locally in Florida the Arab and Muslim community were so terrified They were scared of the government A lot of them were being visited by the FBI in this campaign of intimidation So a lot of them really wanted nothing to do with us and shied away and we felt very isolated8211like our family had to deal with this whole thing by ourselves But8211and this is probably one of the most beautiful parts of this whole nightmare8211there8217s this progressive Christian community and this community of local Tampa residents that stood by us They would hold signs every single Monday during the trial saying 8220Charity to orphans and widows is not a crime8221 and 8220Free Sami8221 And the jurors saw these people who looked just like them just average Americans supporting the rights of this stateless Palestinian professor and I8217m sure that had a big effect on them NANCY WELCH writes for the Socialist Worker What you can do The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace is asking Dr AlArian8217s supporters to call Pamunkey Regional Jail to protest the further unjust treatment8211a 23hour lockdown held in complete isolation8211that Dr AlArian is being subjected to Call 8043656400 press 4 then 3001 and ask to speak to the superintendent8217s office press 0 after business hours Visit the Free Sami AlArian Web site to get regular updates about his case and learn more about what you can do to protest his continued imprisonment You can send donations to help the AlArian family defray the costs of more than five years of legal defense to Liberty Defense Fund PO Box 1211 24525 E Welches Road Welches OR 97067 Laila AlArian8217s book coauthored with Chris Hedges Collateral Damage America8217s War Against Iraqi Civilians exposes the patterns of the US occupation of Iraq through interviews with 50 American veterans of the war The documentary film USA v AlArian can be viewed on the Internet at the LinkTV Web site amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p /> <p>RUSH: A bonus on the program today. We welcome back the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence. I&#8217;m so flattered you can carve some time out for us today, Mr. Vice President. I know you&#8217;ve gotta be swamped.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: (chuckles)</p> <p>RUSH: Welcome back to the program.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Rush Limbaugh, the honor is all mine. Thanks for having me back on.</p> <p>RUSH: You bet. I guess the first place to start here &#8212; and there&#8217;s so many places. I could ask you about the meeting with Putin and so forth. But really, I think, in the forefront of people&#8217;s minds right now is health care and the status of the bill in the Senate. And, you know, the overriding question: &#8220;How in the world can it be this hard when it seemed easy when Obama was in the White House?&#8221; All of these repeal bills were voted on &#8212; with the knowledge that he would veto them, of course. But where does this stand now? Is this&#8230;? If this doesn&#8217;t get done, this has consequences I don&#8217;t even want to contemplate.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, look, it has to get done, Rush. Obamacare is putting a tremendous burden on working families, on small businesses, on the American economy. Every single promise that President Obama made to get Obamacare passed has been broken. You remember them. You&#8217;ve covered them better than anybody else. &#8220;If you like your insurance, you can keep it.&#8221; You know, that wasn&#8217;t true. You know, &#8220;If you like your doctor, you can keep &#8217;em.&#8221; That wasn&#8217;t true. That if they adopted Obamacare, the cost of health insurance would go down. We&#8217;ve seen the cost of health insurance rise in every state across the country, in some cases 200% and more.</p> <p>Families are hurting; Congress must act. The House of Representatives has done its job. And, in the coming days, the president and I are absolutely determined to roll our sleeves up and work with the men and women in the Republican majority in the Senate, and pass legislation that will repeal and replace Obamacare &#8212; and set our nation&#8217;s health care back on a pathway built on respect for the doctor-patient relationship, free-market values, and the belief that states are the laboratories of innovation and reform and allow our states to reform Medicaid in ways that will best meet the needs of our most vulnerable.</p> <p>RUSH: So where are the obstacles? I know you don&#8217;t want to name names.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: (chuckles)</p> <p>RUSH: It would be helpful if you did, but I know you won&#8217;t. But what are the obstacles? We&#8217;ve got 52 votes plus yours if necessary, if it comes down to that. But I hearken back: The way you just laid it out, what is so complicated? How could anybody disagree with what you just said?</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it&#8217;s always in the details. And, look, you know, there&#8217;s that old saying, Rush, &#8220;You know, if you like sausage, you don&#8217;t go where they make it,&#8221; right? (chuckling) If you like lawmaking, don&#8217;t go where they make it in Washington, D.C. It&#8217;s tough. I mean, Obamacare is literally imploding before our eyes. I mean, you have large areas of the country where people are down to only one choice in insurance. In some cases, people have no choice in health insurance as a direct result of the collapsing failure of Obamacare. And so the challenges have to do with the complexity of this disastrous policy launch, and the best way for us to turn this national policy back in the direction of freedom. But it all begins with elements of this bill. Remember, while this legislation doesn&#8217;t do everything that we ultimately want to do&#8230; The president&#8217;s committed to ultimately allowing Americans to buy health insurance across state lines, the way they buy life insurance, the way they buy car insurance.</p> <p>RUSH: Nobody&#8217;s talking about that. That&#8217;s a great point because nobody is talking about it.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yeah.</p> <p>RUSH: That&#8217;s so far down the road, it&#8217;s not even in the Cruz amendment.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right. We have to do it, but the reality is the budget rules that we&#8217;re using to pass this bill with just 51 votes don&#8217;t allow us to make that kind of a substantive change in the law, but the president&#8217;s absolutely committed to it. But in this legislation, Rush, we accomplished enormous things. Remember seven years ago when you were covering day in and day out when Obamacare became law, to me the most onerous aspect of Obamacare &#8212; the most onerous to you and millions of your listeners &#8212; was the federal government for the first time ordered the American people to buy health insurance whether they want it or need it or not.</p> <p>That&#8217;s not a policy built on the American principle of freedom, that a government mandates every American buy it, saying, &#8220;You have to buy health insurance or you have to pay a tax penalty to the government.&#8221; That goes away in the bill that&#8217;s before the United States Senate and the one that already passed the House. The mandate goes away. The tax increases go away. Medicaid goes back to the states for the purposes of reform. Health savings accounts are greatly expanded so that people can become consumers in their own health care choices.</p> <p>But to your question: What&#8217;s standing in the way is just obviously every member of Congress has their own opinion, and this administration &#8212; as we did with the House of Representatives &#8212; is determined to work with each member to address their needs. But we are very close, Rush. If I had one message (chuckles) for your tens of millions of listeners around America, it is: &#8220;This is the moment; now is the time.&#8221;</p> <p>If you&#8217;re one of those Americans who wants to see Obamacare repealed and replaced, we literally are days or maybe just weeks away from being able to accomplish that historic objective. But it&#8217;s gonna take every American within the sound of my voice who wants to see us start over on health care reform built on freedom and federalism and state-based reform to let their voice be heard. Let their elected officials know where they stand. And the president and I and our whole team are gonna continue to work with the Senate, and I think we&#8217;re gonna get it done.</p> <p>RUSH: Let me get specific with you about something.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yeah.</p> <p>RUSH: <a href="" type="internal">I spoke to Ted Cruz last week about his amendment, interviewing him for the next issue of my newsletter</a>, and there are three mandates that are in Obamacare, and most people are only aware of two, when you use the &#8220;mandate&#8221; term. There&#8217;s the personal mandate which you just talked about &#8212;</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right.</p> <p>RUSH: &#8212; which defiles the Constitution, then there&#8217;s the employer mandate. And in the current Senate bill, those go, those are both gone, which is great.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right.</p> <p>RUSH: But then the third mandate is the Title I session of the bill which &#8212;</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: The regulation.</p> <p>RUSH: Right. The Obama essential health benefits.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Mmm-hmm.</p> <p>RUSH: Now, am I correct in saying those were added by Obama&#8217;s secretary of Health and Human Services? Is that why those specific mandates are in this bill?</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, they were added as a part of Obamacare. Before, all of health insurance was regulated at the state level.</p> <p>RUSH: Okay, so they are part of the legislation?</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yeah, they&#8217;re absolutely part of Obamacare from the very beginning.</p> <p>RUSH: What Senator Cruz told me was that there&#8217;s no stomach to get rid of those on the Republican side, or not enough.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, the president made a couple of commitments on the campaign trail, and we worked to keep those when the bill passed the House, which is your kids can stay on your family health insurance plan &#8217;til they&#8217;re 26. And we obviously went to great pains to make sure that Americans with preexisting conditions could not be denied coverage. Those regulations and those protections are all intact in the House and in the Senate bill. But to your point: There&#8217;s a broad range of other regulations that the House allowed to be waived; that frankly Senator Cruz has developed some very creative proposals.</p> <p>Including freedom policies, which would say to a state, &#8220;Look, if you offer an insurance plan that meets what remains of the federal regulations, then you can also offer &#8212; to Americans &#8212; to be able to buy a health insurance product that doesn&#8217;t meet those same criteria.&#8221; You know, Rush, that&#8217;s what freedom looks like, isn&#8217;t it? I mean, come on! (chuckles) We&#8217;re talking about people being able to go to a marketplace and to say, &#8220;Look, if I want all the benefits that are listed here, some of which are certified by the state or even the federal government, I&#8217;ll pay for that. If I don&#8217;t want all of those benefits, I ought to be able to buy that as well.&#8221; That&#8217;s ultimately a free market principle &#8212;</p> <p>RUSH: Precisely.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: &#8212; where President Trump is driving health care reform, but it all begins with repealing and replacing Obamacare.</p> <p>RUSH: Well, the reason why all this is crucial is because, as many people will acknowledge &#8212; some won&#8217;t &#8212; Obamacare was designed to implode, in part, so as to further the public&#8217;s acclimation for single payer. &#8220;If Obamacare, which was sold as the greatest panacea ever &#8212; if not even that can work,&#8221; the thinking goes, &#8220;I guess the government has to take over.&#8221; If Obamacare stays intact, that&#8217;s where we&#8217;re headed. We&#8217;re headed to single payer. We&#8217;re headed to everybody on Medicare &#8212; and, I mean, that&#8217;s&#8230; There&#8217;s no coming back from that. You would never unravel that if that happened.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right.</p> <p>RUSH: That&#8217;s disastrous.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, Rush, you know, I make a point &#8212; back when I was in Congress and as a governor and now as vice president &#8212; I never speculate on people&#8217;s motives. But you remember what&#8230;? You remember what a member of Congress said back in the day when he was asked, &#8220;Why aren&#8217;t you supporting single payer?&#8221; By a few&#8230; You remember that famous quote? It was caught on YouTube back in the day. Former Congressman Barney Frank was walking into an event. They said, &#8220;How come you&#8217;re not supporting single payer?&#8221; He said, &#8220;Obamacare is the quickest way to get to single payer.&#8221;</p> <p>RUSH: Right. Obama said the same thing to the SEIU people back in 2007. We&#8217;ve got the tape. We played it for people. That&#8217;s exactly what the objective was.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I mean, you know, I&#8217;d leave it to you; you didn&#8217;t miss that back when it happened, and you&#8217;re not forgetting it today. And people ought to be reminded that, as you have Bernie Sanders out in Kentucky, where I&#8217;m headed to Kentucky in a couple days myself. He was out there championing single payer this week. So the heartbreaking story of the 11-month-old Charlie Gard in England is a story of single payer. I know you&#8217;ve covered that on this program. That&#8217;s back in court today, and, frankly, we breathe a prayer and the hope that the single-payer system in England will see its way clear to allow the family &#8212; the mother and the father to be able to choose &#8212;</p> <p>RUSH: Stop and think of that. Yeah.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: &#8212; the greatest extent of lifesaving treatment that&#8217;s available to their child instead of having to be submitted to a government program that says, &#8220;No, we&#8217;re going to remove life support from your precious 11 month old child because the government has decided that the prospects of their life are such that they no longer warrant an investment in health services.&#8221;</p> <p>RUSH: Right.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: That&#8217;s what single payer looks like. We hope and pray that little Charlie Gard gets every chance. But the American people ought to reflect on the fact (chuckles) that for all the talk on the left about single payer, that&#8217;s where it takes us. And what President Trump believes in &#8212; what you&#8217;ve advocated now for years &#8212; is, &#8220;Let&#8217;s have a health care system that&#8217;s built on individual choice and free markets and state-based innovation reform.&#8221; But none of that happens unless we stop and turn around and head health care back in the direction of freedom.</p> <p>RUSH: Right.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: That begins with the day that the United States Senate passes the bill before it today to repeal and replace Obamacare.</p> <p>RUSH: Let me ask you a tactical question.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yeah.</p> <p>RUSH: Would you favor&#8230;? If this seemed to be the only way to get where you just said we want to go, would you support a clean repeal with nothing to replace it, and then use the recess to start from scratch on replacing it? Would you support that?</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, let me say, the president&#8217;s made it very clear. While some in the Senate majority have said that if they can&#8217;t pass the current bill, that they&#8217;ll have to reach out to the Democrats. You&#8217;ve got some Republicans &#8212; I saw &#8217;em on television yesterday &#8212; saying, &#8220;We ought to reach out; do a bipartisan bill.&#8221; The president&#8217;s made it very clear. You know, we believe if they can&#8217;t pass this carefully crafted repeal and replace bill &#8212; do those two things simultaneously &#8212; we ought to just repeal only. And then have enough time built into that legislation to craft replacement legislation in a way that&#8217;s orderly and allows states to adjust to different changes in Medicaid over maybe a three or four-year window that allows the insurance markets to evolve.</p> <p>But, Rush, we can&#8217;t&#8230; We simply cannot allow the disaster of Obamacare to continue. It is hurting families. I speak to everyday Americans all across this country every week, and I hear people talk about it. I had a woman come to an event that we were at in Wisconsin and say that she had to make a decision to drop off of her health insurance. It had become so expensive that she dropped off for the preemptive three-month period of time, so she could afford to buy Christmas presents for her children and her grandchildren.</p> <p>RUSH: Quite a few people are saying that they can&#8217;t afford to use the coverage they have.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: They can&#8217;t afford the coverage, they can&#8217;t afford&#8230; Your point is extremely important. They not only can&#8217;t afford the coverage since it&#8217;s become much more expensive since Obamacare, but they can&#8217;t afford to use it if they even are able to pay for it because the deductibles are so high.</p> <p>RUSH: Exactly right.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: You&#8217;ve got people in Washington, D.C., that are standing around, hands on their hips, feeling good about the number of Americans who now are covered with health insurance. I don&#8217;t hear that from so many people who are so-called covered because they have health insurance they essentially can&#8217;t use. President Trump knows, there&#8217;s nothing more powerful than the free market. The free market and health insurance can work to lower the cost of health insurance, make services more available, create the kind of innovation that will give people incentives to make better health care choices; give states more freedom and flexibility.</p> <p>But it all starts with the Senate finding a way forward (chuckles), and we&#8217;re determined to help &#8217;em find it. Find a way forward to get to 51 votes so we can pass this legislation. Just get us to 50; I can be the tiebreaker. It&#8217;d be the greatest honor of my life, Rush, if I had the privilege to be able to be the tie-breaking vote to repeal and replace Obamacare. We&#8217;re gonna work for every single vote in the United States Senate. The time has come to repeal and replace Obamacare, and with the support of the American people &#8212; and with great strong vices like yours across the country &#8212; I believe we&#8217;re going to do it.</p> <p>RUSH: Well, I appreciate your call and your time here. Mr. Vice President, this is the exact situation &#8212; and I&#8217;m not trying to stir anything up here. This is the exact kind of situation that Trump voters expected him to excel at. This is the talent that he was going to bring from outside the Beltway to inside to get people to &#8212; do the right thing.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: That&#8217;s right.</p> <p>RUSH: Not insult anybody. But just, &#8220;Hey, this is how we&#8217;re gonna do it. We&#8217;re gonna get it done. Get it done the right way.&#8221; People have high hopes for President Trump in this.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, just know this, Rush. The next time you turn on the cable TV, and the next time you hear somebody pronouncing (chuckles) the Senate repeal and replace bill dead on arrival, remember that&#8217;s exactly what the national media said about the House bill. And that&#8217;s because they didn&#8217;t understand the kind of dealmaker that President Donald Trump is. He&#8217;s working the phones, he&#8217;s leaning into the effort, and I believe that &#8212; with the strong support of the American people &#8212; with this president in the Oval Office we&#8217;re gonna get it done. We&#8217;re gonna repeal and replace Obamacare. But the time is now.</p> <p>RUSH: Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Vice President &#8212; and all the best to your family as well.</p> <p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Rush. Great to be with you.</p> <p>RUSH: You bet. Vice President Mike Pence. Folks, it&#8217;s time to start sending faxes and emails and making phone calls. Is that what you got? Well, some people wonder if that still works anymore. Some people don&#8217;t think it does. It depends on the circumstances, but I believe it does work.</p>

Exclusive: Vice President Mike Pence Calls the Show

https://rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/07/10/exclusive-vice-president-mike-pence-calls-the-show/

2017-07-10

0right

RUSH A bonus on the program today We welcome back the vice president of the United States Mike Pence I8217m so flattered you can carve some time out for us today Mr Vice President I know you8217ve gotta be swamped THE VICE PRESIDENT chuckles RUSH Welcome back to the program THE VICE PRESIDENT Rush Limbaugh the honor is all mine Thanks for having me back on RUSH You bet I guess the first place to start here 8212 and there8217s so many places I could ask you about the meeting with Putin and so forth But really I think in the forefront of people8217s minds right now is health care and the status of the bill in the Senate And you know the overriding question 8220How in the world can it be this hard when it seemed easy when Obama was in the White House8221 All of these repeal bills were voted on 8212 with the knowledge that he would veto them of course But where does this stand now Is this8230 If this doesn8217t get done this has consequences I don8217t even want to contemplate THE VICE PRESIDENT Well look it has to get done Rush Obamacare is putting a tremendous burden on working families on small businesses on the American economy Every single promise that President Obama made to get Obamacare passed has been broken You remember them You8217ve covered them better than anybody else 8220If you like your insurance you can keep it8221 You know that wasn8217t true You know 8220If you like your doctor you can keep 8217em8221 That wasn8217t true That if they adopted Obamacare the cost of health insurance would go down We8217ve seen the cost of health insurance rise in every state across the country in some cases 200 and more Families are hurting Congress must act The House of Representatives has done its job And in the coming days the president and I are absolutely determined to roll our sleeves up and work with the men and women in the Republican majority in the Senate and pass legislation that will repeal and replace Obamacare 8212 and set our nation8217s health care back on a pathway built on respect for the doctorpatient relationship freemarket values and the belief that states are the laboratories of innovation and reform and allow our states to reform Medicaid in ways that will best meet the needs of our most vulnerable RUSH So where are the obstacles I know you don8217t want to name names THE VICE PRESIDENT chuckles RUSH It would be helpful if you did but I know you won8217t But what are the obstacles We8217ve got 52 votes plus yours if necessary if it comes down to that But I hearken back The way you just laid it out what is so complicated How could anybody disagree with what you just said THE VICE PRESIDENT Well I think it8217s always in the details And look you know there8217s that old saying Rush 8220You know if you like sausage you don8217t go where they make it8221 right chuckling If you like lawmaking don8217t go where they make it in Washington DC It8217s tough I mean Obamacare is literally imploding before our eyes I mean you have large areas of the country where people are down to only one choice in insurance In some cases people have no choice in health insurance as a direct result of the collapsing failure of Obamacare And so the challenges have to do with the complexity of this disastrous policy launch and the best way for us to turn this national policy back in the direction of freedom But it all begins with elements of this bill Remember while this legislation doesn8217t do everything that we ultimately want to do8230 The president8217s committed to ultimately allowing Americans to buy health insurance across state lines the way they buy life insurance the way they buy car insurance RUSH Nobody8217s talking about that That8217s a great point because nobody is talking about it THE VICE PRESIDENT Yeah RUSH That8217s so far down the road it8217s not even in the Cruz amendment THE VICE PRESIDENT Right We have to do it but the reality is the budget rules that we8217re using to pass this bill with just 51 votes don8217t allow us to make that kind of a substantive change in the law but the president8217s absolutely committed to it But in this legislation Rush we accomplished enormous things Remember seven years ago when you were covering day in and day out when Obamacare became law to me the most onerous aspect of Obamacare 8212 the most onerous to you and millions of your listeners 8212 was the federal government for the first time ordered the American people to buy health insurance whether they want it or need it or not That8217s not a policy built on the American principle of freedom that a government mandates every American buy it saying 8220You have to buy health insurance or you have to pay a tax penalty to the government8221 That goes away in the bill that8217s before the United States Senate and the one that already passed the House The mandate goes away The tax increases go away Medicaid goes back to the states for the purposes of reform Health savings accounts are greatly expanded so that people can become consumers in their own health care choices But to your question What8217s standing in the way is just obviously every member of Congress has their own opinion and this administration 8212 as we did with the House of Representatives 8212 is determined to work with each member to address their needs But we are very close Rush If I had one message chuckles for your tens of millions of listeners around America it is 8220This is the moment now is the time8221 If you8217re one of those Americans who wants to see Obamacare repealed and replaced we literally are days or maybe just weeks away from being able to accomplish that historic objective But it8217s gonna take every American within the sound of my voice who wants to see us start over on health care reform built on freedom and federalism and statebased reform to let their voice be heard Let their elected officials know where they stand And the president and I and our whole team are gonna continue to work with the Senate and I think we8217re gonna get it done RUSH Let me get specific with you about something THE VICE PRESIDENT Yeah RUSH I spoke to Ted Cruz last week about his amendment interviewing him for the next issue of my newsletter and there are three mandates that are in Obamacare and most people are only aware of two when you use the 8220mandate8221 term There8217s the personal mandate which you just talked about 8212 THE VICE PRESIDENT Right RUSH 8212 which defiles the Constitution then there8217s the employer mandate And in the current Senate bill those go those are both gone which is great THE VICE PRESIDENT Right RUSH But then the third mandate is the Title I session of the bill which 8212 THE VICE PRESIDENT The regulation RUSH Right The Obama essential health benefits THE VICE PRESIDENT Mmmhmm RUSH Now am I correct in saying those were added by Obama8217s secretary of Health and Human Services Is that why those specific mandates are in this bill THE VICE PRESIDENT Well they were added as a part of Obamacare Before all of health insurance was regulated at the state level RUSH Okay so they are part of the legislation THE VICE PRESIDENT Yeah they8217re absolutely part of Obamacare from the very beginning RUSH What Senator Cruz told me was that there8217s no stomach to get rid of those on the Republican side or not enough THE VICE PRESIDENT Well you know the president made a couple of commitments on the campaign trail and we worked to keep those when the bill passed the House which is your kids can stay on your family health insurance plan 8217til they8217re 26 And we obviously went to great pains to make sure that Americans with preexisting conditions could not be denied coverage Those regulations and those protections are all intact in the House and in the Senate bill But to your point There8217s a broad range of other regulations that the House allowed to be waived that frankly Senator Cruz has developed some very creative proposals Including freedom policies which would say to a state 8220Look if you offer an insurance plan that meets what remains of the federal regulations then you can also offer 8212 to Americans 8212 to be able to buy a health insurance product that doesn8217t meet those same criteria8221 You know Rush that8217s what freedom looks like isn8217t it I mean come on chuckles We8217re talking about people being able to go to a marketplace and to say 8220Look if I want all the benefits that are listed here some of which are certified by the state or even the federal government I8217ll pay for that If I don8217t want all of those benefits I ought to be able to buy that as well8221 That8217s ultimately a free market principle 8212 RUSH Precisely THE VICE PRESIDENT 8212 where President Trump is driving health care reform but it all begins with repealing and replacing Obamacare RUSH Well the reason why all this is crucial is because as many people will acknowledge 8212 some won8217t 8212 Obamacare was designed to implode in part so as to further the public8217s acclimation for single payer 8220If Obamacare which was sold as the greatest panacea ever 8212 if not even that can work8221 the thinking goes 8220I guess the government has to take over8221 If Obamacare stays intact that8217s where we8217re headed We8217re headed to single payer We8217re headed to everybody on Medicare 8212 and I mean that8217s8230 There8217s no coming back from that You would never unravel that if that happened THE VICE PRESIDENT Right RUSH That8217s disastrous THE VICE PRESIDENT Well Rush you know I make a point 8212 back when I was in Congress and as a governor and now as vice president 8212 I never speculate on people8217s motives But you remember what8230 You remember what a member of Congress said back in the day when he was asked 8220Why aren8217t you supporting single payer8221 By a few8230 You remember that famous quote It was caught on YouTube back in the day Former Congressman Barney Frank was walking into an event They said 8220How come you8217re not supporting single payer8221 He said 8220Obamacare is the quickest way to get to single payer8221 RUSH Right Obama said the same thing to the SEIU people back in 2007 We8217ve got the tape We played it for people That8217s exactly what the objective was THE VICE PRESIDENT Well I mean you know I8217d leave it to you you didn8217t miss that back when it happened and you8217re not forgetting it today And people ought to be reminded that as you have Bernie Sanders out in Kentucky where I8217m headed to Kentucky in a couple days myself He was out there championing single payer this week So the heartbreaking story of the 11monthold Charlie Gard in England is a story of single payer I know you8217ve covered that on this program That8217s back in court today and frankly we breathe a prayer and the hope that the singlepayer system in England will see its way clear to allow the family 8212 the mother and the father to be able to choose 8212 RUSH Stop and think of that Yeah THE VICE PRESIDENT 8212 the greatest extent of lifesaving treatment that8217s available to their child instead of having to be submitted to a government program that says 8220No we8217re going to remove life support from your precious 11 month old child because the government has decided that the prospects of their life are such that they no longer warrant an investment in health services8221 RUSH Right THE VICE PRESIDENT That8217s what single payer looks like We hope and pray that little Charlie Gard gets every chance But the American people ought to reflect on the fact chuckles that for all the talk on the left about single payer that8217s where it takes us And what President Trump believes in 8212 what you8217ve advocated now for years 8212 is 8220Let8217s have a health care system that8217s built on individual choice and free markets and statebased innovation reform8221 But none of that happens unless we stop and turn around and head health care back in the direction of freedom RUSH Right THE VICE PRESIDENT That begins with the day that the United States Senate passes the bill before it today to repeal and replace Obamacare RUSH Let me ask you a tactical question THE VICE PRESIDENT Yeah RUSH Would you favor8230 If this seemed to be the only way to get where you just said we want to go would you support a clean repeal with nothing to replace it and then use the recess to start from scratch on replacing it Would you support that THE VICE PRESIDENT Well let me say the president8217s made it very clear While some in the Senate majority have said that if they can8217t pass the current bill that they8217ll have to reach out to the Democrats You8217ve got some Republicans 8212 I saw 8217em on television yesterday 8212 saying 8220We ought to reach out do a bipartisan bill8221 The president8217s made it very clear You know we believe if they can8217t pass this carefully crafted repeal and replace bill 8212 do those two things simultaneously 8212 we ought to just repeal only And then have enough time built into that legislation to craft replacement legislation in a way that8217s orderly and allows states to adjust to different changes in Medicaid over maybe a three or fouryear window that allows the insurance markets to evolve But Rush we can8217t8230 We simply cannot allow the disaster of Obamacare to continue It is hurting families I speak to everyday Americans all across this country every week and I hear people talk about it I had a woman come to an event that we were at in Wisconsin and say that she had to make a decision to drop off of her health insurance It had become so expensive that she dropped off for the preemptive threemonth period of time so she could afford to buy Christmas presents for her children and her grandchildren RUSH Quite a few people are saying that they can8217t afford to use the coverage they have THE VICE PRESIDENT They can8217t afford the coverage they can8217t afford8230 Your point is extremely important They not only can8217t afford the coverage since it8217s become much more expensive since Obamacare but they can8217t afford to use it if they even are able to pay for it because the deductibles are so high RUSH Exactly right THE VICE PRESIDENT You8217ve got people in Washington DC that are standing around hands on their hips feeling good about the number of Americans who now are covered with health insurance I don8217t hear that from so many people who are socalled covered because they have health insurance they essentially can8217t use President Trump knows there8217s nothing more powerful than the free market The free market and health insurance can work to lower the cost of health insurance make services more available create the kind of innovation that will give people incentives to make better health care choices give states more freedom and flexibility But it all starts with the Senate finding a way forward chuckles and we8217re determined to help 8217em find it Find a way forward to get to 51 votes so we can pass this legislation Just get us to 50 I can be the tiebreaker It8217d be the greatest honor of my life Rush if I had the privilege to be able to be the tiebreaking vote to repeal and replace Obamacare We8217re gonna work for every single vote in the United States Senate The time has come to repeal and replace Obamacare and with the support of the American people 8212 and with great strong vices like yours across the country 8212 I believe we8217re going to do it RUSH Well I appreciate your call and your time here Mr Vice President this is the exact situation 8212 and I8217m not trying to stir anything up here This is the exact kind of situation that Trump voters expected him to excel at This is the talent that he was going to bring from outside the Beltway to inside to get people to 8212 do the right thing THE VICE PRESIDENT That8217s right RUSH Not insult anybody But just 8220Hey this is how we8217re gonna do it We8217re gonna get it done Get it done the right way8221 People have high hopes for President Trump in this THE VICE PRESIDENT Well just know this Rush The next time you turn on the cable TV and the next time you hear somebody pronouncing chuckles the Senate repeal and replace bill dead on arrival remember that8217s exactly what the national media said about the House bill And that8217s because they didn8217t understand the kind of dealmaker that President Donald Trump is He8217s working the phones he8217s leaning into the effort and I believe that 8212 with the strong support of the American people 8212 with this president in the Oval Office we8217re gonna get it done We8217re gonna repeal and replace Obamacare But the time is now RUSH Thank you very much for your time Mr Vice President 8212 and all the best to your family as well THE VICE PRESIDENT Thank you Rush Great to be with you RUSH You bet Vice President Mike Pence Folks it8217s time to start sending faxes and emails and making phone calls Is that what you got Well some people wonder if that still works anymore Some people don8217t think it does It depends on the circumstances but I believe it does work

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<p>When I first left the theater after seeing Andrea Arnold&#8217;s Fish Tank, I stood on the sidewalk literally gasping for air like a fish thrown onto the curb. Cars sped by on the street, leaving a trail of noise and exhaust, and I stood frozen, not able to separate myself from the movie. Slowly I started to shudder, and a torrent of silent tears poured out of my body. It&#8217;s been years since a movie has had such a powerful emotional effect on me, and I wondered if I ever would be able to write about a movie to which I had such an intensely personal response. But as time passed, I realized that the effect the movie had on me wasn&#8217;t just about my own personal identification with the subject matter but that Andrea Arnold intentionally wanted the audience to feel the claustrophobic confines of class. She wanted to throw us inside the &#8220;fish tank&#8221; of the lower working class life in the British council estates (public housing). She wanted us to feel the inner and outer compression that result from the trap of class, and she succeeds to such an extent that the movie wraps its fingers around our throats and never lets go for the entire 123 minutes.</p> <p>Fish Tank tells the story of Mia, a fifteen year old girl who lives in the council estates on the Essex borderlands. Industrial plants, polluted mudflats, freeway overpasses, and a tapestry of relentless noise are the geography of her life.&amp;#160; The story of Mia is not one of dramatic narrative arc or even a traditional coming of age story. It is the story of her life with her single mother, her sister, and mother&#8217;s boyfriend Connor, and it is a life that is so tightly compressed by class and gender that there is no &#8220;coming of age&#8221; allowed since it is clear that Mia was, in a sense, born &#8220;grown up.&#8221; The movie takes us through a window of Mia&#8217;s life where she fights with her mother, has hostile interactions with neighborhood girls, attempts to free a horse, dances in isolation in a an empty apartment, has a complicated relationship with her mother&#8217;s boyrfriend Connor, and finally breaks free simply by stepping into a different threshold of her same class.</p> <p>Growing up in a council estate herself, Andrea Arnold brings an autobiographical-based documentary realism to the movie. Filmed in the tightly framed format of academy ratio, the movie closes in on us and compresses us into Mia&#8217;s life with relentless social realism. Everything in Mia&#8217;s environment is covered with the soot of a post industrial landscape. Spinning windmills, gutted factories, a few sputtering smokestacks and towers of concrete block apartment buildings comprise the world Mia occupies. And the sound is as claustrophobic as the physical geography &#8211; honking horns, the whir and rush of traffic on the overpass, boom boxes blaring from every corner and the relentless whipping of wind off the mudflats. Sound and space close in on us for every single second of this film. We get glimpses of people standing on balconies staring across the polluted waters, children running down corridors littered with garbage and barking dogs, girls sunbathing on dead grass, and senior citizens staring blankly out their windows like so many fish in a tank or animals in a zoo. Mia is one of those fish, and the whole movie works to make us feel the walls of her tank closing in on her.</p> <p>The film so microscopically focuses on Mia&#8217;s environment that it is one of the most claustrophobic movies I&#8217;ve ever experienced.&amp;#160; Focusing so tightly on this one singular character and her limited relationships (mother, sister, mother&#8217;s boyfriend) mimics the claustrophobia of the environment that is Mia&#8217;s world. The movie hones in on the specific life of Mia and her very immediate human relations with no room for anything else to get inside. Every single interaction with the people and the environment Mia encounters is fraught with rage, antagonism, and a tightly controlled desperation.&amp;#160; A group of girls dancing on a basketball court, a horse tied to a cement block in a field, a strip club looking for dancers, and her own mother &#8211; everything in Mia&#8217;s life mirrors the claustrophobia of her environment.</p> <p>The scenes in her apartment are so compressed that it is a miracle they could even maneuver a camera within the space to film them. Whether in a bedroom cluttered with posters, perfume bottles and discarded clothes or a kitchen with counters littered with beer bottles or the narrow confines of a stairwell, the characters are literally on top of each other in each scene. The mise-en-scene in the movie is so real that I can&#8217;t even call it mise-en-scene. I can only call it reality, the stuff of life in an apartment in the council estates &#8212; a discarded shoe next to a stainless steel mixing bowl, a tea kettle, mix-matched cups, an ashtray on a coffee table. The interesting thing is that while the characters are compressed together in the tight space of the apartment &#8211; especially the mother and her daughters &#8211; there is such little connection or communication between the family. The mother exists like a menacing specter of female sexuality gone bad from the limits of its class, and her presence in the house is more like an antagonistic haunting than an actual person, yet alone a mother. The mother wears her class all over her body &#8211; from her stumbling high heels, to her garish yellow mini dress, to her shoddy hair dye. She obviously is still a child herself and had Mia when she was a child. Never even given a name in the movie, the mother is like the living breathing symbol of the class and gender that are closing in on Mia&#8217;s life.</p> <p>Everything about Mia (played with heartbreaking reality by first-time actress Katie Jarvis, who was discovered by one of Arnold&#8217;s crew members while arguing with her boyfriend at a train station) is a reaction against the claustrophobic confines of her class and her gender while also a torrential mix of confusion and contradiction. In Mia, we see that being tightly controlled is the ultimate act of protection, yet we also witness the struggle within herself between yearning for intimacy (which she has never experienced, certainly not through her mother) and the knowledge that self-protection trumps intimacy. We see her coming to awareness of her sexuality while also consciously suppressing her sexual identity as an act of protection and rebellion. Mia&#8217;s entire presence is as controlled and clenched as the movie itself. Her neediness and vulnerability are expressed not through tears or self-pity but through compression and bursts of rage. She adopts boyish clothing as a kind of suit of armor, her clenched body stomping through the streets in sweatpants and hoodie. Mia is the perfect embodiment of the tension that resides in young girls who are thrust into a grown up world. The scene with her younger sister sitting in her pink room with her friends, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, while surrounded by stuffed animals and dolls is the quintessential embodiment of the life Mia was born into.</p> <p>One of the movie&#8217;s primary narrative threads is Mia&#8217;s love of dancing. Dancing is the thing she does to take her away and allow escape. Interestingly, the one place where she finds freedom is inside an abandoned apartment within the council estates. Mia breaks into the apartment, plugs in her music, and lets go dancing.&amp;#160; In between dancing, she guzzles beer from a large plastic bottle and looks through the window of her tank and down at the world she lives in &#8211; a sea of public housing and pollution. Her dance moves themselves are completely restrained and stripped of sexuality. When she dances, she clenches her body like a fist, and her moves are so tight and controlled that she allows no room to get inside her. Also, she adopts the dance moves of boys &#8212; break dancing. Mia throws her body on the floor as if the act of throwing herself down will itself protect her from being thrown down. But ultimately there is no protection in dancing either. When she sees an advertisement for &#8220;Dancers Wanted,&#8221; Mia applies and eventually finds herself auditioning in a strip club. She stands on the stage in her sweatpants and hoodie and looks around at a room full of her &#8220;mothers&#8221; &#8211; desperate women dressed and made-up in sex &#8211; with their high heel shoes, their lipstick and eyeliner, their mini-dresses, corsets, and g-strings. It is a heartbreaking and enraging moment when we see Mia trapped between the sexual yearning inside her and the reality of her class and gender and the necessity to consciously suppress her sexuality as an act of survival. She storms off the stage and refuses to concede to that image.</p> <p>It&#8217;s a loveless world that Mia lives in, and she adapts to this loveless world like a fish in a tank. Her mother rarely shows her any emotion other than resentful competitiveness. Her attempts at caring consist of trying to place Mia in a &#8220;special school&#8221; for troubled kids (in other words, by getting rid of her), or by pinching her arm (leaving a huge black bruise) and telling Mia to stop interrupting her party. Mia meets her mother&#8217;s boyfriend Connor who is the first person who actually seems like he cares about her, but it&#8217;s all a mess of confusion between Mia&#8217;s desire for paternal caring and her burgeoning sexuality. At one moment, she allows Connor to make her a cup of tea as an act of caring. At another, Mia watches Connor and her mother have sex through a crack in the bedroom door. The tension between Mia&#8217;s desire for paternal caring and her sexual desire plays beautifully in a scene where Mia pretends to be passed out on her mother&#8217;s bed and allows Connor to carry her to her own bed and strip her pants off. The whole while, we expect rape, molestation or some kind of trespass, but instead Connor gently tucks Mia into bed and walks out of the room.</p> <p>Mia and Connor&#8217;s relationship between play and sexuality fuels the tension and tightness of the movie. The next morning, Connor takes the three girls (mother and two daughters) on an outing to a pond. Connor leads Mia barefoot into the water, and he catches a fish with his bare hands, an image of childish play and fierce sexuality. The whole while the bruise on Mia&#8217;s arm as she enters the water with Connor reminds us that the only relationship that she has to sexuality is through her mother, and specifically through her mother&#8217;s boyfriend. &amp;#160;Later, Connor bandages Mia&#8217;s bare ankle which itself is a scene of nurturing and charged sexuality. Of course, the cut occurred and Mia started bleeding when she entered the wet pond with Connor, another image that is both playful and loaded with sex. The irony is that while Mia rebels against her mother&#8217;s overt sexuality, the only access she eventually has to sexuality is through her mother&#8217;s boyfriend. When the critical moment finally occurs and Mia and Connor have sex, the scene is utterly devastating, not because it is overtly traumatic or dramatic, but because it is so ordinary with Connor pumping up and down on Mia&#8217;s body as Mia clenches her fists on his back.</p> <p>It is this very ordinariness that makes the movie so relentlessly claustrophobic and devastating. There is no single key moment of violence and trespass, but just the relentless violence of class and gender that keep Mia trapped. While the sex scene with Connor is sad and pathetic, it is utterly real. There is no sense of&amp;#160; violation, just the sense that this is just another act (lacking intimacy and trust) in a series of acts that occur in the fish tank of Mia&#8217;s life. Likewise, in the scene with the Welsh settlers when Mia tries to free the horse and they catch her, the struggle with her and the young men leads us to expect somekind of horribly violent outcome &#8211; rape, beating, theft &#8212; , but instead she just runs away unscathed, eventually gets her backpack back, and even takes on one of the young men as her &#8220;boyfriend.&#8221; The movie is not about the violence or catharsis contained in one singular moment but more about the persistence of what is, and that is why it is so powerfully effective. It never allows us to move on or process. It only allows us to feel the confines of the space of Mia&#8217;s life.</p> <p>As brutally realistic as the movie is, it is not without its heartbreaking poetic moments. A series of scenes that are both poetic yet real allow the impact of Mia&#8217;s life to hit us even harder. One of the movie&#8217;s poetic tropes is the image of an old white horse chained to a concrete block in a field. Mia is obsessed with the horse and wanting to free it (as she would like to free herself from the literal concrete block she is chained to). In one scene, Mia takes an enormous rock and bangs on the chain, trying the break the horse free, but the chain never breaks. The horse eventually dies chained to the limits of its environment, an image both symbolic and tragically real.</p> <p>Mia&#8217;s relationship with Connor is not only critical in showing the tensions within Mia as a child and as a sexual being, but it also ends up providing commentary on class and a powerfully symbolic moment when Mia has to confront herself and the limits of her class. Not surprisingly, Mia discovers that Connor lives in a house with a wife and daughter and that he is from an entirely different class than her, that he was using Mia and her mother as a &#8220;childish&#8221; diversion from the comforts of his middle class life. When Mia breaks into Connor&#8217;s house, she literally trespasses her class and sees the life she most likely will never have &#8211; a comfortable and clean home, a video showing caring loving parents, and Connor&#8217;s daughter Keira, a little girl who is truly loved and cared for.&amp;#160; When Mia kidnaps Keira, it&#8217;s like she is kidnapping herself and confronting both who she is and who she will never be. In another moment that leads us to expect tragedy but instead just shows life, Mia abducts Keira and leads her through the windswept fields of the borderlands. As Keira runs, shedding pieces of her princess dress on barbed wire fence along the way, she eventually comes to the edge of the fields and falls into the turbulent stormy sea. When Keira falls into the raging waters gasping for air, we expect her to drown. (We are told earlier in the film that Mia can&#8217;t swim.) Instead, Mia pulls Kaira out of the water and leads her back home. In other words, she pulls herself out of the storming waters that are consuming her, and she sets herself free. It is another poetic moment that reads both as reality and as emotionally laden metaphor.</p> <p>Setting herself free, however, does not provide a climatic happy ending moment. Setting herself free means that Mia leaves her council estate home and her mother and sister for an undetermined life with the Welsh boy from the trailer by the horse. In a moment of departure and closure, Mia, her sister and her mother dance together to the rap song by Nas &#8220;Life&#8217;s A Bitch.&#8221; With the refrain &#8220;Life&#8217;s a bitch and then you die&#8221; playing over and over again as the three women dance &#8211; the mother a perpetual child and her children born into being adults &#8211; we can&#8217;t help but feel the trap of class close in on us. The utopian bittersweet intimacy of the scene is undermined by the brutality and reality of the song. It should be noted that the use of rap music (a traditionally masculine form of music) shows that class is beyond race while also provides the audio evidence of the hard reality these women and girls live in and the tough veneer they have adopted for their survival.&amp;#160; Speaking of tough veneer, as Mia leaves the house for good, her little sister runs out of the house and hugs her, &#8220;I hate you.&#8221; &#8220;I hate you too,&#8221; Mia answers back. As I said, this is a world where love can only express itself as rage or hate and which allows no room to allow for the vulnerability of love.</p> <p>As Mia drives off, one of the last things we see in the movie is a silver heart balloon floating above the towering concrete blocks of the council estates. While it could be read as an intentionally orchestrated (and hokey) poetic moment, the balloon looks and feels accidental, like the cameraman just happened to catch it, this one fleeting glimpse of love bought for $2.99 then cut off from the string and left to float into oblivion.&amp;#160; Despite the balloon and the image of Mia driving off with her boyfriend, and despite the rescue of Keira and the other quiet poetic moments in the film, I still left the movie with a suffocating sense of reality more than a contemplative sense of poetry. I left the movie feeling like I never left the movie, and that&#8217;s the point. Class sticks. Being stuck inside class is like being stuck inside a fish tank, and you can&#8217;t just walk away from it. I realized that all too vividly as I stood outside the movie theater, listened to the traffic, swallowed down my tears, and looked at my own reflection in the window.</p> <p>KIM NICOLINI is an artist, poet and cultural critic. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her daughter and a menagerie of beasts. She works a day job to support her art and culture habits. She is currently finishing a book-length essayistic memoir about being a teenage runaway in 1970s San Francisco. She can be reached at: <a href="mailto:knicolini@gmail.com" type="external">knicolini@gmail.com</a>.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/" type="external">WORDS THAT STICK</a></p> <p />

Class Claustrophobia

https://counterpunch.org/2010/04/16/class-claustrophobia/

2010-04-16

4left

When I first left the theater after seeing Andrea Arnold8217s Fish Tank I stood on the sidewalk literally gasping for air like a fish thrown onto the curb Cars sped by on the street leaving a trail of noise and exhaust and I stood frozen not able to separate myself from the movie Slowly I started to shudder and a torrent of silent tears poured out of my body It8217s been years since a movie has had such a powerful emotional effect on me and I wondered if I ever would be able to write about a movie to which I had such an intensely personal response But as time passed I realized that the effect the movie had on me wasn8217t just about my own personal identification with the subject matter but that Andrea Arnold intentionally wanted the audience to feel the claustrophobic confines of class She wanted to throw us inside the 8220fish tank8221 of the lower working class life in the British council estates public housing She wanted us to feel the inner and outer compression that result from the trap of class and she succeeds to such an extent that the movie wraps its fingers around our throats and never lets go for the entire 123 minutes Fish Tank tells the story of Mia a fifteen year old girl who lives in the council estates on the Essex borderlands Industrial plants polluted mudflats freeway overpasses and a tapestry of relentless noise are the geography of her lifeamp160 The story of Mia is not one of dramatic narrative arc or even a traditional coming of age story It is the story of her life with her single mother her sister and mother8217s boyfriend Connor and it is a life that is so tightly compressed by class and gender that there is no 8220coming of age8221 allowed since it is clear that Mia was in a sense born 8220grown up8221 The movie takes us through a window of Mia8217s life where she fights with her mother has hostile interactions with neighborhood girls attempts to free a horse dances in isolation in a an empty apartment has a complicated relationship with her mother8217s boyrfriend Connor and finally breaks free simply by stepping into a different threshold of her same class Growing up in a council estate herself Andrea Arnold brings an autobiographicalbased documentary realism to the movie Filmed in the tightly framed format of academy ratio the movie closes in on us and compresses us into Mia8217s life with relentless social realism Everything in Mia8217s environment is covered with the soot of a post industrial landscape Spinning windmills gutted factories a few sputtering smokestacks and towers of concrete block apartment buildings comprise the world Mia occupies And the sound is as claustrophobic as the physical geography 8211 honking horns the whir and rush of traffic on the overpass boom boxes blaring from every corner and the relentless whipping of wind off the mudflats Sound and space close in on us for every single second of this film We get glimpses of people standing on balconies staring across the polluted waters children running down corridors littered with garbage and barking dogs girls sunbathing on dead grass and senior citizens staring blankly out their windows like so many fish in a tank or animals in a zoo Mia is one of those fish and the whole movie works to make us feel the walls of her tank closing in on her The film so microscopically focuses on Mia8217s environment that it is one of the most claustrophobic movies I8217ve ever experiencedamp160 Focusing so tightly on this one singular character and her limited relationships mother sister mother8217s boyfriend mimics the claustrophobia of the environment that is Mia8217s world The movie hones in on the specific life of Mia and her very immediate human relations with no room for anything else to get inside Every single interaction with the people and the environment Mia encounters is fraught with rage antagonism and a tightly controlled desperationamp160 A group of girls dancing on a basketball court a horse tied to a cement block in a field a strip club looking for dancers and her own mother 8211 everything in Mia8217s life mirrors the claustrophobia of her environment The scenes in her apartment are so compressed that it is a miracle they could even maneuver a camera within the space to film them Whether in a bedroom cluttered with posters perfume bottles and discarded clothes or a kitchen with counters littered with beer bottles or the narrow confines of a stairwell the characters are literally on top of each other in each scene The miseenscene in the movie is so real that I can8217t even call it miseenscene I can only call it reality the stuff of life in an apartment in the council estates 8212 a discarded shoe next to a stainless steel mixing bowl a tea kettle mixmatched cups an ashtray on a coffee table The interesting thing is that while the characters are compressed together in the tight space of the apartment 8211 especially the mother and her daughters 8211 there is such little connection or communication between the family The mother exists like a menacing specter of female sexuality gone bad from the limits of its class and her presence in the house is more like an antagonistic haunting than an actual person yet alone a mother The mother wears her class all over her body 8211 from her stumbling high heels to her garish yellow mini dress to her shoddy hair dye She obviously is still a child herself and had Mia when she was a child Never even given a name in the movie the mother is like the living breathing symbol of the class and gender that are closing in on Mia8217s life Everything about Mia played with heartbreaking reality by firsttime actress Katie Jarvis who was discovered by one of Arnold8217s crew members while arguing with her boyfriend at a train station is a reaction against the claustrophobic confines of her class and her gender while also a torrential mix of confusion and contradiction In Mia we see that being tightly controlled is the ultimate act of protection yet we also witness the struggle within herself between yearning for intimacy which she has never experienced certainly not through her mother and the knowledge that selfprotection trumps intimacy We see her coming to awareness of her sexuality while also consciously suppressing her sexual identity as an act of protection and rebellion Mia8217s entire presence is as controlled and clenched as the movie itself Her neediness and vulnerability are expressed not through tears or selfpity but through compression and bursts of rage She adopts boyish clothing as a kind of suit of armor her clenched body stomping through the streets in sweatpants and hoodie Mia is the perfect embodiment of the tension that resides in young girls who are thrust into a grown up world The scene with her younger sister sitting in her pink room with her friends smoking cigarettes and drinking beer while surrounded by stuffed animals and dolls is the quintessential embodiment of the life Mia was born into One of the movie8217s primary narrative threads is Mia8217s love of dancing Dancing is the thing she does to take her away and allow escape Interestingly the one place where she finds freedom is inside an abandoned apartment within the council estates Mia breaks into the apartment plugs in her music and lets go dancingamp160 In between dancing she guzzles beer from a large plastic bottle and looks through the window of her tank and down at the world she lives in 8211 a sea of public housing and pollution Her dance moves themselves are completely restrained and stripped of sexuality When she dances she clenches her body like a fist and her moves are so tight and controlled that she allows no room to get inside her Also she adopts the dance moves of boys 8212 break dancing Mia throws her body on the floor as if the act of throwing herself down will itself protect her from being thrown down But ultimately there is no protection in dancing either When she sees an advertisement for 8220Dancers Wanted8221 Mia applies and eventually finds herself auditioning in a strip club She stands on the stage in her sweatpants and hoodie and looks around at a room full of her 8220mothers8221 8211 desperate women dressed and madeup in sex 8211 with their high heel shoes their lipstick and eyeliner their minidresses corsets and gstrings It is a heartbreaking and enraging moment when we see Mia trapped between the sexual yearning inside her and the reality of her class and gender and the necessity to consciously suppress her sexuality as an act of survival She storms off the stage and refuses to concede to that image It8217s a loveless world that Mia lives in and she adapts to this loveless world like a fish in a tank Her mother rarely shows her any emotion other than resentful competitiveness Her attempts at caring consist of trying to place Mia in a 8220special school8221 for troubled kids in other words by getting rid of her or by pinching her arm leaving a huge black bruise and telling Mia to stop interrupting her party Mia meets her mother8217s boyfriend Connor who is the first person who actually seems like he cares about her but it8217s all a mess of confusion between Mia8217s desire for paternal caring and her burgeoning sexuality At one moment she allows Connor to make her a cup of tea as an act of caring At another Mia watches Connor and her mother have sex through a crack in the bedroom door The tension between Mia8217s desire for paternal caring and her sexual desire plays beautifully in a scene where Mia pretends to be passed out on her mother8217s bed and allows Connor to carry her to her own bed and strip her pants off The whole while we expect rape molestation or some kind of trespass but instead Connor gently tucks Mia into bed and walks out of the room Mia and Connor8217s relationship between play and sexuality fuels the tension and tightness of the movie The next morning Connor takes the three girls mother and two daughters on an outing to a pond Connor leads Mia barefoot into the water and he catches a fish with his bare hands an image of childish play and fierce sexuality The whole while the bruise on Mia8217s arm as she enters the water with Connor reminds us that the only relationship that she has to sexuality is through her mother and specifically through her mother8217s boyfriend amp160Later Connor bandages Mia8217s bare ankle which itself is a scene of nurturing and charged sexuality Of course the cut occurred and Mia started bleeding when she entered the wet pond with Connor another image that is both playful and loaded with sex The irony is that while Mia rebels against her mother8217s overt sexuality the only access she eventually has to sexuality is through her mother8217s boyfriend When the critical moment finally occurs and Mia and Connor have sex the scene is utterly devastating not because it is overtly traumatic or dramatic but because it is so ordinary with Connor pumping up and down on Mia8217s body as Mia clenches her fists on his back It is this very ordinariness that makes the movie so relentlessly claustrophobic and devastating There is no single key moment of violence and trespass but just the relentless violence of class and gender that keep Mia trapped While the sex scene with Connor is sad and pathetic it is utterly real There is no sense ofamp160 violation just the sense that this is just another act lacking intimacy and trust in a series of acts that occur in the fish tank of Mia8217s life Likewise in the scene with the Welsh settlers when Mia tries to free the horse and they catch her the struggle with her and the young men leads us to expect somekind of horribly violent outcome 8211 rape beating theft 8212 but instead she just runs away unscathed eventually gets her backpack back and even takes on one of the young men as her 8220boyfriend8221 The movie is not about the violence or catharsis contained in one singular moment but more about the persistence of what is and that is why it is so powerfully effective It never allows us to move on or process It only allows us to feel the confines of the space of Mia8217s life As brutally realistic as the movie is it is not without its heartbreaking poetic moments A series of scenes that are both poetic yet real allow the impact of Mia8217s life to hit us even harder One of the movie8217s poetic tropes is the image of an old white horse chained to a concrete block in a field Mia is obsessed with the horse and wanting to free it as she would like to free herself from the literal concrete block she is chained to In one scene Mia takes an enormous rock and bangs on the chain trying the break the horse free but the chain never breaks The horse eventually dies chained to the limits of its environment an image both symbolic and tragically real Mia8217s relationship with Connor is not only critical in showing the tensions within Mia as a child and as a sexual being but it also ends up providing commentary on class and a powerfully symbolic moment when Mia has to confront herself and the limits of her class Not surprisingly Mia discovers that Connor lives in a house with a wife and daughter and that he is from an entirely different class than her that he was using Mia and her mother as a 8220childish8221 diversion from the comforts of his middle class life When Mia breaks into Connor8217s house she literally trespasses her class and sees the life she most likely will never have 8211 a comfortable and clean home a video showing caring loving parents and Connor8217s daughter Keira a little girl who is truly loved and cared foramp160 When Mia kidnaps Keira it8217s like she is kidnapping herself and confronting both who she is and who she will never be In another moment that leads us to expect tragedy but instead just shows life Mia abducts Keira and leads her through the windswept fields of the borderlands As Keira runs shedding pieces of her princess dress on barbed wire fence along the way she eventually comes to the edge of the fields and falls into the turbulent stormy sea When Keira falls into the raging waters gasping for air we expect her to drown We are told earlier in the film that Mia can8217t swim Instead Mia pulls Kaira out of the water and leads her back home In other words she pulls herself out of the storming waters that are consuming her and she sets herself free It is another poetic moment that reads both as reality and as emotionally laden metaphor Setting herself free however does not provide a climatic happy ending moment Setting herself free means that Mia leaves her council estate home and her mother and sister for an undetermined life with the Welsh boy from the trailer by the horse In a moment of departure and closure Mia her sister and her mother dance together to the rap song by Nas 8220Life8217s A Bitch8221 With the refrain 8220Life8217s a bitch and then you die8221 playing over and over again as the three women dance 8211 the mother a perpetual child and her children born into being adults 8211 we can8217t help but feel the trap of class close in on us The utopian bittersweet intimacy of the scene is undermined by the brutality and reality of the song It should be noted that the use of rap music a traditionally masculine form of music shows that class is beyond race while also provides the audio evidence of the hard reality these women and girls live in and the tough veneer they have adopted for their survivalamp160 Speaking of tough veneer as Mia leaves the house for good her little sister runs out of the house and hugs her 8220I hate you8221 8220I hate you too8221 Mia answers back As I said this is a world where love can only express itself as rage or hate and which allows no room to allow for the vulnerability of love As Mia drives off one of the last things we see in the movie is a silver heart balloon floating above the towering concrete blocks of the council estates While it could be read as an intentionally orchestrated and hokey poetic moment the balloon looks and feels accidental like the cameraman just happened to catch it this one fleeting glimpse of love bought for 299 then cut off from the string and left to float into oblivionamp160 Despite the balloon and the image of Mia driving off with her boyfriend and despite the rescue of Keira and the other quiet poetic moments in the film I still left the movie with a suffocating sense of reality more than a contemplative sense of poetry I left the movie feeling like I never left the movie and that8217s the point Class sticks Being stuck inside class is like being stuck inside a fish tank and you can8217t just walk away from it I realized that all too vividly as I stood outside the movie theater listened to the traffic swallowed down my tears and looked at my own reflection in the window KIM NICOLINI is an artist poet and cultural critic She lives in Tucson Arizona with her daughter and a menagerie of beasts She works a day job to support her art and culture habits She is currently finishing a booklength essayistic memoir about being a teenage runaway in 1970s San Francisco She can be reached at knicolinigmailcom amp160 amp160 WORDS THAT STICK

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<p>Nairobi, Kenya.</p> <p>I am scared.</p> <p>As I am writing this essay, the Eid-ul-Fitr is approaching; festivities that will mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan are about to start. Some 20 percent of the world population, which is Muslim, is now cooking, doing last-minute wrapping of the gifts, getting ready to forgive the loved ones, its neighbors, and to disburse the charities.</p> <p>For many it is just a routine, an obligation. But for some, perhaps for the majority of Muslims that I know, it is one important and beautiful event, an opportunity to become better and more caring people.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t believe. I have no religion and in many of my books and reports I have been arguing that all religions, particularly those practiced in the West, brought tremendous grief and suffering to the people inhabiting our planet.</p> <p>But I have many Muslim friends. Among Muslims are people that I care for immensely. I am close to Muslim people who live in Indonesia, Golf region, Sub-Continent, Africa, Malaysia and elsewhere. I had been a friend of Abdurrahman Wahid, former Indonesian progressive President and the leader of the largest Muslim organization in the world &#8211; NU (Nahdlatul Ulama). I regularly discuss Islam with Muslim clerics in Aceh and with Shia believers in Iran and India.</p> <p>I have enormous respect for Muslim culture &#8211; for its great poetry, its scientific achievements of the past, medicine, the architecture and social structures, including their concepts for the first &#8216;social&#8217; hospitals in the world.</p> <p>But now, just one day before Eid-up-Fitr, I feel scared. Is it because suddenly I feel that the tall walls are separating us all and the doors that were otherwise wide opened to me are suddenly closing?</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>I worked in around 140 countries of the world, I lived on all continents that this planet has. I speak many languages. But more and more often I realize how difficult, almost impossible, is the true and honest dialogue between different cultures and different faiths.</p> <p>Officially we are told the opposite. &#8216;Political correctness&#8217; makes us say &#8216;right things&#8217; about each other. We are all supposed to be one happy family now. We say we are having a dialogue even when we sit in the opposite corners. True, most of us do not swear at each other in public. We don&#8217;t insult others to the face. But do we really know each other? Do we understand each other? Do we go out of our ways to learn?</p> <p>I am one of those &#8216;sad&#8217; atheists and non-believers. I am not happy, not proud of the fact that I do not have faith. I wish I would have, but my brain was trained to be rational and my analytical thinking, philosophy that I studied, experiences from the war zones that I had as a war correspondent; they push me away from any form of devotion. I see, I record, analyze and then fight for better world. There is no time, no space in my life for rituals. Or that is what I repeat to myself. Then why do I feel such sadness and envy on the days like this; just a few hours before Eid-ul-Fitr?</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>Then there is of course that deep frustration from not being included. Even if I do not have faith, I am sympathetic; I am educated and fluent enough in the rituals to be able to share at least the table with those who believe.</p> <p>But there is exclusivity and one ends up either inside or outside, depending on whether he or she accepted belief.</p> <p>Which leaves people like me, internationalists who severed all their original cultural ties and gave up their national identity for the struggle for better world, somewhere in the cold. Or more precisely &#8211; it leaves us in front of some tightly closed gate. Fighting against Western imperialism and against its cultural dictatorship does not guarantee that one would be invited and be given at least some temporary &#8216;cultural or spiritual asylum&#8217; by those he or she is fighting for.</p> <p>And I am not the only one who feels that way. A Byelorussian filmmaker who is helping to coordinate my visit to former USSR recently wrote in her email:</p> <p>&#8220;Ah how many bright and dear Muslim friends I have&#8230; but I don&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s possible to come any closer to each other than to some point with a religious person. No chance to reach real mutual understanding and intimacy. Whose emotional emptiness and limitedness is there to blame? Not sure, not sure&#8230;&#8221;</p> <p>All this explains sadness that is burdening my heart. But it is not explaining the fear.</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>My fear is actually very rational. It is based on many years of observation and on analyzing what I managed to observe and record.</p> <p>I am afraid that people of our planet are now walking towards the different corners. Not all of them, but the majority. The trust had been broken. Hurts, mental injuries are too deep. Western neo-colonialism has been too savage, too brutal, on all continents: in Africa, Oceania, Asia and until recently in Latin America. But some of the most terrible claws of imperialism had been pointed towards the Muslim world. There, the West usually used religion for its own gains, dividing Shia and Sunni Muslims, literally training and bribing religious cadres into fighting against Soviet Union or against progressive and non-aligned ideals in the countries like Indonesia before 1965.</p> <p>It is almost as if much of political Islam had been kidnapped and corrupted by Western interests.</p> <p>It has been long, debilitating and humiliating process, and for majority of the Muslims it was very difficult to fight back, to defend themselves. For decades since the end of the WWII, entire nations like Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Palestine and Somalia to name just a few, had been thrown to terrible meat grinders, they were forced to bleed in agony.</p> <p>Almost every Muslim country, from Sudan, Libya to Mali, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or Iraq had been manipulated or directly invaded or simply destroyed. The worst grade of dictators has been created, cultivated and then supported. The West was determined to rule over the Muslim lands, as it was determined to rule over the whole world.</p> <p>In a way, Muslim countries never gained true independence after centuries of colonial rule. And if they did, they were beaten once again to even worse submission.</p> <p>It is very hard to imagine that trust could bloom in such environment.</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>Emotions are one thing, but knowledge is quite another. Many Muslims may guard their feelings and their &#8216;territory&#8217; when interacting with infidels (one could hardly blame them, given the ancient as well as recent history of the world), but it is the West, the ruling culture, that shows limitless spite towards the Islamic cultural universe, making Muslim even more defensive and protective of that little that has been left to them.</p> <p>Even in the most remote and &#8216;uneducated&#8217; parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, even on many far-away islands of Indonesian archipelago, people are well aware of at least some essentials, some basics on which the Western culture is constructed.</p> <p>But how much the West knows about Islam &#8211; about its ideals, its code of justice, its culture and arts, its taboos and goals? Is Muslim universe that encompasses almost one quarter of the world&#8217;s population treated as equal partner by the Empire and its junior partners?</p> <p>How many &#8216;educated&#8217; people in the West even bothered to read Qur&#8217;an?&amp;#160; We all know it is pathetically low percentage, although I don&#8217;t know anybody in the West who would not have some &#8216;theory&#8217; or strong opinion (and mostly absolutely ignorant) on the subject!</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>The West developed powerful set of uncompromising stereotypes: there are two extremes on the scale of generally accepted measure of intellectualism: On one hand there is an image, a symbol, of totally deranged, submissive female with covered hair &#8211; a personification of oppression, stupidity and irrationality. A Muslim woman is submissive and pitiful and should be enlightened and &#8216;liberated&#8217; at nearest appropriate opportunity.</p> <p>At the other extreme is post-Existentialist intellectual, preferably from Paris, London or other Western metropolis. He (or she but most probably he) is without any doubt an atheist, wine drinking and determinately &#8216;liberal&#8217; (whatever that means). His god is nothing less than &#8216;rational thinking&#8217;. He believes in nothing and sneers at God, but he also despises all revolutions, rebellions as well as Marxism and anything that smells of idealism. And he is fiercely individualistic.</p> <p>Such prototype of intellectual was perfected and nurtured into the very symbol of the superiority of Western civilization. Of course he is at the right-side extreme on the imaginary scale. If a Muslim woman with her covered hair is somewhere near zero, he is scratching his back by the digits of number ten.</p> <p>But is he so smart? Is he really bright? Is he kind; is he a humanist, a brave individual?</p> <p>Is he challenging dogmas advanced by official Western propaganda? Is he brave enough to question his own right to&#8217; superiority&#8217;? When he gets drunk and sings (and he gets drunk often); can we hear selection of world tunes or just his own jingles? When he struggles for something, is it for the world that is oppressed by his own culture or is he fighting mainly his own individualistic and egocentric goals?</p> <p>What does our intellectual champion knows about the world outside his realm?</p> <p>Most of my &#8216;intellectual&#8217; friends in Paris or Madrid or even New York could hardly name one Muslim thinker, or one Middle Eastern poet.</p> <p>Of course they are equally ignorant about all other parts of the world, except their own. While any Chinese or Japanese child can name at least some of the most outstanding composers and writers from Europe and United Sates, how many European adults, even with the advanced degrees can name one great Chinese or Japanese composer, Korean actor or Indonesian painter?</p> <p>And what about the open-mindedness of our hero secular intellectual? What about the range of his choices? For most of Europeans and North American &#8216;thinkers&#8217; it is almost unimaginable to question the superiority of [their own] multi-party political system (democracy is not measured by whether people really rule their countries, but by the number of political parties competing against each other). Also the &#8220;Free market&#8221; economic model that could be easily defined by the words &#8216;market fundamentalism&#8217; allows no challenges &#8211; try to ridicule it and you will have corporate fatwa thrown on your head in no time &#8211; you will not be killed, just sidelined and possibly slowly starved to death.</p> <p>And then, most of the Western intellectuals have one extreme, maybe the most extreme and fundamentalist believe on earth, which already murdered hundreds of millions of innocent men, women and children: it is belief that the West with its set of values and dogmas has some unquestionable mandate to rule over the world.</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>But let us go back to Muslims.</p> <p>Before and during this Ramadan, I met several people from Indian Bohra Muslim sect, extremely educated and Orthodox branch of Shia Islam. I will not go to details here, as they are connected to my, until now unfinished, work as an investigative journalist.</p> <p>One of them is an Indian neurosurgeon, brilliant and determined, known for &#8216;going where all others refuse to go&#8217;, for saving lives where there appears to be no hope left.</p> <p>We exchanged many &#8216;notes&#8217;. To her, doing what she does is one great blessing, as she explained to me: &#8220;I get access to God&#8217;s greatest creation &#8211; human brain.&#8221;</p> <p>In other exchange she expressed her frustration: &#8220;No matter what we do, we are not considered to be &#8216;intellectuals&#8217;, if we are religious, if we believe in God. Atheists do not take believers seriously. Only atheist could be considered true intellectual.&#8221;</p> <p>Her statement made me think and it inspired this essay. Someone who operates on human brains should be taken very seriously. And if she does not have her voice in our world, I am naturally ready to lend her mine.</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>I always thought that one has to believe in something, in order to be able to live (not just to exist), in order to make positive difference in this world.</p> <p>All great revolutions were conducted with passion and definitely with love &#8211; with unconditional love for the humanity. Country like USSR could not fight and defeat fascism (and save the world) without passion and belief in its sacred mission.</p> <p>Cuba could not stand firm, to survive attacks and embargos by the mightiest bully in human history without determination, love and belief in its right path.</p> <p>It often appears to me when I come to visit Europe or North America, when I travel to speak there or in order to launch my books or open films, that everything that used to be &#8216;sacred&#8217; almost disappeared from the daily life there. Nobody is fighting for anything substantial, anymore. Almost nobody is fighting, full stop. There are almost no ideals left. Ideas had been discredited, dragged through dirt, spat on. People appear to be living by inertia while the plunder abroad conducted by their governments and companies continues.</p> <p>Families are not having children anymore and men and women are too afraid to commit themselves to anything that would challenge their &#8216;freedom&#8217;. Old people are fading in retirement homes or are discovered weeks after dying in dismal loneliness.</p> <p>Mention socialism, internationalism or (god forbid) Marxism, and you will be facing uninterrupted and vitriolic barrage of cynicism. Mention other countries that are choosing different path &#8211; China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran &#8211; and badly informed but vicious choir will begin bombarding you with pre-fabricated dirt designed by mass media and propagandists to discredit any nation that is distinctive.</p> <p>I feel unwell in the West, and increasingly so. I know no other part of the world with such uniformity of believes! And I do not like believes that took hold of the people there.</p> <p>It is also becoming clear to me that believes that remained in the West have very little to do with love and so much with hate, and nihilism. That fact actually makes a rational sense: if not for hate and cruelty, how else would the minority be able to plunder and torture most of the world for so many centuries?</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>Some time ago I was sitting on the tall carpet in one of the mosques in Istanbul. It was quiet and comfortable there. I was not alone. Unlike in Saudi Arabia, in Turkey a mosque is not only a place of worship; it is comfortable, beautiful and welcoming public space.</p> <p>I was sitting on the floor and thinking. Not far from me were several women, praying. They were devoted and it appeared to me &#8211; content.</p> <p>I was not content at all. What I witnessed in the Middle East, what I felt after working there was very far from harmony. I also calculated that I have approximately twenty years, at most 25, of this madness of non-stop working, constant traveling, of this exciting fight for better world. I enjoy good fight; I love my work and my life. The idea that I will eventually turn to dust was depressing me.</p> <p>Those ladies had much better future than me, or at least they believed so.</p> <p>And then I realized something else. While I was sitting on the carpet, in my heavy head working on the concept for some article, recalling horrors of existence of so many people on this earth, those women praying just a few steps from me were in love. They loved fully, unconditionally, and selflessly. They loved their God.</p> <p>Everything was suddenly very simple. I recalled couples at sunset in Nicaragua, whispering verses of great poets &#8211; verses engraved to the beautiful sculptures.</p> <p>When one loves, it should be absolute, or what is the point otherwise? And when there is love, objectivity is meaningless; it is even insulting. We don&#8217;t measure size of the nose of a woman we love; we don&#8217;t check her teeth. We don&#8217;t run her IQ test, do we? All that is irrelevant, because she is perfect. And if somebody tells us that she is ugly or brainless or both, we punch his teeth. It is natural and it was since the beginning of human race &#8211; such behavior.</p> <p>The only difference was that these women loved unconditionally the Highest being.</p> <p>I knew I was cheating. I always wanted to be with those who believed, with those who loved, with those who could&#8230;</p> <p>I knew that deep inside, I felt much better, much more comfortable and much safer in this little mosque than I would feel in the pub or at some atheist gathering&#8230;</p> <p>Eventually I lifted up my heavy bag, full of cameras and wires, and I went away, I went to fight for better world on this planet.</p> <p>But as I was passing through the door, in my mind I fully paraphrased the end of one of the iconic philosophical works by Albert Camus: &#8220;The Myth of Sisyphus&#8221;. After observing those devoted women for a while, I had to conclude that they were happy &#8230; while I was scared.</p> <p>Andre Vltchek&amp;#160;is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His book on Western imperialism in the &amp;#160;South Pacific &#8211;&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">Oceania</a>&amp;#160;&#8211; is published by Lulu .&amp;#160;His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and market-fundamentalist model is called &#8220;Indonesia &#8211; The Archipelago of Fear&#8221; and will be released by Pluto Publishing House in August 2012. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his&amp;#160; <a href="http://andrevltchek.weebly.com/" type="external">website</a>.</p> <p>COMING IN SEPTEMBER</p> <p>A Special Memorial Issue of CounterPunch</p> <p>Featuring recollections of Alexander Cockburn from Jeffrey St. Clair, Peter Linebaugh, Paul Craig Roberts, Noam Chomsky, Mike Whitney, Doug Peacock, Perry Anderson, Becky Grant, Dennis Kucinich, Michael Neumann, Susannah Hecht, P. Sainath, Ben Tripp, Alison Weir, James Ridgeway, JoAnn Wypijewski, John Strausbaugh, Pierre Sprey, Carolyn Cooke, Conn Hallinan, James Wolcott, Laura Flanders, Ken Silverstein, Tariq Ali and many others &#8230;</p> <p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Subscribe to CounterPunch Today to Reserve Your Copy</a></p>

Veiled Muslim Women and Boozing Western Intellectuals

https://counterpunch.org/2012/08/20/veiled-muslim-women-and-boozing-western-intellectuals/

2012-08-20

4left

Nairobi Kenya I am scared As I am writing this essay the EidulFitr is approaching festivities that will mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan are about to start Some 20 percent of the world population which is Muslim is now cooking doing lastminute wrapping of the gifts getting ready to forgive the loved ones its neighbors and to disburse the charities For many it is just a routine an obligation But for some perhaps for the majority of Muslims that I know it is one important and beautiful event an opportunity to become better and more caring people I don8217t believe I have no religion and in many of my books and reports I have been arguing that all religions particularly those practiced in the West brought tremendous grief and suffering to the people inhabiting our planet But I have many Muslim friends Among Muslims are people that I care for immensely I am close to Muslim people who live in Indonesia Golf region SubContinent Africa Malaysia and elsewhere I had been a friend of Abdurrahman Wahid former Indonesian progressive President and the leader of the largest Muslim organization in the world 8211 NU Nahdlatul Ulama I regularly discuss Islam with Muslim clerics in Aceh and with Shia believers in Iran and India I have enormous respect for Muslim culture 8211 for its great poetry its scientific achievements of the past medicine the architecture and social structures including their concepts for the first 8216social8217 hospitals in the world But now just one day before EidupFitr I feel scared Is it because suddenly I feel that the tall walls are separating us all and the doors that were otherwise wide opened to me are suddenly closing I worked in around 140 countries of the world I lived on all continents that this planet has I speak many languages But more and more often I realize how difficult almost impossible is the true and honest dialogue between different cultures and different faiths Officially we are told the opposite 8216Political correctness8217 makes us say 8216right things8217 about each other We are all supposed to be one happy family now We say we are having a dialogue even when we sit in the opposite corners True most of us do not swear at each other in public We don8217t insult others to the face But do we really know each other Do we understand each other Do we go out of our ways to learn I am one of those 8216sad8217 atheists and nonbelievers I am not happy not proud of the fact that I do not have faith I wish I would have but my brain was trained to be rational and my analytical thinking philosophy that I studied experiences from the war zones that I had as a war correspondent they push me away from any form of devotion I see I record analyze and then fight for better world There is no time no space in my life for rituals Or that is what I repeat to myself Then why do I feel such sadness and envy on the days like this just a few hours before EidulFitr Then there is of course that deep frustration from not being included Even if I do not have faith I am sympathetic I am educated and fluent enough in the rituals to be able to share at least the table with those who believe But there is exclusivity and one ends up either inside or outside depending on whether he or she accepted belief Which leaves people like me internationalists who severed all their original cultural ties and gave up their national identity for the struggle for better world somewhere in the cold Or more precisely 8211 it leaves us in front of some tightly closed gate Fighting against Western imperialism and against its cultural dictatorship does not guarantee that one would be invited and be given at least some temporary 8216cultural or spiritual asylum8217 by those he or she is fighting for And I am not the only one who feels that way A Byelorussian filmmaker who is helping to coordinate my visit to former USSR recently wrote in her email 8220Ah how many bright and dear Muslim friends I have8230 but I don8217t believe it8217s possible to come any closer to each other than to some point with a religious person No chance to reach real mutual understanding and intimacy Whose emotional emptiness and limitedness is there to blame Not sure not sure82308221 All this explains sadness that is burdening my heart But it is not explaining the fear My fear is actually very rational It is based on many years of observation and on analyzing what I managed to observe and record I am afraid that people of our planet are now walking towards the different corners Not all of them but the majority The trust had been broken Hurts mental injuries are too deep Western neocolonialism has been too savage too brutal on all continents in Africa Oceania Asia and until recently in Latin America But some of the most terrible claws of imperialism had been pointed towards the Muslim world There the West usually used religion for its own gains dividing Shia and Sunni Muslims literally training and bribing religious cadres into fighting against Soviet Union or against progressive and nonaligned ideals in the countries like Indonesia before 1965 It is almost as if much of political Islam had been kidnapped and corrupted by Western interests It has been long debilitating and humiliating process and for majority of the Muslims it was very difficult to fight back to defend themselves For decades since the end of the WWII entire nations like Iran Pakistan Afghanistan Indonesia Palestine and Somalia to name just a few had been thrown to terrible meat grinders they were forced to bleed in agony Almost every Muslim country from Sudan Libya to Mali Saudi Arabia Bahrain or Iraq had been manipulated or directly invaded or simply destroyed The worst grade of dictators has been created cultivated and then supported The West was determined to rule over the Muslim lands as it was determined to rule over the whole world In a way Muslim countries never gained true independence after centuries of colonial rule And if they did they were beaten once again to even worse submission It is very hard to imagine that trust could bloom in such environment Emotions are one thing but knowledge is quite another Many Muslims may guard their feelings and their 8216territory8217 when interacting with infidels one could hardly blame them given the ancient as well as recent history of the world but it is the West the ruling culture that shows limitless spite towards the Islamic cultural universe making Muslim even more defensive and protective of that little that has been left to them Even in the most remote and 8216uneducated8217 parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan even on many faraway islands of Indonesian archipelago people are well aware of at least some essentials some basics on which the Western culture is constructed But how much the West knows about Islam 8211 about its ideals its code of justice its culture and arts its taboos and goals Is Muslim universe that encompasses almost one quarter of the world8217s population treated as equal partner by the Empire and its junior partners How many 8216educated8217 people in the West even bothered to read Qur8217anamp160 We all know it is pathetically low percentage although I don8217t know anybody in the West who would not have some 8216theory8217 or strong opinion and mostly absolutely ignorant on the subject The West developed powerful set of uncompromising stereotypes there are two extremes on the scale of generally accepted measure of intellectualism On one hand there is an image a symbol of totally deranged submissive female with covered hair 8211 a personification of oppression stupidity and irrationality A Muslim woman is submissive and pitiful and should be enlightened and 8216liberated8217 at nearest appropriate opportunity At the other extreme is postExistentialist intellectual preferably from Paris London or other Western metropolis He or she but most probably he is without any doubt an atheist wine drinking and determinately 8216liberal8217 whatever that means His god is nothing less than 8216rational thinking8217 He believes in nothing and sneers at God but he also despises all revolutions rebellions as well as Marxism and anything that smells of idealism And he is fiercely individualistic Such prototype of intellectual was perfected and nurtured into the very symbol of the superiority of Western civilization Of course he is at the rightside extreme on the imaginary scale If a Muslim woman with her covered hair is somewhere near zero he is scratching his back by the digits of number ten But is he so smart Is he really bright Is he kind is he a humanist a brave individual Is he challenging dogmas advanced by official Western propaganda Is he brave enough to question his own right to8217 superiority8217 When he gets drunk and sings and he gets drunk often can we hear selection of world tunes or just his own jingles When he struggles for something is it for the world that is oppressed by his own culture or is he fighting mainly his own individualistic and egocentric goals What does our intellectual champion knows about the world outside his realm Most of my 8216intellectual8217 friends in Paris or Madrid or even New York could hardly name one Muslim thinker or one Middle Eastern poet Of course they are equally ignorant about all other parts of the world except their own While any Chinese or Japanese child can name at least some of the most outstanding composers and writers from Europe and United Sates how many European adults even with the advanced degrees can name one great Chinese or Japanese composer Korean actor or Indonesian painter And what about the openmindedness of our hero secular intellectual What about the range of his choices For most of Europeans and North American 8216thinkers8217 it is almost unimaginable to question the superiority of their own multiparty political system democracy is not measured by whether people really rule their countries but by the number of political parties competing against each other Also the 8220Free market8221 economic model that could be easily defined by the words 8216market fundamentalism8217 allows no challenges 8211 try to ridicule it and you will have corporate fatwa thrown on your head in no time 8211 you will not be killed just sidelined and possibly slowly starved to death And then most of the Western intellectuals have one extreme maybe the most extreme and fundamentalist believe on earth which already murdered hundreds of millions of innocent men women and children it is belief that the West with its set of values and dogmas has some unquestionable mandate to rule over the world But let us go back to Muslims Before and during this Ramadan I met several people from Indian Bohra Muslim sect extremely educated and Orthodox branch of Shia Islam I will not go to details here as they are connected to my until now unfinished work as an investigative journalist One of them is an Indian neurosurgeon brilliant and determined known for 8216going where all others refuse to go8217 for saving lives where there appears to be no hope left We exchanged many 8216notes8217 To her doing what she does is one great blessing as she explained to me 8220I get access to God8217s greatest creation 8211 human brain8221 In other exchange she expressed her frustration 8220No matter what we do we are not considered to be 8216intellectuals8217 if we are religious if we believe in God Atheists do not take believers seriously Only atheist could be considered true intellectual8221 Her statement made me think and it inspired this essay Someone who operates on human brains should be taken very seriously And if she does not have her voice in our world I am naturally ready to lend her mine I always thought that one has to believe in something in order to be able to live not just to exist in order to make positive difference in this world All great revolutions were conducted with passion and definitely with love 8211 with unconditional love for the humanity Country like USSR could not fight and defeat fascism and save the world without passion and belief in its sacred mission Cuba could not stand firm to survive attacks and embargos by the mightiest bully in human history without determination love and belief in its right path It often appears to me when I come to visit Europe or North America when I travel to speak there or in order to launch my books or open films that everything that used to be 8216sacred8217 almost disappeared from the daily life there Nobody is fighting for anything substantial anymore Almost nobody is fighting full stop There are almost no ideals left Ideas had been discredited dragged through dirt spat on People appear to be living by inertia while the plunder abroad conducted by their governments and companies continues Families are not having children anymore and men and women are too afraid to commit themselves to anything that would challenge their 8216freedom8217 Old people are fading in retirement homes or are discovered weeks after dying in dismal loneliness Mention socialism internationalism or god forbid Marxism and you will be facing uninterrupted and vitriolic barrage of cynicism Mention other countries that are choosing different path 8211 China Venezuela Cuba Iran 8211 and badly informed but vicious choir will begin bombarding you with prefabricated dirt designed by mass media and propagandists to discredit any nation that is distinctive I feel unwell in the West and increasingly so I know no other part of the world with such uniformity of believes And I do not like believes that took hold of the people there It is also becoming clear to me that believes that remained in the West have very little to do with love and so much with hate and nihilism That fact actually makes a rational sense if not for hate and cruelty how else would the minority be able to plunder and torture most of the world for so many centuries Some time ago I was sitting on the tall carpet in one of the mosques in Istanbul It was quiet and comfortable there I was not alone Unlike in Saudi Arabia in Turkey a mosque is not only a place of worship it is comfortable beautiful and welcoming public space I was sitting on the floor and thinking Not far from me were several women praying They were devoted and it appeared to me 8211 content I was not content at all What I witnessed in the Middle East what I felt after working there was very far from harmony I also calculated that I have approximately twenty years at most 25 of this madness of nonstop working constant traveling of this exciting fight for better world I enjoy good fight I love my work and my life The idea that I will eventually turn to dust was depressing me Those ladies had much better future than me or at least they believed so And then I realized something else While I was sitting on the carpet in my heavy head working on the concept for some article recalling horrors of existence of so many people on this earth those women praying just a few steps from me were in love They loved fully unconditionally and selflessly They loved their God Everything was suddenly very simple I recalled couples at sunset in Nicaragua whispering verses of great poets 8211 verses engraved to the beautiful sculptures When one loves it should be absolute or what is the point otherwise And when there is love objectivity is meaningless it is even insulting We don8217t measure size of the nose of a woman we love we don8217t check her teeth We don8217t run her IQ test do we All that is irrelevant because she is perfect And if somebody tells us that she is ugly or brainless or both we punch his teeth It is natural and it was since the beginning of human race 8211 such behavior The only difference was that these women loved unconditionally the Highest being I knew I was cheating I always wanted to be with those who believed with those who loved with those who could8230 I knew that deep inside I felt much better much more comfortable and much safer in this little mosque than I would feel in the pub or at some atheist gathering8230 Eventually I lifted up my heavy bag full of cameras and wires and I went away I went to fight for better world on this planet But as I was passing through the door in my mind I fully paraphrased the end of one of the iconic philosophical works by Albert Camus 8220The Myth of Sisyphus8221 After observing those devoted women for a while I had to conclude that they were happy 8230 while I was scared Andre Vltchekamp160is a novelist filmmaker and investigative journalist He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries His book on Western imperialism in the amp160South Pacific 8211amp160 Oceaniaamp1608211 is published by Lulu amp160His provocative book about postSuharto Indonesia and marketfundamentalist model is called 8220Indonesia 8211 The Archipelago of Fear8221 and will be released by Pluto Publishing House in August 2012 After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa He can be reached through hisamp160 website COMING IN SEPTEMBER A Special Memorial Issue of CounterPunch Featuring recollections of Alexander Cockburn from Jeffrey St Clair Peter Linebaugh Paul Craig Roberts Noam Chomsky Mike Whitney Doug Peacock Perry Anderson Becky Grant Dennis Kucinich Michael Neumann Susannah Hecht P Sainath Ben Tripp Alison Weir James Ridgeway JoAnn Wypijewski John Strausbaugh Pierre Sprey Carolyn Cooke Conn Hallinan James Wolcott Laura Flanders Ken Silverstein Tariq Ali and many others 8230 Subscribe to CounterPunch Today to Reserve Your Copy

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<p>BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand on Wednesday charged nine leaders of anti-government protests in 2013 and 2014 with inciting insurrection and sedition in an attempt to oust Yingluck Shinawatra, who was prime minister at the time.</p> <p>The People&#8217;s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) and its supporters took to the streets for seven months, aiming to rid Thailand of the influence of Yingluck, and her billionaire brother, ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who had massive support among the rural poor in the north and northeast.</p> <p>Their governments were overthrown in 2014 and 2006 coups respectively.</p> <p>Nine protest leaders, including Suthep Taugsuban, face eight charges over their roles in the bloody street protests, including insurrection, sedition, and obstructing a 2014 general election, said Prayut Bejraguna, a deputy spokesman for the office of the attorney-general.</p> <p>Suthep and one other protest leader also face an additional terrorism charge, Prayut added.</p> <p>The nine men pleaded not guilty to the charges, Suthep told reporters after the court session, adding that each was granted bail of 600,000 baht ($18,969) and barred from traveling overseas until the end of the trial.</p> <p>&#8220;Whether we are right or wrong, we will fight it out in the justice process...because we believe in Thailand&#8217;s justice system,&#8221; Suthep said.</p> <p>&#8220;We will insist on pushing to reform Thailand, no matter at what cost.&#8221;</p> <p>Prayut said Thailand&#8217;s attorney-general planned to file charges against 34 other PDRC leaders who did not show up in court on Wednesday.</p> <p>Tension has festered in Thailand since the 2006 coup removed Thaksin. Thailand is divided broadly between those backing Thaksin and Yingluck, whose government was ousted in 2014, and the elite in the capital, Bangkok.</p> <p>Thaksin is credited by some as being the first Thai prime minister to tap into the potential of the rural electorate. But his enemies accuse him of corruption, which he denies.</p> <p>Thaksin and Yingluck live abroad. Yingluck fled Thailand last August, ahead of a verdict in a negligence trial that eventually found her guilty and handed down a five-year jail term. Thaksin fled to avoid a 2008 jail term for corruption.</p> <p>Reporting by Aukkarapon Niyomyat and Suphanida Thakral; Writing by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Clarence Fernandez</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LIMA (Reuters) - Peru&#8217;s center-right President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced his resignation on Wednesday after vote-buying allegations ensnared him in a fresh scandal on the eve of an impeachment vote, capping months of political turmoil in one of Latin America&#8217;s most stable economies.</p> <p>Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former Wall Street banker who once held U.S. citizenship, promised a &#8220;constitutional and orderly&#8221; transition of power to end what he described as a hostile political climate that had made governing nearly impossible.</p> <p>But Kuczynski, who is expected to be replaced by Vice President Martin Vizcarra on Friday, denied allegations of wrongdoing and blamed the premature end of his five-year term on the right-wing opposition party that controls Congress.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve worked for nearly 60 years of my life with complete honesty. The opposition has tried to depict me as a corrupt person,&#8221; Kuczynski said in a pre-recorded video message to the nation that broadcast as he left the presidential palace.</p> <p>But Kuczynski added, &#8220;I think what&#8217;s best for the country is for me to resign...I don&#8217;t want to be an obstacle for the nation&#8217;s search for a path to unity and harmony.&#8221;</p> <p>Lawmakers agreed to accept Kuczynski&#8217;s resignation instead of moving forward with a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to oust him on grounds he was &#8220;morally unfit&#8221; to govern, said the president of Congress, Luis Galarreta.</p> <p>Galarreta said he would swear Vizcarra in as president at around midday Friday.</p> <p>A former governor of a mining region who once helped secure community support for Anglo American Plc&#8217;s Quellaveco copper project, Vizcarra has served as Peru&#8217;s ambassador to Canada since September and is currently in Ottawa.</p> <p>In recent days, Vizcarra has received public assurances from opposition lawmakers that they will support his government. But he will take office amid a fractured party, widespread disgust for elected officials in Peru and inherit economic growth that slowed to 2.5 percent last year.</p> Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is seen announcing his resignation at the Presidential Palace in Lima, Peru March 21, 2018 in this still image from video. PERU GOVERNMENT TV/AMERICA TV/Handout via REUTERS <p>Vizcarra, who turns 55 years old on Thursday, appealed to the public to pull through the crisis on Twitter. &#8220;I&#8217;m outraged by the current situation like the majority of Peruvians. But I&#8217;m convinced that together we can show that we can once more push forward.&#8221;</p> TRUMP HEADED TO PERU <p>Kuczynski had been scheduled to welcome Donald Trump on the U.S. president&#8217;s first visit to Latin America next month, where many of the region&#8217;s leaders plan to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to enact democratic reforms.</p> Slideshow (21 Images) <p>A White House official, speaking on background, said Trump still plans to attend the summit.</p> <p>Kuczynski&#8217;s resignation marked a spectacular downfall for a man who was elected less than two years ago amid hopes he would turbocharge growth while cleaning up government corruption and modernizing the Andean nation of some 30 million people.</p> <p>Markets that had cheered Kuczynski&#8217;s rise to power rallied on news of his resignation on Wednesday, amid expectations it would end the political uncertainty that has shadowed Peru since the opposition first sought to oust Kuczynski in December.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-peru-politics-security/peruvian-police-put-officers-on-high-alert-amid-political-crisis-idUSKBN1GX289" type="external">Peruvian police put officers on high alert amid political crisis</a> <a href="/article/us-peru-politics-vizcarra/perus-vizcarra-to-be-sworn-in-as-president-friday-president-of-congress-idUSKBN1GX3A5" type="external">Peru's Vizcarra to be sworn in as president Friday: president of Congress</a> <p>Popular Force - the country&#8217;s most powerful opposition party - tried to impeach Kuczynski in December after revealing his company received money from Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] - a Brazilian company at the center of Latin America&#8217;s biggest graft scandal - while he held public office more than a decade ago.</p> <p>Kuczynski unexpectedly stayed in power in December with the help of former autocratic Alberto Fujimori, whom he pardoned from a human rights sentence days later in what was widely seen as political payback.</p> <p>Ahead of the new impeachment vote on Thursday, Popular Force released a raft of video and audio that appeared to show Kuczynski&#8217;s allies offering lucrative public work contracts to lawmakers in exchange for political support.</p> <p>Kuczynski said the recordings had been edited unfairly as part of a campaign to discredit his government and stressed that no corruption allegation had been proven.</p> <p>Reporting by Mitra Taj and Teresa Cespedes; Additional Reporting by Marco Aquino and Maria Cervantes in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washignton; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said on Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.</p> <p>The military released previously classified cockpit footage, photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept. 6, 2007, air strike on the Al-Kubar facility near Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria.</p> <p>It said the reactor was being constructed with help from North Korea and had been months away from activation. Amos Yadlin, Israel&#8217;s military intelligence chief at the time, said on Israel Radio that even with a functioning reactor, it would have taken Syria years to build a nuclear weapon.</p> <p>Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material.</p> <p>Israel&#8217;s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and international community to take tougher action on Iran, Syria&#8217;s ally.</p> <p>Netanyahu said on Wednesday Israel was determined to prevent its enemies from obtaining nuclear weapons.</p> <p>&#8220;The Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability. They are worthy of full praise for this. Israel&#8217;s policy was and remains consistent - to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons,&#8221; Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.</p> <p>Intelligence minister, Israel Katz, said earlier on Twitter: &#8220;The (2007) operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence - Syria then, and Iran today.&#8221;</p> <p>Iran, which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims, signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal.</p> <p>The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept 5-6, 2007, in which, it said, eight warplanes, F-16s and F-15s, carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases.</p> <p>They flew to Deir al-Zor region, 450 km (270 miles) northwest of Damascus, and dropped 18 tonnes of munitions on the site, it said.</p> <p>Yadlin said Israel decided at the time against acknowledging the raid on the reactor so as not to provoke Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into retaliating. &#8220;No core. No war,&#8221; Yadlin said about Israel&#8217;s goal.</p> A still frame taken from video material released on March 21, 2018 shows a combination image of what the Israeli military describes is before and after an Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site near Deir al-Zor on Sept 6, 2007. IDF/Handout via Reuters TV &#8220;TOP SECRET&#8221; <p>The Israeli military on Wednesday declassified internal &#8220;top secret&#8221; intelligence reports, in Hebrew, some of them partly redacted.</p> <p>One, dated March 30, 2007, said: &#8220;Syria has set up, within its territory, a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium, through North Korea, which according to an (initial) worst-case assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year. To our assessment [REDACTED] secretive and orderly [REDACTED] for achieving a nuclear weapon.&#8221;</p> <p>Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor &#8220;would turn operational by the end of 2007&#8221;.</p> Slideshow (17 Images) <p>The mission to destroy the reactor started at 10.30 p.m. on Sept. 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 2.30 a.m. the next day, the Israeli military said.</p> <p>The disclosure on Wednesday stemmed in part, Yadlin said, from years of pressure by the Israeli media on military censors to allow them to publish Israeli-sourced information about the raid and the release on Wednesday of memoirs by Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister who ordered the bombing.</p> <p>The event was first made public by Syria, which, as reported by Reuters at the time, said in the early hours of Sept. 6 that its air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes.</p> <p>Syria, a signatory of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-israel-syria-nuclear-netanyahu/netanyahu-commenting-on-2007-bombing-in-syria-says-israel-wont-let-its-enemies-obtain-nuclear-arms-idUSKBN1GX24U" type="external">Netanyahu, commenting on 2007 bombing in Syria, says Israel won't let its enemies obtain nuclear arms</a> <p>In his 2010 memoir &#8220;Decision Points,&#8221; former U.S. President George W. Bush disclosed he discussed intelligence about the Syrian facility with Olmert before it was destroyed but did not give him the green light for the raid.</p> <p>In 2008 the United States presented what it described as intelligence showing that North Korea had helped Syria with &#8220;covert nuclear activities.&#8221; At the time Syria dismissed the accusations as part of a campaign to discredit the Damascus government.</p> <p>The Israeli release contains a black-and-white aerial photograph captioned &#8220;before the attack&#8221; and showing a box-like structure amid desert dunes with smaller outlying buildings.</p> <p>A series of black-and-white videos, taken above the target, shows the structure in cross-hairs. A male voice is heard counting down three seconds, a cloud of black smoke rises from the structure as it explodes. Other footage appears to show the aftermath - a smoldering hole in the ground.</p> <p>&#8220;Arizona&#8221;, one pilot radioed to military headquarters in Tel Aviv, giving the code word for a successful operation.</p> <p>Writing by Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Janet Lawrence</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TAIPEI (Reuters) - The United States&#8217; commitment to Taiwan has never been stronger and the island is an inspiration to the rest of the Indo-Pacific region, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Wong said on Wednesday, in comments certain to anger Beijing.</p> Alex Wong, U.S. deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, speaks at American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham)&#8217;s yearly dinner event, in Taipei, Taiwan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>Wong was speaking during a visit to Taipei at a time of increased hostility between the self-ruled island and Beijing and just a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping issued his strongest warning against Taiwan separatism to date.</p> <p>China claims Taiwan as its own and considers the self-ruled island a wayward province, which Xi said on Tuesday would face the &#8220;punishment of history&#8221; for any attempt at separatism.</p> <p>The island is one of China&#8217;s most sensitive issues and a potential military flashpoint. Underlining that threat, Taiwan sent ships and aircraft earlier on Wednesday to shadow a Chinese aircraft carrier group through the narrow Taiwan Strait, its defense ministry said.</p> <p>&#8220;Taiwan can no longer be excluded unjustly from international fora. Taiwan has much to share with the world,&#8221; Wong said at a reception attended by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, a member of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.</p> <p>&#8220;I can assure you, the United States government and the United States private sector will do their part to ensure Taiwan&#8217;s stellar international example shines brightly.&#8221;</p> <p>Beijing is already furious over a law signed last week by U.S. President Donald Trump that encourages the United States to send senior officials to Taiwan to meet Taiwanese counterparts and vice versa.</p> <p>President Tsai welcomed the new law on Wednesday.</p> Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and Alex Wong (R), U.S. deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, attend AmCham&#8217;s yearly dinner event, in Taipei, Taiwan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>&#8220;We were pleased President Trump signed the Taiwan travel act into law. We are grateful to the Trump administration and to members of the congress for supporting this bill,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Taiwan&#8217;s defense ministry said earlier that the Chinese carrier group, led by the mainland&#8217;s sole operational aircraft carrier the Liaoning, entered the Taiwan Strait late on Tuesday, but kept on its western side.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>By midday on Wednesday it had left Taiwan&#8217;s air defense identification zone heading southwest, the ministry said, adding that it looked like China was conducting drills.</p> <p>Taiwan&#8217;s military sent ships and aircraft to shadow the carrier group the entire way but spotted nothing out of the ordinary and people in Taiwan should not be concerned, it added.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Taiwan says China has ramped up military exercises around the island in the past year or so.</p> <p>China suspects Taiwan&#8217;s Tsai wants to push for formal independence for the island, which would cross a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing. Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace.</p> <p>Separately on Wednesday, China announced that a former ambassador to the United Nations, Liu Jieyi, has been appointed head of China&#8217;s Taiwan Affairs Office. Veteran diplomat Liu has been deputy head of the office since October last year.</p> <p>Reporting by Fabian Hamacher and Twinnie Siu; Writing by Ben Blanchard and Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Himani Sarkar</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up near a shrine in Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens, as the Afghan capital celebrated the Nawruz holiday marking the start of the Persian new year.</p> <p>The explosion underlined the threat to the city from militant attacks, despite government promises to tighten security in the wake of an attack in central Kabul that killed around 100 people in January.</p> <p>Militant group Islamic State, which has claimed several previous attacks on Shi&#8217;ite targets, claimed responsibility, saying the attack specifically targeted Shi&#8217;ites celebrating Nawruz, its Amaq news agency said.</p> <p>The Taliban, which often fights Islamic State&#8217;s local affiliate in Afghanistan, issued a statement denying any connection to the blast.</p> <p>Kabul had been on alert for attacks over the Nawruz holiday but the bomber was still able to detonate his explosives as people were leaving the Kart-e Sakhi shrine, in a heavily Shi&#8217;ite area in the west of the city.</p> <p>&#8220;People were heading home joyously after the end of the ceremony when the suicide bomber detonated his explosives among them,&#8221; said Kabul police chief Daud Amin. &#8220;Many of our countrymen were martyred.&#8221;</p> <p>Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danesh said the bomber had apparently intended to reach the shrine, which was attacked during a Shi&#8217;ite festival in October 2016, but had been prevented from getting closer by police checkpoints.</p> An Afghan man inspects the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani <p>&#8220;We had our security in place in and around the shrine,&#8221; he said. &#8220;All the casualties were young people who were either passing by on the road or gathering to enjoy Nawruz.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;UN-ISLAMIC&#8221; FESTIVAL</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>Nawruz, an ancient Persian festival to mark the start of spring, is widely celebrated in many parts of Afghanistan but has also faced opposition from some fundamentalist Muslims, who say it is un-Islamic.</p> <p>Waheed Majroh, a spokesman for the ministry of public health, said 32 people were confirmed dead with more than 50 wounded being treated in hospitals in the city. Women and children were among the casualties, he said.</p> <p>Wednesday&#8217;s attack was the latest in a series to have struck Kabul this year, including one earlier this month that targeted the mainly Shi&#8217;ite Hazara minority.</p> <p>The seemingly endless attacks have undermined support for the government of President Ashraf Ghani, who offered last month to hold peace talks with Taliban insurgents fighting to drive out international forces and reimpose their version of strict Islamic law.</p> <p>The Taliban have so far shown little sign of accepting the offer of talks with the Western-backed government, which they consider an illegitimate, foreign-imposed regime, although they have offered to talk to the United States.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Mohammad Aziz and Omar Fahmy in CAIRO; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Nick Macfie and Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Thailand charges nine in anti-government protests dating to 2013 Peru's president, ensnared in scandals, resigns on eve of impeachment vote Israel admits bombing suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, warns Iran U.S. official says support of Taiwan has never been stronger Suicide bomber kills more than 30 near shrine in Afghan capital

https://reuters.com/article/us-thailand-politics/thailand-charges-nine-in-anti-government-protests-dating-to-2013-idUSKBN1FD0RS

2018-01-24

2least

BANGKOK Reuters Thailand on Wednesday charged nine leaders of antigovernment protests in 2013 and 2014 with inciting insurrection and sedition in an attempt to oust Yingluck Shinawatra who was prime minister at the time The People8217s Democratic Reform Committee PDRC and its supporters took to the streets for seven months aiming to rid Thailand of the influence of Yingluck and her billionaire brother ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra who had massive support among the rural poor in the north and northeast Their governments were overthrown in 2014 and 2006 coups respectively Nine protest leaders including Suthep Taugsuban face eight charges over their roles in the bloody street protests including insurrection sedition and obstructing a 2014 general election said Prayut Bejraguna a deputy spokesman for the office of the attorneygeneral Suthep and one other protest leader also face an additional terrorism charge Prayut added The nine men pleaded not guilty to the charges Suthep told reporters after the court session adding that each was granted bail of 600000 baht 18969 and barred from traveling overseas until the end of the trial 8220Whether we are right or wrong we will fight it out in the justice processbecause we believe in Thailand8217s justice system8221 Suthep said 8220We will insist on pushing to reform Thailand no matter at what cost8221 Prayut said Thailand8217s attorneygeneral planned to file charges against 34 other PDRC leaders who did not show up in court on Wednesday Tension has festered in Thailand since the 2006 coup removed Thaksin Thailand is divided broadly between those backing Thaksin and Yingluck whose government was ousted in 2014 and the elite in the capital Bangkok Thaksin is credited by some as being the first Thai prime minister to tap into the potential of the rural electorate But his enemies accuse him of corruption which he denies Thaksin and Yingluck live abroad Yingluck fled Thailand last August ahead of a verdict in a negligence trial that eventually found her guilty and handed down a fiveyear jail term Thaksin fled to avoid a 2008 jail term for corruption Reporting by Aukkarapon Niyomyat and Suphanida Thakral Writing by Patpicha Tanakasempipat Editing by Clarence Fernandez Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LIMA Reuters Peru8217s centerright President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced his resignation on Wednesday after votebuying allegations ensnared him in a fresh scandal on the eve of an impeachment vote capping months of political turmoil in one of Latin America8217s most stable economies Kuczynski a 79yearold former Wall Street banker who once held US citizenship promised a 8220constitutional and orderly8221 transition of power to end what he described as a hostile political climate that had made governing nearly impossible But Kuczynski who is expected to be replaced by Vice President Martin Vizcarra on Friday denied allegations of wrongdoing and blamed the premature end of his fiveyear term on the rightwing opposition party that controls Congress 8220I8217ve worked for nearly 60 years of my life with complete honesty The opposition has tried to depict me as a corrupt person8221 Kuczynski said in a prerecorded video message to the nation that broadcast as he left the presidential palace But Kuczynski added 8220I think what8217s best for the country is for me to resignI don8217t want to be an obstacle for the nation8217s search for a path to unity and harmony8221 Lawmakers agreed to accept Kuczynski8217s resignation instead of moving forward with a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to oust him on grounds he was 8220morally unfit8221 to govern said the president of Congress Luis Galarreta Galarreta said he would swear Vizcarra in as president at around midday Friday A former governor of a mining region who once helped secure community support for Anglo American Plc8217s Quellaveco copper project Vizcarra has served as Peru8217s ambassador to Canada since September and is currently in Ottawa In recent days Vizcarra has received public assurances from opposition lawmakers that they will support his government But he will take office amid a fractured party widespread disgust for elected officials in Peru and inherit economic growth that slowed to 25 percent last year Perus President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is seen announcing his resignation at the Presidential Palace in Lima Peru March 21 2018 in this still image from video PERU GOVERNMENT TVAMERICA TVHandout via REUTERS Vizcarra who turns 55 years old on Thursday appealed to the public to pull through the crisis on Twitter 8220I8217m outraged by the current situation like the majority of Peruvians But I8217m convinced that together we can show that we can once more push forward8221 TRUMP HEADED TO PERU Kuczynski had been scheduled to welcome Donald Trump on the US president8217s first visit to Latin America next month where many of the region8217s leaders plan to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to enact democratic reforms Slideshow 21 Images A White House official speaking on background said Trump still plans to attend the summit Kuczynski8217s resignation marked a spectacular downfall for a man who was elected less than two years ago amid hopes he would turbocharge growth while cleaning up government corruption and modernizing the Andean nation of some 30 million people Markets that had cheered Kuczynski8217s rise to power rallied on news of his resignation on Wednesday amid expectations it would end the political uncertainty that has shadowed Peru since the opposition first sought to oust Kuczynski in December Related Coverage Peruvian police put officers on high alert amid political crisis Perus Vizcarra to be sworn in as president Friday president of Congress Popular Force the country8217s most powerful opposition party tried to impeach Kuczynski in December after revealing his company received money from Odebrecht ODBESUL a Brazilian company at the center of Latin America8217s biggest graft scandal while he held public office more than a decade ago Kuczynski unexpectedly stayed in power in December with the help of former autocratic Alberto Fujimori whom he pardoned from a human rights sentence days later in what was widely seen as political payback Ahead of the new impeachment vote on Thursday Popular Force released a raft of video and audio that appeared to show Kuczynski8217s allies offering lucrative public work contracts to lawmakers in exchange for political support Kuczynski said the recordings had been edited unfairly as part of a campaign to discredit his government and stressed that no corruption allegation had been proven Reporting by Mitra Taj and Teresa Cespedes Additional Reporting by Marco Aquino and Maria Cervantes in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washignton Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles JERUSALEM Reuters Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said on Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons The military released previously classified cockpit footage photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept 6 2007 air strike on the AlKubar facility near Deir alZor in eastern Syria It said the reactor was being constructed with help from North Korea and had been months away from activation Amos Yadlin Israel8217s military intelligence chief at the time said on Israel Radio that even with a functioning reactor it would have taken Syria years to build a nuclear weapon Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material Israel8217s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and international community to take tougher action on Iran Syria8217s ally Netanyahu said on Wednesday Israel was determined to prevent its enemies from obtaining nuclear weapons 8220The Israeli government the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability They are worthy of full praise for this Israel8217s policy was and remains consistent to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons8221 Netanyahu wrote on Twitter Intelligence minister Israel Katz said earlier on Twitter 8220The 2007 operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence Syria then and Iran today8221 Iran which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept 56 2007 in which it said eight warplanes F16s and F15s carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases They flew to Deir alZor region 450 km 270 miles northwest of Damascus and dropped 18 tonnes of munitions on the site it said Yadlin said Israel decided at the time against acknowledging the raid on the reactor so as not to provoke Syrian President Bashar alAssad into retaliating 8220No core No war8221 Yadlin said about Israel8217s goal A still frame taken from video material released on March 21 2018 shows a combination image of what the Israeli military describes is before and after an Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site near Deir alZor on Sept 6 2007 IDFHandout via Reuters TV 8220TOP SECRET8221 The Israeli military on Wednesday declassified internal 8220top secret8221 intelligence reports in Hebrew some of them partly redacted One dated March 30 2007 said 8220Syria has set up within its territory a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium through North Korea which according to an initial worstcase assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year To our assessment REDACTED secretive and orderly REDACTED for achieving a nuclear weapon8221 Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor 8220would turn operational by the end of 20078221 Slideshow 17 Images The mission to destroy the reactor started at 1030 pm on Sept 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 230 am the next day the Israeli military said The disclosure on Wednesday stemmed in part Yadlin said from years of pressure by the Israeli media on military censors to allow them to publish Israelisourced information about the raid and the release on Wednesday of memoirs by Ehud Olmert the former prime minister who ordered the bombing The event was first made public by Syria which as reported by Reuters at the time said in the early hours of Sept 6 that its air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes Syria a signatory of the 1970 nuclear NonProliferation Treaty NPT has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea Related Coverage Netanyahu commenting on 2007 bombing in Syria says Israel wont let its enemies obtain nuclear arms In his 2010 memoir 8220Decision Points8221 former US President George W Bush disclosed he discussed intelligence about the Syrian facility with Olmert before it was destroyed but did not give him the green light for the raid In 2008 the United States presented what it described as intelligence showing that North Korea had helped Syria with 8220covert nuclear activities8221 At the time Syria dismissed the accusations as part of a campaign to discredit the Damascus government The Israeli release contains a blackandwhite aerial photograph captioned 8220before the attack8221 and showing a boxlike structure amid desert dunes with smaller outlying buildings A series of blackandwhite videos taken above the target shows the structure in crosshairs A male voice is heard counting down three seconds a cloud of black smoke rises from the structure as it explodes Other footage appears to show the aftermath a smoldering hole in the ground 8220Arizona8221 one pilot radioed to military headquarters in Tel Aviv giving the code word for a successful operation Writing by Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell Editing by Janet Lawrence Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TAIPEI Reuters The United States8217 commitment to Taiwan has never been stronger and the island is an inspiration to the rest of the IndoPacific region US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Wong said on Wednesday in comments certain to anger Beijing Alex Wong US deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs speaks at American Chamber of Commerce AmCham8217s yearly dinner event in Taipei Taiwan March 21 2018 REUTERSTyrone Siu Wong was speaking during a visit to Taipei at a time of increased hostility between the selfruled island and Beijing and just a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping issued his strongest warning against Taiwan separatism to date China claims Taiwan as its own and considers the selfruled island a wayward province which Xi said on Tuesday would face the 8220punishment of history8221 for any attempt at separatism The island is one of China8217s most sensitive issues and a potential military flashpoint Underlining that threat Taiwan sent ships and aircraft earlier on Wednesday to shadow a Chinese aircraft carrier group through the narrow Taiwan Strait its defense ministry said 8220Taiwan can no longer be excluded unjustly from international fora Taiwan has much to share with the world8221 Wong said at a reception attended by Taiwan President Tsai Ingwen a member of the proindependence Democratic Progressive Party 8220I can assure you the United States government and the United States private sector will do their part to ensure Taiwan8217s stellar international example shines brightly8221 Beijing is already furious over a law signed last week by US President Donald Trump that encourages the United States to send senior officials to Taiwan to meet Taiwanese counterparts and vice versa President Tsai welcomed the new law on Wednesday Taiwans President Tsai Ingwen and Alex Wong R US deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs attend AmCham8217s yearly dinner event in Taipei Taiwan March 21 2018 REUTERSTyrone Siu 8220We were pleased President Trump signed the Taiwan travel act into law We are grateful to the Trump administration and to members of the congress for supporting this bill8221 she said Taiwan8217s defense ministry said earlier that the Chinese carrier group led by the mainland8217s sole operational aircraft carrier the Liaoning entered the Taiwan Strait late on Tuesday but kept on its western side Slideshow 2 Images By midday on Wednesday it had left Taiwan8217s air defense identification zone heading southwest the ministry said adding that it looked like China was conducting drills Taiwan8217s military sent ships and aircraft to shadow the carrier group the entire way but spotted nothing out of the ordinary and people in Taiwan should not be concerned it added China8217s Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment Taiwan says China has ramped up military exercises around the island in the past year or so China suspects Taiwan8217s Tsai wants to push for formal independence for the island which would cross a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace Separately on Wednesday China announced that a former ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi has been appointed head of China8217s Taiwan Affairs Office Veteran diplomat Liu has been deputy head of the office since October last year Reporting by Fabian Hamacher and Twinnie Siu Writing by Ben Blanchard and Anne Marie Roantree Editing by Himani Sarkar Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles KABUL Reuters A suicide bomber blew himself up near a shrine in Kabul on Wednesday killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens as the Afghan capital celebrated the Nawruz holiday marking the start of the Persian new year The explosion underlined the threat to the city from militant attacks despite government promises to tighten security in the wake of an attack in central Kabul that killed around 100 people in January Militant group Islamic State which has claimed several previous attacks on Shi8217ite targets claimed responsibility saying the attack specifically targeted Shi8217ites celebrating Nawruz its Amaq news agency said The Taliban which often fights Islamic State8217s local affiliate in Afghanistan issued a statement denying any connection to the blast Kabul had been on alert for attacks over the Nawruz holiday but the bomber was still able to detonate his explosives as people were leaving the Karte Sakhi shrine in a heavily Shi8217ite area in the west of the city 8220People were heading home joyously after the end of the ceremony when the suicide bomber detonated his explosives among them8221 said Kabul police chief Daud Amin 8220Many of our countrymen were martyred8221 Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danesh said the bomber had apparently intended to reach the shrine which was attacked during a Shi8217ite festival in October 2016 but had been prevented from getting closer by police checkpoints An Afghan man inspects the site of a suicide attack in Kabul Afghanistan March 21 2018 REUTERSOmar Sobhani 8220We had our security in place in and around the shrine8221 he said 8220All the casualties were young people who were either passing by on the road or gathering to enjoy Nawruz8221 8220UNISLAMIC8221 FESTIVAL Slideshow 11 Images Nawruz an ancient Persian festival to mark the start of spring is widely celebrated in many parts of Afghanistan but has also faced opposition from some fundamentalist Muslims who say it is unIslamic Waheed Majroh a spokesman for the ministry of public health said 32 people were confirmed dead with more than 50 wounded being treated in hospitals in the city Women and children were among the casualties he said Wednesday8217s attack was the latest in a series to have struck Kabul this year including one earlier this month that targeted the mainly Shi8217ite Hazara minority The seemingly endless attacks have undermined support for the government of President Ashraf Ghani who offered last month to hold peace talks with Taliban insurgents fighting to drive out international forces and reimpose their version of strict Islamic law The Taliban have so far shown little sign of accepting the offer of talks with the Westernbacked government which they consider an illegitimate foreignimposed regime although they have offered to talk to the United States Additional reporting by Mohammad Aziz and Omar Fahmy in CAIRO Writing by James Mackenzie Editing by Nick Macfie and Gareth Jones Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 22 (Reuters) - Blis Technologies Ltd:</p> <p>* Q3 REVENUE WAS NZ$1.6 MILLION, UP 6% ON PREVIOUS QUARTER AND SIMILAR TO SAME PERIOD LAST YEAR</p> * Q3 &#8205;EBITDA NZ$0.2 MLN <p>* SEES FY REVENUE IN EXCESS OF NZ$5 MLN AND AN EBITDA LOSS OF LESS THAN NZ$0.5 MLN Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Twenty-First Century Fox ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FOXA.O" type="external">FOXA.O</a>) said it could legally separate Sky News within the wider Sky group to allay the concerns of a British regulator about the news service&#8217;s continuing independence under Rupert Murdoch&#8217;s ownership.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Sky logo is seen on outside of an entrance to offices and studios in west London, Britain June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo FILE PHOTO: The Twenty-First Century Fox Studios flag flies over the company building in Los Angeles, California U.S. on November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo <p>It also said it could sell the 24-hour news channel to Walt Disney ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DIS.N" type="external">DIS.N</a>) if its bid to acquire the 61 percent of the company it does not already own is approved, regardless of whether Disney&#8217;s proposed acquisition of Twenty-First Century Fox&#8217;s assets proceeds.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FOXA.O" type="external">Twenty-First Century Fox Inc</a> 36.13 FOXA.O Nasdaq -- (--%) FOXA.O DIS.N <p>Fox agreed to buy all of the European pay-TV group in December 2016, but the deal has been repeatedly delayed by the British government and regulators.</p> <p>U.S. cable giant Comcast Corp CMCSA.0 gate crashed the deal in February when it said it would offer 12.50 pounds a share to buy Sky, compared to Fox&#8217;s 10.75 pounds, although it has not yet made a formal bid.</p> <p>Fox, which already owns 39 percent of the European pay-TV group, had already put forward steps it would take to guarantee the independence of Sky News, such as funding it for 10 years and creating an independent board of directors.</p> <p>&#8220;We have worked diligently with the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) throughout its extensive review,&#8221; Fox said on Tuesday.</p> <p>&#8220;In fact, we believe that the enhanced firewall remedies we proposed to safeguard the editorial independence of Sky News addressed comprehensively and constructively the CMA&#8217;s provisional concerns.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Guy Faulconbridge</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian gas producer Santos Ltd ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=STO.AX" type="external">STO.AX</a>) said on Tuesday it would &#8220;engage with&#8221; Harbour Energy after receiving a $10.4 billion takeover offer from the U.S. company, its fourth unsolicited bid since August 2017.</p> FILE PHOTO: The logo of Australian oil and gas producer Santos Ltd is pictured at their Sydney office February 15, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File photo <p>The bid, valuing Santos at a 28 percent premium to its last close, would give Harbour access to a recently revived company with a low cost of oil production and stakes in liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the Asia-Pacific, where demand is soaring.</p> <p>News of the latest offer, the biggest inbound bid for a listed Australian company since Unibail-Rodamco&#8217;s $16 billion buy-out offer for shopping mall giant Westfield Corp, sent Santos shares soaring.</p> <p>But even if accepted by Santos this time round, a deal may be fraught with political and regulatory risk: Australia&#8217;s lingering energy supply crisis has stoked fears that companies that come under foreign ownership may ignore domestic needs.</p> <p>&#8220;The price is definitely in the ball park of something that we will seriously consider,&#8221; said Andy Forster, senior investment officer at Argo Investments, Santo&#8217;s ninth-largest shareholder.</p> <p>Investment bank RBC Capital Markets described the bid as a &#8220;knock-out&#8221; in a note to clients on Tuesday.</p> <p>The offer values Adelaide-based Santos ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=STO.AX" type="external">STO.AX</a>) at A$6.50, per share, a 28 percent premium to the company&#8217;s last closing share price of A$5.07. Santos&#8217; shares close 16.2 percent higher at A$5.89.</p> <p>The latest offer price is also 43 percent higher than Harbour&#8217;s first attempt last year.</p> EXPANSION PLANS <p>Harbour&#8217;s chief executive Linda Cook said the plan for Santos was &#8220;one of growth, in Australia, Papua New Guinea and beyond&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;We are prepared to move expeditiously through the due diligence phase to immediately begin the government review and approval process,&#8221; Cook said in a phone interview.</p> <p>But given the highly politicized nature of the Australian domestic gas landscape and Santos&#8217; key role there, analysts and investors see government approval as a key risk to any deal.</p> <p>A takeover would be subject to government approvals and will be scrutinized by Australia&#8217;s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), which provides recommendations to the government. Cook said Harbour was preparing its FIRB application.</p> <p>Santos&#8217; more sensitive assets include its interest in the Gladstone LNG project in the Australian state of Queensland and the strategically important Cooper Basin in the country&#8217;s east, where significant onshore oil and gas deposits are located.</p> <p>&#8220;Any buyer of Santos would need to be prepared for ongoing engagement with government and public scrutiny for many years going forward,&#8221; said Saul Kavonic of energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.</p> <p>Still, for a new LNG player, Santos represents an attractive target given its portfolio of LNG assets and growth options, according to analysts.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=STO.AX" type="external">Santos Ltd</a> 5.89 STO.AX Australia Stock Exchange +0.82 (+16.17%) STO.AX &#8216;ENGAGE FURTHER&#8217; <p>&#8220;The Santos board considers that, based on the indicative offer price of A$6.50 per share, it is in the interests of shareholders to engage further with Harbour,&#8221; Santos said in a statement to shareholders.</p> <p>The bid from Washington-based Harbour, a private equity-backed firm led by Cook, who is a former Royal Dutch Shell Plc executive director, consists of $4.70 per share in cash and a special dividend of $0.28 per share, or A$6.50.</p> <p>The offer would allow for majority shareholders Hony Capital and ENN to retain a stake of up to 20 percent.</p> <p>Santos was in considerable trouble just a few years ago, struggling with high debt and low oil LCOc1 and gas LNG-AS prices. But asset sales, debt reduction and cost-cutting have led it back to health.</p> <p>As a result, Santos is seen to be able to produce profitably at average oil costs of just over $32 per barrel, versus actual costs of around $68 a barrel.</p> <p>The company&#8217;s focus on LNG, which is seen to be a bigger growth markets in coming years than oil, is also seen as attractive for investors.</p> <p>Harbour plans to fund the takeover through a combination of debt and equity, with J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley underwriting $7.75 billion of debt.</p> <p>Santos is a partner in the Papua New Guinea LNG export project, which was highly profitable before it got knocked out by a strong earthquake in late February. It is expected to resume operations in April.</p> <p>Reporting by Jonathan Barrett and Paulina Duran in SYDNEY; Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE and Aditya Soni in BENGALURU; Editing by Stephen Coates and Aaron Sheldrick</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong&#8217;s once thriving pro-democracy movement, weighed down by growing pessimism among its supporters over China&#8217;s ever-increasing control in the city, is facing a crisis of confidence about its future.</p> FILE PHOTO: Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong (L) urges people to vote for pro-democracy candidate Au Nok-hin (4th L) during a Legislative Council by-election in Hong Kong, China March 11, 2018. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo <p>As China tightens its grip on Hong Kong, pro-democracy parties have been hit by the sidelining of key leaders and have been losing ground to a well-organized pro-Beijing camp.</p> <p>Those troubles hit home last month, when the democrats suffered an electoral setback in a key legislative by-election, winning only two of three seats they were expected to take easily.</p> <p>Critically, many supporters stayed home &#8211; and some switched sides to protest what they said were the confrontational tactics of pro-democracy groups.</p> <p>&#8220;The opposition always argues for the sake of argument,&#8221; said one democracy supporter who gave her name as Feng. In frustration, she&amp;#160;cast her ballot for a pro-Beijing candidate in the March 11 elections.</p> <p>&#8220;Confronting Beijing directly is not a good strategy,&#8221; the&amp;#160;44-year-old government contractor said. &#8220;You have to go about it in softer ways.&#8221; She said she did not want her full name published because she works for the government.</p> <p>That sort of shift by voters like Feng is worrying leaders of pro-democracy parties in Hong Kong who fear an eroding&amp;#160;public mandate, which they see as their sole weapon to counter Beijing&#8217;s influence in the city.</p> <p>&#8220;We have to make sure that our own people here in Hong Kong do not give up on us,&#8221; said Alvin Yeung, a barrister and head of the pro-democracy Civic Party.</p> <p>Over the past decade, resentment has deepened toward China&#8217;s perceived growing encroachment on Hong Kong&#8217;s autonomy.</p> <p>In 2014, protests by pro-democrats calling for a greater say in how Hong Kong&#8217;s leader was chosen engulfed large areas of the city for months. The collapse of those protests led to growing calls among young activists for independence.</p> <p>The Chinese government has responded with an increasingly tougher line.</p> <p>In 2016, it intervened in a Hong Kong court decision that removed pro-independence lawmakers from office for taking their oaths improperly &#8211; the action that led to the March by-elections. It has also deemed a Hong Kong train station to be under mainland authority.</p> <p>On Tuesday, dozens of pro-Beijing groups took out advertisements in Hong Kong newspapers calling for the dismissal of a University of Hong Kong academic, Benny Tai, after he allegedly made comments advocating independence for China.</p> <p>The growing reach of China&#8217;s security apparatus is also worrying many in Hong Kong after instances like the 2015 disappearance of several Hong Kong booksellers who later showed up in Chinese custody, as well as the mysterious disappearance of a mainland Chinese tycoon from a luxury hotel in 2017.</p> <p>Hong Kong authorities, meanwhile, have proposed jail terms of up to three years for those mocking China&#8217;s national anthem, and there have been calls from pro-Beijing politicians for national security laws outlawing subversive acts against China.</p> <p>The authorities have also started jailing protest leaders like Joshua Wong, a 21-year-old student.</p> FALLING TURNOUT <p>The loss of the legislative seat last month was the first time that the pro-democracy camp had lost a head-to-head contest in a by-election, a significant defeat as it meant that the opposition failed to regain some veto powers.</p> <p>The democrats will be vying for an additional two seats in by-elections whose dates have yet to be announced.</p> <p>In addition to growing discontent over the democratic movement&#8217;s direction, some voters have expressed concerns about a lack of charismatic candidates, as well as public infighting within the democratic camp.</p> <p>Ben Wong, a 45-year-old office worker, said he was only voting against the establishment when he cast his ballot for Edward Yiu, a democratic candidate with whom who he felt little affinity.</p> <p>&#8220;I was voting in distaste,&#8221; he said. Yiu was the candidate who failed to take back his seat.</p> <p>While by-elections generally attract fewer voters, pro-democracy parties saw their number of votes in the three contested districts fall 35 percent when compared to the full election two years ago. In contrast, the pro-Beijing camp saw votes drop 12 percent.</p> <p>Crystal So, a 26-year-old&amp;#160;club DJ, was one democracy supporter who said she did not bother to vote.</p> <p>&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; &#8220;I feel like Hong Kong is not a place to call home anymore,&#8221; So said in a text message. She added that some people her age were considering moving to other countries. The jailing of Wong, who she said was &#8220;doing the bravest things compared to a lot of us&#8221;, hit her particularly hard.</p> <p>Wong, who is out on bail,&amp;#160;told Reuters&amp;#160;he believes Hong Kong will not be able to achieve genuine democracy in the short term. But he said it was important to defend Hong Kong&#8217;s core values.</p> <p>&#8220;You need to build a foundation, so when the critical moment comes, you would have bargaining power,&#8221; Wong said of Hong Kong&#8217;s democratic movement.</p> <p>For the democrats, the next big tests will be possible by-elections ahead of local district council elections in 2019 and Legislative Council elections in 2020.</p> FILE PHOTO: Newly elected Vincent Cheng (front row 4th L) poses with other lawmakers at the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, China March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo <p>Joseph Cheng, a retired academic who advises the democrats, said he believes the moment has arrived for the camp to dive into &#8220;some serious soul searching&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;Not only do we have our own troubles, but we face an opposition machine that is now exceptionally sophisticated,&#8221; he added.</p> CHINA&#8217;S SQUEEZE&amp;#160; <p>The pro-establishment camp is backed&amp;#160;by the United Front, a Chinese Communist Party-linked group that mobilizes supporters through social groups and business associations,&amp;#160;according to scholars and diplomats.</p> <p>The democrats, by contrast, lack a clear central leadership to unite a broad spectrum of supporters.</p> <p>Funding is also an issue for the pro-democracy parties. Jimmy Lai, the founder of the NextMedia group, remains a significant funder&amp;#160;of the movement, which gets positive coverage in his mass market Apple Daily newspaper. Lai could not be reached for comment.</p> <p>But they have struggled to raise money from other large companies, who may fear retribution from China, and&amp;#160;rely on small donations from individuals.</p> <p>Pro-Beijing parties, by contrast, have an easier time raising money.</p> <p>The largest,&amp;#160;the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong,&amp;#160;in 2016 fetched HK$18.8 million ($2.40 million) from auctioning off calligraphy by the top Beijing official in Hong Kong, according to local media.</p> &#8220;THE POLITICAL GAME&#8221; <p>When asked about the United Front&#8217;s influence, Regina Ip, a prominent pro-Beijing lawmaker, acknowledged that some supporters of her New People&#8217;s Party with roots in the mainland might talk to Chinese officials.</p> <p>But Ip also stressed the hard work of her party, saying it mobilized about 1,000 volunteers to hit the streets and talk to voters face-to-face before the by-election.</p> <p>&#8220;You cannot win by just flying a democracy flag,&#8221; Ip said. She said the pro-democracy parties were dependent &#8220;on their old tactics of just relying on the appeal of democracy or stirring up anger against the government.&#8221; She added: &#8220;Clearly these days these tactics are not good enough.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Venus Wu and James Pomfret; Additional reporting by Greg Torode, Pak Yiu; Editing by Philip McClellan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As far as the stock market is concerned, U.S. President Donald Trump is, right now, his own worst enemy.</p> <p>The president - who frequently touted Wall Street&#8217;s rally following his 2016 election victory - was partly blamed for a sharp stock selloff on Monday that investors believe is likely to continue, deepening cracks in a nine-year-old bull run.</p> <p>The selling was sparked by escalating fears of a trade war as China slapped tariffs on a host of U.S. goods as Trump prepares to impose tariffs of more than $50 billion on Chinese imports, and by Trump&#8217;s renewed criticism of Amazon.com Inc.</p> <p>&#8220;The president&#8217;s behavior is now beginning to impact the capital markets - both the averages and individual equities,&#8221; said Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management in Palm Beach, Florida.</p> <p>Particularly worrisome to investors on Monday: more weakness in the tech sector, which led the market up in recent months, and a breach below a major S&amp;amp;P 500 technical level.</p> <p>In a Twitter post, Trump attacked Amazon for a second time in three days over the pricing of its deliveries through the United States Postal Service and promised unspecified changes.</p> <p>Amazon&#8217;s stock slumped 5.2 percent and led the S&amp;amp;P 500 and Nasdaq down, pressuring other high-growth, technology-related stocks, including Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc and Facebook Inc. Outcry in recent weeks over Facebook&#8217;s handling of data about its users has shaken the tech sector with fears of greater governmental oversight.</p> <p>&#8220;(One) big factor is Trump further going after the tech sector, namely Amazon,&#8221; said Tom di Galoma, managing director at Seaport Global Holdings in New York. &#8220;It casts a shadow effectively around all of the tech sector.&#8221;</p> TECH SECTOR PAIN = MARKET PAIN <p>The selloff in technology-related stocks was seen as a particularly worrisome sign for investors who have banked on that sector continuing to drive the broader market.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S. for the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very significant,&#8221; said Michael Purves, chief global strategist at Weeden &amp;amp; Co in New York. &#8220;Selling tech is not a sector rotation story, its a sell-the-market story.&#8221;</p> <p>Technology stocks have been widely viewed in recent months as a &#8220;crowded trade&#8221; - with most investors having the same opinion, increasing the potential for a volatile selloff if sentiment changes.</p> <p>&#8220;What we&#8217;ve learned over the past two weeks is just how overweight investors were in technology,&#8221; said Nicholas Colas, co-founder of Datatrek Research, New York.</p> <p>Investors saw more selling pressure ahead, particularly after the S&amp;amp;P 500 dipped below a major technical level, the 200-day moving average, for the first time since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. The index closed at 2,582, for a year-to-date decline of 3.4 percent.</p> People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton <p>&#8220;We have been pounding on the 200-day for the last six sessions and now we&#8217;ve broken through,&#8221; said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas. There may be support around the 2,537 level, he said, &#8220;but then below that we may be looking at 2,500 or so again, which is pretty scary.&#8221;</p> <p>In Trump&#8217;s first year as president, the S&amp;amp;P 500 surged 24 percent on bets he would boost the economy with fiscal spending, deregulation and deep tax cuts. Trump tweeted frequently about the stock market as it rallied through 2017. But since a selloff in February, he has been noticeably silent.</p> <p>But this bull market has frequently staged swift recoveries, and some were poised for opportunity.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m taking advantage of these markets and am heavily overweighted financials and banks,&#8221; said David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer Of Cumberland Advisors in Sarasota, Florida. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t buy today, we&#8217;re in freefall, but I might tomorrow.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Noel Randewich; additional reporting by Kate Duguid, Karen Brettell, Jennifer Ablan and Megan Davies in New York; editing by Megan Davies and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Blis Technologies Posts Q3 Revenue of NZ$1.6 Million Murdoch's Fox could separate Sky News to satisfy UK regulator on takeover Australia's Santos to open books to Harbour Energy after unsolicited $10.4 billion bid As China tightens squeeze, soul searching for Hong Kong's democracy movement As Wall Street sinks, Trump is his own worst enemy

https://reuters.com/article/brief-blis-technologies-posts-q3-revenue/brief-blis-technologies-posts-q3-revenue-of-nz16-million-idUSFWN1PE19S

2018-01-21

2least

Jan 22 Reuters Blis Technologies Ltd Q3 REVENUE WAS NZ16 MILLION UP 6 ON PREVIOUS QUARTER AND SIMILAR TO SAME PERIOD LAST YEAR Q3 8205EBITDA NZ02 MLN SEES FY REVENUE IN EXCESS OF NZ5 MLN AND AN EBITDA LOSS OF LESS THAN NZ05 MLN Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters TwentyFirst Century Fox FOXAO said it could legally separate Sky News within the wider Sky group to allay the concerns of a British regulator about the news service8217s continuing independence under Rupert Murdoch8217s ownership FILE PHOTO The Sky logo is seen on outside of an entrance to offices and studios in west London Britain June 29 2017 REUTERSToby MelvilleFile Photo FILE PHOTO The TwentyFirst Century Fox Studios flag flies over the company building in Los Angeles California US on November 6 2017 REUTERSLucy NicholsonFile Photo It also said it could sell the 24hour news channel to Walt Disney DISN if its bid to acquire the 61 percent of the company it does not already own is approved regardless of whether Disney8217s proposed acquisition of TwentyFirst Century Fox8217s assets proceeds TwentyFirst Century Fox Inc 3613 FOXAO Nasdaq FOXAO DISN Fox agreed to buy all of the European payTV group in December 2016 but the deal has been repeatedly delayed by the British government and regulators US cable giant Comcast Corp CMCSA0 gate crashed the deal in February when it said it would offer 1250 pounds a share to buy Sky compared to Fox8217s 1075 pounds although it has not yet made a formal bid Fox which already owns 39 percent of the European payTV group had already put forward steps it would take to guarantee the independence of Sky News such as funding it for 10 years and creating an independent board of directors 8220We have worked diligently with the CMA Competition and Markets Authority throughout its extensive review8221 Fox said on Tuesday 8220In fact we believe that the enhanced firewall remedies we proposed to safeguard the editorial independence of Sky News addressed comprehensively and constructively the CMA8217s provisional concerns8221 Reporting by Paul Sandle editing by Guy Faulconbridge Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SYDNEY Reuters Australian gas producer Santos Ltd STOAX said on Tuesday it would 8220engage with8221 Harbour Energy after receiving a 104 billion takeover offer from the US company its fourth unsolicited bid since August 2017 FILE PHOTO The logo of Australian oil and gas producer Santos Ltd is pictured at their Sydney office February 15 2016 REUTERSJason ReedFile photo The bid valuing Santos at a 28 percent premium to its last close would give Harbour access to a recently revived company with a low cost of oil production and stakes in liquefied natural gas LNG in the AsiaPacific where demand is soaring News of the latest offer the biggest inbound bid for a listed Australian company since UnibailRodamco8217s 16 billion buyout offer for shopping mall giant Westfield Corp sent Santos shares soaring But even if accepted by Santos this time round a deal may be fraught with political and regulatory risk Australia8217s lingering energy supply crisis has stoked fears that companies that come under foreign ownership may ignore domestic needs 8220The price is definitely in the ball park of something that we will seriously consider8221 said Andy Forster senior investment officer at Argo Investments Santo8217s ninthlargest shareholder Investment bank RBC Capital Markets described the bid as a 8220knockout8221 in a note to clients on Tuesday The offer values Adelaidebased Santos STOAX at A650 per share a 28 percent premium to the company8217s last closing share price of A507 Santos8217 shares close 162 percent higher at A589 The latest offer price is also 43 percent higher than Harbour8217s first attempt last year EXPANSION PLANS Harbour8217s chief executive Linda Cook said the plan for Santos was 8220one of growth in Australia Papua New Guinea and beyond8221 8220We are prepared to move expeditiously through the due diligence phase to immediately begin the government review and approval process8221 Cook said in a phone interview But given the highly politicized nature of the Australian domestic gas landscape and Santos8217 key role there analysts and investors see government approval as a key risk to any deal A takeover would be subject to government approvals and will be scrutinized by Australia8217s Foreign Investment Review Board FIRB which provides recommendations to the government Cook said Harbour was preparing its FIRB application Santos8217 more sensitive assets include its interest in the Gladstone LNG project in the Australian state of Queensland and the strategically important Cooper Basin in the country8217s east where significant onshore oil and gas deposits are located 8220Any buyer of Santos would need to be prepared for ongoing engagement with government and public scrutiny for many years going forward8221 said Saul Kavonic of energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie Still for a new LNG player Santos represents an attractive target given its portfolio of LNG assets and growth options according to analysts Santos Ltd 589 STOAX Australia Stock Exchange 082 1617 STOAX 8216ENGAGE FURTHER8217 8220The Santos board considers that based on the indicative offer price of A650 per share it is in the interests of shareholders to engage further with Harbour8221 Santos said in a statement to shareholders The bid from Washingtonbased Harbour a private equitybacked firm led by Cook who is a former Royal Dutch Shell Plc executive director consists of 470 per share in cash and a special dividend of 028 per share or A650 The offer would allow for majority shareholders Hony Capital and ENN to retain a stake of up to 20 percent Santos was in considerable trouble just a few years ago struggling with high debt and low oil LCOc1 and gas LNGAS prices But asset sales debt reduction and costcutting have led it back to health As a result Santos is seen to be able to produce profitably at average oil costs of just over 32 per barrel versus actual costs of around 68 a barrel The company8217s focus on LNG which is seen to be a bigger growth markets in coming years than oil is also seen as attractive for investors Harbour plans to fund the takeover through a combination of debt and equity with JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley underwriting 775 billion of debt Santos is a partner in the Papua New Guinea LNG export project which was highly profitable before it got knocked out by a strong earthquake in late February It is expected to resume operations in April Reporting by Jonathan Barrett and Paulina Duran in SYDNEY Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE and Aditya Soni in BENGALURU Editing by Stephen Coates and Aaron Sheldrick Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles HONG KONG Reuters Hong Kong8217s once thriving prodemocracy movement weighed down by growing pessimism among its supporters over China8217s everincreasing control in the city is facing a crisis of confidence about its future FILE PHOTO Prodemocracy activist Joshua Wong L urges people to vote for prodemocracy candidate Au Nokhin 4th L during a Legislative Council byelection in Hong Kong China March 11 2018 REUTERSBobby YipFile Photo As China tightens its grip on Hong Kong prodemocracy parties have been hit by the sidelining of key leaders and have been losing ground to a wellorganized proBeijing camp Those troubles hit home last month when the democrats suffered an electoral setback in a key legislative byelection winning only two of three seats they were expected to take easily Critically many supporters stayed home 8211 and some switched sides to protest what they said were the confrontational tactics of prodemocracy groups 8220The opposition always argues for the sake of argument8221 said one democracy supporter who gave her name as Feng In frustration sheamp160cast her ballot for a proBeijing candidate in the March 11 elections 8220Confronting Beijing directly is not a good strategy8221 theamp16044yearold government contractor said 8220You have to go about it in softer ways8221 She said she did not want her full name published because she works for the government That sort of shift by voters like Feng is worrying leaders of prodemocracy parties in Hong Kong who fear an erodingamp160public mandate which they see as their sole weapon to counter Beijing8217s influence in the city 8220We have to make sure that our own people here in Hong Kong do not give up on us8221 said Alvin Yeung a barrister and head of the prodemocracy Civic Party Over the past decade resentment has deepened toward China8217s perceived growing encroachment on Hong Kong8217s autonomy In 2014 protests by prodemocrats calling for a greater say in how Hong Kong8217s leader was chosen engulfed large areas of the city for months The collapse of those protests led to growing calls among young activists for independence The Chinese government has responded with an increasingly tougher line In 2016 it intervened in a Hong Kong court decision that removed proindependence lawmakers from office for taking their oaths improperly 8211 the action that led to the March byelections It has also deemed a Hong Kong train station to be under mainland authority On Tuesday dozens of proBeijing groups took out advertisements in Hong Kong newspapers calling for the dismissal of a University of Hong Kong academic Benny Tai after he allegedly made comments advocating independence for China The growing reach of China8217s security apparatus is also worrying many in Hong Kong after instances like the 2015 disappearance of several Hong Kong booksellers who later showed up in Chinese custody as well as the mysterious disappearance of a mainland Chinese tycoon from a luxury hotel in 2017 Hong Kong authorities meanwhile have proposed jail terms of up to three years for those mocking China8217s national anthem and there have been calls from proBeijing politicians for national security laws outlawing subversive acts against China The authorities have also started jailing protest leaders like Joshua Wong a 21yearold student FALLING TURNOUT The loss of the legislative seat last month was the first time that the prodemocracy camp had lost a headtohead contest in a byelection a significant defeat as it meant that the opposition failed to regain some veto powers The democrats will be vying for an additional two seats in byelections whose dates have yet to be announced In addition to growing discontent over the democratic movement8217s direction some voters have expressed concerns about a lack of charismatic candidates as well as public infighting within the democratic camp Ben Wong a 45yearold office worker said he was only voting against the establishment when he cast his ballot for Edward Yiu a democratic candidate with whom who he felt little affinity 8220I was voting in distaste8221 he said Yiu was the candidate who failed to take back his seat While byelections generally attract fewer voters prodemocracy parties saw their number of votes in the three contested districts fall 35 percent when compared to the full election two years ago In contrast the proBeijing camp saw votes drop 12 percent Crystal So a 26yearoldamp160club DJ was one democracy supporter who said she did not bother to vote amp160amp160amp160 8220I feel like Hong Kong is not a place to call home anymore8221 So said in a text message She added that some people her age were considering moving to other countries The jailing of Wong who she said was 8220doing the bravest things compared to a lot of us8221 hit her particularly hard Wong who is out on bailamp160told Reutersamp160he believes Hong Kong will not be able to achieve genuine democracy in the short term But he said it was important to defend Hong Kong8217s core values 8220You need to build a foundation so when the critical moment comes you would have bargaining power8221 Wong said of Hong Kong8217s democratic movement For the democrats the next big tests will be possible byelections ahead of local district council elections in 2019 and Legislative Council elections in 2020 FILE PHOTO Newly elected Vincent Cheng front row 4th L poses with other lawmakers at the Legislative Council in Hong Kong China March 21 2018 REUTERSBobby YipFile Photo Joseph Cheng a retired academic who advises the democrats said he believes the moment has arrived for the camp to dive into 8220some serious soul searching8221 8220Not only do we have our own troubles but we face an opposition machine that is now exceptionally sophisticated8221 he added CHINA8217S SQUEEZEamp160 The proestablishment camp is backedamp160by the United Front a Chinese Communist Partylinked group that mobilizes supporters through social groups and business associationsamp160according to scholars and diplomats The democrats by contrast lack a clear central leadership to unite a broad spectrum of supporters Funding is also an issue for the prodemocracy parties Jimmy Lai the founder of the NextMedia group remains a significant funderamp160of the movement which gets positive coverage in his mass market Apple Daily newspaper Lai could not be reached for comment But they have struggled to raise money from other large companies who may fear retribution from China andamp160rely on small donations from individuals ProBeijing parties by contrast have an easier time raising money The largestamp160the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kongamp160in 2016 fetched HK188 million 240 million from auctioning off calligraphy by the top Beijing official in Hong Kong according to local media 8220THE POLITICAL GAME8221 When asked about the United Front8217s influence Regina Ip a prominent proBeijing lawmaker acknowledged that some supporters of her New People8217s Party with roots in the mainland might talk to Chinese officials But Ip also stressed the hard work of her party saying it mobilized about 1000 volunteers to hit the streets and talk to voters facetoface before the byelection 8220You cannot win by just flying a democracy flag8221 Ip said She said the prodemocracy parties were dependent 8220on their old tactics of just relying on the appeal of democracy or stirring up anger against the government8221 She added 8220Clearly these days these tactics are not good enough8221 Reporting by Venus Wu and James Pomfret Additional reporting by Greg Torode Pak Yiu Editing by Philip McClellan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCO Reuters As far as the stock market is concerned US President Donald Trump is right now his own worst enemy The president who frequently touted Wall Street8217s rally following his 2016 election victory was partly blamed for a sharp stock selloff on Monday that investors believe is likely to continue deepening cracks in a nineyearold bull run The selling was sparked by escalating fears of a trade war as China slapped tariffs on a host of US goods as Trump prepares to impose tariffs of more than 50 billion on Chinese imports and by Trump8217s renewed criticism of Amazoncom Inc 8220The president8217s behavior is now beginning to impact the capital markets both the averages and individual equities8221 said Doug Kass president of Seabreeze Partners Management in Palm Beach Florida Particularly worrisome to investors on Monday more weakness in the tech sector which led the market up in recent months and a breach below a major SampampP 500 technical level In a Twitter post Trump attacked Amazon for a second time in three days over the pricing of its deliveries through the United States Postal Service and promised unspecified changes Amazon8217s stock slumped 52 percent and led the SampampP 500 and Nasdaq down pressuring other highgrowth technologyrelated stocks including Microsoft Corp Apple Inc and Facebook Inc Outcry in recent weeks over Facebook8217s handling of data about its users has shaken the tech sector with fears of greater governmental oversight 8220One big factor is Trump further going after the tech sector namely Amazon8221 said Tom di Galoma managing director at Seaport Global Holdings in New York 8220It casts a shadow effectively around all of the tech sector8221 TECH SECTOR PAIN MARKET PAIN The selloff in technologyrelated stocks was seen as a particularly worrisome sign for investors who have banked on that sector continuing to drive the broader market FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport Florida US for the Easter weekend at MaraLago in Palm Beach March 29 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas 8220It8217s very significant8221 said Michael Purves chief global strategist at Weeden ampamp Co in New York 8220Selling tech is not a sector rotation story its a sellthemarket story8221 Technology stocks have been widely viewed in recent months as a 8220crowded trade8221 with most investors having the same opinion increasing the potential for a volatile selloff if sentiment changes 8220What we8217ve learned over the past two weeks is just how overweight investors were in technology8221 said Nicholas Colas cofounder of Datatrek Research New York Investors saw more selling pressure ahead particularly after the SampampP 500 dipped below a major technical level the 200day moving average for the first time since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016 The index closed at 2582 for a yeartodate decline of 34 percent People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US April 2 2018 REUTERSShannon Stapleton 8220We have been pounding on the 200day for the last six sessions and now we8217ve broken through8221 said Randy Frederick vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin Texas There may be support around the 2537 level he said 8220but then below that we may be looking at 2500 or so again which is pretty scary8221 In Trump8217s first year as president the SampampP 500 surged 24 percent on bets he would boost the economy with fiscal spending deregulation and deep tax cuts Trump tweeted frequently about the stock market as it rallied through 2017 But since a selloff in February he has been noticeably silent But this bull market has frequently staged swift recoveries and some were poised for opportunity 8220I8217m taking advantage of these markets and am heavily overweighted financials and banks8221 said David Kotok chairman and chief investment officer Of Cumberland Advisors in Sarasota Florida 8220I didn8217t buy today we8217re in freefall but I might tomorrow8221 Reporting by Noel Randewich additional reporting by Kate Duguid Karen Brettell Jennifer Ablan and Megan Davies in New York editing by Megan Davies and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - The Baltic Exchange&#8217;s main sea freight index, tracking rates for ships carrying dry bulk commodities, fell on Thursday, as capesize rates dropped to its lowest since August.</p> <p>* The overall index, which factors in rates for capesize, panamax, supramax and handysize shipping vessels, shed 25 points, or 2.15 percent, to close at 1,139 points, the lowest since Aug. 11.</p> <p>* Baltic index was down for the seventh-straight session.</p> <p>* The capesize index fell 132 points, or 7.57 percent, to a more-than-five-months low of 1,611 points.</p> <p>* Average daily earnings for capesizes, which typically transport 150,000-tonne cargoes such as iron ore and coal, fell $863 to $12,312 - lowest since Aug 2.</p> <p>* The panamax index slipped 6 points, or 0.46 percent, to close at 1,311 points.</p> <p>* Average daily earnings for panamaxes, which usually carry coal or grain cargoes of about 60,000 to 70,000 tonnes, eased $48 to $10,517.</p> <p>* Among smaller vessels, the supramax index remained flat at 910 points, while the handysize index shed 1 point to 580 points. (Reporting by Sumita Layek in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Financial stocks led a drop on Wall Street on Friday as results from big banks failed to enthuse and fear of broader conflict in Syria further unnerved investors.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P banks index fell 2.6 percent and the broader S&amp;amp;P financial index lost 1.6 percent, the most among the 11 major S&amp;amp;P sectors.</p> <p>Shares of JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, dropped 2.7 percent after the bank&#8217;s quarterly profit fell slightly short of expectations. JPMorgan shares were the biggest weight on the S&amp;amp;P 500.</p> <p>Wells Fargo sank 3.4 percent after the bank said it may have to pay a penalty of $1 billion to resolve investigations, while Citigroup dropped 1.6 percent despite beating profit estimates.</p> <p>Weak loan growth weighed on bank shares, said RJ Grant, head of trading at Keefe, Bruyette &amp;amp; Woods in New York.</p> <p>&#8220;If you didn&#8217;t own financials going into the quarter, there was nothing in the numbers today that would make you excited about owning them,&#8221; Grant said.</p> <p>U.S. stocks extended losses on Friday after the State Department said that it had proof that Syria carried out a recent chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma.</p> <p>The renewed possibility of a strike in Syria &#8220;is enough to cause heartburn for the market,&#8221; said Robert Phipps, a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin, Texas. &#8220;There&#8217;s a ton of uncertainty right now so investors don&#8217;t want to go into the weekend particularly long.&#8221;</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 122.91 points, or 0.5 percent, to 24,360.14, the S&amp;amp;P 500 lost 7.69 points, or 0.29 percent, to 2,656.3 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 33.60 points, or 0.47 percent, to 7,106.65.</p> <p>Still, for the week, the S&amp;amp;P 500 rose 1.99 percent, the Dow gained 1.79 percent, and the Nasdaq added 2.77 percent.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s bank results kicked off earnings season, with Thomson Reuters data predicting profits at S&amp;amp;P 500 companies increased by 18.6 percent in the first quarter from a year ago, their biggest rise in seven years.</p> <p>While the U.S. economy is performing well, geopolitical issues are weighing on stock markets this year.</p> <p>Senior Russian lawmakers said on Friday that the lower house of parliament would consider draft legislation giving the Kremlin powers to ban or restrict a list of U.S. imports, reacting to new U.S. sanctions on Russian tycoons and officials.</p> <p>Boeing fell 2.4 percent after a Russian lawmaker said the country may stop supplying titanium to the company.</p> <p>Issues with engines for Boeing&#8217;s 787 Dreamliner planes also weighed on the company&#8217;s shares.</p> <p>The top gainer among S&amp;amp;P sectors was energy, up 1.1 percent as oil prices rose.</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 10, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo <p>Tesla rose 2.1 percent after founder Elon Musk said the electric car maker would be profitable in the third and fourth quarters and would not need to raise any money this year.</p> <p>Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.28-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.64-to-1 ratio favored decliners.</p> <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 5.78 billion shares, compared to the 7.22 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Sin&#233;ad Carew in New York; Editing by Patrick Graham and Chizu Nomiyama</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPM.N</a>) quarterly profit fell short of Wall Street expectations on Friday as lower revenue from investment banking ate into gains from stock trading and higher interest rates.</p> FILE PHOTO: People walk inside JP Morgan headquarters in New York, U.S., October 25, 2013. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo <p>Investment banking revenue fell 7 percent as it underwrote fewer debt and equity offerings, a dark spot in an otherwise strong quarterly report.</p> <p>Shares of the largest U.S. bank by assets were down nearly 1 percent, paring early gains. The stock has risen 33 percent in the past 12 months.</p> <p>JPMorgan gained from a strengthening economy and higher interest rates that lifted lending revenue more than the its cost of money. Its equity markets business had a robust quarter, driven by a surge in volatility in global markets.</p> <p>Overall, profit rose 35 percent to an all-time high, while revenue was up 10 percent.</p> <p>&#8220;We are pleased with the firm&#8217;s performance this quarter, with all of our businesses showing continued and broad strength and an overall environment that remains supportive,&#8221; Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake said on a call.</p> <p>She expects tax cuts and higher interest rates to provide even more of a &#8220;tailwind&#8221; to profits going forward.</p> <p>JPMorgan, like its rivals, had indicated that President Donald Trump&#8217;s sweeping changes to the U.S. tax law would kick-start economic growth and help lenders boost their revenue as corporations borrow more to expand their businesses.</p> <p>Income tax expense was down 8.6 percent at $2.56 billion as the corporate tax rate fell.</p> <p>Markets revenue rose 7 percent, excluding special items, on a 26 percent jump in equity trading.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co</a> 110.3 JPM.N New York Stock Exchange -3.07 (-2.71%) JPM.N <p>Global markets have been in churn since February due to worries over inflation, rising bond yields and heightened trade tensions between the United States and China.</p> <p>Net interest income rose 9 percent to $13.5 billion as the rates it received for loans rose faster than its costs of funds.</p> <p>The bank&#8217;s net income rose 35 percent to $8.71 billion in the quarter.</p> <p>Excluding items, it earned $2.26 per share, missing average estimate of $2.28, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p> <p>Net revenue was $28.52 billion, beating the average estimate of $27.68 billion.</p> <p>Return on tangible common equity, a performance measure, was 19 percent, compared with 13 percent a year earlier. JPMorgan in February raised its return target for three years out to 17 percent, largely because of lower tax rates.</p> <p>Reporting by Sweta Singh in Bengaluru and David Henry in New York; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GE.N" type="external">GE.N</a>) said on Friday it took a $4.24 billion equity charge and reduced earnings for the last two years by 30 cents a share, figures in line with expectations the company set earlier this year when it said it would comply with new accounting standards.</p> FILE PHOTO: The General Electric logo is pictured on the General Electric offshore wind turbine plant in Montoir-de-Bretagne, near Saint-Nazaire, western France, November 21, 2016. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo <p>The maker of power plants, jet engines, medical devices and other industrial goods had estimated the after-tax, non-cash impact would be about $4.2 billion, plus reduced earnings for 2016 and 2017 of about 29 cents a share.</p> <p>The accounting change prompted GE to recast two years of past financial statements to reflect lower income and asset values under the new standard, and those will be reflected when GE reports first-quarter results on April 20.</p> <p>The value of GE&#8217;s contract assets are being written down, but that does not change the value of the long-term contracts GE has, nor does it affect GE&#8217;s cash flow or earnings estimates for 2018, GE said.</p> <p>The adjustments appear within expectations, Edward Jones analyst Jeff Windau said. &#8220;Now the focus moves to next Friday&#8217;s earnings.&#8221;</p> <p>The figures suggest GE executives have gotten to the bottom of some accounting issues and bolster confidence in Chief Executive Officer John Flannery after a series of financial surprises, including underestimating the impact of insurance policies that prompted a $6.2 billion charge in the fourth quarter, analysts said.</p> <p>GE shares were down 1 percent at $13.35 in aftermarket trading after rising 2.4 percent on Friday.</p> <p>The new accounting standard governs how companies estimate and recognize revenue from long-term contracts, and is designed to make a company&#8217;s cash flow more closely match its income, accounting experts and analysts said.</p> <p>The prior standard allowed companies to recognize future revenue from such agreements more quickly. The new standard shifts revenue to later in the contract duration, analysts said.</p> <p>Companies typically use the cost of providing services as a basis for estimating future revenue from the contracts, but the process can lead to over- or under-estimating the value of the contracts as assets on the balance sheet, experts say.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GE.N" type="external">General Electric Co</a> 13.5 GE.N New York Stock Exchange +0.32 (+2.43%) GE.N <p>GE&#8217;s contract asset tally has soared 70 percent to $28.8 billion in 2017, from $16.9 billion in 2014, most of it in its power and aviation units. The majority of the total reflects revenue GE has already booked but for which it has not billed customers, which creates the gap between profit and cash flow, according to GE&#8217;s regulatory filings.</p> <p>GE also made adjustments for new accounting standards for pensions, cash flow and taxes on Friday.</p> <p>GE&#8217;s accounting is under scrutiny after earnings swung to a loss last year and GE said its 2018 results would be at the low end of its forecasted range of between $1.00 and $1.07 a share.</p> <p>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into GE&#8217;s accounting for contract assets, raising investor concern but GE has said it is not overly concerned about the investigation.</p> <p>GE said in February that it expects to make the adjustments as it switches to the new accounting standards for contracts.</p> <p>GE said it chose to restate 2016 and 2017 earnings, a more exacting standard under the new rules, because it will allow investors to compare 2018 results with the prior years.</p> <p>Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Bill Rigby and Clive McKeef</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>KANE COUNTY, Ill. (Reuters) - Lucas Strom, who runs a century-old family farm in rural Illinois, canceled an order to buy a new $71,000 grain storage bin last month - after the seller raised the price 5 percent in a day.</p> Illinois grain farmer Lucas Strom checks on his tractor inside his barn in unincorporated Kane County, Illinois, U.S., April 10, 2018. REUTERS/P.J. Huffstutter <p>The reason: steel prices jumped right after U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs.</p> <p>Throughout U.S. farm country, where Trump has enjoyed strong support, tariffs on steel and aluminum imports are boosting costs for equipment and infrastructure and causing some farmers and agricultural firms to scrap purchases and expansion plans, according to Reuters&#8217; interviews with farmers, manufacturers, construction firms and food shippers.</p> <p>The impact of rising steel prices on agriculture illustrates the unintended and unpredictable consequences of aggressive protectionism in a global economy. And the blow comes as farmers fear a more direct hit from retaliatory tariffs threatened by China on crops such as sorghum and soybeans, the most valuable U.S. agricultural export.</p> <p>A&amp;amp;P Grain Systems in Maple Park, Illinois - the seller of the storage bin Strom wanted to buy with a neighboring farmer - raised its price two days after Trump announced aluminum and steel tariffs on March 1 to protect U.S. producers of the metals. Strom and his neighbor backed out.</p> <p>&#8220;Would that price destroy us? No,&#8221; Strom said. &#8220;But these days, you have to be smart about your expenses.&#8221;</p> <p>The metals tariffs also hitting makers and sellers of farm equipment, from smaller firms like A&amp;amp;P Grain to global giants such as Deere &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DE.N" type="external">DE.N</a>) and Caterpillar Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CAT.N" type="external">CAT.N</a>). Such firms are struggling with whether and how to pass along their higher raw materials costs to farmers who are already reeling from low commodity prices amid a global grains glut.</p> <p>The world&#8217;s two largest economies have threatened each other with tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of goods recent weeks.</p> <p>Trump imposed&amp;#160;tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum in a move mainly aimed at curbing imports from China. He&amp;#160;has since temporarily excluded the&amp;#160;European Union and six other allies from the duties and given them until May 1 to negotiate permanent exemptions.</p> <p>A&amp;amp;P Grain President Dave Altepeter said the steel used in their bins is made in the United States, but domestic steel prices also have soared because of the tariffs.</p> <p>U.S. steel mills typically adjust their prices once a year, normally in the first quarter, Altepeter said. But this year, those prices have jumped four times, he said.</p> <p>The price of steel used in A&amp;amp;P&#8217;s grain bins has jumped about 20 percent since January 1.</p> <p>&#8220;Any time there&#8217;s any type of negative talk that affects the steel mill, they&#8217;ve raised the price,&#8221; said Altepeter.</p> <p>Last year, about 95,000 tons of steel was shipped to the agriculture industry, compared to the 14 million tons for the U.S. auto industry, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, an industry group.</p> <p>Other factors had been driving up steel prices before the recent trade disputes, including&amp;#160;an improving global economy and accelerating manufacturing and construction, particularly in the U.S.</p> <p>The White House referred questions from Reuters to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which did not respond to a request for comment. Trump and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue have vowed the U.S. government will protect farmers from China&#8217;s tariffs, but not explained how.</p> <p>U.S. farmers can ill-afford any loss of sales. Farm income has dropped by more than half since 2013, following years of massive harvests that have depressed prices for staples such as corn and soybeans.</p> <p>U.S. competitors Brazil, Argentina and Russia have all raised grain output in recent years, eating into the U.S. share of global markets. Mexico imported ten times more corn from Brazil last year and is set to buy even more in 2018 on worries that renegotiations of the NAFTA trade pact could disrupt their U.S. supplies.</p> <p>Strom said he has also pushed back plans to build a new metal storage building to house his planter and the combine head he uses for harvesting corn and soybeans. Other farmers, food producers and beer makers have scrambled to finalize deals for steel-based equipment before prices climb more.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) CONSTRUCTION POSTPONED <p>In Riverton, Illinois, farmer Allen Entwistle said he postponed construction of a new $800,000 storage system for grain after AGCO Corp&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AGCO.N" type="external">AGCO.N</a>) GSI unit increased prices by 15 percent.</p> <p>Entwistle, who voted for Trump, will instead store corn in bags on the ground.</p> <p>&#8220;President Trump keeps telling us he&#8217;s going to get a better deal,&#8221; Entwistle said. &#8220;When are we gonna make it better?&#8221;</p> <p>AGCO said Trump&#8217;s tariffs will raise its costs and make price hikes to customers unavoidable.</p> <p>&#8220;As the entire grain storage industry has weathered increased steel prices, AGCO and GSI are constantly looking for new ways to maximize efficiency and minimize the impact to customers,&#8221; said spokeswoman Kelli Cook.</p> <p>Other companies, including Deere and Caterpillar, are also facing pain from rising steel prices, which account for about 10 percent of equipment manufacturers&#8217; direct costs.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DE.N" type="external">Deere &amp;amp; Co</a> 149.98 DE.N New York Stock Exchange -0.28 (-0.19%) DE.N CAT.N AGCO.N <p>Deere CEO Samuel Allen told Reuters last month the company will have to absorb the price increase and cut costs elsewhere. China&#8217;s threatened tariffs on U.S. crops could hurt the company even more by undermining demand from farmers, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;This has a huge effect on livelihood of the farmer right now, and at the same time it has a huge impact on manufacturers,&#8221; said Dennis Slater, president at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, an industry group.</p> <p>U.S. net farm income is forecast to drop to $59.5 billion in 2018 dollars, down from $64.9 billion in 2017, an 8.3 percent decline, according to the USDA.</p> <p>TARIFF &#8216;DOOM-AND-GLOOM&#8217;</p> <p>In Sheffield, Iowa, Sukup Manufacturing has seen steel prices soar 40 percent since November, said Brent Hansen, the company&#8217;s commercial accounts manager.</p> <p>The maker of grain bins and pre-manufactured steel buildings has encouraged customers to buy quickly before prices jump more. But some have already postponed projects, Hansen said.</p> <p>&#8220;That&#8217;s obviously a big price increase for an industry that&#8217;s a little bit doom-and-gloom over tariffs,&#8221; Hansen said.</p> <p>Sukup used to give customers up to two months to consider its bids for projects. Now, it allows just a week in some cases because of volatile steel prices, Hansen said.</p> <p>Prices have jumped by 25 percent for thermal insulated panels that keep food cold &#8211; which can use either steel, aluminum or both, said Glenn Todd, owner of Todd Construction Services. The company has built food processing and storage facilities for Bumble Bee Seafoods and poultry company Foster Farms.</p> <p>Richard Adkins, director of sales at Discovery Designs Refrigeration in Mukwonago, Wisconsin, thought his company wouldn&#8217;t have to worry about Trump&#8217;s tariffs. Most of the metal they use to design industrial refrigeration systems comes from Canada and Mexico, he said, and the president has exempted both countries from the levies.</p> <p>It didn&#8217;t matter. Price-hike notices from vendors landed in Adkins&#8217; mailbox days after Trump announced the duties.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s this knee-jerk reaction,&#8221; Adkins said. &#8220;We&#8217;re quoting prices for projects that won&#8217;t be awarded for another six or eight months, and no one wants to be hung out to dry.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago and PJ Huffstutter in Kane County. Additional reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago.; Editing by David Gaffen, Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Easing capesize rates continue to weigh on Baltic index Wall Street falls as bank stocks, Syria conflict weigh JPMorgan profit just below estimates on weak investment banking GE books $4.2 billion charge, restates earnings as expected Trade war backfire: Steel tariff shrapnel hits U.S. farmers

https://reuters.com/article/baltic-index/easing-capesize-rates-continue-to-weigh-on-baltic-index-idUSL3N1PD4UM

2018-01-18

2least

Jan 18 Reuters The Baltic Exchange8217s main sea freight index tracking rates for ships carrying dry bulk commodities fell on Thursday as capesize rates dropped to its lowest since August The overall index which factors in rates for capesize panamax supramax and handysize shipping vessels shed 25 points or 215 percent to close at 1139 points the lowest since Aug 11 Baltic index was down for the seventhstraight session The capesize index fell 132 points or 757 percent to a morethanfivemonths low of 1611 points Average daily earnings for capesizes which typically transport 150000tonne cargoes such as iron ore and coal fell 863 to 12312 lowest since Aug 2 The panamax index slipped 6 points or 046 percent to close at 1311 points Average daily earnings for panamaxes which usually carry coal or grain cargoes of about 60000 to 70000 tonnes eased 48 to 10517 Among smaller vessels the supramax index remained flat at 910 points while the handysize index shed 1 point to 580 points Reporting by Sumita Layek in Bengaluru Editing by Arun Koyyur Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Financial stocks led a drop on Wall Street on Friday as results from big banks failed to enthuse and fear of broader conflict in Syria further unnerved investors The SampampP banks index fell 26 percent and the broader SampampP financial index lost 16 percent the most among the 11 major SampampP sectors Shares of JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co the biggest US bank by assets dropped 27 percent after the bank8217s quarterly profit fell slightly short of expectations JPMorgan shares were the biggest weight on the SampampP 500 Wells Fargo sank 34 percent after the bank said it may have to pay a penalty of 1 billion to resolve investigations while Citigroup dropped 16 percent despite beating profit estimates Weak loan growth weighed on bank shares said RJ Grant head of trading at Keefe Bruyette ampamp Woods in New York 8220If you didn8217t own financials going into the quarter there was nothing in the numbers today that would make you excited about owning them8221 Grant said US stocks extended losses on Friday after the State Department said that it had proof that Syria carried out a recent chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma The renewed possibility of a strike in Syria 8220is enough to cause heartburn for the market8221 said Robert Phipps a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin Texas 8220There8217s a ton of uncertainty right now so investors don8217t want to go into the weekend particularly long8221 The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 12291 points or 05 percent to 2436014 the SampampP 500 lost 769 points or 029 percent to 26563 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 3360 points or 047 percent to 710665 Still for the week the SampampP 500 rose 199 percent the Dow gained 179 percent and the Nasdaq added 277 percent Friday8217s bank results kicked off earnings season with Thomson Reuters data predicting profits at SampampP 500 companies increased by 186 percent in the first quarter from a year ago their biggest rise in seven years While the US economy is performing well geopolitical issues are weighing on stock markets this year Senior Russian lawmakers said on Friday that the lower house of parliament would consider draft legislation giving the Kremlin powers to ban or restrict a list of US imports reacting to new US sanctions on Russian tycoons and officials Boeing fell 24 percent after a Russian lawmaker said the country may stop supplying titanium to the company Issues with engines for Boeing8217s 787 Dreamliner planes also weighed on the company8217s shares The top gainer among SampampP sectors was energy up 11 percent as oil prices rose Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US April 10 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermidFile Photo Tesla rose 21 percent after founder Elon Musk said the electric car maker would be profitable in the third and fourth quarters and would not need to raise any money this year Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 128to1 ratio on Nasdaq a 164to1 ratio favored decliners Volume on US exchanges was 578 billion shares compared to the 722 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Sin233ad Carew in New York Editing by Patrick Graham and Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co8217s JPMN quarterly profit fell short of Wall Street expectations on Friday as lower revenue from investment banking ate into gains from stock trading and higher interest rates FILE PHOTO People walk inside JP Morgan headquarters in New York US October 25 2013 REUTERSEduardo MunozFile Photo Investment banking revenue fell 7 percent as it underwrote fewer debt and equity offerings a dark spot in an otherwise strong quarterly report Shares of the largest US bank by assets were down nearly 1 percent paring early gains The stock has risen 33 percent in the past 12 months JPMorgan gained from a strengthening economy and higher interest rates that lifted lending revenue more than the its cost of money Its equity markets business had a robust quarter driven by a surge in volatility in global markets Overall profit rose 35 percent to an alltime high while revenue was up 10 percent 8220We are pleased with the firm8217s performance this quarter with all of our businesses showing continued and broad strength and an overall environment that remains supportive8221 Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake said on a call She expects tax cuts and higher interest rates to provide even more of a 8220tailwind8221 to profits going forward JPMorgan like its rivals had indicated that President Donald Trump8217s sweeping changes to the US tax law would kickstart economic growth and help lenders boost their revenue as corporations borrow more to expand their businesses Income tax expense was down 86 percent at 256 billion as the corporate tax rate fell Markets revenue rose 7 percent excluding special items on a 26 percent jump in equity trading JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co 1103 JPMN New York Stock Exchange 307 271 JPMN Global markets have been in churn since February due to worries over inflation rising bond yields and heightened trade tensions between the United States and China Net interest income rose 9 percent to 135 billion as the rates it received for loans rose faster than its costs of funds The bank8217s net income rose 35 percent to 871 billion in the quarter Excluding items it earned 226 per share missing average estimate of 228 according to Thomson Reuters IBES Net revenue was 2852 billion beating the average estimate of 2768 billion Return on tangible common equity a performance measure was 19 percent compared with 13 percent a year earlier JPMorgan in February raised its return target for three years out to 17 percent largely because of lower tax rates Reporting by Sweta Singh in Bengaluru and David Henry in New York Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters General Electric Co GEN said on Friday it took a 424 billion equity charge and reduced earnings for the last two years by 30 cents a share figures in line with expectations the company set earlier this year when it said it would comply with new accounting standards FILE PHOTO The General Electric logo is pictured on the General Electric offshore wind turbine plant in MontoirdeBretagne near SaintNazaire western France November 21 2016 REUTERSStephane MaheFile Photo The maker of power plants jet engines medical devices and other industrial goods had estimated the aftertax noncash impact would be about 42 billion plus reduced earnings for 2016 and 2017 of about 29 cents a share The accounting change prompted GE to recast two years of past financial statements to reflect lower income and asset values under the new standard and those will be reflected when GE reports firstquarter results on April 20 The value of GE8217s contract assets are being written down but that does not change the value of the longterm contracts GE has nor does it affect GE8217s cash flow or earnings estimates for 2018 GE said The adjustments appear within expectations Edward Jones analyst Jeff Windau said 8220Now the focus moves to next Friday8217s earnings8221 The figures suggest GE executives have gotten to the bottom of some accounting issues and bolster confidence in Chief Executive Officer John Flannery after a series of financial surprises including underestimating the impact of insurance policies that prompted a 62 billion charge in the fourth quarter analysts said GE shares were down 1 percent at 1335 in aftermarket trading after rising 24 percent on Friday The new accounting standard governs how companies estimate and recognize revenue from longterm contracts and is designed to make a company8217s cash flow more closely match its income accounting experts and analysts said The prior standard allowed companies to recognize future revenue from such agreements more quickly The new standard shifts revenue to later in the contract duration analysts said Companies typically use the cost of providing services as a basis for estimating future revenue from the contracts but the process can lead to over or underestimating the value of the contracts as assets on the balance sheet experts say General Electric Co 135 GEN New York Stock Exchange 032 243 GEN GE8217s contract asset tally has soared 70 percent to 288 billion in 2017 from 169 billion in 2014 most of it in its power and aviation units The majority of the total reflects revenue GE has already booked but for which it has not billed customers which creates the gap between profit and cash flow according to GE8217s regulatory filings GE also made adjustments for new accounting standards for pensions cash flow and taxes on Friday GE8217s accounting is under scrutiny after earnings swung to a loss last year and GE said its 2018 results would be at the low end of its forecasted range of between 100 and 107 a share The US Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into GE8217s accounting for contract assets raising investor concern but GE has said it is not overly concerned about the investigation GE said in February that it expects to make the adjustments as it switches to the new accounting standards for contracts GE said it chose to restate 2016 and 2017 earnings a more exacting standard under the new rules because it will allow investors to compare 2018 results with the prior years Reporting by Alwyn Scott Editing by Bill Rigby and Clive McKeef Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles KANE COUNTY Ill Reuters Lucas Strom who runs a centuryold family farm in rural Illinois canceled an order to buy a new 71000 grain storage bin last month after the seller raised the price 5 percent in a day Illinois grain farmer Lucas Strom checks on his tractor inside his barn in unincorporated Kane County Illinois US April 10 2018 REUTERSPJ Huffstutter The reason steel prices jumped right after US President Donald Trump announced tariffs Throughout US farm country where Trump has enjoyed strong support tariffs on steel and aluminum imports are boosting costs for equipment and infrastructure and causing some farmers and agricultural firms to scrap purchases and expansion plans according to Reuters8217 interviews with farmers manufacturers construction firms and food shippers The impact of rising steel prices on agriculture illustrates the unintended and unpredictable consequences of aggressive protectionism in a global economy And the blow comes as farmers fear a more direct hit from retaliatory tariffs threatened by China on crops such as sorghum and soybeans the most valuable US agricultural export AampampP Grain Systems in Maple Park Illinois the seller of the storage bin Strom wanted to buy with a neighboring farmer raised its price two days after Trump announced aluminum and steel tariffs on March 1 to protect US producers of the metals Strom and his neighbor backed out 8220Would that price destroy us No8221 Strom said 8220But these days you have to be smart about your expenses8221 The metals tariffs also hitting makers and sellers of farm equipment from smaller firms like AampampP Grain to global giants such as Deere ampamp Co DEN and Caterpillar Inc CATN Such firms are struggling with whether and how to pass along their higher raw materials costs to farmers who are already reeling from low commodity prices amid a global grains glut The world8217s two largest economies have threatened each other with tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of goods recent weeks Trump imposedamp160tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum in a move mainly aimed at curbing imports from China Heamp160has since temporarily excluded theamp160European Union and six other allies from the duties and given them until May 1 to negotiate permanent exemptions AampampP Grain President Dave Altepeter said the steel used in their bins is made in the United States but domestic steel prices also have soared because of the tariffs US steel mills typically adjust their prices once a year normally in the first quarter Altepeter said But this year those prices have jumped four times he said The price of steel used in AampampP8217s grain bins has jumped about 20 percent since January 1 8220Any time there8217s any type of negative talk that affects the steel mill they8217ve raised the price8221 said Altepeter Last year about 95000 tons of steel was shipped to the agriculture industry compared to the 14 million tons for the US auto industry according to the American Iron and Steel Institute an industry group Other factors had been driving up steel prices before the recent trade disputes includingamp160an improving global economy and accelerating manufacturing and construction particularly in the US The White House referred questions from Reuters to the US Department of Agriculture which did not respond to a request for comment Trump and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue have vowed the US government will protect farmers from China8217s tariffs but not explained how US farmers can illafford any loss of sales Farm income has dropped by more than half since 2013 following years of massive harvests that have depressed prices for staples such as corn and soybeans US competitors Brazil Argentina and Russia have all raised grain output in recent years eating into the US share of global markets Mexico imported ten times more corn from Brazil last year and is set to buy even more in 2018 on worries that renegotiations of the NAFTA trade pact could disrupt their US supplies Strom said he has also pushed back plans to build a new metal storage building to house his planter and the combine head he uses for harvesting corn and soybeans Other farmers food producers and beer makers have scrambled to finalize deals for steelbased equipment before prices climb more Slideshow 2 Images CONSTRUCTION POSTPONED In Riverton Illinois farmer Allen Entwistle said he postponed construction of a new 800000 storage system for grain after AGCO Corp8217s AGCON GSI unit increased prices by 15 percent Entwistle who voted for Trump will instead store corn in bags on the ground 8220President Trump keeps telling us he8217s going to get a better deal8221 Entwistle said 8220When are we gonna make it better8221 AGCO said Trump8217s tariffs will raise its costs and make price hikes to customers unavoidable 8220As the entire grain storage industry has weathered increased steel prices AGCO and GSI are constantly looking for new ways to maximize efficiency and minimize the impact to customers8221 said spokeswoman Kelli Cook Other companies including Deere and Caterpillar are also facing pain from rising steel prices which account for about 10 percent of equipment manufacturers8217 direct costs Deere ampamp Co 14998 DEN New York Stock Exchange 028 019 DEN CATN AGCON Deere CEO Samuel Allen told Reuters last month the company will have to absorb the price increase and cut costs elsewhere China8217s threatened tariffs on US crops could hurt the company even more by undermining demand from farmers he said 8220This has a huge effect on livelihood of the farmer right now and at the same time it has a huge impact on manufacturers8221 said Dennis Slater president at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers an industry group US net farm income is forecast to drop to 595 billion in 2018 dollars down from 649 billion in 2017 an 83 percent decline according to the USDA TARIFF 8216DOOMANDGLOOM8217 In Sheffield Iowa Sukup Manufacturing has seen steel prices soar 40 percent since November said Brent Hansen the company8217s commercial accounts manager The maker of grain bins and premanufactured steel buildings has encouraged customers to buy quickly before prices jump more But some have already postponed projects Hansen said 8220That8217s obviously a big price increase for an industry that8217s a little bit doomandgloom over tariffs8221 Hansen said Sukup used to give customers up to two months to consider its bids for projects Now it allows just a week in some cases because of volatile steel prices Hansen said Prices have jumped by 25 percent for thermal insulated panels that keep food cold 8211 which can use either steel aluminum or both said Glenn Todd owner of Todd Construction Services The company has built food processing and storage facilities for Bumble Bee Seafoods and poultry company Foster Farms Richard Adkins director of sales at Discovery Designs Refrigeration in Mukwonago Wisconsin thought his company wouldn8217t have to worry about Trump8217s tariffs Most of the metal they use to design industrial refrigeration systems comes from Canada and Mexico he said and the president has exempted both countries from the levies It didn8217t matter Pricehike notices from vendors landed in Adkins8217 mailbox days after Trump announced the duties 8220There8217s this kneejerk reaction8221 Adkins said 8220We8217re quoting prices for projects that won8217t be awarded for another six or eight months and no one wants to be hung out to dry8221 Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago and PJ Huffstutter in Kane County Additional reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago Editing by David Gaffen Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>(Repeating to fix formatting in 2nd paragraph)</p> <p>By Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan</p> <p>WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - U.S. senators struck a deal on Monday to lift a three-day government shutdown and try to end a fight between Democrats and President Donald Trump&#8217;s Republicans over immigration and border security.</p> <p>Legislation to renew federal funding to the government cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate and was expected soon to pass votes in the Senate and House of Representatives, allowing government to re-open through Feb 8.</p> <p>Tens of thousands of federal workers had begun closing down operations for lack of funding on Monday, the first weekday since the shutdown, but essential services such as security and defense operations had continued.</p> <p>Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he had come to an arrangement with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to keep the government open for the next few weeks after the Republican promised to let a bill on immigration reach the Senate floor.</p> <p>The U.S. government cannot fully operate without funding bills that are voted in Congress regularly. Washington has been hampered by frequent threats of a shutdown in recent years as the two parties fight over spending, immigration and other issues. The last U.S. government shutdown was in 2013.</p> <p>This shutdown, which began on the Friday&#8217;s first anniversary of Trump&#8217;s inauguration as president, undercut his self-crafted image as a dealmaker who would repair the broken culture in Washington.</p> <p>It had forced Trump to cancel a planned weekend trip to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and created uncertainty around his scheduled trip this week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.</p> <p>In negotiations over the shutdown, Democrats had insisted that legislation to keep the government running include protections for young undocumented immigrants known as &#8220;Dreamers.&#8221;</p> <p>Republicans in turn said they would not negotiate on immigration until Democrats gave them the votes needed to reopen the government.</p> TRUMP EXPECTED TO SIGN <p>Trump was expected to sign the legislation, which would give Congress more time to try to reach agreement on a long-term spending bill that would resolve issues including immigration, border security and spending caps.</p> <p>McConnell promised to allow a fair and open immigration debate &#8220;to consider a proposal that can actually be signed into law, a bipartisan, bicameral group is already negotiating and I look forward to completion of its work.&#8221;</p> <p>Such a debate would occur if a deal on an immigration bill is not reached before Feb. 8, McConnell said</p> <p>Democrats want Congress to address the issue of the Dreamers, more than 700,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.</p> <p>Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp welcomed the deal.</p> <p>&#8220;You now have a commitment for a path forward for the so-called &#8216;Dreamers.; That&#8217;s critical. We&#8217;re going to get a vote. We&#8217;re going to regular order,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>House of Representatives Republicans have been told by their leaders to plan on voting on re-opening the government immediately.</p> <p>Markets have absorbed the shutdown drama over the last week, and on Monday morning world stocks and U.S. bond markets largely shrugged off the standoff even as the dollar continued its pullback. U.S. stocks were higher, the dollar was slightly lower and benchmark treasuries yields were off highs of the day.</p> <p>Both sides in Washington had tried to blame each other for the shutdown.</p> <p>Democrats said Trump had not only failed to bring both sides together but made a deal more difficult by changing his position on what kind of agreement on immigration he would accept.</p> <p>Trump and Republicans accused Democrats of putting the interests of illegal immigrants ahead of U.S. military personnel and government workers.</p> <p>Early polls showed that Trump and Republican leaders were drawing most of the blame from American voters, but some Democrats worried they would pay a higher political cost if the shutdown dragged on.</p> <p>Additional reporting David Morgan, Ginger Gibson, Amanda Becker, Blake Brittain, Susan Heavey, Diane Bartz, Megan Davies, Lucia Mutikani, Yasmeen Abdutaleb, Patricia Zengerle; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Alistair Bell</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The internal watchdog at the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday he is launching a review into allegations by Republican lawmakers that the FBI made serious missteps when it sought a warrant to monitor a former adviser to President Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 election campaign.</p> Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies during a Judiciary Committee hearing into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 26, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>Michael Horowitz, the department&#8217;s inspector general, said in a statement his review will examine whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department followed proper procedures when they applied for a warrant with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly conduct surveillance on Carter Page and his ties to Russia.</p> <p>Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters last month he planned to ask Horowitz to investigate the alleged surveillance abuses.</p> <p>The allegations were outlined in a memo commissioned by U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and declassified for public release by Trump, over the objections of Justice Department officials and Democrats on the panel.</p> <p>The Republican memo claims that the FBI used in part a dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to justify the warrant, and failed to disclose to the court that Steele was employed by a firm funded by Democrats to do opposition research on Trump&#8217;s business dealings.</p> <p>The FBI staunchly opposed the public release of the memo at the time, saying there were &#8220;material omissions of fact.&#8221;</p> <p>Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have since released their own memo, accusing Republicans of deliberately omitting facts in an effort to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into whether Trump&#8217;s campaign colluded with Russia.</p> <p>The Democrats concluded that the Justice Department did not engage in misconduct when applying for the warrant.</p> <p>House Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler said it is a &#8220;shame&#8221; that Horowitz must devote resources to probe a &#8220;conspiracy theory.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump lambasted Sessions in late February for referring the Republican memo to Horowitz for investigation. The president wrote in a tweet: &#8220;Why is A.G. Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate massive FISA abuse? Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey, etc.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s tweet mischaracterized the role inspector generals play in investigating alleged misconduct inside federal agencies, and it prompted Sessions to issue a sharp rebuttal defending his decision.</p> <p>Horowitz was sworn into his post in 2012 during the Obama administration, and previously served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission under Republican President George W. Bush.</p> <p>A still non-public report by Horowitz accusing former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of lack of candor was used recently as the basis for Sessions to fire McCabe on March 16, less than two days before he was set to retire.</p> <p>Despite Trump&#8217;s prior concerns with letting Horowitz investigate the alleged surveillance abuses outlined by Republicans, the president cheered the decision to terminate McCabe, calling it on Twitter a &#8220;great day for Democracy.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by James Dalgleish and David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Trump administration has sharply curtailed a once-common practice of granting long-term reprieves to immigrants targeted for deportation, a Reuters analysis of court records shows, adding to an already huge backlog of cases in U.S. immigration courts.</p> <p>The trend underscores how the Trump administration&#8217;s broad crackdown on illegal immigration has sometimes had unintended consequences. Attorney-General Jeff Sessions had vowed to reduce that case backlog, but the government&#8217;s aggressive opposition to reprieves has caused the opposite to happen.</p> <p>Under a procedure known as &#8220;administrative closure,&#8221; judges can indefinitely shelve deportation cases of immigrants who have lived illegally for years in the United States but have not committed serious crimes and have strong family or other ties in the country. The immigrants are not granted full legal status and their cases can be reopened at any time. In the interim they can remain in the country and often are eligible to work legally.</p> <p>The practice became more common after the Obama administration instructed prosecutors in 2011 to prioritize immigration cases involving criminals. Closures accelerated further after a 2012 decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals, which gave judges additional authority to close cases.</p> <p>As a result, the number of shelved cases rose steadily for several years. In the last year of the Obama administration, more than 56,000 such cases were closed, the Reuters analysis of court records found.</p> <p>In the first year after Donald Trump became president, the trend was sharply reversed, with about 20,000 cases closed, 64 percent fewer than the previous year. (Graphic: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2DKhoAJ" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2DKhoAJ</a>)</p> <p>Immigrant advocates say some of the most vulnerable immigrants - victims of domestic violence and unaccompanied minors - could potentially be deported even though they are eligible for a visa, because the courts will not set their cases aside.</p> <p>In January, Sessions announced he will review a recent decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals and consider whether judges should have authority to close cases.&amp;#160;He sought legal arguments from all sides as he considers the matter.</p> <p>In a December speech, Sessions skewered the Obama administration for closing &#8220;nearly 200,000 pending immigration court cases without a final decision&#8221; over a five-year period. &#8220;We are completing, not closing, immigration cases,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>About 542,000 cases were pending three weeks before Trump took office in January 2017, according to a Department of Justice estimate. Since then, the backlog has grown by another estimated 145,000 cases, a 27 percent increase.</p> <p>In comparison, the Obama administration added an average of 41,000 cases to the backlog each year, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a New York-based research organization.</p> OPPOSING VIEWS <p>Trump was elected on a platform of tightening border security and speeding the removal of people living in the country illegally. Early in his presidency, he announced that all categories of immigrants in the country illegally would be considered targets for deportation.</p> <p>Justice Department spokesman Devin O&#8217;Malley declined to comment on Reuters&#8217; findings and on when Sessions might conclude his review of whether judges can close cases.</p> <p>Groups advocating stricter immigration enforcement have long opposed the policy of administrative closure.</p> <p>&#8220;We see this as one more example of attempts by the Obama administration to work around the rules of law,&#8221; said Michael Hethmon, senior counsel with the conservative Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington.</p> <p>In a legal filing in the Sessions&#8217; review, the American Bar Association cautioned that &#8220;withdrawal of administrative closure ... would have profound and long-lasting consequences on the operation of the immigration adjudication system and the lives of those who must proceed through it.&#8221;</p> <p>Supporters of the policy also say it allows judges to focus on cases involving criminals and ones in which an immigrant has little possibility of gaining legal status. They note that many of the closed cases involved immigrants who had applications pending for legal status, through asylum claims, marriages to citizens or other means.&amp;#160;</p> Two young girls watch a soccer match on a television from their holding area where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center in Nogales, Arizona June 18, 2014. REUTERS/Ross D. Franklin/Pool RUNNING FROM THE GANGS <p>After gangs shot her father, paralyzing him and placing him permanently in a wheelchair, Jennifer Mendoza fled Honduras by herself in 2016. She was 10 years old.</p> <p>She was detained after crossing the border, placed in deportation proceedings and held for four months at a facility for unaccompanied minors in Texas until she could be reunited with her mother, Ruth. The two applied for a U visa, which is granted to undocumented immigrants who are victims of violent crime and who help law enforcement try to catch the perpetrators.</p> <p>In February this year, Mendoza moved to close her deportation case while she waited for a decision on her visa. The immigration court judge agreed, but the government lawyer objected and appealed. The case is now pending at the Board of Immigration Appeals.</p> <p>Mendoza&#8217;s lawyer, Vicky Dobrin, said the case shows how aggressively the government is fighting closures. Prosecutors used to routinely support closing cases like Mendoza&#8217;s, said Dobrin.</p> <p>&#8220;Within a few months they were starting to oppose everything,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>During the last four years of the Obama administration, prosecutors appealed less than one percent of all case closures. Since Trump took office in January 2017, ICE prosecutors have appealed decisions to close cases 10 times more often, Reuters found.</p> <p>Ashley Tabaddor, president of the immigration judges&#8217; union, said the pushback from prosecutors has meant more work for judges.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>&#8220;The case is going to take much longer and is going to take more resources,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Reporting by Reade Levinson; Editing by Sue Horton and Ross Colvin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared conflicted over what to do &#8212; if anything &#8212; to rein in politicians who draw state electoral maps with the aim of entrenching their party in power in a closely watched case from Maryland over the practice known as partisan gerrymandering.</p> <p>The nine justices heard an hour-long argument in a challenge by Republican voters to a U.S. House of Representatives district in Maryland that was reconfigured by Democratic state legislators in a way that helped the Democrats defeat an incumbent Republican congressman.</p> <p>There appeared little dispute among the justices that the Maryland district&#8217;s lines were drawn with partisan intent.</p> <p>But based on questions they asked, the justices seemed no closer to answering the major question in this case and a similar one involving Wisconsin: whether courts should be able to intervene to curb the manipulation of electoral district boundaries purely to favor one party over another.</p> <p>On Oct. 3, the court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority, seemed similarly torn when it heard a challenge by Democratic voters to Republican-drawn legislative districts statewide in Wisconsin, and has not yet issued a ruling.</p> <p>The rulings in the two cases, due by the end of June, could alter the U.S. political landscape, either by imposing limits on partisan gerrymandering or by allowing it even in its most extreme forms.</p> <p>Opponents have said partisan gerrymandering has begun to warp American democracy by muffling large segments of the electorate.</p> <p>Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer suggested the court delay deciding the cases and instead hear another round of arguments in its next term, starting in October, along with a similar case from North Carolina.</p> <p>&#8220;It seems like a pretty clear violation of the Constitution in some form to have deliberate, extreme gerrymandering,&#8221; Breyer said. &#8220; ... But is there a practical remedy that won&#8217;t get judges involved in every &#8212; or dozens and dozens and dozens of very important political decisions?&#8221;</p> &#8216;TOO MUCH&#8217; <p>Liberal Justice Elena Kagan agreed with Breyer about the problem of deciding the threshold for when partisan line-drawing becomes too much to allow, but said, &#8220;However much you think is too much, this case is too much.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;How much more evidence of partisan intent could we need?&#8221; Kagan asked.</p> <p>The Maryland voters, supported by Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, appealed a lower court ruling rejecting their challenge.</p> <p>Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, a potential key vote in the case, raised concerns about a ruling so soon before November&#8217;s mid-term election but also indicated there was evidence of partisan intent in Maryland.</p> <p>Maryland&#8217;s lawyer Steven Sullivan said the law enacting the state&#8217;s electoral map contained no language suggesting partisan intent, prompting a sharp response from Kennedy.</p> <p>&#8220;So if you hide the evidence of what you&#8217;re doing, you&#8217;re going to prevail?&#8221; Kennedy asked.</p> <p>The Supreme Court for decades has invalidated state electoral maps due to racial discrimination but not due to partisan advantage.</p> <p>Democrats have said partisan gerrymandering by Republicans in such states as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania has helped President Donald Trump&#8217;s party maintain control of the House and various state legislatures.</p> <p>Republican voters sued Maryland after the legislature in 2011 redrew boundaries for the state&#8217;s Sixth District in a way that removed Republican-leaning areas and added Democratic-leaning areas. Democrat John Delaney subsequently beat incumbent Republican Roscoe Bartlett to take the seat in 2012.</p> People gather on the plaza in front of the Supreme court before oral arguments on Benisek v. Lamone, a redistricting case on whether Democratic lawmakers in Maryland unlawfully drew a congressional district in a way that would prevent a Republican candidate from winning, in Washington, U.S., March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>Governor Hogan&#8217;s election victory in 2014 illustrated Republican strength statewide. But Republicans hold just one of Maryland&#8217;s eight House seats because of the way the districts are configured.</p> <p>The question before the Supreme Court is whether Maryland&#8217;s electoral map violated the U.S. Constitution&#8217;s First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The novel legal theory pursued by the challengers is that Republican voters were retaliated against by Democrats based on their political views.</p> <p>In a 2004 ruling in another case, Kennedy suggested that if partisan gerrymandering went too far courts might have to step in if a &#8220;workable standard&#8221; could be found.</p> <p>Conservative Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday told the Maryland plaintiffs&#8217; lawyer he did not think their First Amendment challenge offered a workable standard.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see how any legislature would ever be able to redistrict,&#8221; Alito said.</p> <p>The Wisconsin challengers presented a different argument, focusing on the Constitution&#8217;s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law because of the extent to which it marginalized Democratic voters.</p> <p>Gerrymandered electoral maps often concentrate voters who tend to favor the minority party into a small number of districts to dilute their statewide clout and distribute the rest of those voters in other districts in numbers too small to be a majority.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>Legislative districts are redrawn nationwide every decade to reflect population changes after the national census. Redistricting in most states is done by the party in power, though some states in the interest of fairness assign the task to independent commissions.</p> <p>Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

RPT-UPDATE 8-U.S. senators strike deal to end government shutdown U.S. watchdog to probe Republican claims of FBI surveillance abuses Exclusive: Under Trump, prosecutors fight reprieves for people facing deportation Supreme Court finds solution elusive in pivotal electoral map case

https://reuters.com/article/usa-shutdown/rpt-update-8-us-senators-strike-deal-to-end-government-shutdown-idUSL2N1PH1F8

2018-01-22

2least

Repeating to fix formatting in 2nd paragraph By Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON Jan 22 Reuters US senators struck a deal on Monday to lift a threeday government shutdown and try to end a fight between Democrats and President Donald Trump8217s Republicans over immigration and border security Legislation to renew federal funding to the government cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate and was expected soon to pass votes in the Senate and House of Representatives allowing government to reopen through Feb 8 Tens of thousands of federal workers had begun closing down operations for lack of funding on Monday the first weekday since the shutdown but essential services such as security and defense operations had continued Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he had come to an arrangement with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to keep the government open for the next few weeks after the Republican promised to let a bill on immigration reach the Senate floor The US government cannot fully operate without funding bills that are voted in Congress regularly Washington has been hampered by frequent threats of a shutdown in recent years as the two parties fight over spending immigration and other issues The last US government shutdown was in 2013 This shutdown which began on the Friday8217s first anniversary of Trump8217s inauguration as president undercut his selfcrafted image as a dealmaker who would repair the broken culture in Washington It had forced Trump to cancel a planned weekend trip to his MaraLago estate in Florida and created uncertainty around his scheduled trip this week to the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland In negotiations over the shutdown Democrats had insisted that legislation to keep the government running include protections for young undocumented immigrants known as 8220Dreamers8221 Republicans in turn said they would not negotiate on immigration until Democrats gave them the votes needed to reopen the government TRUMP EXPECTED TO SIGN Trump was expected to sign the legislation which would give Congress more time to try to reach agreement on a longterm spending bill that would resolve issues including immigration border security and spending caps McConnell promised to allow a fair and open immigration debate 8220to consider a proposal that can actually be signed into law a bipartisan bicameral group is already negotiating and I look forward to completion of its work8221 Such a debate would occur if a deal on an immigration bill is not reached before Feb 8 McConnell said Democrats want Congress to address the issue of the Dreamers more than 700000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp welcomed the deal 8220You now have a commitment for a path forward for the socalled 8216Dreamers That8217s critical We8217re going to get a vote We8217re going to regular order8221 she said House of Representatives Republicans have been told by their leaders to plan on voting on reopening the government immediately Markets have absorbed the shutdown drama over the last week and on Monday morning world stocks and US bond markets largely shrugged off the standoff even as the dollar continued its pullback US stocks were higher the dollar was slightly lower and benchmark treasuries yields were off highs of the day Both sides in Washington had tried to blame each other for the shutdown Democrats said Trump had not only failed to bring both sides together but made a deal more difficult by changing his position on what kind of agreement on immigration he would accept Trump and Republicans accused Democrats of putting the interests of illegal immigrants ahead of US military personnel and government workers Early polls showed that Trump and Republican leaders were drawing most of the blame from American voters but some Democrats worried they would pay a higher political cost if the shutdown dragged on Additional reporting David Morgan Ginger Gibson Amanda Becker Blake Brittain Susan Heavey Diane Bartz Megan Davies Lucia Mutikani Yasmeen Abdutaleb Patricia Zengerle Writing by Doina Chiacu Editing by Alistair Bell Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The internal watchdog at the US Justice Department said on Wednesday he is launching a review into allegations by Republican lawmakers that the FBI made serious missteps when it sought a warrant to monitor a former adviser to President Donald Trump8217s 2016 election campaign Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies during a Judiciary Committee hearing into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election on Capitol Hill in Washington US July 26 2017 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein Michael Horowitz the department8217s inspector general said in a statement his review will examine whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department followed proper procedures when they applied for a warrant with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly conduct surveillance on Carter Page and his ties to Russia Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters last month he planned to ask Horowitz to investigate the alleged surveillance abuses The allegations were outlined in a memo commissioned by US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and declassified for public release by Trump over the objections of Justice Department officials and Democrats on the panel The Republican memo claims that the FBI used in part a dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to justify the warrant and failed to disclose to the court that Steele was employed by a firm funded by Democrats to do opposition research on Trump8217s business dealings The FBI staunchly opposed the public release of the memo at the time saying there were 8220material omissions of fact8221 Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have since released their own memo accusing Republicans of deliberately omitting facts in an effort to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller8217s investigation into whether Trump8217s campaign colluded with Russia The Democrats concluded that the Justice Department did not engage in misconduct when applying for the warrant House Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler said it is a 8220shame8221 that Horowitz must devote resources to probe a 8220conspiracy theory8221 Trump lambasted Sessions in late February for referring the Republican memo to Horowitz for investigation The president wrote in a tweet 8220Why is AG Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate massive FISA abuse Will take forever has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc8221 Trump8217s tweet mischaracterized the role inspector generals play in investigating alleged misconduct inside federal agencies and it prompted Sessions to issue a sharp rebuttal defending his decision Horowitz was sworn into his post in 2012 during the Obama administration and previously served on the US Sentencing Commission under Republican President George W Bush A still nonpublic report by Horowitz accusing former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of lack of candor was used recently as the basis for Sessions to fire McCabe on March 16 less than two days before he was set to retire Despite Trump8217s prior concerns with letting Horowitz investigate the alleged surveillance abuses outlined by Republicans the president cheered the decision to terminate McCabe calling it on Twitter a 8220great day for Democracy8221 Reporting by Sarah N Lynch editing by James Dalgleish and David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters The Trump administration has sharply curtailed a oncecommon practice of granting longterm reprieves to immigrants targeted for deportation a Reuters analysis of court records shows adding to an already huge backlog of cases in US immigration courts The trend underscores how the Trump administration8217s broad crackdown on illegal immigration has sometimes had unintended consequences AttorneyGeneral Jeff Sessions had vowed to reduce that case backlog but the government8217s aggressive opposition to reprieves has caused the opposite to happen Under a procedure known as 8220administrative closure8221 judges can indefinitely shelve deportation cases of immigrants who have lived illegally for years in the United States but have not committed serious crimes and have strong family or other ties in the country The immigrants are not granted full legal status and their cases can be reopened at any time In the interim they can remain in the country and often are eligible to work legally The practice became more common after the Obama administration instructed prosecutors in 2011 to prioritize immigration cases involving criminals Closures accelerated further after a 2012 decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals which gave judges additional authority to close cases As a result the number of shelved cases rose steadily for several years In the last year of the Obama administration more than 56000 such cases were closed the Reuters analysis of court records found In the first year after Donald Trump became president the trend was sharply reversed with about 20000 cases closed 64 percent fewer than the previous year Graphic tmsnrtrs2DKhoAJ Immigrant advocates say some of the most vulnerable immigrants victims of domestic violence and unaccompanied minors could potentially be deported even though they are eligible for a visa because the courts will not set their cases aside In January Sessions announced he will review a recent decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals and consider whether judges should have authority to close casesamp160He sought legal arguments from all sides as he considers the matter In a December speech Sessions skewered the Obama administration for closing 8220nearly 200000 pending immigration court cases without a final decision8221 over a fiveyear period 8220We are completing not closing immigration cases8221 he said About 542000 cases were pending three weeks before Trump took office in January 2017 according to a Department of Justice estimate Since then the backlog has grown by another estimated 145000 cases a 27 percent increase In comparison the Obama administration added an average of 41000 cases to the backlog each year according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse TRAC a New Yorkbased research organization OPPOSING VIEWS Trump was elected on a platform of tightening border security and speeding the removal of people living in the country illegally Early in his presidency he announced that all categories of immigrants in the country illegally would be considered targets for deportation Justice Department spokesman Devin O8217Malley declined to comment on Reuters8217 findings and on when Sessions might conclude his review of whether judges can close cases Groups advocating stricter immigration enforcement have long opposed the policy of administrative closure 8220We see this as one more example of attempts by the Obama administration to work around the rules of law8221 said Michael Hethmon senior counsel with the conservative Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington In a legal filing in the Sessions8217 review the American Bar Association cautioned that 8220withdrawal of administrative closure would have profound and longlasting consequences on the operation of the immigration adjudication system and the lives of those who must proceed through it8221 Supporters of the policy also say it allows judges to focus on cases involving criminals and ones in which an immigrant has little possibility of gaining legal status They note that many of the closed cases involved immigrants who had applications pending for legal status through asylum claims marriages to citizens or other meansamp160 Two young girls watch a soccer match on a television from their holding area where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the US Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center in Nogales Arizona June 18 2014 REUTERSRoss D FranklinPool RUNNING FROM THE GANGS After gangs shot her father paralyzing him and placing him permanently in a wheelchair Jennifer Mendoza fled Honduras by herself in 2016 She was 10 years old She was detained after crossing the border placed in deportation proceedings and held for four months at a facility for unaccompanied minors in Texas until she could be reunited with her mother Ruth The two applied for a U visa which is granted to undocumented immigrants who are victims of violent crime and who help law enforcement try to catch the perpetrators In February this year Mendoza moved to close her deportation case while she waited for a decision on her visa The immigration court judge agreed but the government lawyer objected and appealed The case is now pending at the Board of Immigration Appeals Mendoza8217s lawyer Vicky Dobrin said the case shows how aggressively the government is fighting closures Prosecutors used to routinely support closing cases like Mendoza8217s said Dobrin 8220Within a few months they were starting to oppose everything8221 she said During the last four years of the Obama administration prosecutors appealed less than one percent of all case closures Since Trump took office in January 2017 ICE prosecutors have appealed decisions to close cases 10 times more often Reuters found Ashley Tabaddor president of the immigration judges8217 union said the pushback from prosecutors has meant more work for judges Slideshow 4 Images 8220The case is going to take much longer and is going to take more resources8221 she said Reporting by Reade Levinson Editing by Sue Horton and Ross Colvin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters US Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared conflicted over what to do 8212 if anything 8212 to rein in politicians who draw state electoral maps with the aim of entrenching their party in power in a closely watched case from Maryland over the practice known as partisan gerrymandering The nine justices heard an hourlong argument in a challenge by Republican voters to a US House of Representatives district in Maryland that was reconfigured by Democratic state legislators in a way that helped the Democrats defeat an incumbent Republican congressman There appeared little dispute among the justices that the Maryland district8217s lines were drawn with partisan intent But based on questions they asked the justices seemed no closer to answering the major question in this case and a similar one involving Wisconsin whether courts should be able to intervene to curb the manipulation of electoral district boundaries purely to favor one party over another On Oct 3 the court which has a 54 conservative majority seemed similarly torn when it heard a challenge by Democratic voters to Republicandrawn legislative districts statewide in Wisconsin and has not yet issued a ruling The rulings in the two cases due by the end of June could alter the US political landscape either by imposing limits on partisan gerrymandering or by allowing it even in its most extreme forms Opponents have said partisan gerrymandering has begun to warp American democracy by muffling large segments of the electorate Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer suggested the court delay deciding the cases and instead hear another round of arguments in its next term starting in October along with a similar case from North Carolina 8220It seems like a pretty clear violation of the Constitution in some form to have deliberate extreme gerrymandering8221 Breyer said 8220 But is there a practical remedy that won8217t get judges involved in every 8212 or dozens and dozens and dozens of very important political decisions8221 8216TOO MUCH8217 Liberal Justice Elena Kagan agreed with Breyer about the problem of deciding the threshold for when partisan linedrawing becomes too much to allow but said 8220However much you think is too much this case is too much8221 8220How much more evidence of partisan intent could we need8221 Kagan asked The Maryland voters supported by Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan appealed a lower court ruling rejecting their challenge Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy a potential key vote in the case raised concerns about a ruling so soon before November8217s midterm election but also indicated there was evidence of partisan intent in Maryland Maryland8217s lawyer Steven Sullivan said the law enacting the state8217s electoral map contained no language suggesting partisan intent prompting a sharp response from Kennedy 8220So if you hide the evidence of what you8217re doing you8217re going to prevail8221 Kennedy asked The Supreme Court for decades has invalidated state electoral maps due to racial discrimination but not due to partisan advantage Democrats have said partisan gerrymandering by Republicans in such states as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania has helped President Donald Trump8217s party maintain control of the House and various state legislatures Republican voters sued Maryland after the legislature in 2011 redrew boundaries for the state8217s Sixth District in a way that removed Republicanleaning areas and added Democraticleaning areas Democrat John Delaney subsequently beat incumbent Republican Roscoe Bartlett to take the seat in 2012 People gather on the plaza in front of the Supreme court before oral arguments on Benisek v Lamone a redistricting case on whether Democratic lawmakers in Maryland unlawfully drew a congressional district in a way that would prevent a Republican candidate from winning in Washington US March 28 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts Governor Hogan8217s election victory in 2014 illustrated Republican strength statewide But Republicans hold just one of Maryland8217s eight House seats because of the way the districts are configured The question before the Supreme Court is whether Maryland8217s electoral map violated the US Constitution8217s First Amendment guarantee of free speech The novel legal theory pursued by the challengers is that Republican voters were retaliated against by Democrats based on their political views In a 2004 ruling in another case Kennedy suggested that if partisan gerrymandering went too far courts might have to step in if a 8220workable standard8221 could be found Conservative Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday told the Maryland plaintiffs8217 lawyer he did not think their First Amendment challenge offered a workable standard 8220I don8217t see how any legislature would ever be able to redistrict8221 Alito said The Wisconsin challengers presented a different argument focusing on the Constitution8217s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law because of the extent to which it marginalized Democratic voters Gerrymandered electoral maps often concentrate voters who tend to favor the minority party into a small number of districts to dilute their statewide clout and distribute the rest of those voters in other districts in numbers too small to be a majority Slideshow 6 Images Legislative districts are redrawn nationwide every decade to reflect population changes after the national census Redistricting in most states is done by the party in power though some states in the interest of fairness assign the task to independent commissions Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung Editing by Will Dunham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ore. (AP) &#8212; A high-tech heart valve replacement surgery that requires less anesthetic, a smaller incision and faster operation and recovery time has been performed on more than 425 heart patients at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the past five years.</p> <p>Now, this transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure &#8212; TAVR for short &#8212; is available to an expanded group of heart patients: the younger, stronger ones.</p> <p>&#8220;Initially the only people we could put these valves into were the ones at high-risk for open-heart surgery,&#8221; said cardiologist Dennis Gory, one of the surgeons who perform TAVR procedures at RiverBend&#8217;s Oregon Heart &amp;amp; Vascular Institute.</p> <p>TAVR long has been considered the aortic heart valve replacement surgery of last resort for people like Herbert Ball, 89, of Cottage Grove.</p> <p>A professor emeritus of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, Ball likes to take walks. But recently he noticed that he was becoming increasingly breathless and exhausted.</p> <p>A trip to his cardiologist, Dr. David Duke at RiverBend, diagnosed Ball&#8217;s problem as aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the aortic valve opening. That narrowing, caused by an accumulation of calcium, weakens the aorta&#8217;s ability to close tightly and pump efficiently.</p> <p>The aortic valve closes off the lower left chamber of the heart after the heart pumps. That closure prevents oxygen-rich blood from moving back into the heart, and instead ensures that the blood flows through arteries into the body. A defective aortic valve inhibits that crucial flow.</p> <p>Without replacement, an aortic valve failure eventually leads to heart failure and death. Cardiac disease continues to be the top cause of death in the world for both men and women.</p> <p>The professional group that sets clinical practice guidelines, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, traditionally has considered open-heart surgery the appropriate treatment for aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve. But in the summer of 2016, the group climbed aboard the TAVR train, noting in its newsletter: &#8220;TAVR was approved in 2011 for use in patients who are at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR). Recently, trials in intermediate-risk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent and possibly superior to SAVR. These findings have now opened the door to trials in low-risk patients, who make up about 80 percent of patients with aortic stenosis, according to an analysis of data in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database.&#8221;</p> <p>Now the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is predicting an 80 percent shift from open-heart procedures to transcatheter procedures in the next decade.</p> <p>The shift already is happening &#8212; rapidly &#8212; in Oregon. Although RiverBend is the only Eugene-area hospital to offer TAVR, three hospitals in Portland and one in Medford also offer the procedure. Soon they will have competition from hospitals in Salem and Corvallis.</p> <p>SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON</p> <p>A quick comparison of open-heart surgery with TAVR shows why the rapid change:</p> <p>Open-heart surgery is done under general anesthesia and involves a six-inch midline chest incision, followed by a three- to four-hour open-heart operation. The patient is on life support while the new artificial valve is put into place. Risks include restarting the heart, and after the surgery the patient must be monitored in the intensive care unit and endure a lengthy recovery.</p> <p>Although Gory has performed many open heart surgeries in his 35 years as a cardiologist, he said he&#8217;s never been more gratified by a surgical result than he is with the TAVR procedure he performs three or four times a week at RiverBend.</p> <p>His sentiments are echoed by fellow cardiologist Sudeshna Banerjee, who said she&#8217;s excited at the prospect of seeing more younger heart patients take advantage of the procedure.</p> <p>&#8220;These patients aren&#8217;t guinea pigs,&#8221; she said, alluding to the surgery&#8217;s proven benefits. &#8220;It can be right for younger people who have arterial blockages.&#8221;</p> <p>In the hope of spreading the news about the suitability of the surgery to younger heart patients, RiverBend recently invited members of the media to witness a TAVR procedure.</p> <p>Retired professor Ball gave his written approval to be a living lesson on the procedure, which was photographed and filmed the morning of Dec. 14.</p> <p>BEFORE THE SURGERY</p> <p>&#8220;I am looking forward to it,&#8221; he said in an interview a few days before the operation.</p> <p>A large cast of professionals, each with a highly specialized role, surrounded Ball, who was lightly sedated but still conscious.</p> <p>They were: an anesthesiologist; anesthesia technician; interventional cardiologist; a cardiothoracic or cardiovascular surgeon; one cardiovascular perfusionist to run the bypass machine if needed; a physician assistant; circulating nurse; scrub nurse; another operating room nurse; three or four cardiovascular technologists; an echo technologist who before, during and after the procedure obtains transthoracic and transesophageal echoes to measure effectiveness; one representative from the valve maker (RiverBend uses both FDA-approved kinds of valve); a valve coordinator nurse who is the keeper of the data, collecting it and assisting with diagnostic questions; and a cardiovascular operating room nurse manager, who circulates around like a stage manager, checking on everything.</p> <p>Becky Hammerschmith, the program manager of the Valve Center at RiverBend, was the one keeping an eye on the details for Ball the day of his TAVR &#8212; as she had since his surgery was scheduled.</p> <p>The night before, she made sure that he received treatment for an upset stomach and was ready for surgery. She answered his questions and attended to any details.</p> <p>Finally, everyone was in the operating room or an adjoining viewing area, watching what looked like a well-choreographed stage production.</p> <p>For Ball&#8217;s surgery, a team from the manufacturers of the balloon-expandable Sapien XT aortic valve was on hand. The device is made of bovine &#8212; cow or bull &#8212; pericaridial tissue that forms a kind of peace symbol shape &#8212; the same configuration as the human aortic valve. This bovine vein is custom-fitted onto a glittering cobalt chromium frame that looks like a tiny crown. It&#8217;s royally priced as well, costing about $25,000.</p> <p>This device is crimped impossibly small and threaded onto a catheter for insertion.</p> <p>Gory cut a small incision in the femoral artery in Ball&#8217;s right leg and began threading the catheter toward his heart. But the calcium deposits were so thick, he quickly made an incision in the left femoral artery and began again.</p> <p>Ball began to say something.</p> <p>&#8220;Not just right now, Mr. Ball,&#8221; Hammerschmith said, in a kind but authoritative tone. Ball relaxed. The catheter was making steady progress, visible on the array of computer monitors in the room. It was carrying the tightly furled valve toward its new home. It stopped at Ball&#8217;s leaking, calcium-thickened aortic valve. Then, as the dramatic execution of a well-rehearsed act, the new valve was expanded, fusing with the old one. For an instant, the monitors showed Ball&#8217;s heart pause, almost as if humming, and then the new valve began to steadily and strongly to take over the job of pumping his blood.</p> <p>Even the calcium had a role, helping to hold the new valve firmly in place.</p> <p>The surgery had taken less than an hour.</p> <p>A RETURN TO WALKING</p> <p>The day after his surgery, Hammerschmith had Ball walking. He went home on the third day, accompanied by his daughter, Alesia Ball, and was chatting amiably on the fourth day about his experience. Because Gory had to thread the catheter through Ball&#8217;s left artery, &#8220;I have two groin areas that are tender now,&#8221; Ball said, more in observation than complaint. &#8220;Too bad I can&#8217;t go on display,&#8221; referring to bruises on his legs that were turning bright and festive colors.</p> <p>But less than a week after the TAVR, he could detect other differences.</p> <p>&#8220;My body feels much better now,&#8221; he said, much warmer.</p> <p>He was looking forward to rehab. He said the extra blood circulating through his body made his extremities tingle sometimes, but his energy level was good, except for the cold he&#8217;d caught.</p> <p>More than anything, Ball said, he wanted to return to his walks around the fountain in Bohemia Park in downtown Cottage Grove.</p> <p>&#8220;I want to get outside.&#8221; But for now, he and his daughter will have another Christmas together.</p> <p>NEW SURGERY, SAME PRICE</p> <p>If there is one way that TAVR still isn&#8217;t much different than standard open-heart surgery, it&#8217;s costs.</p> <p>TAVR or standard aortic heart valve replacement surgery ranges from $70,000 to $200,000, depending on its complexity.</p> <p>For the elderly, Medicare covers most of the expense. Much of the TVAR cost for the surgery, Gory said, is because it still is accepted protocol to have an open-heart team standing by during TAVR procedures.</p> <p>Gory said that might soon change. He said the open-heart team at RiverBend never has had to spring into action in five years.</p> <p>But given that most of the TAVR patients to date already have overlapping health issues and advanced years, the mortality rate is about 20 percent. There is a risk of strokes.</p> <p>However, Gory predicts that as more TAVR programs are established, costs will decline.</p> <p>TAVR, he said, is a good example of how less is proving to be more.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Information from: The Register-Guard, <a href="http://www.registerguard.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.registerguard.com" type="external">http://www.registerguard.com</a></p> <p>SPRINGFIELD, Ore. (AP) &#8212; A high-tech heart valve replacement surgery that requires less anesthetic, a smaller incision and faster operation and recovery time has been performed on more than 425 heart patients at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the past five years.</p> <p>Now, this transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure &#8212; TAVR for short &#8212; is available to an expanded group of heart patients: the younger, stronger ones.</p> <p>&#8220;Initially the only people we could put these valves into were the ones at high-risk for open-heart surgery,&#8221; said cardiologist Dennis Gory, one of the surgeons who perform TAVR procedures at RiverBend&#8217;s Oregon Heart &amp;amp; Vascular Institute.</p> <p>TAVR long has been considered the aortic heart valve replacement surgery of last resort for people like Herbert Ball, 89, of Cottage Grove.</p> <p>A professor emeritus of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, Ball likes to take walks. But recently he noticed that he was becoming increasingly breathless and exhausted.</p> <p>A trip to his cardiologist, Dr. David Duke at RiverBend, diagnosed Ball&#8217;s problem as aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the aortic valve opening. That narrowing, caused by an accumulation of calcium, weakens the aorta&#8217;s ability to close tightly and pump efficiently.</p> <p>The aortic valve closes off the lower left chamber of the heart after the heart pumps. That closure prevents oxygen-rich blood from moving back into the heart, and instead ensures that the blood flows through arteries into the body. A defective aortic valve inhibits that crucial flow.</p> <p>Without replacement, an aortic valve failure eventually leads to heart failure and death. Cardiac disease continues to be the top cause of death in the world for both men and women.</p> <p>The professional group that sets clinical practice guidelines, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, traditionally has considered open-heart surgery the appropriate treatment for aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve. But in the summer of 2016, the group climbed aboard the TAVR train, noting in its newsletter: &#8220;TAVR was approved in 2011 for use in patients who are at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR). Recently, trials in intermediate-risk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent and possibly superior to SAVR. These findings have now opened the door to trials in low-risk patients, who make up about 80 percent of patients with aortic stenosis, according to an analysis of data in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database.&#8221;</p> <p>Now the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is predicting an 80 percent shift from open-heart procedures to transcatheter procedures in the next decade.</p> <p>The shift already is happening &#8212; rapidly &#8212; in Oregon. Although RiverBend is the only Eugene-area hospital to offer TAVR, three hospitals in Portland and one in Medford also offer the procedure. Soon they will have competition from hospitals in Salem and Corvallis.</p> <p>SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON</p> <p>A quick comparison of open-heart surgery with TAVR shows why the rapid change:</p> <p>Open-heart surgery is done under general anesthesia and involves a six-inch midline chest incision, followed by a three- to four-hour open-heart operation. The patient is on life support while the new artificial valve is put into place. Risks include restarting the heart, and after the surgery the patient must be monitored in the intensive care unit and endure a lengthy recovery.</p> <p>Although Gory has performed many open heart surgeries in his 35 years as a cardiologist, he said he&#8217;s never been more gratified by a surgical result than he is with the TAVR procedure he performs three or four times a week at RiverBend.</p> <p>His sentiments are echoed by fellow cardiologist Sudeshna Banerjee, who said she&#8217;s excited at the prospect of seeing more younger heart patients take advantage of the procedure.</p> <p>&#8220;These patients aren&#8217;t guinea pigs,&#8221; she said, alluding to the surgery&#8217;s proven benefits. &#8220;It can be right for younger people who have arterial blockages.&#8221;</p> <p>In the hope of spreading the news about the suitability of the surgery to younger heart patients, RiverBend recently invited members of the media to witness a TAVR procedure.</p> <p>Retired professor Ball gave his written approval to be a living lesson on the procedure, which was photographed and filmed the morning of Dec. 14.</p> <p>BEFORE THE SURGERY</p> <p>&#8220;I am looking forward to it,&#8221; he said in an interview a few days before the operation.</p> <p>A large cast of professionals, each with a highly specialized role, surrounded Ball, who was lightly sedated but still conscious.</p> <p>They were: an anesthesiologist; anesthesia technician; interventional cardiologist; a cardiothoracic or cardiovascular surgeon; one cardiovascular perfusionist to run the bypass machine if needed; a physician assistant; circulating nurse; scrub nurse; another operating room nurse; three or four cardiovascular technologists; an echo technologist who before, during and after the procedure obtains transthoracic and transesophageal echoes to measure effectiveness; one representative from the valve maker (RiverBend uses both FDA-approved kinds of valve); a valve coordinator nurse who is the keeper of the data, collecting it and assisting with diagnostic questions; and a cardiovascular operating room nurse manager, who circulates around like a stage manager, checking on everything.</p> <p>Becky Hammerschmith, the program manager of the Valve Center at RiverBend, was the one keeping an eye on the details for Ball the day of his TAVR &#8212; as she had since his surgery was scheduled.</p> <p>The night before, she made sure that he received treatment for an upset stomach and was ready for surgery. She answered his questions and attended to any details.</p> <p>Finally, everyone was in the operating room or an adjoining viewing area, watching what looked like a well-choreographed stage production.</p> <p>For Ball&#8217;s surgery, a team from the manufacturers of the balloon-expandable Sapien XT aortic valve was on hand. The device is made of bovine &#8212; cow or bull &#8212; pericaridial tissue that forms a kind of peace symbol shape &#8212; the same configuration as the human aortic valve. This bovine vein is custom-fitted onto a glittering cobalt chromium frame that looks like a tiny crown. It&#8217;s royally priced as well, costing about $25,000.</p> <p>This device is crimped impossibly small and threaded onto a catheter for insertion.</p> <p>Gory cut a small incision in the femoral artery in Ball&#8217;s right leg and began threading the catheter toward his heart. But the calcium deposits were so thick, he quickly made an incision in the left femoral artery and began again.</p> <p>Ball began to say something.</p> <p>&#8220;Not just right now, Mr. Ball,&#8221; Hammerschmith said, in a kind but authoritative tone. Ball relaxed. The catheter was making steady progress, visible on the array of computer monitors in the room. It was carrying the tightly furled valve toward its new home. It stopped at Ball&#8217;s leaking, calcium-thickened aortic valve. Then, as the dramatic execution of a well-rehearsed act, the new valve was expanded, fusing with the old one. For an instant, the monitors showed Ball&#8217;s heart pause, almost as if humming, and then the new valve began to steadily and strongly to take over the job of pumping his blood.</p> <p>Even the calcium had a role, helping to hold the new valve firmly in place.</p> <p>The surgery had taken less than an hour.</p> <p>A RETURN TO WALKING</p> <p>The day after his surgery, Hammerschmith had Ball walking. He went home on the third day, accompanied by his daughter, Alesia Ball, and was chatting amiably on the fourth day about his experience. Because Gory had to thread the catheter through Ball&#8217;s left artery, &#8220;I have two groin areas that are tender now,&#8221; Ball said, more in observation than complaint. &#8220;Too bad I can&#8217;t go on display,&#8221; referring to bruises on his legs that were turning bright and festive colors.</p> <p>But less than a week after the TAVR, he could detect other differences.</p> <p>&#8220;My body feels much better now,&#8221; he said, much warmer.</p> <p>He was looking forward to rehab. He said the extra blood circulating through his body made his extremities tingle sometimes, but his energy level was good, except for the cold he&#8217;d caught.</p> <p>More than anything, Ball said, he wanted to return to his walks around the fountain in Bohemia Park in downtown Cottage Grove.</p> <p>&#8220;I want to get outside.&#8221; But for now, he and his daughter will have another Christmas together.</p> <p>NEW SURGERY, SAME PRICE</p> <p>If there is one way that TAVR still isn&#8217;t much different than standard open-heart surgery, it&#8217;s costs.</p> <p>TAVR or standard aortic heart valve replacement surgery ranges from $70,000 to $200,000, depending on its complexity.</p> <p>For the elderly, Medicare covers most of the expense. Much of the TVAR cost for the surgery, Gory said, is because it still is accepted protocol to have an open-heart team standing by during TAVR procedures.</p> <p>Gory said that might soon change. He said the open-heart team at RiverBend never has had to spring into action in five years.</p> <p>But given that most of the TAVR patients to date already have overlapping health issues and advanced years, the mortality rate is about 20 percent. There is a risk of strokes.</p> <p>However, Gory predicts that as more TAVR programs are established, costs will decline.</p> <p>TAVR, he said, is a good example of how less is proving to be more.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Information from: The Register-Guard, <a href="http://www.registerguard.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.registerguard.com" type="external">http://www.registerguard.com</a></p>

A faster, simpler heart valve surgery is gaining favor

https://apnews.com/138aa62d3cf94cb6bb33967188a83cf4

2017-12-30

2least

SPRINGFIELD Ore AP 8212 A hightech heart valve replacement surgery that requires less anesthetic a smaller incision and faster operation and recovery time has been performed on more than 425 heart patients at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the past five years Now this transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure 8212 TAVR for short 8212 is available to an expanded group of heart patients the younger stronger ones 8220Initially the only people we could put these valves into were the ones at highrisk for openheart surgery8221 said cardiologist Dennis Gory one of the surgeons who perform TAVR procedures at RiverBend8217s Oregon Heart ampamp Vascular Institute TAVR long has been considered the aortic heart valve replacement surgery of last resort for people like Herbert Ball 89 of Cottage Grove A professor emeritus of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan Kansas Ball likes to take walks But recently he noticed that he was becoming increasingly breathless and exhausted A trip to his cardiologist Dr David Duke at RiverBend diagnosed Ball8217s problem as aortic stenosis a narrowing of the aortic valve opening That narrowing caused by an accumulation of calcium weakens the aorta8217s ability to close tightly and pump efficiently The aortic valve closes off the lower left chamber of the heart after the heart pumps That closure prevents oxygenrich blood from moving back into the heart and instead ensures that the blood flows through arteries into the body A defective aortic valve inhibits that crucial flow Without replacement an aortic valve failure eventually leads to heart failure and death Cardiac disease continues to be the top cause of death in the world for both men and women The professional group that sets clinical practice guidelines the Society of Thoracic Surgeons traditionally has considered openheart surgery the appropriate treatment for aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve But in the summer of 2016 the group climbed aboard the TAVR train noting in its newsletter 8220TAVR was approved in 2011 for use in patients who are at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement SAVR Recently trials in intermediaterisk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent and possibly superior to SAVR These findings have now opened the door to trials in lowrisk patients who make up about 80 percent of patients with aortic stenosis according to an analysis of data in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database8221 Now the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is predicting an 80 percent shift from openheart procedures to transcatheter procedures in the next decade The shift already is happening 8212 rapidly 8212 in Oregon Although RiverBend is the only Eugenearea hospital to offer TAVR three hospitals in Portland and one in Medford also offer the procedure Soon they will have competition from hospitals in Salem and Corvallis SIDEBYSIDE COMPARISON A quick comparison of openheart surgery with TAVR shows why the rapid change Openheart surgery is done under general anesthesia and involves a sixinch midline chest incision followed by a three to fourhour openheart operation The patient is on life support while the new artificial valve is put into place Risks include restarting the heart and after the surgery the patient must be monitored in the intensive care unit and endure a lengthy recovery Although Gory has performed many open heart surgeries in his 35 years as a cardiologist he said he8217s never been more gratified by a surgical result than he is with the TAVR procedure he performs three or four times a week at RiverBend His sentiments are echoed by fellow cardiologist Sudeshna Banerjee who said she8217s excited at the prospect of seeing more younger heart patients take advantage of the procedure 8220These patients aren8217t guinea pigs8221 she said alluding to the surgery8217s proven benefits 8220It can be right for younger people who have arterial blockages8221 In the hope of spreading the news about the suitability of the surgery to younger heart patients RiverBend recently invited members of the media to witness a TAVR procedure Retired professor Ball gave his written approval to be a living lesson on the procedure which was photographed and filmed the morning of Dec 14 BEFORE THE SURGERY 8220I am looking forward to it8221 he said in an interview a few days before the operation A large cast of professionals each with a highly specialized role surrounded Ball who was lightly sedated but still conscious They were an anesthesiologist anesthesia technician interventional cardiologist a cardiothoracic or cardiovascular surgeon one cardiovascular perfusionist to run the bypass machine if needed a physician assistant circulating nurse scrub nurse another operating room nurse three or four cardiovascular technologists an echo technologist who before during and after the procedure obtains transthoracic and transesophageal echoes to measure effectiveness one representative from the valve maker RiverBend uses both FDAapproved kinds of valve a valve coordinator nurse who is the keeper of the data collecting it and assisting with diagnostic questions and a cardiovascular operating room nurse manager who circulates around like a stage manager checking on everything Becky Hammerschmith the program manager of the Valve Center at RiverBend was the one keeping an eye on the details for Ball the day of his TAVR 8212 as she had since his surgery was scheduled The night before she made sure that he received treatment for an upset stomach and was ready for surgery She answered his questions and attended to any details Finally everyone was in the operating room or an adjoining viewing area watching what looked like a wellchoreographed stage production For Ball8217s surgery a team from the manufacturers of the balloonexpandable Sapien XT aortic valve was on hand The device is made of bovine 8212 cow or bull 8212 pericaridial tissue that forms a kind of peace symbol shape 8212 the same configuration as the human aortic valve This bovine vein is customfitted onto a glittering cobalt chromium frame that looks like a tiny crown It8217s royally priced as well costing about 25000 This device is crimped impossibly small and threaded onto a catheter for insertion Gory cut a small incision in the femoral artery in Ball8217s right leg and began threading the catheter toward his heart But the calcium deposits were so thick he quickly made an incision in the left femoral artery and began again Ball began to say something 8220Not just right now Mr Ball8221 Hammerschmith said in a kind but authoritative tone Ball relaxed The catheter was making steady progress visible on the array of computer monitors in the room It was carrying the tightly furled valve toward its new home It stopped at Ball8217s leaking calciumthickened aortic valve Then as the dramatic execution of a wellrehearsed act the new valve was expanded fusing with the old one For an instant the monitors showed Ball8217s heart pause almost as if humming and then the new valve began to steadily and strongly to take over the job of pumping his blood Even the calcium had a role helping to hold the new valve firmly in place The surgery had taken less than an hour A RETURN TO WALKING The day after his surgery Hammerschmith had Ball walking He went home on the third day accompanied by his daughter Alesia Ball and was chatting amiably on the fourth day about his experience Because Gory had to thread the catheter through Ball8217s left artery 8220I have two groin areas that are tender now8221 Ball said more in observation than complaint 8220Too bad I can8217t go on display8221 referring to bruises on his legs that were turning bright and festive colors But less than a week after the TAVR he could detect other differences 8220My body feels much better now8221 he said much warmer He was looking forward to rehab He said the extra blood circulating through his body made his extremities tingle sometimes but his energy level was good except for the cold he8217d caught More than anything Ball said he wanted to return to his walks around the fountain in Bohemia Park in downtown Cottage Grove 8220I want to get outside8221 But for now he and his daughter will have another Christmas together NEW SURGERY SAME PRICE If there is one way that TAVR still isn8217t much different than standard openheart surgery it8217s costs TAVR or standard aortic heart valve replacement surgery ranges from 70000 to 200000 depending on its complexity For the elderly Medicare covers most of the expense Much of the TVAR cost for the surgery Gory said is because it still is accepted protocol to have an openheart team standing by during TAVR procedures Gory said that might soon change He said the openheart team at RiverBend never has had to spring into action in five years But given that most of the TAVR patients to date already have overlapping health issues and advanced years the mortality rate is about 20 percent There is a risk of strokes However Gory predicts that as more TAVR programs are established costs will decline TAVR he said is a good example of how less is proving to be more ___ Information from The RegisterGuard httpwwwregisterguardcom SPRINGFIELD Ore AP 8212 A hightech heart valve replacement surgery that requires less anesthetic a smaller incision and faster operation and recovery time has been performed on more than 425 heart patients at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the past five years Now this transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure 8212 TAVR for short 8212 is available to an expanded group of heart patients the younger stronger ones 8220Initially the only people we could put these valves into were the ones at highrisk for openheart surgery8221 said cardiologist Dennis Gory one of the surgeons who perform TAVR procedures at RiverBend8217s Oregon Heart ampamp Vascular Institute TAVR long has been considered the aortic heart valve replacement surgery of last resort for people like Herbert Ball 89 of Cottage Grove A professor emeritus of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan Kansas Ball likes to take walks But recently he noticed that he was becoming increasingly breathless and exhausted A trip to his cardiologist Dr David Duke at RiverBend diagnosed Ball8217s problem as aortic stenosis a narrowing of the aortic valve opening That narrowing caused by an accumulation of calcium weakens the aorta8217s ability to close tightly and pump efficiently The aortic valve closes off the lower left chamber of the heart after the heart pumps That closure prevents oxygenrich blood from moving back into the heart and instead ensures that the blood flows through arteries into the body A defective aortic valve inhibits that crucial flow Without replacement an aortic valve failure eventually leads to heart failure and death Cardiac disease continues to be the top cause of death in the world for both men and women The professional group that sets clinical practice guidelines the Society of Thoracic Surgeons traditionally has considered openheart surgery the appropriate treatment for aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve But in the summer of 2016 the group climbed aboard the TAVR train noting in its newsletter 8220TAVR was approved in 2011 for use in patients who are at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement SAVR Recently trials in intermediaterisk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent and possibly superior to SAVR These findings have now opened the door to trials in lowrisk patients who make up about 80 percent of patients with aortic stenosis according to an analysis of data in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database8221 Now the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is predicting an 80 percent shift from openheart procedures to transcatheter procedures in the next decade The shift already is happening 8212 rapidly 8212 in Oregon Although RiverBend is the only Eugenearea hospital to offer TAVR three hospitals in Portland and one in Medford also offer the procedure Soon they will have competition from hospitals in Salem and Corvallis SIDEBYSIDE COMPARISON A quick comparison of openheart surgery with TAVR shows why the rapid change Openheart surgery is done under general anesthesia and involves a sixinch midline chest incision followed by a three to fourhour openheart operation The patient is on life support while the new artificial valve is put into place Risks include restarting the heart and after the surgery the patient must be monitored in the intensive care unit and endure a lengthy recovery Although Gory has performed many open heart surgeries in his 35 years as a cardiologist he said he8217s never been more gratified by a surgical result than he is with the TAVR procedure he performs three or four times a week at RiverBend His sentiments are echoed by fellow cardiologist Sudeshna Banerjee who said she8217s excited at the prospect of seeing more younger heart patients take advantage of the procedure 8220These patients aren8217t guinea pigs8221 she said alluding to the surgery8217s proven benefits 8220It can be right for younger people who have arterial blockages8221 In the hope of spreading the news about the suitability of the surgery to younger heart patients RiverBend recently invited members of the media to witness a TAVR procedure Retired professor Ball gave his written approval to be a living lesson on the procedure which was photographed and filmed the morning of Dec 14 BEFORE THE SURGERY 8220I am looking forward to it8221 he said in an interview a few days before the operation A large cast of professionals each with a highly specialized role surrounded Ball who was lightly sedated but still conscious They were an anesthesiologist anesthesia technician interventional cardiologist a cardiothoracic or cardiovascular surgeon one cardiovascular perfusionist to run the bypass machine if needed a physician assistant circulating nurse scrub nurse another operating room nurse three or four cardiovascular technologists an echo technologist who before during and after the procedure obtains transthoracic and transesophageal echoes to measure effectiveness one representative from the valve maker RiverBend uses both FDAapproved kinds of valve a valve coordinator nurse who is the keeper of the data collecting it and assisting with diagnostic questions and a cardiovascular operating room nurse manager who circulates around like a stage manager checking on everything Becky Hammerschmith the program manager of the Valve Center at RiverBend was the one keeping an eye on the details for Ball the day of his TAVR 8212 as she had since his surgery was scheduled The night before she made sure that he received treatment for an upset stomach and was ready for surgery She answered his questions and attended to any details Finally everyone was in the operating room or an adjoining viewing area watching what looked like a wellchoreographed stage production For Ball8217s surgery a team from the manufacturers of the balloonexpandable Sapien XT aortic valve was on hand The device is made of bovine 8212 cow or bull 8212 pericaridial tissue that forms a kind of peace symbol shape 8212 the same configuration as the human aortic valve This bovine vein is customfitted onto a glittering cobalt chromium frame that looks like a tiny crown It8217s royally priced as well costing about 25000 This device is crimped impossibly small and threaded onto a catheter for insertion Gory cut a small incision in the femoral artery in Ball8217s right leg and began threading the catheter toward his heart But the calcium deposits were so thick he quickly made an incision in the left femoral artery and began again Ball began to say something 8220Not just right now Mr Ball8221 Hammerschmith said in a kind but authoritative tone Ball relaxed The catheter was making steady progress visible on the array of computer monitors in the room It was carrying the tightly furled valve toward its new home It stopped at Ball8217s leaking calciumthickened aortic valve Then as the dramatic execution of a wellrehearsed act the new valve was expanded fusing with the old one For an instant the monitors showed Ball8217s heart pause almost as if humming and then the new valve began to steadily and strongly to take over the job of pumping his blood Even the calcium had a role helping to hold the new valve firmly in place The surgery had taken less than an hour A RETURN TO WALKING The day after his surgery Hammerschmith had Ball walking He went home on the third day accompanied by his daughter Alesia Ball and was chatting amiably on the fourth day about his experience Because Gory had to thread the catheter through Ball8217s left artery 8220I have two groin areas that are tender now8221 Ball said more in observation than complaint 8220Too bad I can8217t go on display8221 referring to bruises on his legs that were turning bright and festive colors But less than a week after the TAVR he could detect other differences 8220My body feels much better now8221 he said much warmer He was looking forward to rehab He said the extra blood circulating through his body made his extremities tingle sometimes but his energy level was good except for the cold he8217d caught More than anything Ball said he wanted to return to his walks around the fountain in Bohemia Park in downtown Cottage Grove 8220I want to get outside8221 But for now he and his daughter will have another Christmas together NEW SURGERY SAME PRICE If there is one way that TAVR still isn8217t much different than standard openheart surgery it8217s costs TAVR or standard aortic heart valve replacement surgery ranges from 70000 to 200000 depending on its complexity For the elderly Medicare covers most of the expense Much of the TVAR cost for the surgery Gory said is because it still is accepted protocol to have an openheart team standing by during TAVR procedures Gory said that might soon change He said the openheart team at RiverBend never has had to spring into action in five years But given that most of the TAVR patients to date already have overlapping health issues and advanced years the mortality rate is about 20 percent There is a risk of strokes However Gory predicts that as more TAVR programs are established costs will decline TAVR he said is a good example of how less is proving to be more ___ Information from The RegisterGuard httpwwwregisterguardcom

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<p /> <p>Still from &#8220;Sully&#8221; (Warner Bros.)</p> <p>As an actor and director, Clint Eastwood has been involved in movie and television production for better than half a century.&amp;#160; He&#8217;s made some outstanding pictures, notably Unforgiven (1992) and Mystic River (2003), neither of which betrays a particular political viewpoint.&amp;#160; But the release of American Sniper (2014) revealed Eastwood&#8217;s hard rightwing perspective in relentless and unflinching fashion.&amp;#160; It is based on the mendacious memoir of Chris Kyle, a racist who murdered more human beings as a sniper than anyone in US military history.&amp;#160; (Kyle actually considered himself a Christian and had crucifixes tattooed to his forearms.)&amp;#160; Rather than condemn Kyle&#8217;s attrocious conduct Eastwood exalted it, celebrated it, and made this vile man a &#8220;hero&#8221;.&amp;#160; Eastwood was also involved in Heartbreak Ridge (1986) which showed US soldiers bravely invading the tiny resort island of Grenada and Gran Torino (2008) wherein a retired Detroit auto worker uses primitive brutality to defend his neighbors.&amp;#160; Both films ennoble the conservative principle that might is right.</p> <p>Eastwood learned film making from the late Don Siegel, one of the truly great Hollywood directors who first worked with Clint on Coogan&#8217;s Bluff (1968), a fish-out-of-water flick that follows an Arizona lawman to the Big Apple, where he is tasked with extraditing a felon.&amp;#160; Siegel&#8217;s movies are marked by their efficiency and fluidity, and rarely contain an empty moment.&amp;#160; The two men next collaborated on Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Dirty Harry (1971), the latter becoming a smash hit that spawned a string of Dirty Harry pictures concluding with The Dead Pool (1988).</p> <p>Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry became synonomous.&amp;#160; The Harry Callahan character rarely alters his expression, which made him a perfect candidate for Eastwood&#8217;s limited acting repertoire.&amp;#160; Sergio Leone, who famously directed Eastwood in his Spaghetti Westerns of the 60&#8217;s, once said Eastwood could only muster two expressions: Clint with his hat on and Clint with his hat off.</p> <p>Harry Callahan as portrayed by Eastwood is a facistic, sadistic, murdering monster&#8212;a malevolent screen icon that appeals to a very dark element in US society.&amp;#160; (Given the success of these movies, it becomes discomfittingly obvious that said dark element embraces a substantial portion of the US population.)&amp;#160; Siegel, whose political views were decidedly leftist, distanced himself from the Dirty Harry franchise while Eastwood proudly embraced it.</p> <p>As a director Eastwood&#8217;s career is checkered.&amp;#160; He&#8217;s made some truly interesting movies such as Bronco Billy (1980) and White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), and some really awful ones.&amp;#160; The Gauntlet (1977) and Space Cowboys (2000) should be avoided at all costs.&amp;#160; Off-screen, Eastwood is known for his financial rapacity and his personal vindictiveness.</p> <p>On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River.&amp;#160; All 155 passengers and crew survived, and the incident would later be called the &#8220;Miracle on the Hudson&#8221;.&amp;#160; Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who piloted the aircraft, emerged as a national hero.&amp;#160; &#8220;Sully&#8221;&#8212;as he came to be popularly known&#8212;is the subject of Eastwood&#8217;s most recent feature.</p> <p>Sully (2016) Directed by Clint Eastwood</p> <p>Sully opens to the sounds of an airplane cockpit against a dark screen.&amp;#160; Next we see Tom Hanks as Chesley Sullenberger at the controls of an airliner reporting &#8220;Mayday!&amp;#160; Mayday!&#8221; to Air Traffic Control.&amp;#160; Aaron Eckhart plays Jeff Skiles, the co-pilot.&amp;#160; &#8220;We&#8217;ve lost both engines,&#8221; Sully explains, &#8220;both engines.&#8221;&amp;#160; Seconds later he tells them: &#8220;. . . we can make it.&amp;#160; We&#8217;re turning back to LaGuardia.&#8221;</p> <p>We watch the crippled aircraft with smoke streaming from its two engines and panic seizing its passengers descend over New York and clip a wing on the side of a skyscraper before crashing into a busy Manhattan street corner.&amp;#160; Sully awakens from this nightmare alone in a darkened hotel room.</p> <p>From the getgo, the audience is informed in a manner less than subtle that turning back to LaGuardia would be a fatal mistake.&amp;#160; Whether or not Sully should have turned back is the central question posed by Eastwood&#8217;s Sully and one that entirely comprehends what passes for the movie&#8217;s plot.</p> <p>After observing him awaken, we follow Sully as he jogs along the river before returning to his Manhattan hotel, where he watches media coverage of the &#8220;Miracle on the Hudson&#8221;.</p> <p>Next day Sully and Skiles are brought before a panel of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).&amp;#160; (In an actual NTSB investigation, the two men would have been questioned separately.)&amp;#160; The panel is openly hostile (it is composed of Jamey Sheridan as Ben Edwards, Anna Gunn as Dr. Elizabeth Davis and Mike O&#8217;Malley as Charles Porter).&amp;#160; Their questions are aggressive and adversarial (odd, given the recent heroism of these two men).&amp;#160; They label the event a &#8220;crash&#8221;.&amp;#160; Sully pointedly contradicts them, calling it a &#8220;forced water landing&#8221;.&amp;#160; The panel believes Flight 1549 had sufficient altitude to make it back to LaGuardia, but Sully tells them he believes turning back would have been a mistake.&amp;#160; The two pilots are informed that computer simulations of the event will be run.&amp;#160; Pilot and co-pilot are then asked if they&#8217;d consumed drinks or drugs before the flight (these standard NTSB questions are delivered in an admonitory and distrustful manner) and the two men answer that they had not.</p> <p>The film then shows us Sully in New York and his wife (played by Laura Linney) back in California separately besieged by the press.&amp;#160; Throughout all this Sully expesses no jubilation or triumph or, at the very least, relief that 155 human beings were saved by his actions.&amp;#160; This is decidedly unnatural.</p> <p>Sully has a second nightmare.&amp;#160; In it a TV talking head takes him to task for making a wrong decision when he ditched the plane.&amp;#160; &#8220;Captain Sullenberger,&#8221; the female newscaster asks, &#8220;are you a hero or a fraud?&#8221;&amp;#160; (It is fitting that two of film&#8217;s early sequences reside in the province of dreams.)</p> <p>Sully and Skiles go on a late night walk through the streets of New York. &amp;#160;Skiles tells Sully they&#8217;ve been booked on Letterman.&amp;#160; Sully comments on the surreal nature of their situation and tells Skiles: &#8220;I&#8217;ve delivered a million passengers over 40 years in the air and in the end I&#8217;m going to be judged on 208 seconds.&#8221;&amp;#160; This very effective line in such a context is both fraudulent and misleading, as will be explained below.</p> <p>We see Sully interviewed by Katie Couric.&amp;#160; As she questions him we see, by flashback, Sully learning to fly in a biplane.&amp;#160; After the interview Sully gazes out an office window at the New York skyline and has another vision of the terrible crash he&#8217;d earlier witnessed in his nightmare.</p> <p>Once again Sully and Skiles are brought before the NTSB panel and once again their interrogators are hostile and accusatory.&amp;#160; Now a question arises as to whether the aircraft&#8217;s left engine remained functional after the bird strike.&amp;#160; Certain data suggests it could have been restarted.&amp;#160; During this session they are informed that computer simulations confirmed they could have safely returned to LaGuardia.&amp;#160; The panel also expresses concern about leaks to the press.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Afterwards, Skiles tells Sully not to worry, that he did good.&amp;#160; Later they appear on Letterman.</p> <p>The following day Sully&#8217;s wife calls him, worried about domestic financial concerns.&amp;#160; He expresses anxiety over the NTSB investigation and she tells him he&#8217;s a hero, and the NTSB will just have to deal with it.</p> <p>Now we are shown the first of three sequences depicting the actual event.&amp;#160; In the initial run-through we see Sully purchase a tuna sandwich from a vendor in a terminal at LaGuardia Airport and board the US Airways Airbus.&amp;#160; We see passengers hustling to make the flight.&amp;#160; Sully and Skiles exchange banter in the cockpit while late arrivals find their seats.&amp;#160; Then comes the usual air safety drill from the flight attendants as Flight 1549 taxis for takeoff.</p> <p>We watch the Airbus rise into a wintry sky.&amp;#160; New York spreads out below them, patterned with snow.&amp;#160; Sully comments on how beautiful the world is from up here, then barks: &#8220;Birds!&#8221;&amp;#160; A chevron of geese smash into the airliner.&amp;#160; We see the starboard engine catch fire as disquiet spreads through the passenger compartment.&amp;#160; Inside the aircraft it falls strangely silent.&amp;#160; Sully and Skiles confirm that both engines are inoperable while flight attendants remind passengers to fasten their seatbelts.&amp;#160; The action shifts to Air Traffic Control where a savvy controller (played by Patch Darragh) clears a runway at LaGuardia, with Teterboro as an alternative.&amp;#160; Then we see Sully telling the passengers: &#8220;Brace for impact.&#8221;&amp;#160; The controller watches as Flight 1549 vanishes from his screen, and alerts all aircraft in the vicinity to keep an eye out for the stricken Airbus.</p> <p>We watch Sully dead-sticking his aircraft into the Hudson.&amp;#160; On impact with the river, we are returned to Sully&#8217;s hotel room.&amp;#160; Once again, Sully goes running.&amp;#160; He sees an F-4 Phantom on the deck of the USS Intrepid and we flashback to Sully in the Air Force back in the 60&#8217;s safely landing a malfunctioning Phantom.&amp;#160; Returning to the present, Sully ends up at a Manhattan bar where he is told a new drink has been named in his honor.</p> <p>While Sully sits at the bar we witness the second dramatization of the forced water landing, this time from the perspective of ferries on the Hudson and first responders in the immediate vicinity.&amp;#160; In this sequence we are provided a brief glimpse of the Airbus striking water and are offered a look inside the passenger compartment at the moment of impact.&amp;#160; Thereafter, the passengers evacuate to the aircraft&#8217;s wings on a cold cold day in January.&amp;#160; A helicopter shot tracks ferries swinging out from various locations as they make for the fallen airliner, trailing bright apostrophes against gray-green water.&amp;#160; We watch these large cumbersome watercraft gingerly edge up to the fragile aircraft&#8217;s wings and witness crewmen hoisting passengers to safety.&amp;#160; No one panics.&amp;#160; No one screams for help.&amp;#160; This sequence is particularly engrossing, and it illustrates how the city&#8217;s first responders functioned collectively in a moment of crisis.&amp;#160; Having just been saved from freezing water, passengers arriving onshore are greeted by emergency workers who provide them warm dry Red Cross blankets and lead them to shelter.&amp;#160; This is how it actually happened&#8212;a moment the City of New York should be damned proud of.</p> <p>When Sully arrives onshore he asks for the survivor count.&amp;#160; He had 155 people on the Airbus and is desperate to learn the number of those rescued.&amp;#160; When informed that the Mayor and Chief of Police want to see him, Sully thinks only of those in his charge.&amp;#160; While being checked out at a hospital, Sully is informed that all 155 aboard the plane have survived.&amp;#160; He and Skiles are put up in a hotel while the NTSB initiates its investigation.</p> <p>The flashback ends and Sully leaves the bar and calls a friend, asking him to obtain the results of the computer simulations before the next NTSB meeting.</p> <p>We then follow Sully and Skiles to NTSB headquarters in Washington, DC.&amp;#160; Once again the two pilots face a hostile panel of inquisitors.&amp;#160; In this scene, some 40 or 50 additional &#8220;experts&#8221; are present to witness the hearing.&amp;#160; Computer simulations are produced that demonstrate the ease with which Flight 1549 could have safely returned to LaGuardia.&amp;#160; Sully protests the simulations do not take into account the human factor and that time must be added to accommodate the decision-making process.&amp;#160; The panel agrees to add 35 seconds.&amp;#160; Skiles tells Sully it isn&#8217;t enough time but Sully counters that given the 208 total seconds involved, he&#8217;ll take it.&amp;#160; With this added time the simulations fail.</p> <p>Now the actual cockpit recording is played and we see the third and final dramatization of the crash, which reveals all that happens in the cockpit and shows the forced water landing in its entirety.&amp;#160; After the recording ends, Sully and Skiles are informed that the left engine has been recovered from the bottom of the Hudson and its condition confirms Sully&#8217;s claim that it could not have been restarted.&amp;#160; The two pilots are completely vindicated.</p> <p>Distortions presented by the film&#8212;which barely runs ninety minutes&#8212;are numerous and potentially harmful.&amp;#160; I am particularly troubled by how the NTSB is treated.&amp;#160; As an organization, the NTSB has long possessed a sterling reputation for probity and insightful analysis.&amp;#160; To present its investigators as flint-hearted, callous, hostile and adversarial is beyond distortion.&amp;#160; It approaches the legal definition of defamation.&amp;#160; Work the NTSB does is invaluable.&amp;#160; Its worth is truly beyond calculation.&amp;#160; To denigrate this important agency in such fashion ought to be a criminal offense.</p> <p>In an article by Stephen Cass in The Guardian dated September 12, 2016 and titled &#8220;Sullied: with Sully Clint Eastwood is weaponizing a hero&#8221; Cass writes: &#8220;. . . the film has smeared the NTSB&#8217;s reputation for the sake of a hero who needed no defending&#8221;.&amp;#160; Cass goes on to write: &#8220;Directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood, the film Sully claims to tell the true story of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/hudson-river-plane-crash" type="external">&#8220;miracle on the Hudson&#8221;</a>.&amp;#160; Instead, it is another rightwing attempt to delegitimize government&#8212;and in the process undermine the safety of millions who travel by air, train, road and boat&#8221;.</p> <p>On September 9, 2016 an article titled &#8220;What The &#8216;Sully&#8217; Movie Gets Wrong&#8221; by Barbara Peterson appeared in Conde Nast Traveler.&amp;#160; In it she writes: &#8220;Director Eastwood has admitted that he needed a villain. &#8220;Where&#8217;s the antagonist?&#8221; he reportedly asked when approached about the project. Sully&#8217;s best-selling book, Highest Duty, was more inspirational than a tell-all, and offered no candidates for the role of black hat. So the filmmakers solved their no-drama problem, in true Hollywood fashion, by making one up.&#8221;</p> <p>Her article continues:</p> <p>Actually, they made up an entire band of baddies, a glowering tribunal of investigators who torment Sully and Skiles for days immediately after the accident, not just questioning their decisions but contradicting their accounts.</p> <p>When the film&#8217;s pilots are shown in their first interview with the feds, the plot quickly strays from the well-known narrative.&amp;#160; The so-called &#8220;lead investigator Charles Porter,&#8221; played by Mike O&#8217;Malley as a snarling Torquemada, immediately pounces on Sully and Skiles about alcohol and drug use, and follows that with claims that &#8220;engineers&#8221; and simulations of the flight revealed that they could have gotten the plane safely back to LaGuardia.&amp;#160; Better yet: One engine still had power.&amp;#160; Sully and Skiles are shocked, traumatized; Sully fears losing not just his reputation, but his whole livelihood: &#8220;I&#8217;ve got 40 years in the air but in the end I&#8217;m going to be judged on 208 seconds.&#8221;</p> <p>Peterson contacted Robert Benzon, the actual NTSB investigator assigned the accident on the Hudson.&amp;#160; She records:</p> <p>&#8220;The NTSB treated Captain Sullenberger and his fellow crewmembers very benignly, as we always did in the many other major investigations with crew interviews,&#8221; he said.&amp;#160; In fact, by the time the NTSB conducted interviews, &#8220;they were international heroes,&#8221; he adds.&amp;#160; &#8220;As a result, we were even more deferential.&#8221;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>In Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters by Capt. Chesley &#8220;Sully&#8221; Sullenberger with Jeffrey Zaslow (Harper/Collins 2009), Sully himself says of the NTSB: &#8220;In the end, I was buoyed by the fact that invesgators determined that Jeff and I made appropriate choices at every step.&#8221;&amp;#160; (Highest Duty at p. 274)&amp;#160; Later in the book Sully describes flying to Washington where he meets Jeff Skiles and together they listen to the cockpit tape:</p> <p>There were six of us in the room: Jeff Skiles, Jeff Diercksmeier, a US Airline Pilots Association accident investigation committee member, three NTSB officials (two investigators and a specialist from the agency&#8217;s recordings section), and me.&amp;#160; The investigators were happy to have Jeff and me there with them.&amp;#160; (Highest Duty at p. 308)</p> <p>Listening to the tape, however, I realized that everything really happened in 208 extraordinarily time-compressed seconds.&amp;#160; (Highest Duty at p. 310)</p> <p>These, then, are the 208 seconds the movie Sully feared his entire career would be judged by.&amp;#160; There is also the issue of the computer simulations that caused the movie Sully such anxiety.&amp;#160; A Wall Street Journal article by Andy Pasztor dated May 4, 2010 reports:</p> <p>Documents indicate nearly two dozen emergency simulations were flown by experienced aviators, including an Airbus test pilot, at the manufacturer&#8217;s headquarters in Toulouse, France.&amp;#160; Four out of four attempts to return to the closest LaGuardia runway were succcessful, according to the safety board&#8217;s summary.&amp;#160; There were nine additional simulated attempts to land at LaGuardia, either at a different runway or under a scenario in which the plane was more severely disabled.&amp;#160; Of those, three were successful.</p> <p>Early on, Airbus officials were so squeamish about potentially being seen as second-guessing the heroic actions of the pilots, according to people familiar with the details, that&amp;#160; they broached the idea with the safety board of keeping the results private.</p> <p>Rather than NTSB investigators using simulations as a club to threaten Sully and Skiles, the facts say just the opposite.&amp;#160; Not only were NTSB officials friendly toward the two pilots, but they also went out of their way to preserve the heroic reputation the two men had rightfully earned.&amp;#160; Barbara Peterson in her Conde Nast Traveler article writes: &#8220;. . . the NTSB was never consulted or even contacted by anyone connected with the film, a spokesperson confirms.&#8221;</p> <p>In his article for The Guardian Stephen Cass agrees with Peterson that for dramatic reasons, the film makers made NTSB investigators the movie&#8217;s villains.&amp;#160; Cass adds:</p> <p>It is not hard to see why this tack appealed to strident libertarian Eastwood.&amp;#160; In its populist zeal, the American right wing has been increasingly unwilling to accept the legitimacy of any branch of federal government.&amp;#160; Sully meshes perfectly with a worldview where petty and clueless civil servants obstruct real Americans from being great.</p> <p>Using a popular film to make political points is nothing new, but what sets Sully apart is its sinister distortion of an event so recent and so universally acclaimed in order to blacken the reputation of a government agency internationally recognized as the very best at what it does.&amp;#160; The NTSB trains investigators the world over in the complex science of accident investigation.&amp;#160; Once again the right cannot alter the past and so attempts to rewrite it.</p>

Sinister Distortions: the Rightwing Politics of Eastwood’s “Sully”

https://counterpunch.org/2016/12/23/sinister-distortions-the-rightwing-politics-of-eastwoods-sully/

2016-12-23

4left

Still from 8220Sully8221 Warner Bros As an actor and director Clint Eastwood has been involved in movie and television production for better than half a centuryamp160 He8217s made some outstanding pictures notably Unforgiven 1992 and Mystic River 2003 neither of which betrays a particular political viewpointamp160 But the release of American Sniper 2014 revealed Eastwood8217s hard rightwing perspective in relentless and unflinching fashionamp160 It is based on the mendacious memoir of Chris Kyle a racist who murdered more human beings as a sniper than anyone in US military historyamp160 Kyle actually considered himself a Christian and had crucifixes tattooed to his forearmsamp160 Rather than condemn Kyle8217s attrocious conduct Eastwood exalted it celebrated it and made this vile man a 8220hero8221amp160 Eastwood was also involved in Heartbreak Ridge 1986 which showed US soldiers bravely invading the tiny resort island of Grenada and Gran Torino 2008 wherein a retired Detroit auto worker uses primitive brutality to defend his neighborsamp160 Both films ennoble the conservative principle that might is right Eastwood learned film making from the late Don Siegel one of the truly great Hollywood directors who first worked with Clint on Coogan8217s Bluff 1968 a fishoutofwater flick that follows an Arizona lawman to the Big Apple where he is tasked with extraditing a felonamp160 Siegel8217s movies are marked by their efficiency and fluidity and rarely contain an empty momentamp160 The two men next collaborated on Two Mules for Sister Sara 1970 and Dirty Harry 1971 the latter becoming a smash hit that spawned a string of Dirty Harry pictures concluding with The Dead Pool 1988 Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry became synonomousamp160 The Harry Callahan character rarely alters his expression which made him a perfect candidate for Eastwood8217s limited acting repertoireamp160 Sergio Leone who famously directed Eastwood in his Spaghetti Westerns of the 608217s once said Eastwood could only muster two expressions Clint with his hat on and Clint with his hat off Harry Callahan as portrayed by Eastwood is a facistic sadistic murdering monster8212a malevolent screen icon that appeals to a very dark element in US societyamp160 Given the success of these movies it becomes discomfittingly obvious that said dark element embraces a substantial portion of the US populationamp160 Siegel whose political views were decidedly leftist distanced himself from the Dirty Harry franchise while Eastwood proudly embraced it As a director Eastwood8217s career is checkeredamp160 He8217s made some truly interesting movies such as Bronco Billy 1980 and White Hunter Black Heart 1990 and some really awful onesamp160 The Gauntlet 1977 and Space Cowboys 2000 should be avoided at all costsamp160 Offscreen Eastwood is known for his financial rapacity and his personal vindictiveness On January 15 2009 US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson Riveramp160 All 155 passengers and crew survived and the incident would later be called the 8220Miracle on the Hudson8221amp160 Captain Chesley Sullenberger who piloted the aircraft emerged as a national heroamp160 8220Sully82218212as he came to be popularly known8212is the subject of Eastwood8217s most recent feature Sully 2016 Directed by Clint Eastwood Sully opens to the sounds of an airplane cockpit against a dark screenamp160 Next we see Tom Hanks as Chesley Sullenberger at the controls of an airliner reporting 8220Maydayamp160 Mayday8221 to Air Traffic Controlamp160 Aaron Eckhart plays Jeff Skiles the copilotamp160 8220We8217ve lost both engines8221 Sully explains 8220both engines8221amp160 Seconds later he tells them 8220 we can make itamp160 We8217re turning back to LaGuardia8221 We watch the crippled aircraft with smoke streaming from its two engines and panic seizing its passengers descend over New York and clip a wing on the side of a skyscraper before crashing into a busy Manhattan street corneramp160 Sully awakens from this nightmare alone in a darkened hotel room From the getgo the audience is informed in a manner less than subtle that turning back to LaGuardia would be a fatal mistakeamp160 Whether or not Sully should have turned back is the central question posed by Eastwood8217s Sully and one that entirely comprehends what passes for the movie8217s plot After observing him awaken we follow Sully as he jogs along the river before returning to his Manhattan hotel where he watches media coverage of the 8220Miracle on the Hudson8221 Next day Sully and Skiles are brought before a panel of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board NTSBamp160 In an actual NTSB investigation the two men would have been questioned separatelyamp160 The panel is openly hostile it is composed of Jamey Sheridan as Ben Edwards Anna Gunn as Dr Elizabeth Davis and Mike O8217Malley as Charles Porteramp160 Their questions are aggressive and adversarial odd given the recent heroism of these two menamp160 They label the event a 8220crash8221amp160 Sully pointedly contradicts them calling it a 8220forced water landing8221amp160 The panel believes Flight 1549 had sufficient altitude to make it back to LaGuardia but Sully tells them he believes turning back would have been a mistakeamp160 The two pilots are informed that computer simulations of the event will be runamp160 Pilot and copilot are then asked if they8217d consumed drinks or drugs before the flight these standard NTSB questions are delivered in an admonitory and distrustful manner and the two men answer that they had not The film then shows us Sully in New York and his wife played by Laura Linney back in California separately besieged by the pressamp160 Throughout all this Sully expesses no jubilation or triumph or at the very least relief that 155 human beings were saved by his actionsamp160 This is decidedly unnatural Sully has a second nightmareamp160 In it a TV talking head takes him to task for making a wrong decision when he ditched the planeamp160 8220Captain Sullenberger8221 the female newscaster asks 8220are you a hero or a fraud8221amp160 It is fitting that two of film8217s early sequences reside in the province of dreams Sully and Skiles go on a late night walk through the streets of New York amp160Skiles tells Sully they8217ve been booked on Lettermanamp160 Sully comments on the surreal nature of their situation and tells Skiles 8220I8217ve delivered a million passengers over 40 years in the air and in the end I8217m going to be judged on 208 seconds8221amp160 This very effective line in such a context is both fraudulent and misleading as will be explained below We see Sully interviewed by Katie Couricamp160 As she questions him we see by flashback Sully learning to fly in a biplaneamp160 After the interview Sully gazes out an office window at the New York skyline and has another vision of the terrible crash he8217d earlier witnessed in his nightmare Once again Sully and Skiles are brought before the NTSB panel and once again their interrogators are hostile and accusatoryamp160 Now a question arises as to whether the aircraft8217s left engine remained functional after the bird strikeamp160 Certain data suggests it could have been restartedamp160 During this session they are informed that computer simulations confirmed they could have safely returned to LaGuardiaamp160 The panel also expresses concern about leaks to the pressamp160amp160 Afterwards Skiles tells Sully not to worry that he did goodamp160 Later they appear on Letterman The following day Sully8217s wife calls him worried about domestic financial concernsamp160 He expresses anxiety over the NTSB investigation and she tells him he8217s a hero and the NTSB will just have to deal with it Now we are shown the first of three sequences depicting the actual eventamp160 In the initial runthrough we see Sully purchase a tuna sandwich from a vendor in a terminal at LaGuardia Airport and board the US Airways Airbusamp160 We see passengers hustling to make the flightamp160 Sully and Skiles exchange banter in the cockpit while late arrivals find their seatsamp160 Then comes the usual air safety drill from the flight attendants as Flight 1549 taxis for takeoff We watch the Airbus rise into a wintry skyamp160 New York spreads out below them patterned with snowamp160 Sully comments on how beautiful the world is from up here then barks 8220Birds8221amp160 A chevron of geese smash into the airlineramp160 We see the starboard engine catch fire as disquiet spreads through the passenger compartmentamp160 Inside the aircraft it falls strangely silentamp160 Sully and Skiles confirm that both engines are inoperable while flight attendants remind passengers to fasten their seatbeltsamp160 The action shifts to Air Traffic Control where a savvy controller played by Patch Darragh clears a runway at LaGuardia with Teterboro as an alternativeamp160 Then we see Sully telling the passengers 8220Brace for impact8221amp160 The controller watches as Flight 1549 vanishes from his screen and alerts all aircraft in the vicinity to keep an eye out for the stricken Airbus We watch Sully deadsticking his aircraft into the Hudsonamp160 On impact with the river we are returned to Sully8217s hotel roomamp160 Once again Sully goes runningamp160 He sees an F4 Phantom on the deck of the USS Intrepid and we flashback to Sully in the Air Force back in the 608217s safely landing a malfunctioning Phantomamp160 Returning to the present Sully ends up at a Manhattan bar where he is told a new drink has been named in his honor While Sully sits at the bar we witness the second dramatization of the forced water landing this time from the perspective of ferries on the Hudson and first responders in the immediate vicinityamp160 In this sequence we are provided a brief glimpse of the Airbus striking water and are offered a look inside the passenger compartment at the moment of impactamp160 Thereafter the passengers evacuate to the aircraft8217s wings on a cold cold day in Januaryamp160 A helicopter shot tracks ferries swinging out from various locations as they make for the fallen airliner trailing bright apostrophes against graygreen wateramp160 We watch these large cumbersome watercraft gingerly edge up to the fragile aircraft8217s wings and witness crewmen hoisting passengers to safetyamp160 No one panicsamp160 No one screams for helpamp160 This sequence is particularly engrossing and it illustrates how the city8217s first responders functioned collectively in a moment of crisisamp160 Having just been saved from freezing water passengers arriving onshore are greeted by emergency workers who provide them warm dry Red Cross blankets and lead them to shelteramp160 This is how it actually happened8212a moment the City of New York should be damned proud of When Sully arrives onshore he asks for the survivor countamp160 He had 155 people on the Airbus and is desperate to learn the number of those rescuedamp160 When informed that the Mayor and Chief of Police want to see him Sully thinks only of those in his chargeamp160 While being checked out at a hospital Sully is informed that all 155 aboard the plane have survivedamp160 He and Skiles are put up in a hotel while the NTSB initiates its investigation The flashback ends and Sully leaves the bar and calls a friend asking him to obtain the results of the computer simulations before the next NTSB meeting We then follow Sully and Skiles to NTSB headquarters in Washington DCamp160 Once again the two pilots face a hostile panel of inquisitorsamp160 In this scene some 40 or 50 additional 8220experts8221 are present to witness the hearingamp160 Computer simulations are produced that demonstrate the ease with which Flight 1549 could have safely returned to LaGuardiaamp160 Sully protests the simulations do not take into account the human factor and that time must be added to accommodate the decisionmaking processamp160 The panel agrees to add 35 secondsamp160 Skiles tells Sully it isn8217t enough time but Sully counters that given the 208 total seconds involved he8217ll take itamp160 With this added time the simulations fail Now the actual cockpit recording is played and we see the third and final dramatization of the crash which reveals all that happens in the cockpit and shows the forced water landing in its entiretyamp160 After the recording ends Sully and Skiles are informed that the left engine has been recovered from the bottom of the Hudson and its condition confirms Sully8217s claim that it could not have been restartedamp160 The two pilots are completely vindicated Distortions presented by the film8212which barely runs ninety minutes8212are numerous and potentially harmfulamp160 I am particularly troubled by how the NTSB is treatedamp160 As an organization the NTSB has long possessed a sterling reputation for probity and insightful analysisamp160 To present its investigators as flinthearted callous hostile and adversarial is beyond distortionamp160 It approaches the legal definition of defamationamp160 Work the NTSB does is invaluableamp160 Its worth is truly beyond calculationamp160 To denigrate this important agency in such fashion ought to be a criminal offense In an article by Stephen Cass in The Guardian dated September 12 2016 and titled 8220Sullied with Sully Clint Eastwood is weaponizing a hero8221 Cass writes 8220 the film has smeared the NTSB8217s reputation for the sake of a hero who needed no defending8221amp160 Cass goes on to write 8220Directed and coproduced by Clint Eastwood the film Sully claims to tell the true story of the 8220miracle on the Hudson8221amp160 Instead it is another rightwing attempt to delegitimize government8212and in the process undermine the safety of millions who travel by air train road and boat8221 On September 9 2016 an article titled 8220What The 8216Sully8217 Movie Gets Wrong8221 by Barbara Peterson appeared in Conde Nast Traveleramp160 In it she writes 8220Director Eastwood has admitted that he needed a villain 8220Where8217s the antagonist8221 he reportedly asked when approached about the project Sully8217s bestselling book Highest Duty was more inspirational than a tellall and offered no candidates for the role of black hat So the filmmakers solved their nodrama problem in true Hollywood fashion by making one up8221 Her article continues Actually they made up an entire band of baddies a glowering tribunal of investigators who torment Sully and Skiles for days immediately after the accident not just questioning their decisions but contradicting their accounts When the film8217s pilots are shown in their first interview with the feds the plot quickly strays from the wellknown narrativeamp160 The socalled 8220lead investigator Charles Porter8221 played by Mike O8217Malley as a snarling Torquemada immediately pounces on Sully and Skiles about alcohol and drug use and follows that with claims that 8220engineers8221 and simulations of the flight revealed that they could have gotten the plane safely back to LaGuardiaamp160 Better yet One engine still had poweramp160 Sully and Skiles are shocked traumatized Sully fears losing not just his reputation but his whole livelihood 8220I8217ve got 40 years in the air but in the end I8217m going to be judged on 208 seconds8221 Peterson contacted Robert Benzon the actual NTSB investigator assigned the accident on the Hudsonamp160 She records 8220The NTSB treated Captain Sullenberger and his fellow crewmembers very benignly as we always did in the many other major investigations with crew interviews8221 he saidamp160 In fact by the time the NTSB conducted interviews 8220they were international heroes8221 he addsamp160 8220As a result we were even more deferential8221 amp160 In Highest Duty My Search for What Really Matters by Capt Chesley 8220Sully8221 Sullenberger with Jeffrey Zaslow HarperCollins 2009 Sully himself says of the NTSB 8220In the end I was buoyed by the fact that invesgators determined that Jeff and I made appropriate choices at every step8221amp160 Highest Duty at p 274amp160 Later in the book Sully describes flying to Washington where he meets Jeff Skiles and together they listen to the cockpit tape There were six of us in the room Jeff Skiles Jeff Diercksmeier a US Airline Pilots Association accident investigation committee member three NTSB officials two investigators and a specialist from the agency8217s recordings section and meamp160 The investigators were happy to have Jeff and me there with themamp160 Highest Duty at p 308 Listening to the tape however I realized that everything really happened in 208 extraordinarily timecompressed secondsamp160 Highest Duty at p 310 These then are the 208 seconds the movie Sully feared his entire career would be judged byamp160 There is also the issue of the computer simulations that caused the movie Sully such anxietyamp160 A Wall Street Journal article by Andy Pasztor dated May 4 2010 reports Documents indicate nearly two dozen emergency simulations were flown by experienced aviators including an Airbus test pilot at the manufacturer8217s headquarters in Toulouse Franceamp160 Four out of four attempts to return to the closest LaGuardia runway were succcessful according to the safety board8217s summaryamp160 There were nine additional simulated attempts to land at LaGuardia either at a different runway or under a scenario in which the plane was more severely disabledamp160 Of those three were successful Early on Airbus officials were so squeamish about potentially being seen as secondguessing the heroic actions of the pilots according to people familiar with the details thatamp160 they broached the idea with the safety board of keeping the results private Rather than NTSB investigators using simulations as a club to threaten Sully and Skiles the facts say just the oppositeamp160 Not only were NTSB officials friendly toward the two pilots but they also went out of their way to preserve the heroic reputation the two men had rightfully earnedamp160 Barbara Peterson in her Conde Nast Traveler article writes 8220 the NTSB was never consulted or even contacted by anyone connected with the film a spokesperson confirms8221 In his article for The Guardian Stephen Cass agrees with Peterson that for dramatic reasons the film makers made NTSB investigators the movie8217s villainsamp160 Cass adds It is not hard to see why this tack appealed to strident libertarian Eastwoodamp160 In its populist zeal the American right wing has been increasingly unwilling to accept the legitimacy of any branch of federal governmentamp160 Sully meshes perfectly with a worldview where petty and clueless civil servants obstruct real Americans from being great Using a popular film to make political points is nothing new but what sets Sully apart is its sinister distortion of an event so recent and so universally acclaimed in order to blacken the reputation of a government agency internationally recognized as the very best at what it doesamp160 The NTSB trains investigators the world over in the complex science of accident investigationamp160 Once again the right cannot alter the past and so attempts to rewrite it

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<p>Look at the following <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" type="external">series of tweets</a> from the president of the United States, reflecting Thursday on the tearing down of Confederate statues in the U.S. South:</p> <p>Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can&#8217;t change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson&#8212;who&#8217;s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also &#8230; the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!</p> <p>These 69 words are noxious historical nonsense. Of course, we can change history&#8212;in the present and the future. The more we know and understand the past, the better we will be situated to alter history in decent and desirable ways.</p> <p>Which brings us to the Confederacy, whose symbols and statues are now under unprecedented anti-racist scrutiny and have become major white-supremacist rallying points.</p> <p /> <p>What does it really mean to uphold statues of Confederate military commanders Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee as &#8220;beautiful&#8221; symbols of the &#8220;history and culture of our great country&#8221;?</p> <p>Let there be no mistake. Here is an unchanging fact of history: The Southern Confederacy was formed to preserve, by any means necessary, the vicious, arch-racist, torture and exploitation regime that was black <a href="https://fightslaverynow.org/why-fight-there-are-27-million-reasons/otherformsoftrafficking/chattel-slavery/" type="external">chattel slavery</a>. The Confederacy was a secession government formed by Southern states whose ruling elites had determined that the election of Abraham Lincoln spelled the demise of their beloved slave system. These states openly collaborated to commit treason, taking up arms against &#8220;our great country&#8221; in order to save slavery.</p> <p>Roughly 750,000 soldiers died in the Civil War&#8212;more than the total killed in all other U.S. wars combined&#8212;because of the Southern slave-owning, ruling-class determination to keep 4 million black Americans in chains.</p> <p>As retired University of Virginia historian Edward Ayers <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shifting-history-confederate-monuments/" type="external">said on &#8220;PBS NewsHour&#8221; last week</a>, &#8220;even if &#8230; individual [Confederate] soldiers were not slaveholders, they were fighting to defend a nation that was based on slavery. &#8230; The fact is, had they won, you would have had an independent nation overseeing the largest and most powerful system of slavery in the modern world.&#8221;</p> <p>Why on earth couldn&#8217;t statues of slave power warlords be more than &#8220;comparably replaced&#8221; with statues dedicated, say, to the millions of Africans and black Americans killed by the slave system or to the tens of thousands of former slaves who took up arms to <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/black-soldiers-in-blue-john-david-ed-smith/1101620788?ean=9780807855799&amp;amp;pcta=n&amp;amp;st=PLA&amp;amp;sid=BNB_DRS_Core+Shopping+Textbooks_00000000&amp;amp;2sid=Google_&amp;amp;sourceId=PLGoP163&amp;amp;k_clickid=3x163" type="external">join the Union Army</a> in the grand struggle against the slave owners&#8217; criminal Confederacy?</p> <p>Here, Donald Trump gets an &#8220;F&#8221; in U.S. history.</p> <p>But let us turn to a tougher historical nut&#8212;Trump&#8217;s claim that going after Jackson and Lee suggests a further turn on statues of the U.S. Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. This one&#8217;s not so simple, I&#8217;m afraid. As Trump noted in an impromptu, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix3764QIBIc" type="external">off-the-rails discussion with reporters</a> last week:</p> <p>George Washington was a slaveowner [sounds of disapproval in the press corps]. Was George Washington a slaveowner [a reporter says &#8220;yes,&#8221; and more outrage can be heard]. So, will George Washington now lose his statue? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? [reporters in a hubbub]. What about Thomas Jefferson? Do you like him? [reporters say &#8220;yes,&#8221; of course]. OK, good. &#8230; He was a major slaveowner. Now, are we going to take down his statue [more clamor can be heard among the journalists]?</p> <p>Here, Trump gets at least a &#8220;B&#8221; for historical accuracy&#8212;and for the suggestion of moral hypocrisy in the historical sensibilities of his liberal critics. The liberal commentators I&#8217;ve seen responding to the president&#8217;s Washington and Jefferson comments have all been aghast at Trump&#8217;s &#8220;slippery slope&#8221; suggestion.</p> <p>They need to take a closer and longer look in the American historical mirror.</p> <p>Yes, Jefferson and Washington were builders of the early U.S. republic, not advocates of separatist secessions. And yes, Jefferson privately expressed moral and political discomfort with the slave system, whose fruits he enjoyed in more ways than one.</p> <p>Still, it is unethical folly not to admit that morally consistent opposition to slavery&#8217;s symbols should lead us to take down Washington&#8217;s and Jefferson&#8217;s statues, as well as those of Lee and Jackson. &#8220;The Star-Spangled Banner&#8221; dripped with the blood of slaves, at least until the Civil War, when historical forces aligned it against the Confederate flag on the battlefields of Antietam, Gettysburg and Vicksburg. As the prolific black historian <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?415064-1/depth-gerald-horne" type="external">Gerald Horne</a> showed in his brilliant and provocative 2014 study, &#8220; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Counter-Revolution-1776-Resistance-Origins-America-ebook/dp/B00J8DOMIG/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1" type="external">The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America</a>,&#8221; the early U.S. republic broke from England in part because its largely slavery-based propertied elite feared that the North American slave regime could not survive and expand under continued rule of the British Empire. The American &#8220;Revolution,&#8221; Horne shows, was the first American slaveholders&#8217; secession&#8212;from the English crown.</p> <p>The road to independence, Horne shows, was critically paved by two key British actions. In the 1772 Somerset case ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart" type="external">Somerset v. Stewart</a>), the British high court ruled that chattel slavery violated English common law. The application of Somerset to the 13 British colonies would have meant an end to the slave machine that fed the coffers of the Yankee mercantile elite and fueled the wealth of New England while it created an opulent landed aristocracy in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. The British judge responsible for the decision&#8212;William Murray Mansfield&#8212;would become a special target of white colonists&#8217; denunciation over the next four years.</p> <p>A second great British provocation to North American slavery came in 1775, when Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, offered to liberate and arm North American slaves to squash the New England- and New York-based colonial rebellion that had been underway since the Tea Act of 1773. With this action, Dunmore &#8220;entered a pre-existing maelstrom of [colonial] insecurity about slavery and London&#8217;s intentions,&#8221; wrote Horne in &#8220;The Counter-Revolution.&#8221;</p> <p>Across the future U.S. South in the spring of 1775, elite colonists were consumed with fears of a slave insurrection allied with the British, Spanish and/or Native Americans. &#8220;Lord Dunmore&#8217;s proclamation effectively barred any possibility of rebel reconciliation with London,&#8221; as the colonists &#8220;now confronted Africans armed by London,&#8221; explained Horne.</p> <p>Dunmore&#8217;s edict irrevocably joined London with abolition in the minds of the white colonists. It provided a key rallying point for what historian Thelma Wills Foote called &#8220;a white settler revolt&#8221; and &#8220;the white American War for Independence&#8221;&#8212;fought in no small measure to preserve and expand black chattel slavery. Independence emerged from &#8220;the state of the mind of the rebels,&#8221; who were already by early 1775 &#8220;coming to believe that a London-African combine was mounting against them, leaving secession&#8212;a unilateral declaration of independence&#8212;as the only way out,&#8221; Horne wrote. When Dunmore issued his decree, there was no turning back from white independence, leading Horne to ironically but properly call Lord Dunmore a leading U.S. &#8220;Founding Father.&#8221;</p> <p>It is hardly surprising that North American slaves identified the cause of freedom with London, not the rebels. Tens of thousands of those slaves and a large number of free blacks naturally joined the redcoats. So did many Native Americans, inhabitants of land coveted by the rebellious white colonial setters, who chafed at British restrictions on their territorial expansion.</p> <p>The colonists&#8217; triumph over London (U.S. independence, attained through the American &#8220;Revolutionary&#8221; war) &#8220;brought about the reassertion of slaveowner control over the enslaved black population in the new republic,&#8221; Horne quotes Foote as saying. The North American slave system tightened and expanded across vast swaths of territory stolen from indigenous civilizations in the absence of British restraints. The color line between white and black was drawn with harsher lines than ever before in the &#8220;land of liberty.&#8221; The white North American settlers&#8217; counter-revolution was a great slavery success&#8212;at least until the Civil War, when another white secession and military necessity compelled Lincoln to follow in Lord Dunmore&#8217;s footsteps by liberating and arming black slaves.</p> <p>Jefferson&#8217;s heralded Declaration of Independence naturally contained no criticism of North American slavery. It did, however, accuse King George III of &#8220;excit[ing] domestic insurrections amongst us.&#8221; Another purported sin of the British crown listed in Jefferson&#8217;s declaration was that he &#8220;endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.&#8221;</p> <p>This vicious charge against the Native Americans was a total inversion of reality. It was the Euro-American invaders and settlers, not the indigenous inhabitants, who practiced genocide. But the false charge was useful as the young-settler empire geared to ethnically cleanse more First Nations peoples&#8212;it&#8217;s not for nothing that George Washington was known to the Iroquois as &#8220;town destroyer&#8221;&#8212;to make way for the geographic expansion of its slavery-dependent political economy, which was sanctioned and defended in the Constitution.</p> <p>Exactly 76 years after U.S. independence was declared and nine years before the Confederate flag was first flown, the great black escaped slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass reflected on &#8220; <a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/" type="external">What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?</a>&#8221; According to Douglass, who spoke on a warm summer day in upstate New York as the American flag waved nearby, it was:</p> <p>[A] day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy&#8212;a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.</p> <p>Trump thinks that Jefferson&#8217;s and Washington&#8217;s statues should stay up, of course, along with Jackson&#8217;s and Lee&#8217;s.</p> <p>Beyond deleting the great national sin of slavery, Trump made another great historical omission&#8212;one he shares with most white Americans, including those who oppose him. I am referring to the need not only to acknowledge the crime of slavery but also to make reparations for its long, crippling impact, whose devastating compound interest legacy still richly fuels the terrible statistics of stark U.S. racial disparity today.</p> <p>There&#8217;s no way to put a precise dollar amount on the value added to American capitalism by the black human beings who provided the critical human raw material for the giant whipping machine that was British North American and U.S. chattel slavery. As historian Edward Baptist has suggested in his brilliant 2014 volume &#8220; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told-ebook/dp/B01HXM0R9Q/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1" type="external">The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism</a>,&#8221; Americans&#8217; tendency to see slavery as a quaint and archaic &#8220;pre-modern institution&#8221; that had nothing to do with the United States&#8217; rise to wealth and power is deeply mistaken. Contrary to what many abolitionists thought in the 19th century, the savagery and torture perpetrated against slaves in the South was about much more than sadism and psychopathy on the part of slave traders, owners and drivers.</p> <p>Slavery, Baptist demonstrates, was an incredibly cost-efficient method for extracting surplus value from human beings, far superior in that regard to &#8220;free&#8221; (wage) labor in the onerous work of planting, tending and harvesting cotton. It was an especially brutal form of capitalism, driven by ruthless yet economically &#8220;rational&#8221; torture, along with a dehumanizing ideology of racism.</p> <p>It wasn&#8217;t just the South, home to the four wealthiest U.S. states on the eve of the Civil War, where investors profited handsomely from the forced cotton labor of black slaves. By the 1840s, Baptist shows, the &#8220;free labor North&#8221; had &#8220;built a complex industrialized economy on the backs of enslaved people and their highly profitable cotton labor.&#8221; Cotton picked by Southern slaves provided the critical cheap raw material for early Northern industrialization and the formation of a new Northern wage-earning populace with money to purchase new and basic commodities.</p> <p>At the same time, the rapidly expanding slavery frontier provided a major market for early Northern manufactured goods: clothes, hats, cotton collection bags, axes, shoes and much more. Numerous infant industries, technologies and markets spun off from the textile-based Industrial Revolution in the North. Along the way, shipments of cotton to England (the world&#8217;s leading industrial power) produced fortunes for Northern merchants, and innovative new financial instruments and methods were developed to provide capital for, and speculate on, the slavery-based cotton boom.</p> <p>All told, Baptist calculates, by 1836 nearly half the nation&#8217;s economic activity derived directly and indirectly from the roughly 1 million black slaves (just 6 percent of the national population) who toiled on the nation&#8217; Southern cotton frontier.</p> <p>&#8220;The Half Has Never Been Told&#8221; shows that &#8220;the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African-Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich&#8221; decades before the Civil War. The U.S. owes much of its wealth and treasure precisely to the super-exploited labor of black chattel slaves in the 19th century. Capitalist cotton slavery was how the United States seized control of the lucrative world market for cotton, the critical raw material for the Industrial Revolution, emerging thereby as a rich and influential nation in the world capitalist system by the second third of the 19th century:</p> <p>From 1783, at the end of the American Revolution to 1861, the number of slaves in the United States increased five times over, and all this expansion produced a powerful nation &#8230; white enslavers were able to force enslaved African American migrants to pick cotton faster and more efficiently than free people. Their practices transformed the southern states into the dominant force in the global cotton market, and cotton was the world&#8217;s most widely traded commodity at the time, as it was the key material during the first century of the industrial revolution. The returns from cotton monopoly powered the modernization of the rest of the American economy, and by the time of the Civil War, the United States had become the second nation to undergo large-scale industrialization [emphasis added].</p> <p>The United States&#8217; later emergence as the world&#8217;s leading industrial producer and military superpower is unimaginable without this prior development, rooted in the ruthless capitalist exploitation of black slaves.</p> <p>A critical and underestimated part of the deep societal racism that lives on beneath the &#8220;post-racial&#8221; American surface&#8212;behind the selection of a black Supreme Court justice or the election of a black president or the removal of the Confederate flag or a Confederate war statue in a Southern city&#8212;is the steadfast refusal of our longtime white-majority nation to acknowledge that the multi-century history of slavery (the vicious racist and torture system the Confederacy fought to defend and preserve) is intimately related to the nation&#8217;s stark racial disparities today.</p> <p>Forget for a moment that American capitalism is still permeated with institutional, societal and cultural racism. Put aside the basic and important fact that the game is not being played fairly, with genuinely color-blind, &#8220;post-racial&#8221; rules. Given what is well known about the relationship between historically accumulated resources and current and future success, the very distinction between past and present racism ought to be considered part of the ideological superstructure of contemporary white supremacy.</p> <p>As anyone who studies capitalism in a smart and honest way knows, what economic actors get from the present and future so-called &#8220;free market&#8221; is very much about what and how much they bring to that market from the past. And what whites and blacks bring from the living past to the supposedly &#8220;color-blind&#8221; and &#8220;equal opportunity&#8221; market of the post-civil rights era (wherein the dominant neoliberal authorities and ideology purport to have gone beyond &#8220;considerations of race&#8221;) is still shaped by not-so &#8220;ancient&#8221; decades and centuries of explicit racial oppression.</p> <p>Even if U.S. capitalism was being conducted without racial discrimination&#8212;and vast volumes and data demonstrate that it is not (see my own discussion <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8089175-racial-oppression-in-the-global-metropolis" type="external">here</a>&#8212;there would still be the question of all the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674456457" type="external">poker chips</a> that white America (superrich, white capitalist America, in particular) has stacked up on its side of the table over centuries of brutal theft from black America. Those surplus chips are not quaintly irrelevant hangovers from &#8220;days gone by.&#8221; They are living, accumulated weapons of racial inequality in the present and future.</p> <p>It is long past time for a monumental payback&#8212;paid out of giant taxes on the absurdly rich top tenth of the very predominantly white U.S. 1 percent, which <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/26/bernie-s/dnc-bernie-sanders-repeats-claim-top-one-tenth-1-o/" type="external">owns as much wealth</a> as the bottom U.S. 90 percent.</p> <p>The class specificity of the payment is critical. We shouldn&#8217;t charge lower- and working-class whites a penny for the sins of slavery. American racial oppression, it should always be remembered, has harmed ordinary middle- and working-class white Americans as well as blacks.</p> <p>From the nation&#8217;s colonial origins through the present, the Machiavellian, ruling-class-imposed color line (see Edmund Morgan&#8217;s classic 1976 study &#8220; <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/American-Slavery-American-Freedom/" type="external">American Slavery, American Freedom</a>&#8221; has hurt ordinary whites as well as people of color. Elite-crafted racism has undermined working-class and poor whites&#8217; willingness and ability to join with blacks and other nonwhites in forming the powerful grass-roots alliances and solidarities required to wrest a durably decent living and a democratic society from the wealthy few.</p> <p>In the place of these basic necessities, the pervasive and living culture of racism&#8212;so doggedly persistent that the mild phrase &#8220;black lives matter&#8221; is somehow controversial more than half a century after the passage of the Civil Rights Act&#8212;has offered poor and working-class whites the poisonous, false-compensatory <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/255-the-wages-of-whiteness" type="external">&#8220;psychological wage&#8221; of whiteness</a>: the belief that while one may occupy a relatively low and insecure position in capitalist America, one was at least more elevated and honored than absurdly demonized nonwhite others.</p> <p>The always embattled American left has said something else: &#8220;Black and White Unite and Fight,&#8221; in solidarity against the ruling-class masters. That slogan was no small reflection of how the <a href="" type="external">American industrial workers movement</a> was built in the 1930s and 1940s.</p> <p>It would be a very good thing for Americans to know more about all this living racial and race-class history&#8212;and to know that history can, in fact, be changed, for the better and from the bottom up.</p>

A Lesson on Slavery for White America

https://truthdig.com/articles/lesson-slavery-white-america/

2017-08-22

4left

Look at the following series of tweets from the president of the United States reflecting Thursday on the tearing down of Confederate statues in the US South Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments You can8217t change history but you can learn from it Robert E Lee Stonewall Jackson8212who8217s next Washington Jefferson So foolish Also 8230 the beauty that is being taken out of our cities towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced These 69 words are noxious historical nonsense Of course we can change history8212in the present and the future The more we know and understand the past the better we will be situated to alter history in decent and desirable ways Which brings us to the Confederacy whose symbols and statues are now under unprecedented antiracist scrutiny and have become major whitesupremacist rallying points What does it really mean to uphold statues of Confederate military commanders Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee as 8220beautiful8221 symbols of the 8220history and culture of our great country8221 Let there be no mistake Here is an unchanging fact of history The Southern Confederacy was formed to preserve by any means necessary the vicious archracist torture and exploitation regime that was black chattel slavery The Confederacy was a secession government formed by Southern states whose ruling elites had determined that the election of Abraham Lincoln spelled the demise of their beloved slave system These states openly collaborated to commit treason taking up arms against 8220our great country8221 in order to save slavery Roughly 750000 soldiers died in the Civil War8212more than the total killed in all other US wars combined8212because of the Southern slaveowning rulingclass determination to keep 4 million black Americans in chains As retired University of Virginia historian Edward Ayers said on 8220PBS NewsHour8221 last week 8220even if 8230 individual Confederate soldiers were not slaveholders they were fighting to defend a nation that was based on slavery 8230 The fact is had they won you would have had an independent nation overseeing the largest and most powerful system of slavery in the modern world8221 Why on earth couldn8217t statues of slave power warlords be more than 8220comparably replaced8221 with statues dedicated say to the millions of Africans and black Americans killed by the slave system or to the tens of thousands of former slaves who took up arms to join the Union Army in the grand struggle against the slave owners8217 criminal Confederacy Here Donald Trump gets an 8220F8221 in US history But let us turn to a tougher historical nut8212Trump8217s claim that going after Jackson and Lee suggests a further turn on statues of the US Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson This one8217s not so simple I8217m afraid As Trump noted in an impromptu offtherails discussion with reporters last week George Washington was a slaveowner sounds of disapproval in the press corps Was George Washington a slaveowner a reporter says 8220yes8221 and more outrage can be heard So will George Washington now lose his statue Are we going to take down statues to George Washington reporters in a hubbub What about Thomas Jefferson Do you like him reporters say 8220yes8221 of course OK good 8230 He was a major slaveowner Now are we going to take down his statue more clamor can be heard among the journalists Here Trump gets at least a 8220B8221 for historical accuracy8212and for the suggestion of moral hypocrisy in the historical sensibilities of his liberal critics The liberal commentators I8217ve seen responding to the president8217s Washington and Jefferson comments have all been aghast at Trump8217s 8220slippery slope8221 suggestion They need to take a closer and longer look in the American historical mirror Yes Jefferson and Washington were builders of the early US republic not advocates of separatist secessions And yes Jefferson privately expressed moral and political discomfort with the slave system whose fruits he enjoyed in more ways than one Still it is unethical folly not to admit that morally consistent opposition to slavery8217s symbols should lead us to take down Washington8217s and Jefferson8217s statues as well as those of Lee and Jackson 8220The StarSpangled Banner8221 dripped with the blood of slaves at least until the Civil War when historical forces aligned it against the Confederate flag on the battlefields of Antietam Gettysburg and Vicksburg As the prolific black historian Gerald Horne showed in his brilliant and provocative 2014 study 8220 The CounterRevolution of 1776 Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America8221 the early US republic broke from England in part because its largely slaverybased propertied elite feared that the North American slave regime could not survive and expand under continued rule of the British Empire The American 8220Revolution8221 Horne shows was the first American slaveholders8217 secession8212from the English crown The road to independence Horne shows was critically paved by two key British actions In the 1772 Somerset case Somerset v Stewart the British high court ruled that chattel slavery violated English common law The application of Somerset to the 13 British colonies would have meant an end to the slave machine that fed the coffers of the Yankee mercantile elite and fueled the wealth of New England while it created an opulent landed aristocracy in Virginia the Carolinas and Georgia The British judge responsible for the decision8212William Murray Mansfield8212would become a special target of white colonists8217 denunciation over the next four years A second great British provocation to North American slavery came in 1775 when Lord Dunmore the royal governor of Virginia offered to liberate and arm North American slaves to squash the New England and New Yorkbased colonial rebellion that had been underway since the Tea Act of 1773 With this action Dunmore 8220entered a preexisting maelstrom of colonial insecurity about slavery and London8217s intentions8221 wrote Horne in 8220The CounterRevolution8221 Across the future US South in the spring of 1775 elite colonists were consumed with fears of a slave insurrection allied with the British Spanish andor Native Americans 8220Lord Dunmore8217s proclamation effectively barred any possibility of rebel reconciliation with London8221 as the colonists 8220now confronted Africans armed by London8221 explained Horne Dunmore8217s edict irrevocably joined London with abolition in the minds of the white colonists It provided a key rallying point for what historian Thelma Wills Foote called 8220a white settler revolt8221 and 8220the white American War for Independence82218212fought in no small measure to preserve and expand black chattel slavery Independence emerged from 8220the state of the mind of the rebels8221 who were already by early 1775 8220coming to believe that a LondonAfrican combine was mounting against them leaving secession8212a unilateral declaration of independence8212as the only way out8221 Horne wrote When Dunmore issued his decree there was no turning back from white independence leading Horne to ironically but properly call Lord Dunmore a leading US 8220Founding Father8221 It is hardly surprising that North American slaves identified the cause of freedom with London not the rebels Tens of thousands of those slaves and a large number of free blacks naturally joined the redcoats So did many Native Americans inhabitants of land coveted by the rebellious white colonial setters who chafed at British restrictions on their territorial expansion The colonists8217 triumph over London US independence attained through the American 8220Revolutionary8221 war 8220brought about the reassertion of slaveowner control over the enslaved black population in the new republic8221 Horne quotes Foote as saying The North American slave system tightened and expanded across vast swaths of territory stolen from indigenous civilizations in the absence of British restraints The color line between white and black was drawn with harsher lines than ever before in the 8220land of liberty8221 The white North American settlers8217 counterrevolution was a great slavery success8212at least until the Civil War when another white secession and military necessity compelled Lincoln to follow in Lord Dunmore8217s footsteps by liberating and arming black slaves Jefferson8217s heralded Declaration of Independence naturally contained no criticism of North American slavery It did however accuse King George III of 8220exciting domestic insurrections amongst us8221 Another purported sin of the British crown listed in Jefferson8217s declaration was that he 8220endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages sexes and conditions8221 This vicious charge against the Native Americans was a total inversion of reality It was the EuroAmerican invaders and settlers not the indigenous inhabitants who practiced genocide But the false charge was useful as the youngsettler empire geared to ethnically cleanse more First Nations peoples8212it8217s not for nothing that George Washington was known to the Iroquois as 8220town destroyer82218212to make way for the geographic expansion of its slaverydependent political economy which was sanctioned and defended in the Constitution Exactly 76 years after US independence was declared and nine years before the Confederate flag was first flown the great black escaped slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass reflected on 8220 What to the Slave is the Fourth of July8221 According to Douglass who spoke on a warm summer day in upstate New York as the American flag waved nearby it was A day that reveals to him more than all other days in the year the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim To him your celebration is a sham your boasted liberty an unholy license your national greatness swelling vanity your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless your denunciations of tyrants brass fronted impudence your shouts of liberty and equality hollow mockery your prayers and hymns your sermons and thanksgivings with all your religious parade and solemnity are to him mere bombast fraud deception impiety and hypocrisy8212a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages Trump thinks that Jefferson8217s and Washington8217s statues should stay up of course along with Jackson8217s and Lee8217s Beyond deleting the great national sin of slavery Trump made another great historical omission8212one he shares with most white Americans including those who oppose him I am referring to the need not only to acknowledge the crime of slavery but also to make reparations for its long crippling impact whose devastating compound interest legacy still richly fuels the terrible statistics of stark US racial disparity today There8217s no way to put a precise dollar amount on the value added to American capitalism by the black human beings who provided the critical human raw material for the giant whipping machine that was British North American and US chattel slavery As historian Edward Baptist has suggested in his brilliant 2014 volume 8220 The Half Has Never Been Told Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism8221 Americans8217 tendency to see slavery as a quaint and archaic 8220premodern institution8221 that had nothing to do with the United States8217 rise to wealth and power is deeply mistaken Contrary to what many abolitionists thought in the 19th century the savagery and torture perpetrated against slaves in the South was about much more than sadism and psychopathy on the part of slave traders owners and drivers Slavery Baptist demonstrates was an incredibly costefficient method for extracting surplus value from human beings far superior in that regard to 8220free8221 wage labor in the onerous work of planting tending and harvesting cotton It was an especially brutal form of capitalism driven by ruthless yet economically 8220rational8221 torture along with a dehumanizing ideology of racism It wasn8217t just the South home to the four wealthiest US states on the eve of the Civil War where investors profited handsomely from the forced cotton labor of black slaves By the 1840s Baptist shows the 8220free labor North8221 had 8220built a complex industrialized economy on the backs of enslaved people and their highly profitable cotton labor8221 Cotton picked by Southern slaves provided the critical cheap raw material for early Northern industrialization and the formation of a new Northern wageearning populace with money to purchase new and basic commodities At the same time the rapidly expanding slavery frontier provided a major market for early Northern manufactured goods clothes hats cotton collection bags axes shoes and much more Numerous infant industries technologies and markets spun off from the textilebased Industrial Revolution in the North Along the way shipments of cotton to England the world8217s leading industrial power produced fortunes for Northern merchants and innovative new financial instruments and methods were developed to provide capital for and speculate on the slaverybased cotton boom All told Baptist calculates by 1836 nearly half the nation8217s economic activity derived directly and indirectly from the roughly 1 million black slaves just 6 percent of the national population who toiled on the nation8217 Southern cotton frontier 8220The Half Has Never Been Told8221 shows that 8220the commodification and suffering and forced labor of AfricanAmericans is what made the United States powerful and rich8221 decades before the Civil War The US owes much of its wealth and treasure precisely to the superexploited labor of black chattel slaves in the 19th century Capitalist cotton slavery was how the United States seized control of the lucrative world market for cotton the critical raw material for the Industrial Revolution emerging thereby as a rich and influential nation in the world capitalist system by the second third of the 19th century From 1783 at the end of the American Revolution to 1861 the number of slaves in the United States increased five times over and all this expansion produced a powerful nation 8230 white enslavers were able to force enslaved African American migrants to pick cotton faster and more efficiently than free people Their practices transformed the southern states into the dominant force in the global cotton market and cotton was the world8217s most widely traded commodity at the time as it was the key material during the first century of the industrial revolution The returns from cotton monopoly powered the modernization of the rest of the American economy and by the time of the Civil War the United States had become the second nation to undergo largescale industrialization emphasis added The United States8217 later emergence as the world8217s leading industrial producer and military superpower is unimaginable without this prior development rooted in the ruthless capitalist exploitation of black slaves A critical and underestimated part of the deep societal racism that lives on beneath the 8220postracial8221 American surface8212behind the selection of a black Supreme Court justice or the election of a black president or the removal of the Confederate flag or a Confederate war statue in a Southern city8212is the steadfast refusal of our longtime whitemajority nation to acknowledge that the multicentury history of slavery the vicious racist and torture system the Confederacy fought to defend and preserve is intimately related to the nation8217s stark racial disparities today Forget for a moment that American capitalism is still permeated with institutional societal and cultural racism Put aside the basic and important fact that the game is not being played fairly with genuinely colorblind 8220postracial8221 rules Given what is well known about the relationship between historically accumulated resources and current and future success the very distinction between past and present racism ought to be considered part of the ideological superstructure of contemporary white supremacy As anyone who studies capitalism in a smart and honest way knows what economic actors get from the present and future socalled 8220free market8221 is very much about what and how much they bring to that market from the past And what whites and blacks bring from the living past to the supposedly 8220colorblind8221 and 8220equal opportunity8221 market of the postcivil rights era wherein the dominant neoliberal authorities and ideology purport to have gone beyond 8220considerations of race8221 is still shaped by notso 8220ancient8221 decades and centuries of explicit racial oppression Even if US capitalism was being conducted without racial discrimination8212and vast volumes and data demonstrate that it is not see my own discussion here8212there would still be the question of all the poker chips that white America superrich white capitalist America in particular has stacked up on its side of the table over centuries of brutal theft from black America Those surplus chips are not quaintly irrelevant hangovers from 8220days gone by8221 They are living accumulated weapons of racial inequality in the present and future It is long past time for a monumental payback8212paid out of giant taxes on the absurdly rich top tenth of the very predominantly white US 1 percent which owns as much wealth as the bottom US 90 percent The class specificity of the payment is critical We shouldn8217t charge lower and workingclass whites a penny for the sins of slavery American racial oppression it should always be remembered has harmed ordinary middle and workingclass white Americans as well as blacks From the nation8217s colonial origins through the present the Machiavellian rulingclassimposed color line see Edmund Morgan8217s classic 1976 study 8220 American Slavery American Freedom8221 has hurt ordinary whites as well as people of color Elitecrafted racism has undermined workingclass and poor whites8217 willingness and ability to join with blacks and other nonwhites in forming the powerful grassroots alliances and solidarities required to wrest a durably decent living and a democratic society from the wealthy few In the place of these basic necessities the pervasive and living culture of racism8212so doggedly persistent that the mild phrase 8220black lives matter8221 is somehow controversial more than half a century after the passage of the Civil Rights Act8212has offered poor and workingclass whites the poisonous falsecompensatory 8220psychological wage8221 of whiteness the belief that while one may occupy a relatively low and insecure position in capitalist America one was at least more elevated and honored than absurdly demonized nonwhite others The always embattled American left has said something else 8220Black and White Unite and Fight8221 in solidarity against the rulingclass masters That slogan was no small reflection of how the American industrial workers movement was built in the 1930s and 1940s It would be a very good thing for Americans to know more about all this living racial and raceclass history8212and to know that history can in fact be changed for the better and from the bottom up

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<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ore. (AP) &#8212; A high-tech heart valve replacement surgery that requires less anesthetic, a smaller incision and faster operation and recovery time has been performed on more than 425 heart patients at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the past five years.</p> <p>Now, this transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure &#8212; TAVR for short &#8212; is available to an expanded group of heart patients: the younger, stronger ones.</p> <p>"Initially the only people we could put these valves into were the ones at high-risk for open-heart surgery," said cardiologist Dennis Gory, one of the surgeons who perform TAVR procedures at RiverBend's Oregon Heart &amp;amp; Vascular Institute.</p> <p>TAVR long has been considered the aortic heart valve replacement surgery of last resort for people like Herbert Ball, 89, of Cottage Grove.</p> <p>A professor emeritus of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, Ball likes to take walks. But recently he noticed that he was becoming increasingly breathless and exhausted.</p> <p>A trip to his cardiologist, Dr. David Duke at RiverBend, diagnosed Ball's problem as aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the aortic valve opening. That narrowing, caused by an accumulation of calcium, weakens the aorta's ability to close tightly and pump efficiently.</p> <p>The aortic valve closes off the lower left chamber of the heart after the heart pumps. That closure prevents oxygen-rich blood from moving back into the heart, and instead ensures that the blood flows through arteries into the body. A defective aortic valve inhibits that crucial flow.</p> <p>Without replacement, an aortic valve failure eventually leads to heart failure and death. Cardiac disease continues to be the top cause of death in the world for both men and women.</p> <p>The professional group that sets clinical practice guidelines, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, traditionally has considered open-heart surgery the appropriate treatment for aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve. But in the summer of 2016, the group climbed aboard the TAVR train, noting in its newsletter: "TAVR was approved in 2011 for use in patients who are at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR). Recently, trials in intermediate-risk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent and possibly superior to SAVR. These findings have now opened the door to trials in low-risk patients, who make up about 80 percent of patients with aortic stenosis, according to an analysis of data in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database."</p> <p>Now the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is predicting an 80 percent shift from open-heart procedures to transcatheter procedures in the next decade.</p> <p>The shift already is happening &#8212; rapidly &#8212; in Oregon. Although RiverBend is the only Eugene-area hospital to offer TAVR, three hospitals in Portland and one in Medford also offer the procedure. Soon they will have competition from hospitals in Salem and Corvallis.</p> <p>SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON</p> <p>A quick comparison of open-heart surgery with TAVR shows why the rapid change:</p> <p>Open-heart surgery is done under general anesthesia and involves a six-inch midline chest incision, followed by a three- to four-hour open-heart operation. The patient is on life support while the new artificial valve is put into place. Risks include restarting the heart, and after the surgery the patient must be monitored in the intensive care unit and endure a lengthy recovery.</p> <p>Although Gory has performed many open heart surgeries in his 35 years as a cardiologist, he said he's never been more gratified by a surgical result than he is with the TAVR procedure he performs three or four times a week at RiverBend.</p> <p>His sentiments are echoed by fellow cardiologist Sudeshna Banerjee, who said she's excited at the prospect of seeing more younger heart patients take advantage of the procedure.</p> <p>"These patients aren't guinea pigs," she said, alluding to the surgery's proven benefits. "It can be right for younger people who have arterial blockages."</p> <p>In the hope of spreading the news about the suitability of the surgery to younger heart patients, RiverBend recently invited members of the media to witness a TAVR procedure.</p> <p>Retired professor Ball gave his written approval to be a living lesson on the procedure, which was photographed and filmed the morning of Dec. 14.</p> <p>BEFORE THE SURGERY</p> <p>"I am looking forward to it," he said in an interview a few days before the operation.</p> <p>A large cast of professionals, each with a highly specialized role, surrounded Ball, who was lightly sedated but still conscious.</p> <p>They were: an anesthesiologist; anesthesia technician; interventional cardiologist; a cardiothoracic or cardiovascular surgeon; one cardiovascular perfusionist to run the bypass machine if needed; a physician assistant; circulating nurse; scrub nurse; another operating room nurse; three or four cardiovascular technologists; an echo technologist who before, during and after the procedure obtains transthoracic and transesophageal echoes to measure effectiveness; one representative from the valve maker (RiverBend uses both FDA-approved kinds of valve); a valve coordinator nurse who is the keeper of the data, collecting it and assisting with diagnostic questions; and a cardiovascular operating room nurse manager, who circulates around like a stage manager, checking on everything.</p> <p>Becky Hammerschmith, the program manager of the Valve Center at RiverBend, was the one keeping an eye on the details for Ball the day of his TAVR &#8212; as she had since his surgery was scheduled.</p> <p>The night before, she made sure that he received treatment for an upset stomach and was ready for surgery. She answered his questions and attended to any details.</p> <p>Finally, everyone was in the operating room or an adjoining viewing area, watching what looked like a well-choreographed stage production.</p> <p>For Ball's surgery, a team from the manufacturers of the balloon-expandable Sapien XT aortic valve was on hand. The device is made of bovine &#8212; cow or bull &#8212; pericaridial tissue that forms a kind of peace symbol shape &#8212; the same configuration as the human aortic valve. This bovine vein is custom-fitted onto a glittering cobalt chromium frame that looks like a tiny crown. It's royally priced as well, costing about $25,000.</p> <p>This device is crimped impossibly small and threaded onto a catheter for insertion.</p> <p>Gory cut a small incision in the femoral artery in Ball's right leg and began threading the catheter toward his heart. But the calcium deposits were so thick, he quickly made an incision in the left femoral artery and began again.</p> <p>Ball began to say something.</p> <p>"Not just right now, Mr. Ball," Hammerschmith said, in a kind but authoritative tone. Ball relaxed. The catheter was making steady progress, visible on the array of computer monitors in the room. It was carrying the tightly furled valve toward its new home. It stopped at Ball's leaking, calcium-thickened aortic valve. Then, as the dramatic execution of a well-rehearsed act, the new valve was expanded, fusing with the old one. For an instant, the monitors showed Ball's heart pause, almost as if humming, and then the new valve began to steadily and strongly to take over the job of pumping his blood.</p> <p>Even the calcium had a role, helping to hold the new valve firmly in place.</p> <p>The surgery had taken less than an hour.</p> <p>A RETURN TO WALKING</p> <p>The day after his surgery, Hammerschmith had Ball walking. He went home on the third day, accompanied by his daughter, Alesia Ball, and was chatting amiably on the fourth day about his experience. Because Gory had to thread the catheter through Ball's left artery, "I have two groin areas that are tender now," Ball said, more in observation than complaint. "Too bad I can't go on display," referring to bruises on his legs that were turning bright and festive colors.</p> <p>But less than a week after the TAVR, he could detect other differences.</p> <p>"My body feels much better now," he said, much warmer.</p> <p>He was looking forward to rehab. He said the extra blood circulating through his body made his extremities tingle sometimes, but his energy level was good, except for the cold he'd caught.</p> <p>More than anything, Ball said, he wanted to return to his walks around the fountain in Bohemia Park in downtown Cottage Grove.</p> <p>"I want to get outside." But for now, he and his daughter will have another Christmas together.</p> <p>NEW SURGERY, SAME PRICE</p> <p>If there is one way that TAVR still isn't much different than standard open-heart surgery, it's costs.</p> <p>TAVR or standard aortic heart valve replacement surgery ranges from $70,000 to $200,000, depending on its complexity.</p> <p>For the elderly, Medicare covers most of the expense. Much of the TVAR cost for the surgery, Gory said, is because it still is accepted protocol to have an open-heart team standing by during TAVR procedures.</p> <p>Gory said that might soon change. He said the open-heart team at RiverBend never has had to spring into action in five years.</p> <p>But given that most of the TAVR patients to date already have overlapping health issues and advanced years, the mortality rate is about 20 percent. There is a risk of strokes.</p> <p>However, Gory predicts that as more TAVR programs are established, costs will decline.</p> <p>TAVR, he said, is a good example of how less is proving to be more.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Information from: The Register-Guard, <a href="http://www.registerguard.com" type="external">http://www.registerguard.com</a></p> <p>SPRINGFIELD, Ore. (AP) &#8212; A high-tech heart valve replacement surgery that requires less anesthetic, a smaller incision and faster operation and recovery time has been performed on more than 425 heart patients at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the past five years.</p> <p>Now, this transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure &#8212; TAVR for short &#8212; is available to an expanded group of heart patients: the younger, stronger ones.</p> <p>"Initially the only people we could put these valves into were the ones at high-risk for open-heart surgery," said cardiologist Dennis Gory, one of the surgeons who perform TAVR procedures at RiverBend's Oregon Heart &amp;amp; Vascular Institute.</p> <p>TAVR long has been considered the aortic heart valve replacement surgery of last resort for people like Herbert Ball, 89, of Cottage Grove.</p> <p>A professor emeritus of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, Ball likes to take walks. But recently he noticed that he was becoming increasingly breathless and exhausted.</p> <p>A trip to his cardiologist, Dr. David Duke at RiverBend, diagnosed Ball's problem as aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the aortic valve opening. That narrowing, caused by an accumulation of calcium, weakens the aorta's ability to close tightly and pump efficiently.</p> <p>The aortic valve closes off the lower left chamber of the heart after the heart pumps. That closure prevents oxygen-rich blood from moving back into the heart, and instead ensures that the blood flows through arteries into the body. A defective aortic valve inhibits that crucial flow.</p> <p>Without replacement, an aortic valve failure eventually leads to heart failure and death. Cardiac disease continues to be the top cause of death in the world for both men and women.</p> <p>The professional group that sets clinical practice guidelines, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, traditionally has considered open-heart surgery the appropriate treatment for aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve. But in the summer of 2016, the group climbed aboard the TAVR train, noting in its newsletter: "TAVR was approved in 2011 for use in patients who are at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR). Recently, trials in intermediate-risk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent and possibly superior to SAVR. These findings have now opened the door to trials in low-risk patients, who make up about 80 percent of patients with aortic stenosis, according to an analysis of data in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database."</p> <p>Now the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is predicting an 80 percent shift from open-heart procedures to transcatheter procedures in the next decade.</p> <p>The shift already is happening &#8212; rapidly &#8212; in Oregon. Although RiverBend is the only Eugene-area hospital to offer TAVR, three hospitals in Portland and one in Medford also offer the procedure. Soon they will have competition from hospitals in Salem and Corvallis.</p> <p>SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON</p> <p>A quick comparison of open-heart surgery with TAVR shows why the rapid change:</p> <p>Open-heart surgery is done under general anesthesia and involves a six-inch midline chest incision, followed by a three- to four-hour open-heart operation. The patient is on life support while the new artificial valve is put into place. Risks include restarting the heart, and after the surgery the patient must be monitored in the intensive care unit and endure a lengthy recovery.</p> <p>Although Gory has performed many open heart surgeries in his 35 years as a cardiologist, he said he's never been more gratified by a surgical result than he is with the TAVR procedure he performs three or four times a week at RiverBend.</p> <p>His sentiments are echoed by fellow cardiologist Sudeshna Banerjee, who said she's excited at the prospect of seeing more younger heart patients take advantage of the procedure.</p> <p>"These patients aren't guinea pigs," she said, alluding to the surgery's proven benefits. "It can be right for younger people who have arterial blockages."</p> <p>In the hope of spreading the news about the suitability of the surgery to younger heart patients, RiverBend recently invited members of the media to witness a TAVR procedure.</p> <p>Retired professor Ball gave his written approval to be a living lesson on the procedure, which was photographed and filmed the morning of Dec. 14.</p> <p>BEFORE THE SURGERY</p> <p>"I am looking forward to it," he said in an interview a few days before the operation.</p> <p>A large cast of professionals, each with a highly specialized role, surrounded Ball, who was lightly sedated but still conscious.</p> <p>They were: an anesthesiologist; anesthesia technician; interventional cardiologist; a cardiothoracic or cardiovascular surgeon; one cardiovascular perfusionist to run the bypass machine if needed; a physician assistant; circulating nurse; scrub nurse; another operating room nurse; three or four cardiovascular technologists; an echo technologist who before, during and after the procedure obtains transthoracic and transesophageal echoes to measure effectiveness; one representative from the valve maker (RiverBend uses both FDA-approved kinds of valve); a valve coordinator nurse who is the keeper of the data, collecting it and assisting with diagnostic questions; and a cardiovascular operating room nurse manager, who circulates around like a stage manager, checking on everything.</p> <p>Becky Hammerschmith, the program manager of the Valve Center at RiverBend, was the one keeping an eye on the details for Ball the day of his TAVR &#8212; as she had since his surgery was scheduled.</p> <p>The night before, she made sure that he received treatment for an upset stomach and was ready for surgery. She answered his questions and attended to any details.</p> <p>Finally, everyone was in the operating room or an adjoining viewing area, watching what looked like a well-choreographed stage production.</p> <p>For Ball's surgery, a team from the manufacturers of the balloon-expandable Sapien XT aortic valve was on hand. The device is made of bovine &#8212; cow or bull &#8212; pericaridial tissue that forms a kind of peace symbol shape &#8212; the same configuration as the human aortic valve. This bovine vein is custom-fitted onto a glittering cobalt chromium frame that looks like a tiny crown. It's royally priced as well, costing about $25,000.</p> <p>This device is crimped impossibly small and threaded onto a catheter for insertion.</p> <p>Gory cut a small incision in the femoral artery in Ball's right leg and began threading the catheter toward his heart. But the calcium deposits were so thick, he quickly made an incision in the left femoral artery and began again.</p> <p>Ball began to say something.</p> <p>"Not just right now, Mr. Ball," Hammerschmith said, in a kind but authoritative tone. Ball relaxed. The catheter was making steady progress, visible on the array of computer monitors in the room. It was carrying the tightly furled valve toward its new home. It stopped at Ball's leaking, calcium-thickened aortic valve. Then, as the dramatic execution of a well-rehearsed act, the new valve was expanded, fusing with the old one. For an instant, the monitors showed Ball's heart pause, almost as if humming, and then the new valve began to steadily and strongly to take over the job of pumping his blood.</p> <p>Even the calcium had a role, helping to hold the new valve firmly in place.</p> <p>The surgery had taken less than an hour.</p> <p>A RETURN TO WALKING</p> <p>The day after his surgery, Hammerschmith had Ball walking. He went home on the third day, accompanied by his daughter, Alesia Ball, and was chatting amiably on the fourth day about his experience. Because Gory had to thread the catheter through Ball's left artery, "I have two groin areas that are tender now," Ball said, more in observation than complaint. "Too bad I can't go on display," referring to bruises on his legs that were turning bright and festive colors.</p> <p>But less than a week after the TAVR, he could detect other differences.</p> <p>"My body feels much better now," he said, much warmer.</p> <p>He was looking forward to rehab. He said the extra blood circulating through his body made his extremities tingle sometimes, but his energy level was good, except for the cold he'd caught.</p> <p>More than anything, Ball said, he wanted to return to his walks around the fountain in Bohemia Park in downtown Cottage Grove.</p> <p>"I want to get outside." But for now, he and his daughter will have another Christmas together.</p> <p>NEW SURGERY, SAME PRICE</p> <p>If there is one way that TAVR still isn't much different than standard open-heart surgery, it's costs.</p> <p>TAVR or standard aortic heart valve replacement surgery ranges from $70,000 to $200,000, depending on its complexity.</p> <p>For the elderly, Medicare covers most of the expense. Much of the TVAR cost for the surgery, Gory said, is because it still is accepted protocol to have an open-heart team standing by during TAVR procedures.</p> <p>Gory said that might soon change. He said the open-heart team at RiverBend never has had to spring into action in five years.</p> <p>But given that most of the TAVR patients to date already have overlapping health issues and advanced years, the mortality rate is about 20 percent. There is a risk of strokes.</p> <p>However, Gory predicts that as more TAVR programs are established, costs will decline.</p> <p>TAVR, he said, is a good example of how less is proving to be more.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Information from: The Register-Guard, <a href="http://www.registerguard.com" type="external">http://www.registerguard.com</a></p>

A faster, simpler heart valve surgery is gaining favor

https://apnews.com/amp/138aa62d3cf94cb6bb33967188a83cf4

2017-12-30

2least

SPRINGFIELD Ore AP 8212 A hightech heart valve replacement surgery that requires less anesthetic a smaller incision and faster operation and recovery time has been performed on more than 425 heart patients at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the past five years Now this transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure 8212 TAVR for short 8212 is available to an expanded group of heart patients the younger stronger ones Initially the only people we could put these valves into were the ones at highrisk for openheart surgery said cardiologist Dennis Gory one of the surgeons who perform TAVR procedures at RiverBends Oregon Heart ampamp Vascular Institute TAVR long has been considered the aortic heart valve replacement surgery of last resort for people like Herbert Ball 89 of Cottage Grove A professor emeritus of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan Kansas Ball likes to take walks But recently he noticed that he was becoming increasingly breathless and exhausted A trip to his cardiologist Dr David Duke at RiverBend diagnosed Balls problem as aortic stenosis a narrowing of the aortic valve opening That narrowing caused by an accumulation of calcium weakens the aortas ability to close tightly and pump efficiently The aortic valve closes off the lower left chamber of the heart after the heart pumps That closure prevents oxygenrich blood from moving back into the heart and instead ensures that the blood flows through arteries into the body A defective aortic valve inhibits that crucial flow Without replacement an aortic valve failure eventually leads to heart failure and death Cardiac disease continues to be the top cause of death in the world for both men and women The professional group that sets clinical practice guidelines the Society of Thoracic Surgeons traditionally has considered openheart surgery the appropriate treatment for aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve But in the summer of 2016 the group climbed aboard the TAVR train noting in its newsletter TAVR was approved in 2011 for use in patients who are at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement SAVR Recently trials in intermediaterisk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent and possibly superior to SAVR These findings have now opened the door to trials in lowrisk patients who make up about 80 percent of patients with aortic stenosis according to an analysis of data in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database Now the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is predicting an 80 percent shift from openheart procedures to transcatheter procedures in the next decade The shift already is happening 8212 rapidly 8212 in Oregon Although RiverBend is the only Eugenearea hospital to offer TAVR three hospitals in Portland and one in Medford also offer the procedure Soon they will have competition from hospitals in Salem and Corvallis SIDEBYSIDE COMPARISON A quick comparison of openheart surgery with TAVR shows why the rapid change Openheart surgery is done under general anesthesia and involves a sixinch midline chest incision followed by a three to fourhour openheart operation The patient is on life support while the new artificial valve is put into place Risks include restarting the heart and after the surgery the patient must be monitored in the intensive care unit and endure a lengthy recovery Although Gory has performed many open heart surgeries in his 35 years as a cardiologist he said hes never been more gratified by a surgical result than he is with the TAVR procedure he performs three or four times a week at RiverBend His sentiments are echoed by fellow cardiologist Sudeshna Banerjee who said shes excited at the prospect of seeing more younger heart patients take advantage of the procedure These patients arent guinea pigs she said alluding to the surgerys proven benefits It can be right for younger people who have arterial blockages In the hope of spreading the news about the suitability of the surgery to younger heart patients RiverBend recently invited members of the media to witness a TAVR procedure Retired professor Ball gave his written approval to be a living lesson on the procedure which was photographed and filmed the morning of Dec 14 BEFORE THE SURGERY I am looking forward to it he said in an interview a few days before the operation A large cast of professionals each with a highly specialized role surrounded Ball who was lightly sedated but still conscious They were an anesthesiologist anesthesia technician interventional cardiologist a cardiothoracic or cardiovascular surgeon one cardiovascular perfusionist to run the bypass machine if needed a physician assistant circulating nurse scrub nurse another operating room nurse three or four cardiovascular technologists an echo technologist who before during and after the procedure obtains transthoracic and transesophageal echoes to measure effectiveness one representative from the valve maker RiverBend uses both FDAapproved kinds of valve a valve coordinator nurse who is the keeper of the data collecting it and assisting with diagnostic questions and a cardiovascular operating room nurse manager who circulates around like a stage manager checking on everything Becky Hammerschmith the program manager of the Valve Center at RiverBend was the one keeping an eye on the details for Ball the day of his TAVR 8212 as she had since his surgery was scheduled The night before she made sure that he received treatment for an upset stomach and was ready for surgery She answered his questions and attended to any details Finally everyone was in the operating room or an adjoining viewing area watching what looked like a wellchoreographed stage production For Balls surgery a team from the manufacturers of the balloonexpandable Sapien XT aortic valve was on hand The device is made of bovine 8212 cow or bull 8212 pericaridial tissue that forms a kind of peace symbol shape 8212 the same configuration as the human aortic valve This bovine vein is customfitted onto a glittering cobalt chromium frame that looks like a tiny crown Its royally priced as well costing about 25000 This device is crimped impossibly small and threaded onto a catheter for insertion Gory cut a small incision in the femoral artery in Balls right leg and began threading the catheter toward his heart But the calcium deposits were so thick he quickly made an incision in the left femoral artery and began again Ball began to say something Not just right now Mr Ball Hammerschmith said in a kind but authoritative tone Ball relaxed The catheter was making steady progress visible on the array of computer monitors in the room It was carrying the tightly furled valve toward its new home It stopped at Balls leaking calciumthickened aortic valve Then as the dramatic execution of a wellrehearsed act the new valve was expanded fusing with the old one For an instant the monitors showed Balls heart pause almost as if humming and then the new valve began to steadily and strongly to take over the job of pumping his blood Even the calcium had a role helping to hold the new valve firmly in place The surgery had taken less than an hour A RETURN TO WALKING The day after his surgery Hammerschmith had Ball walking He went home on the third day accompanied by his daughter Alesia Ball and was chatting amiably on the fourth day about his experience Because Gory had to thread the catheter through Balls left artery I have two groin areas that are tender now Ball said more in observation than complaint Too bad I cant go on display referring to bruises on his legs that were turning bright and festive colors But less than a week after the TAVR he could detect other differences My body feels much better now he said much warmer He was looking forward to rehab He said the extra blood circulating through his body made his extremities tingle sometimes but his energy level was good except for the cold hed caught More than anything Ball said he wanted to return to his walks around the fountain in Bohemia Park in downtown Cottage Grove I want to get outside But for now he and his daughter will have another Christmas together NEW SURGERY SAME PRICE If there is one way that TAVR still isnt much different than standard openheart surgery its costs TAVR or standard aortic heart valve replacement surgery ranges from 70000 to 200000 depending on its complexity For the elderly Medicare covers most of the expense Much of the TVAR cost for the surgery Gory said is because it still is accepted protocol to have an openheart team standing by during TAVR procedures Gory said that might soon change He said the openheart team at RiverBend never has had to spring into action in five years But given that most of the TAVR patients to date already have overlapping health issues and advanced years the mortality rate is about 20 percent There is a risk of strokes However Gory predicts that as more TAVR programs are established costs will decline TAVR he said is a good example of how less is proving to be more ___ Information from The RegisterGuard httpwwwregisterguardcom SPRINGFIELD Ore AP 8212 A hightech heart valve replacement surgery that requires less anesthetic a smaller incision and faster operation and recovery time has been performed on more than 425 heart patients at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the past five years Now this transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure 8212 TAVR for short 8212 is available to an expanded group of heart patients the younger stronger ones Initially the only people we could put these valves into were the ones at highrisk for openheart surgery said cardiologist Dennis Gory one of the surgeons who perform TAVR procedures at RiverBends Oregon Heart ampamp Vascular Institute TAVR long has been considered the aortic heart valve replacement surgery of last resort for people like Herbert Ball 89 of Cottage Grove A professor emeritus of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan Kansas Ball likes to take walks But recently he noticed that he was becoming increasingly breathless and exhausted A trip to his cardiologist Dr David Duke at RiverBend diagnosed Balls problem as aortic stenosis a narrowing of the aortic valve opening That narrowing caused by an accumulation of calcium weakens the aortas ability to close tightly and pump efficiently The aortic valve closes off the lower left chamber of the heart after the heart pumps That closure prevents oxygenrich blood from moving back into the heart and instead ensures that the blood flows through arteries into the body A defective aortic valve inhibits that crucial flow Without replacement an aortic valve failure eventually leads to heart failure and death Cardiac disease continues to be the top cause of death in the world for both men and women The professional group that sets clinical practice guidelines the Society of Thoracic Surgeons traditionally has considered openheart surgery the appropriate treatment for aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve But in the summer of 2016 the group climbed aboard the TAVR train noting in its newsletter TAVR was approved in 2011 for use in patients who are at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement SAVR Recently trials in intermediaterisk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent and possibly superior to SAVR These findings have now opened the door to trials in lowrisk patients who make up about 80 percent of patients with aortic stenosis according to an analysis of data in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database Now the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is predicting an 80 percent shift from openheart procedures to transcatheter procedures in the next decade The shift already is happening 8212 rapidly 8212 in Oregon Although RiverBend is the only Eugenearea hospital to offer TAVR three hospitals in Portland and one in Medford also offer the procedure Soon they will have competition from hospitals in Salem and Corvallis SIDEBYSIDE COMPARISON A quick comparison of openheart surgery with TAVR shows why the rapid change Openheart surgery is done under general anesthesia and involves a sixinch midline chest incision followed by a three to fourhour openheart operation The patient is on life support while the new artificial valve is put into place Risks include restarting the heart and after the surgery the patient must be monitored in the intensive care unit and endure a lengthy recovery Although Gory has performed many open heart surgeries in his 35 years as a cardiologist he said hes never been more gratified by a surgical result than he is with the TAVR procedure he performs three or four times a week at RiverBend His sentiments are echoed by fellow cardiologist Sudeshna Banerjee who said shes excited at the prospect of seeing more younger heart patients take advantage of the procedure These patients arent guinea pigs she said alluding to the surgerys proven benefits It can be right for younger people who have arterial blockages In the hope of spreading the news about the suitability of the surgery to younger heart patients RiverBend recently invited members of the media to witness a TAVR procedure Retired professor Ball gave his written approval to be a living lesson on the procedure which was photographed and filmed the morning of Dec 14 BEFORE THE SURGERY I am looking forward to it he said in an interview a few days before the operation A large cast of professionals each with a highly specialized role surrounded Ball who was lightly sedated but still conscious They were an anesthesiologist anesthesia technician interventional cardiologist a cardiothoracic or cardiovascular surgeon one cardiovascular perfusionist to run the bypass machine if needed a physician assistant circulating nurse scrub nurse another operating room nurse three or four cardiovascular technologists an echo technologist who before during and after the procedure obtains transthoracic and transesophageal echoes to measure effectiveness one representative from the valve maker RiverBend uses both FDAapproved kinds of valve a valve coordinator nurse who is the keeper of the data collecting it and assisting with diagnostic questions and a cardiovascular operating room nurse manager who circulates around like a stage manager checking on everything Becky Hammerschmith the program manager of the Valve Center at RiverBend was the one keeping an eye on the details for Ball the day of his TAVR 8212 as she had since his surgery was scheduled The night before she made sure that he received treatment for an upset stomach and was ready for surgery She answered his questions and attended to any details Finally everyone was in the operating room or an adjoining viewing area watching what looked like a wellchoreographed stage production For Balls surgery a team from the manufacturers of the balloonexpandable Sapien XT aortic valve was on hand The device is made of bovine 8212 cow or bull 8212 pericaridial tissue that forms a kind of peace symbol shape 8212 the same configuration as the human aortic valve This bovine vein is customfitted onto a glittering cobalt chromium frame that looks like a tiny crown Its royally priced as well costing about 25000 This device is crimped impossibly small and threaded onto a catheter for insertion Gory cut a small incision in the femoral artery in Balls right leg and began threading the catheter toward his heart But the calcium deposits were so thick he quickly made an incision in the left femoral artery and began again Ball began to say something Not just right now Mr Ball Hammerschmith said in a kind but authoritative tone Ball relaxed The catheter was making steady progress visible on the array of computer monitors in the room It was carrying the tightly furled valve toward its new home It stopped at Balls leaking calciumthickened aortic valve Then as the dramatic execution of a wellrehearsed act the new valve was expanded fusing with the old one For an instant the monitors showed Balls heart pause almost as if humming and then the new valve began to steadily and strongly to take over the job of pumping his blood Even the calcium had a role helping to hold the new valve firmly in place The surgery had taken less than an hour A RETURN TO WALKING The day after his surgery Hammerschmith had Ball walking He went home on the third day accompanied by his daughter Alesia Ball and was chatting amiably on the fourth day about his experience Because Gory had to thread the catheter through Balls left artery I have two groin areas that are tender now Ball said more in observation than complaint Too bad I cant go on display referring to bruises on his legs that were turning bright and festive colors But less than a week after the TAVR he could detect other differences My body feels much better now he said much warmer He was looking forward to rehab He said the extra blood circulating through his body made his extremities tingle sometimes but his energy level was good except for the cold hed caught More than anything Ball said he wanted to return to his walks around the fountain in Bohemia Park in downtown Cottage Grove I want to get outside But for now he and his daughter will have another Christmas together NEW SURGERY SAME PRICE If there is one way that TAVR still isnt much different than standard openheart surgery its costs TAVR or standard aortic heart valve replacement surgery ranges from 70000 to 200000 depending on its complexity For the elderly Medicare covers most of the expense Much of the TVAR cost for the surgery Gory said is because it still is accepted protocol to have an openheart team standing by during TAVR procedures Gory said that might soon change He said the openheart team at RiverBend never has had to spring into action in five years But given that most of the TAVR patients to date already have overlapping health issues and advanced years the mortality rate is about 20 percent There is a risk of strokes However Gory predicts that as more TAVR programs are established costs will decline TAVR he said is a good example of how less is proving to be more ___ Information from The RegisterGuard httpwwwregisterguardcom

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<p>BOSTON (AP) - Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes, stealing the spotlight from LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 102-88 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.</p> <p>Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11-point lead, and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21. Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece, and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win.</p> <p>James had 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists, and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland, which lost for the fourth time in five games. Playing on back-to-back nights - the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Year's Eve - Cleveland shot 34.8 percent.</p> <p>It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener, when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race.</p> <p>WARRIORS 125, MAVERICKS 122</p> <p>DALLAS (AP) - Stephen Curry hit a long 3-pointer with three seconds to play, giving Golden State a hard-fought victory over Dallas.</p> <p>Curry finished with 32 points as Golden State's "Big Four" combined for 100 - and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight.</p> <p>Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each, and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds.</p> <p>Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points, including seven 3-pointers, and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21.</p> <p>Dallas, playing from behind most of the game, erased a 12-point deficit with 4:32 to play, tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes' jumper with 39.9 seconds left.</p> <p>THUNDER 133, LAKERS 96</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home, and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat.</p> <p>Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook, the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA.</p> <p>The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzma's 18 points. They shot just 41.3 percent from the field, while the Thunder shot 60.2 percent.</p> <p>76ERS 112, SPURS 106</p> <p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points, grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio.</p> <p>The 76ers snapped a 12-game losing streak to the Spurs. They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off short-handed San Antonio.</p> <p>Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns. Philadelphia's leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldn't shoot.</p> <p>Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills, and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play.</p> <p>The Sixers blew a 16-point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players. Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds.</p> <p>ROCKETS 116, MAGIC 98</p> <p>ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Gerald Green scored 27 points, Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden, routing Orlando.</p> <p>Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring.</p> <p>Green made his first five 3-point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets, who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter.</p> <p>Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State.</p> <p>Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots. Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlando's 12th loss in 13 games.</p> <p>WIZARDS 121, KNICKS 103</p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Bradley Beal scored 27 points, John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York.</p> <p>Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week, Beal followed his 39-point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington, which was won five of six.</p> <p>Marcin Gortat had a season-high 21 points, shooting 9 of 10 from the field.</p> <p>Michael Beasley had 20 points, including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks, who have lost six of seven.</p> <p>Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points. New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington.</p> <p>HEAT 111, PISTONS 104</p> <p>MIAMI (AP) - Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points, including a big layup with 39 seconds left, and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit.</p> <p>Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat, who are three games over .500 for the first time since April 2016.</p> <p>Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami, which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 51-27 from 3-point range. James Johnson scored 16, Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat.</p> <p>Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19.</p> <p>NETS 98, TIMBERWOLVES 97</p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) - Spencer Dinwiddie made the go-ahead jumper with 9.7 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points, leading Brooklyn over Minnesota.</p> <p>Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games.</p> <p>Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 2-0 in the new year - more wins than they had all last January, when they were 1-15. Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points.</p> <p>Butler finished with 30 points, mostly on the strength of 16-of-18 shooting at the foul line. Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>RAPTORS 124, BULLS 115</p> <p>CHICAGO (AP) - DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago.</p> <p>DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchise-record 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Year's Day. Held to nine in the first half this time, he scored 18 in the third quarter. He also shot 5 of 8 on 3-pointers and converted all 10 free throws.</p> <p>Wright had his first career double-double and hit four 3s.</p> <p>Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto. Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games.</p> <p>Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points, and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds. Nikola Mirotic scored 20, but the Bulls dropped their third straight.</p> <p>BUCKS 122, PACERS 101</p> <p>MILWAUKEE (AP) - Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds, Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana.</p> <p>Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups, shooting 12 of 18. He secured his 18th double-double of the season with 1:01 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth.</p> <p>Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo (24.9 points per game) for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury, the Pacers couldn't keep up. Domantas Sabonis had a career-high 24 points on 10-of-13 shooting for Indiana, which lost its season-high fifth in a row.</p> <p>The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3-point range.</p> <p>PELICANS 108, JAZZ 98</p> <p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah.</p> <p>Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 first-half points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans. DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds.</p> <p>Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points, and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench.</p> <p>The Pelicans' 3-point shooting was the difference, as New Orleans went 14 for 30 (46.7 percent) from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 (21.9 percent).</p> <p>The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 12-1 run, including seven points from Davis. He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out.</p> <p>NUGGETS 134, SUNS 111</p> <p>DENVER (AP) - Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix.</p> <p>Harris tied his career high in points, finishing 14 of 17 from the field. Nikola Jokic added 14 points, nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a two-game slide and improve to 13-4 at home this season.</p> <p>Wilson Chandler scored 17 points, Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13.</p> <p>Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points. Greg Monroe, filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler, had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>___</p> <p>More NBA basketball: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball</a></p> <p>BOSTON (AP) - Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes, stealing the spotlight from LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 102-88 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.</p> <p>Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11-point lead, and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21. Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece, and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win.</p> <p>James had 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists, and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland, which lost for the fourth time in five games. Playing on back-to-back nights - the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Year's Eve - Cleveland shot 34.8 percent.</p> <p>It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener, when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race.</p> <p>WARRIORS 125, MAVERICKS 122</p> <p>DALLAS (AP) - Stephen Curry hit a long 3-pointer with three seconds to play, giving Golden State a hard-fought victory over Dallas.</p> <p>Curry finished with 32 points as Golden State's "Big Four" combined for 100 - and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight.</p> <p>Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each, and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds.</p> <p>Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points, including seven 3-pointers, and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21.</p> <p>Dallas, playing from behind most of the game, erased a 12-point deficit with 4:32 to play, tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes' jumper with 39.9 seconds left.</p> <p>THUNDER 133, LAKERS 96</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home, and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat.</p> <p>Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook, the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA.</p> <p>The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzma's 18 points. They shot just 41.3 percent from the field, while the Thunder shot 60.2 percent.</p> <p>76ERS 112, SPURS 106</p> <p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points, grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio.</p> <p>The 76ers snapped a 12-game losing streak to the Spurs. They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off short-handed San Antonio.</p> <p>Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns. Philadelphia's leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldn't shoot.</p> <p>Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills, and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play.</p> <p>The Sixers blew a 16-point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players. Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds.</p> <p>ROCKETS 116, MAGIC 98</p> <p>ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Gerald Green scored 27 points, Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden, routing Orlando.</p> <p>Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring.</p> <p>Green made his first five 3-point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets, who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter.</p> <p>Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State.</p> <p>Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots. Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlando's 12th loss in 13 games.</p> <p>WIZARDS 121, KNICKS 103</p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Bradley Beal scored 27 points, John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York.</p> <p>Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week, Beal followed his 39-point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington, which was won five of six.</p> <p>Marcin Gortat had a season-high 21 points, shooting 9 of 10 from the field.</p> <p>Michael Beasley had 20 points, including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks, who have lost six of seven.</p> <p>Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points. New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington.</p> <p>HEAT 111, PISTONS 104</p> <p>MIAMI (AP) - Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points, including a big layup with 39 seconds left, and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit.</p> <p>Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat, who are three games over .500 for the first time since April 2016.</p> <p>Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami, which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 51-27 from 3-point range. James Johnson scored 16, Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat.</p> <p>Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19.</p> <p>NETS 98, TIMBERWOLVES 97</p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) - Spencer Dinwiddie made the go-ahead jumper with 9.7 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points, leading Brooklyn over Minnesota.</p> <p>Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games.</p> <p>Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 2-0 in the new year - more wins than they had all last January, when they were 1-15. Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points.</p> <p>Butler finished with 30 points, mostly on the strength of 16-of-18 shooting at the foul line. Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>RAPTORS 124, BULLS 115</p> <p>CHICAGO (AP) - DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago.</p> <p>DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchise-record 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Year's Day. Held to nine in the first half this time, he scored 18 in the third quarter. He also shot 5 of 8 on 3-pointers and converted all 10 free throws.</p> <p>Wright had his first career double-double and hit four 3s.</p> <p>Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto. Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games.</p> <p>Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points, and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds. Nikola Mirotic scored 20, but the Bulls dropped their third straight.</p> <p>BUCKS 122, PACERS 101</p> <p>MILWAUKEE (AP) - Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds, Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana.</p> <p>Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups, shooting 12 of 18. He secured his 18th double-double of the season with 1:01 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth.</p> <p>Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo (24.9 points per game) for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury, the Pacers couldn't keep up. Domantas Sabonis had a career-high 24 points on 10-of-13 shooting for Indiana, which lost its season-high fifth in a row.</p> <p>The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3-point range.</p> <p>PELICANS 108, JAZZ 98</p> <p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah.</p> <p>Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 first-half points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans. DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds.</p> <p>Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points, and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench.</p> <p>The Pelicans' 3-point shooting was the difference, as New Orleans went 14 for 30 (46.7 percent) from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 (21.9 percent).</p> <p>The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 12-1 run, including seven points from Davis. He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out.</p> <p>NUGGETS 134, SUNS 111</p> <p>DENVER (AP) - Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix.</p> <p>Harris tied his career high in points, finishing 14 of 17 from the field. Nikola Jokic added 14 points, nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a two-game slide and improve to 13-4 at home this season.</p> <p>Wilson Chandler scored 17 points, Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13.</p> <p>Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points. Greg Monroe, filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler, had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>___</p> <p>More NBA basketball: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball</a></p>

Rozier steals spotlight, leads Celtics past Cavaliers 102-88

https://apnews.com/amp/24ff67f4d7854dbd8bc17560661d58b1

2018-01-04

2least

BOSTON AP Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes stealing the spotlight from LeBron James Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 10288 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11point lead and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21 Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win James had 19 points seven rebounds and six assists and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland which lost for the fourth time in five games Playing on backtoback nights the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Years Eve Cleveland shot 348 percent It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race WARRIORS 125 MAVERICKS 122 DALLAS AP Stephen Curry hit a long 3pointer with three seconds to play giving Golden State a hardfought victory over Dallas Curry finished with 32 points as Golden States Big Four combined for 100 and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points including seven 3pointers and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21 Dallas playing from behind most of the game erased a 12point deficit with 432 to play tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes jumper with 399 seconds left THUNDER 133 LAKERS 96 LOS ANGELES AP Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzmas 18 points They shot just 413 percent from the field while the Thunder shot 602 percent 76ERS 112 SPURS 106 PHILADELPHIA AP Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio The 76ers snapped a 12game losing streak to the Spurs They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off shorthanded San Antonio Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns Philadelphias leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldnt shoot Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play The Sixers blew a 16point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds ROCKETS 116 MAGIC 98 ORLANDO Fla AP Gerald Green scored 27 points Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden routing Orlando Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring Green made his first five 3point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlandos 12th loss in 13 games WIZARDS 121 KNICKS 103 WASHINGTON AP Bradley Beal scored 27 points John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week Beal followed his 39point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington which was won five of six Marcin Gortat had a seasonhigh 21 points shooting 9 of 10 from the field Michael Beasley had 20 points including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks who have lost six of seven Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington HEAT 111 PISTONS 104 MIAMI AP Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points including a big layup with 39 seconds left and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat who are three games over 500 for the first time since April 2016 Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 5127 from 3point range James Johnson scored 16 Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19 NETS 98 TIMBERWOLVES 97 NEW YORK AP Spencer Dinwiddie made the goahead jumper with 97 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points leading Brooklyn over Minnesota Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 20 in the new year more wins than they had all last January when they were 115 Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points Butler finished with 30 points mostly on the strength of 16of18 shooting at the foul line Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and KarlAnthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds RAPTORS 124 BULLS 115 CHICAGO AP DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchiserecord 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Years Day Held to nine in the first half this time he scored 18 in the third quarter He also shot 5 of 8 on 3pointers and converted all 10 free throws Wright had his first career doubledouble and hit four 3s Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds Nikola Mirotic scored 20 but the Bulls dropped their third straight BUCKS 122 PACERS 101 MILWAUKEE AP Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups shooting 12 of 18 He secured his 18th doubledouble of the season with 101 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo 249 points per game for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury the Pacers couldnt keep up Domantas Sabonis had a careerhigh 24 points on 10of13 shooting for Indiana which lost its seasonhigh fifth in a row The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3point range PELICANS 108 JAZZ 98 SALT LAKE CITY AP Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 firsthalf points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench The Pelicans 3point shooting was the difference as New Orleans went 14 for 30 467 percent from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 219 percent The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 121 run including seven points from Davis He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out NUGGETS 134 SUNS 111 DENVER AP Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix Harris tied his career high in points finishing 14 of 17 from the field Nikola Jokic added 14 points nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a twogame slide and improve to 134 at home this season Wilson Chandler scored 17 points Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13 Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points Greg Monroe filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler had 16 points and 10 rebounds ___ More NBA basketball httpsapnewscomtagNBAbasketball BOSTON AP Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes stealing the spotlight from LeBron James Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 10288 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11point lead and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21 Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win James had 19 points seven rebounds and six assists and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland which lost for the fourth time in five games Playing on backtoback nights the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Years Eve Cleveland shot 348 percent It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race WARRIORS 125 MAVERICKS 122 DALLAS AP Stephen Curry hit a long 3pointer with three seconds to play giving Golden State a hardfought victory over Dallas Curry finished with 32 points as Golden States Big Four combined for 100 and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points including seven 3pointers and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21 Dallas playing from behind most of the game erased a 12point deficit with 432 to play tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes jumper with 399 seconds left THUNDER 133 LAKERS 96 LOS ANGELES AP Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzmas 18 points They shot just 413 percent from the field while the Thunder shot 602 percent 76ERS 112 SPURS 106 PHILADELPHIA AP Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio The 76ers snapped a 12game losing streak to the Spurs They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off shorthanded San Antonio Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns Philadelphias leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldnt shoot Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play The Sixers blew a 16point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds ROCKETS 116 MAGIC 98 ORLANDO Fla AP Gerald Green scored 27 points Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden routing Orlando Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring Green made his first five 3point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlandos 12th loss in 13 games WIZARDS 121 KNICKS 103 WASHINGTON AP Bradley Beal scored 27 points John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week Beal followed his 39point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington which was won five of six Marcin Gortat had a seasonhigh 21 points shooting 9 of 10 from the field Michael Beasley had 20 points including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks who have lost six of seven Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington HEAT 111 PISTONS 104 MIAMI AP Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points including a big layup with 39 seconds left and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat who are three games over 500 for the first time since April 2016 Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 5127 from 3point range James Johnson scored 16 Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19 NETS 98 TIMBERWOLVES 97 NEW YORK AP Spencer Dinwiddie made the goahead jumper with 97 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points leading Brooklyn over Minnesota Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 20 in the new year more wins than they had all last January when they were 115 Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points Butler finished with 30 points mostly on the strength of 16of18 shooting at the foul line Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and KarlAnthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds RAPTORS 124 BULLS 115 CHICAGO AP DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchiserecord 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Years Day Held to nine in the first half this time he scored 18 in the third quarter He also shot 5 of 8 on 3pointers and converted all 10 free throws Wright had his first career doubledouble and hit four 3s Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds Nikola Mirotic scored 20 but the Bulls dropped their third straight BUCKS 122 PACERS 101 MILWAUKEE AP Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups shooting 12 of 18 He secured his 18th doubledouble of the season with 101 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo 249 points per game for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury the Pacers couldnt keep up Domantas Sabonis had a careerhigh 24 points on 10of13 shooting for Indiana which lost its seasonhigh fifth in a row The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3point range PELICANS 108 JAZZ 98 SALT LAKE CITY AP Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 firsthalf points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench The Pelicans 3point shooting was the difference as New Orleans went 14 for 30 467 percent from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 219 percent The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 121 run including seven points from Davis He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out NUGGETS 134 SUNS 111 DENVER AP Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix Harris tied his career high in points finishing 14 of 17 from the field Nikola Jokic added 14 points nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a twogame slide and improve to 134 at home this season Wilson Chandler scored 17 points Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13 Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points Greg Monroe filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler had 16 points and 10 rebounds ___ More NBA basketball httpsapnewscomtagNBAbasketball

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<p>BOSTON (AP) - Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes, stealing the spotlight from LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 102-88 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.</p> <p>Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11-point lead, and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21. Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece, and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win.</p> <p>James had 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists, and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland, which lost for the fourth time in five games. Playing on back-to-back nights - the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Year's Eve - Cleveland shot 34.8 percent.</p> <p>It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener, when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race.</p> <p>WARRIORS 125, MAVERICKS 122</p> <p>DALLAS (AP) - Stephen Curry hit a long 3-pointer with three seconds to play, giving Golden State a hard-fought victory over Dallas.</p> <p>Curry finished with 32 points as Golden State's "Big Four" combined for 100 - and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight.</p> <p>Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each, and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds.</p> <p>Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points, including seven 3-pointers, and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21.</p> <p>Dallas, playing from behind most of the game, erased a 12-point deficit with 4:32 to play, tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes' jumper with 39.9 seconds left.</p> <p>THUNDER 133, LAKERS 96</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home, and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat.</p> <p>Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook, the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA.</p> <p>The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzma's 18 points. They shot just 41.3 percent from the field, while the Thunder shot 60.2 percent.</p> <p>76ERS 112, SPURS 106</p> <p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points, grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio.</p> <p>The 76ers snapped a 12-game losing streak to the Spurs. They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off short-handed San Antonio.</p> <p>Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns. Philadelphia's leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldn't shoot.</p> <p>Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills, and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play.</p> <p>The Sixers blew a 16-point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players. Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds.</p> <p>ROCKETS 116, MAGIC 98</p> <p>ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Gerald Green scored 27 points, Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden, routing Orlando.</p> <p>Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring.</p> <p>Green made his first five 3-point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets, who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter.</p> <p>Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State.</p> <p>Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots. Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlando's 12th loss in 13 games.</p> <p>WIZARDS 121, KNICKS 103</p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Bradley Beal scored 27 points, John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York.</p> <p>Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week, Beal followed his 39-point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington, which was won five of six.</p> <p>Marcin Gortat had a season-high 21 points, shooting 9 of 10 from the field.</p> <p>Michael Beasley had 20 points, including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks, who have lost six of seven.</p> <p>Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points. New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington.</p> <p>HEAT 111, PISTONS 104</p> <p>MIAMI (AP) - Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points, including a big layup with 39 seconds left, and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit.</p> <p>Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat, who are three games over .500 for the first time since April 2016.</p> <p>Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami, which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 51-27 from 3-point range. James Johnson scored 16, Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat.</p> <p>Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19.</p> <p>NETS 98, TIMBERWOLVES 97</p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) - Spencer Dinwiddie made the go-ahead jumper with 9.7 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points, leading Brooklyn over Minnesota.</p> <p>Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games.</p> <p>Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 2-0 in the new year - more wins than they had all last January, when they were 1-15. Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points.</p> <p>Butler finished with 30 points, mostly on the strength of 16-of-18 shooting at the foul line. Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>RAPTORS 124, BULLS 115</p> <p>CHICAGO (AP) - DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago.</p> <p>DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchise-record 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Year's Day. Held to nine in the first half this time, he scored 18 in the third quarter. He also shot 5 of 8 on 3-pointers and converted all 10 free throws.</p> <p>Wright had his first career double-double and hit four 3s.</p> <p>Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto. Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games.</p> <p>Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points, and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds. Nikola Mirotic scored 20, but the Bulls dropped their third straight.</p> <p>BUCKS 122, PACERS 101</p> <p>MILWAUKEE (AP) - Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds, Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana.</p> <p>Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups, shooting 12 of 18. He secured his 18th double-double of the season with 1:01 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth.</p> <p>Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo (24.9 points per game) for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury, the Pacers couldn't keep up. Domantas Sabonis had a career-high 24 points on 10-of-13 shooting for Indiana, which lost its season-high fifth in a row.</p> <p>The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3-point range.</p> <p>PELICANS 108, JAZZ 98</p> <p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah.</p> <p>Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 first-half points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans. DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds.</p> <p>Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points, and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench.</p> <p>The Pelicans? 3-point shooting was the difference, as New Orleans went 14 for 30 (46.7 percent) from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 (21.9 percent).</p> <p>The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 12-1 run, including seven points from Davis. He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out.</p> <p>NUGGETS 134, SUNS 111</p> <p>DENVER (AP) - Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix.</p> <p>Harris tied his career high in points, finishing 14 of 17 from the field. Nikola Jokic added 14 points, nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a two-game slide and improve to 13-4 at home this season.</p> <p>Wilson Chandler scored 17 points, Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13.</p> <p>Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points. Greg Monroe, filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler, had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>___</p> <p>More NBA basketball: <a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball</a></p> <p>BOSTON (AP) - Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes, stealing the spotlight from LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 102-88 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.</p> <p>Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11-point lead, and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21. Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece, and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win.</p> <p>James had 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists, and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland, which lost for the fourth time in five games. Playing on back-to-back nights - the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Year's Eve - Cleveland shot 34.8 percent.</p> <p>It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener, when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race.</p> <p>WARRIORS 125, MAVERICKS 122</p> <p>DALLAS (AP) - Stephen Curry hit a long 3-pointer with three seconds to play, giving Golden State a hard-fought victory over Dallas.</p> <p>Curry finished with 32 points as Golden State's "Big Four" combined for 100 - and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight.</p> <p>Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each, and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds.</p> <p>Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points, including seven 3-pointers, and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21.</p> <p>Dallas, playing from behind most of the game, erased a 12-point deficit with 4:32 to play, tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes' jumper with 39.9 seconds left.</p> <p>THUNDER 133, LAKERS 96</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home, and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat.</p> <p>Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook, the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA.</p> <p>The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzma's 18 points. They shot just 41.3 percent from the field, while the Thunder shot 60.2 percent.</p> <p>76ERS 112, SPURS 106</p> <p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points, grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio.</p> <p>The 76ers snapped a 12-game losing streak to the Spurs. They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off short-handed San Antonio.</p> <p>Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns. Philadelphia's leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldn't shoot.</p> <p>Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills, and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play.</p> <p>The Sixers blew a 16-point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players. Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds.</p> <p>ROCKETS 116, MAGIC 98</p> <p>ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Gerald Green scored 27 points, Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden, routing Orlando.</p> <p>Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring.</p> <p>Green made his first five 3-point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets, who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter.</p> <p>Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State.</p> <p>Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots. Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlando's 12th loss in 13 games.</p> <p>WIZARDS 121, KNICKS 103</p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Bradley Beal scored 27 points, John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York.</p> <p>Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week, Beal followed his 39-point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington, which was won five of six.</p> <p>Marcin Gortat had a season-high 21 points, shooting 9 of 10 from the field.</p> <p>Michael Beasley had 20 points, including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks, who have lost six of seven.</p> <p>Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points. New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington.</p> <p>HEAT 111, PISTONS 104</p> <p>MIAMI (AP) - Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points, including a big layup with 39 seconds left, and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit.</p> <p>Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat, who are three games over .500 for the first time since April 2016.</p> <p>Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami, which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 51-27 from 3-point range. James Johnson scored 16, Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat.</p> <p>Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19.</p> <p>NETS 98, TIMBERWOLVES 97</p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) - Spencer Dinwiddie made the go-ahead jumper with 9.7 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points, leading Brooklyn over Minnesota.</p> <p>Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games.</p> <p>Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 2-0 in the new year - more wins than they had all last January, when they were 1-15. Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points.</p> <p>Butler finished with 30 points, mostly on the strength of 16-of-18 shooting at the foul line. Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>RAPTORS 124, BULLS 115</p> <p>CHICAGO (AP) - DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago.</p> <p>DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchise-record 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Year's Day. Held to nine in the first half this time, he scored 18 in the third quarter. He also shot 5 of 8 on 3-pointers and converted all 10 free throws.</p> <p>Wright had his first career double-double and hit four 3s.</p> <p>Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto. Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games.</p> <p>Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points, and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds. Nikola Mirotic scored 20, but the Bulls dropped their third straight.</p> <p>BUCKS 122, PACERS 101</p> <p>MILWAUKEE (AP) - Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds, Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana.</p> <p>Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups, shooting 12 of 18. He secured his 18th double-double of the season with 1:01 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth.</p> <p>Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo (24.9 points per game) for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury, the Pacers couldn't keep up. Domantas Sabonis had a career-high 24 points on 10-of-13 shooting for Indiana, which lost its season-high fifth in a row.</p> <p>The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3-point range.</p> <p>PELICANS 108, JAZZ 98</p> <p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah.</p> <p>Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 first-half points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans. DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds.</p> <p>Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points, and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench.</p> <p>The Pelicans? 3-point shooting was the difference, as New Orleans went 14 for 30 (46.7 percent) from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 (21.9 percent).</p> <p>The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 12-1 run, including seven points from Davis. He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out.</p> <p>NUGGETS 134, SUNS 111</p> <p>DENVER (AP) - Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix.</p> <p>Harris tied his career high in points, finishing 14 of 17 from the field. Nikola Jokic added 14 points, nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a two-game slide and improve to 13-4 at home this season.</p> <p>Wilson Chandler scored 17 points, Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13.</p> <p>Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points. Greg Monroe, filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler, had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>___</p> <p>More NBA basketball: <a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball</a></p>

Rozier steals spotlight, leads Celtics past Cavaliers 102-88

https://apnews.com/24ff67f4d7854dbd8bc17560661d58b1

2018-01-04

2least

BOSTON AP Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes stealing the spotlight from LeBron James Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 10288 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11point lead and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21 Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win James had 19 points seven rebounds and six assists and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland which lost for the fourth time in five games Playing on backtoback nights the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Years Eve Cleveland shot 348 percent It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race WARRIORS 125 MAVERICKS 122 DALLAS AP Stephen Curry hit a long 3pointer with three seconds to play giving Golden State a hardfought victory over Dallas Curry finished with 32 points as Golden States Big Four combined for 100 and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points including seven 3pointers and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21 Dallas playing from behind most of the game erased a 12point deficit with 432 to play tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes jumper with 399 seconds left THUNDER 133 LAKERS 96 LOS ANGELES AP Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzmas 18 points They shot just 413 percent from the field while the Thunder shot 602 percent 76ERS 112 SPURS 106 PHILADELPHIA AP Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio The 76ers snapped a 12game losing streak to the Spurs They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off shorthanded San Antonio Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns Philadelphias leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldnt shoot Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play The Sixers blew a 16point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds ROCKETS 116 MAGIC 98 ORLANDO Fla AP Gerald Green scored 27 points Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden routing Orlando Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring Green made his first five 3point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlandos 12th loss in 13 games WIZARDS 121 KNICKS 103 WASHINGTON AP Bradley Beal scored 27 points John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week Beal followed his 39point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington which was won five of six Marcin Gortat had a seasonhigh 21 points shooting 9 of 10 from the field Michael Beasley had 20 points including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks who have lost six of seven Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington HEAT 111 PISTONS 104 MIAMI AP Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points including a big layup with 39 seconds left and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat who are three games over 500 for the first time since April 2016 Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 5127 from 3point range James Johnson scored 16 Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19 NETS 98 TIMBERWOLVES 97 NEW YORK AP Spencer Dinwiddie made the goahead jumper with 97 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points leading Brooklyn over Minnesota Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 20 in the new year more wins than they had all last January when they were 115 Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points Butler finished with 30 points mostly on the strength of 16of18 shooting at the foul line Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and KarlAnthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds RAPTORS 124 BULLS 115 CHICAGO AP DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchiserecord 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Years Day Held to nine in the first half this time he scored 18 in the third quarter He also shot 5 of 8 on 3pointers and converted all 10 free throws Wright had his first career doubledouble and hit four 3s Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds Nikola Mirotic scored 20 but the Bulls dropped their third straight BUCKS 122 PACERS 101 MILWAUKEE AP Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups shooting 12 of 18 He secured his 18th doubledouble of the season with 101 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo 249 points per game for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury the Pacers couldnt keep up Domantas Sabonis had a careerhigh 24 points on 10of13 shooting for Indiana which lost its seasonhigh fifth in a row The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3point range PELICANS 108 JAZZ 98 SALT LAKE CITY AP Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 firsthalf points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench The Pelicans 3point shooting was the difference as New Orleans went 14 for 30 467 percent from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 219 percent The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 121 run including seven points from Davis He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out NUGGETS 134 SUNS 111 DENVER AP Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix Harris tied his career high in points finishing 14 of 17 from the field Nikola Jokic added 14 points nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a twogame slide and improve to 134 at home this season Wilson Chandler scored 17 points Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13 Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points Greg Monroe filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler had 16 points and 10 rebounds ___ More NBA basketball httpsapnewscomtagNBAbasketball BOSTON AP Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes stealing the spotlight from LeBron James Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 10288 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11point lead and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21 Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win James had 19 points seven rebounds and six assists and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland which lost for the fourth time in five games Playing on backtoback nights the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Years Eve Cleveland shot 348 percent It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race WARRIORS 125 MAVERICKS 122 DALLAS AP Stephen Curry hit a long 3pointer with three seconds to play giving Golden State a hardfought victory over Dallas Curry finished with 32 points as Golden States Big Four combined for 100 and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points including seven 3pointers and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21 Dallas playing from behind most of the game erased a 12point deficit with 432 to play tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes jumper with 399 seconds left THUNDER 133 LAKERS 96 LOS ANGELES AP Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzmas 18 points They shot just 413 percent from the field while the Thunder shot 602 percent 76ERS 112 SPURS 106 PHILADELPHIA AP Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio The 76ers snapped a 12game losing streak to the Spurs They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off shorthanded San Antonio Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns Philadelphias leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldnt shoot Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play The Sixers blew a 16point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds ROCKETS 116 MAGIC 98 ORLANDO Fla AP Gerald Green scored 27 points Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden routing Orlando Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring Green made his first five 3point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlandos 12th loss in 13 games WIZARDS 121 KNICKS 103 WASHINGTON AP Bradley Beal scored 27 points John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week Beal followed his 39point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington which was won five of six Marcin Gortat had a seasonhigh 21 points shooting 9 of 10 from the field Michael Beasley had 20 points including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks who have lost six of seven Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington HEAT 111 PISTONS 104 MIAMI AP Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points including a big layup with 39 seconds left and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat who are three games over 500 for the first time since April 2016 Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 5127 from 3point range James Johnson scored 16 Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19 NETS 98 TIMBERWOLVES 97 NEW YORK AP Spencer Dinwiddie made the goahead jumper with 97 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points leading Brooklyn over Minnesota Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 20 in the new year more wins than they had all last January when they were 115 Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points Butler finished with 30 points mostly on the strength of 16of18 shooting at the foul line Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and KarlAnthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds RAPTORS 124 BULLS 115 CHICAGO AP DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchiserecord 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Years Day Held to nine in the first half this time he scored 18 in the third quarter He also shot 5 of 8 on 3pointers and converted all 10 free throws Wright had his first career doubledouble and hit four 3s Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds Nikola Mirotic scored 20 but the Bulls dropped their third straight BUCKS 122 PACERS 101 MILWAUKEE AP Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups shooting 12 of 18 He secured his 18th doubledouble of the season with 101 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo 249 points per game for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury the Pacers couldnt keep up Domantas Sabonis had a careerhigh 24 points on 10of13 shooting for Indiana which lost its seasonhigh fifth in a row The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3point range PELICANS 108 JAZZ 98 SALT LAKE CITY AP Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 firsthalf points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench The Pelicans 3point shooting was the difference as New Orleans went 14 for 30 467 percent from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 219 percent The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 121 run including seven points from Davis He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out NUGGETS 134 SUNS 111 DENVER AP Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix Harris tied his career high in points finishing 14 of 17 from the field Nikola Jokic added 14 points nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a twogame slide and improve to 134 at home this season Wilson Chandler scored 17 points Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13 Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points Greg Monroe filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler had 16 points and 10 rebounds ___ More NBA basketball httpsapnewscomtagNBAbasketball

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<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Anglo American ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAL.L" type="external">AAL.L</a>) beat expectations on Thursday with a 5 percent increase in production in 2017, driven by increases in diamond and iron ore output, while base metal copper stagnated.</p> The Anglo American logo is seen in Rusternburg October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo <p>Many miners have struggled to maintain output as ore bodies have aged and exploration budgets collapsed as a result of the commodity markets downturn of 2015-16.</p> <p>Copper is particularly in demand because of its use for both old and new technology, such as electric vehicles.</p> <p>Anglo&#8217;s Platinum and palladium, iron ore and coking coal output fell between 4 and 8 percent in the fourth quarter and were flat or higher for the full year.</p> <p>But the ramp-up of its Gahcho Kue mine in Canada increased Anglo&#8217;s diamond production by 22 percent.</p> <p>Anglo Chief Executive Mark Cutifani said in a statement the rise in overall output &#8220;was achieved despite the removal of unprofitable and higher cost platinum and metallurgical coal&#8221;.</p> <p>BMO Capital Markets in a note said the results were solid and it expected the company to continue focusing on incremental improvements to drive productivity.</p> <p>South Africa, Anglo&#8217;s central focus, has had particular issues with efficiency at deep, old mines and platinum prices have suffered from falling demand because of the shift away from diesel cars, which use the metal to reduce emissions.</p> <p>Anglo mothballed its Bokoni mine, which contributed to a 4 percent fall in platinum output in the last quarter.</p> <p>Platinum XPT= prices peaked at above $2,000 an ounce a decade ago and hit 7-year lows at the start of 2016. Since then they have recovered by around 25 percent.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAL.L" type="external">Anglo American PLC</a> 1789.4 AAL.L London Stock Exchange +57.80 (+3.34%) AAL.L KAZ.L <p>Productivity improvements boosted iron ore output at South Africa&#8217;s Kumba by 8 percent for the full year, but in Brazil, where annual output fell 4 percent, Anglo is still negotiating for a licence to increase iron ore production.</p> <p>The perception that copper CMCU3 is one of the most sought-after minerals has pushed prices more than 50 percent higher since the lows of late 2015/early 2016.</p> <p>Kazakh-focused copper miner Kaz Minerals ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=KAZ.L" type="external">KAZ.L</a>) is among those bringing on new production and announced an 80 percent full-year increase in output to 259,000 tonnes.</p> <p>Analysts said the results were below expectations following maintenance and the realization some of its copper ore was lower grade than previously thought.</p> <p>Kaz Minerals share price was down more than 3 percent by 0900 GMT, while Anglo American was trading around flat, in line with the broader index. .FTNMX1770</p> <p>Additional reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely and Alexander Smith</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain&#8217;s response on Wednesday to the nerve agent attack on a Russian double agent in southern England does not go far enough and senior Kremlin figures should be targeted with sanctions, the widow of a Russian dissident murdered in London said.</p> <p>Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament Britain would expel 23 Russian diplomats and freeze Russian state assets wherever there was evidence of a threat as part of measures against Moscow which she blames for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal.</p> <p>Russia denies any involvement in the March 4 attack on Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, who are both critically ill in hospital, and has accused Britain of unjustified action.</p> <p>&#8220;I think something more should be done. It&#8217;s not enough,&#8221; Marina Litvinenko told Reuters in an interview. Her husband Alexander, a former KGB agent, was murdered with the rare radioactive isotope polonium in London in 2006.</p> <p>&#8220;Even though (the reaction) is stronger than it was in (the) case of my husband, it is still not enough.&#8221;</p> <p>British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is among those who have linked the Skirpal case to that of Litvinenko, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.</p> <p>A public inquiry in 2016 concluded Litvinenko&#8217;s murder was carried out by two Russians, one of them a former KGB bodyguard who became a member of the Russian parliament, as part of an operation probably ordered by Putin, allegations Moscow rejects.</p> <p>After that inquiry, Britain expelled four diplomats and May told lawmakers that this time the response needed to be firmer. While Marina Litvinenko said the reaction had been faster and more direct than two years ago, it was not tough enough.</p> <p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t need to play with the same rules as Putin, because you&#8217;ll never win,&#8221; she told Reuters. &#8220;But you don&#8217;t need to show you&#8217;re soft and you are accepting everything that happened in your country even after what happened to my husband.</p> Marina Litvinenko, widow of former Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko, poses for a portrait during an interview with Reuters in London, Britain, March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville <p>&#8220;You need to be more serious and (do) something that maybe Putin doesn&#8217;t expect.&#8221;</p> <p>She said Britain should look at wider and bigger personal sanctions beyond those in the U.S. Magnitsky Act which imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very important to make severe targeted sanctions,&#8221; she said, adding that sanctions against the Russian state would be portrayed as an attack on ordinary Russians.</p> <p>She had to battle with the British authorities to hold the public inquiry into her husband&#8217;s death which May - then interior minister - had initially ruled out as Britain sought better relations with Russia.</p> <p>&#8220;They tried to protect this relationship between Russia and (the) UK. But Russia&#8217;s president and these people who are in power in Russia did not accept it. It was softness, even weakness,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>She hopes Britain will have learned and May&#8217;s personal involvement in her husband&#8217;s case will have hardened her resolve.</p> <p>&#8220;I believe she (...) understands (better) who Mr Putin is,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>She said other Russian dissidents living in Britain still did not feel very secure and it was hard not to see the death in London on Monday of another Putin critic, Nikolai Glushkov, 68, as suspicious.</p> <p>Counter-terrorism police are now investigating his death although they said it was not thought to be linked to the attack on the Skripals.</p> <p>She said it was hard to accept that Glushkov&#8217;s death was only due to natural causes.</p> <p>Editing by Elisabeth O'Leary and Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is to kick out 23 Russian diplomats, the biggest such expulsion since the Cold War, over a chemical attack on a former Russian double agent in England that Prime Minister Theresa May blamed on Moscow.</p> <p>May pointed the finger firmly at Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday as she outlined retaliatory measures in parliament.</p> <p>Russia denies any involvement in the attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who have been critical in hospital since they were found unconscious on March 4 on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury.</p> <p>May announced the potential freezing of Russian state assets that pose a security threat, new laws to counter hostile state activity and a downgrading of Britain&#8217;s attendance at the soccer World Cup in Russia this summer.</p> <p>She had given Moscow until midnight on Tuesday to explain how the Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent came to be deployed on the streets of Salisbury, saying either the Russian state was responsible or had lost control of a stock of the substance.</p> <p>&#8220;Their response demonstrated complete disdain for the gravity of these events,&#8221; May said in her statement to parliament. &#8220;They have treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance.&#8221;</p> <p>The only possible conclusion was that the Russian state was behind the attempted murder of the Skripals and the harm that befell Nick Bailey, a police officer who is in a serious condition after being exposed to the nerve agent, May said.</p> <p>&#8220;This represents an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow would swiftly retaliate against the British measures which had been undertaken for &#8220;short-sighted political ends&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;The British government has made a choice in favor of confrontation with Russia,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>Russia&#8217;s Ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, on Wednesday repeated Moscow&#8217;s denial that it had anything to do with the poisoning and called for proof of its involvement.</p> <p>&#8220;We demand that material proof be provided of allegedly found Russian trace,&#8221; Nebenzia said at a U.N. Security Council meeting on the poisoning.</p> MAY DENOUNCES PUTIN <p>The two governments blamed each other for the crisis.</p> <p>&#8220;Many of us looked at a post-Soviet Russia with hope. We wanted a better relationship and it is tragic that President Putin has chosen to act in this way,&#8221; said May.</p> <p>Britain, which has received statements of support from the United States, the European Union and NATO, has said it would seek to coordinate an international response to the attack.</p> <p>U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the Security Council meeting called by Britain that Washington believes Russia was responsible, and she urged the council to take &#8220;immediate, concrete measures to address this now.&#8221;</p> <p>In a phone call between May and U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the two leaders agreed that Russia must provide &#8220;unambiguous answers&#8221; about how a Russian-developed chemical agent came to be used in the attack.</p> Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the House of Commons on her government's reaction to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, in London, March 14, 2018. Parliament TV handout via REUTERS <p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she took the British findings seriously and there would be a common European stance, although &#8220;we must still talk responsibly&#8221; with Russia despite differences of opinion.</p> <p>A French government spokesman said Paris was awaiting proof before deciding if it would act in solidarity with London.</p> <p>Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britain before being arrested in Moscow and later jailed in 2006. He was freed under a spy swap deal in 2010 and took refuge in Britain.</p> <p>The attack on him was likened in Britain to the killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of Putin, who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium 210. Russia refused to extradite the two Russians identified by Britain as the killers.</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s response to the Litvinenko affair, which included the expulsion of four Russian diplomats, was criticized domestically as too weak, and many in British politics and media have called for a much tougher response to the Skripal attack.</p> <p>Some Russia experts cast doubt over whether May&#8217;s actions met that test.</p> Slideshow (15 Images) <p>&#8220;This is certainly not a strong response from Britain - it is a mild response,&#8221; said Mathieu Boul&#232;gue, a Russia expert at Chatham House think-tank in London. &#8220;It will not deter Russia because Britain is showing too little steel.&#8221;</p> <p>May said the 23 diplomats, identified as undeclared intelligence officers, had one week to leave and Russian intelligence capabilities in Britain would be damaged for years.</p> <p>May also said Britain would revoke an invitation to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to visit and suspend planned high level bilateral contacts between London and Moscow. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said Lavrov had not accepted the invitation to visit Britain anyway.</p> <p>On the soccer World Cup, which Russia is hosting in June and July, May said no ministers or members of the British royal family would attend.</p> &#8216;CORRUPT ELITES&#8217; <p>But unlike when the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea, May did not name Russian individuals or companies that would be specifically targeted by sanctions.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-usa-haley/u-s-ambassador-haley-tells-u-n-russia-responsible-for-chemical-attack-idUSKCN1GQ2YR" type="external">U.S. Ambassador Haley tells U.N. Russia responsible for chemical attack</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-response-factbox/factbox-britain-to-freeze-russian-state-assets-and-expel-23-diplomats-after-nerve-attack-idUSKCN1GQ1TN" type="external">Factbox: Britain to freeze Russian state assets and expel 23 diplomats after nerve attack</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-france-ledrian/france-to-coordinate-response-to-uk-spy-attack-at-the-highest-level-idUSKCN1GQ32L" type="external">France to coordinate response to UK spy attack at the highest level</a> <p>&#8220;We will freeze Russian state assets wherever we have the evidence that they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>She said checks on private flights, customs and freight would be stepped up to better track those traveling to Britain who could represent a security threat.</p> <p>She also threatened action against those she described as &#8220;serious criminals and corrupt elites,&#8221; adding: &#8220;There is no place for these people, or their money, in our country.&#8221;</p> <p>London has been a venue of choice for many rich Russian to buy property and the in-flow of Russian money has led to the capital being nicknamed &#8220;Londongrad&#8221;.</p> <p>Russian gas giant Gazprom will cut hundreds of jobs at its overseas trading and export offices, including Britain where it has its largest such office by far, and move them to St Petersburg, as part of a drive by Putin to repatriate capital to reduce exposure to sanctions, according to two sources familiar with the plan who spoke exclusively to Reuters in Moscow</p> <p>In a separate development, British media regulator Ofcom said it could strip Russia Today, a Kremlin-funded TV channel, of its UK license. Russia has said British media would be expelled in retaliation should that happen.</p> <p>Reporting by Costas Pitas, Estelle Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge, Michael Holden, Alistair Smout, Elizabeth Piper and William James in London, Christian Lowe in Moscow, writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Stephen Addison, Richard Balmforth and Grant McCool</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States shares Britain&#8217;s assessment that Russia was responsible for a nerve agent attack in Britain against a former Russian double agent and supports Britain&#8217;s decision to expel Russian diplomats, the White House said in a statement on Wednesday.</p> <p>It said the attack &#8220;fits into a pattern of behavior in which Russia disregards the international rules-based order, undermines the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide, and attempts to subvert and discredit Western democratic institutions and processes.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives approved spending more money on metal detectors, locks and other school security measures on Wednesday, but took no steps to tighten gun control laws a month after a Florida high school shooting that killed 17 people.</p> People supporting gun control attend a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>While students marched nationwide for change on one of America&#8217;s most vexing social issues, lawmakers voted 407-10 for legislation to spend $50 million to $75 million per year from 2019 through 2028 on school security and safety training.</p> <p>No parallel measure was pending in the Senate, where a somewhat more ambitious bill was being debated, but prospects for meaningful gun control reforms in Congress remained remote in the face of stiff resistance from gun industry lobbyists.</p> <p>&#8220;This bill, on its own, is not the kind of meaningful congressional action needed to address this crisis of gun violence,&#8221; Representative Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;This must be a first step and it must be followed by a serious effort to pass legislation that expands background checks and bans military-style assault weapons,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>It was not yet clear when the Senate would take up the House bill, which would not become law without Senate approval.</p> <p>President Donald Trump applauded the House bill, the White House said, though it falls far short of broader gun control legislation he talked about shortly after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.</p> <p>The measure would not allow any of the funding to be used for arming teachers or other school personnel. The White House said the bill would be improved by lifting that restriction.</p> Ryan Petty, whose daughter was killed during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School attack, Katherine Posada, a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and Michael Beckerman, President and CEO of the Internet Association, testify to Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>Since the Parkland massacre, student protesters have successfully lobbied for tighter gun controls in Florida. Hundreds of them gathered outside the Capitol to urge Congress to take action on placing new limits on firearms and gun sales.</p> <p>In the Senate is a bill to strengthen existing background checks of gun purchasers. It enjoys broad bipartisan support but has not been scheduled for debate.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>Congressional aides said discussions were underway about folding the school safety and background check bills into a government funding bill that lawmakers want to pass by March 23.</p> <p>Eleven organizations, including some gun control and law enforcement groups, wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urging passage this month of the background checks bill.</p> <p>Since the Florida shooting, the Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration have considered measures to curb gun violence while trying to avoid crossing the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group, or threatening the right to bear arms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution&#8217;s Second Amendment.</p> <p>Neither the House nor Senate bills address many of the gun control initiatives backed by students, teachers and families of shooting victims at the Florida school.</p> <p>In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Katherine Posada, a teacher at the school, recounted the horror she experienced the day of the shooting and urged Congress to ban assault-style weapons like the AR-15 rifle used by Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged in the murders.</p> <p>&#8220;Some of the victims were shot through doors, or even through walls &#8211; a knife can&#8217;t do that,&#8221; Posada said. &#8220;How many innocent lives could have been saved if these weapons of war weren&#8217;t so readily available?&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Richard Cowan, Lisa Lambert, David Alexander and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Tom Brown</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Diamonds drive Anglo American output rise, copper flat UK response to Russia over spy poisoning not tough enough: Litvinenko widow Britain expels 23 Russian diplomats over nerve attack on ex-spy U.S. supports Britain's decision to expel Russian diplomats School safety bill passes House, no action on gun control

https://reuters.com/article/anglo-outlook/update-2-diamonds-drive-anglo-american-output-rise-copper-flat-idUSL8N1PK1BN

2018-01-25

2least

LONDON Reuters Anglo American AALL beat expectations on Thursday with a 5 percent increase in production in 2017 driven by increases in diamond and iron ore output while base metal copper stagnated The Anglo American logo is seen in Rusternburg October 5 2015 REUTERSSiphiwe SibekoFile Photo Many miners have struggled to maintain output as ore bodies have aged and exploration budgets collapsed as a result of the commodity markets downturn of 201516 Copper is particularly in demand because of its use for both old and new technology such as electric vehicles Anglo8217s Platinum and palladium iron ore and coking coal output fell between 4 and 8 percent in the fourth quarter and were flat or higher for the full year But the rampup of its Gahcho Kue mine in Canada increased Anglo8217s diamond production by 22 percent Anglo Chief Executive Mark Cutifani said in a statement the rise in overall output 8220was achieved despite the removal of unprofitable and higher cost platinum and metallurgical coal8221 BMO Capital Markets in a note said the results were solid and it expected the company to continue focusing on incremental improvements to drive productivity South Africa Anglo8217s central focus has had particular issues with efficiency at deep old mines and platinum prices have suffered from falling demand because of the shift away from diesel cars which use the metal to reduce emissions Anglo mothballed its Bokoni mine which contributed to a 4 percent fall in platinum output in the last quarter Platinum XPT prices peaked at above 2000 an ounce a decade ago and hit 7year lows at the start of 2016 Since then they have recovered by around 25 percent Anglo American PLC 17894 AALL London Stock Exchange 5780 334 AALL KAZL Productivity improvements boosted iron ore output at South Africa8217s Kumba by 8 percent for the full year but in Brazil where annual output fell 4 percent Anglo is still negotiating for a licence to increase iron ore production The perception that copper CMCU3 is one of the most soughtafter minerals has pushed prices more than 50 percent higher since the lows of late 2015early 2016 Kazakhfocused copper miner Kaz Minerals KAZL is among those bringing on new production and announced an 80 percent fullyear increase in output to 259000 tonnes Analysts said the results were below expectations following maintenance and the realization some of its copper ore was lower grade than previously thought Kaz Minerals share price was down more than 3 percent by 0900 GMT while Anglo American was trading around flat in line with the broader index FTNMX1770 Additional reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru editing by Jason Neely and Alexander Smith Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain8217s response on Wednesday to the nerve agent attack on a Russian double agent in southern England does not go far enough and senior Kremlin figures should be targeted with sanctions the widow of a Russian dissident murdered in London said Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament Britain would expel 23 Russian diplomats and freeze Russian state assets wherever there was evidence of a threat as part of measures against Moscow which she blames for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal Russia denies any involvement in the March 4 attack on Skripal 66 and his daughter Yulia 33 who are both critically ill in hospital and has accused Britain of unjustified action 8220I think something more should be done It8217s not enough8221 Marina Litvinenko told Reuters in an interview Her husband Alexander a former KGB agent was murdered with the rare radioactive isotope polonium in London in 2006 8220Even though the reaction is stronger than it was in the case of my husband it is still not enough8221 British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is among those who have linked the Skirpal case to that of Litvinenko a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin A public inquiry in 2016 concluded Litvinenko8217s murder was carried out by two Russians one of them a former KGB bodyguard who became a member of the Russian parliament as part of an operation probably ordered by Putin allegations Moscow rejects After that inquiry Britain expelled four diplomats and May told lawmakers that this time the response needed to be firmer While Marina Litvinenko said the reaction had been faster and more direct than two years ago it was not tough enough 8220You don8217t need to play with the same rules as Putin because you8217ll never win8221 she told Reuters 8220But you don8217t need to show you8217re soft and you are accepting everything that happened in your country even after what happened to my husband Marina Litvinenko widow of former Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko poses for a portrait during an interview with Reuters in London Britain March 14 2018 REUTERSToby Melville 8220You need to be more serious and do something that maybe Putin doesn8217t expect8221 She said Britain should look at wider and bigger personal sanctions beyond those in the US Magnitsky Act which imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials 8220It8217s very important to make severe targeted sanctions8221 she said adding that sanctions against the Russian state would be portrayed as an attack on ordinary Russians She had to battle with the British authorities to hold the public inquiry into her husband8217s death which May then interior minister had initially ruled out as Britain sought better relations with Russia 8220They tried to protect this relationship between Russia and the UK But Russia8217s president and these people who are in power in Russia did not accept it It was softness even weakness8221 she said She hopes Britain will have learned and May8217s personal involvement in her husband8217s case will have hardened her resolve 8220I believe she understands better who Mr Putin is8221 she said She said other Russian dissidents living in Britain still did not feel very secure and it was hard not to see the death in London on Monday of another Putin critic Nikolai Glushkov 68 as suspicious Counterterrorism police are now investigating his death although they said it was not thought to be linked to the attack on the Skripals She said it was hard to accept that Glushkov8217s death was only due to natural causes Editing by Elisabeth OLeary and Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain is to kick out 23 Russian diplomats the biggest such expulsion since the Cold War over a chemical attack on a former Russian double agent in England that Prime Minister Theresa May blamed on Moscow May pointed the finger firmly at Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday as she outlined retaliatory measures in parliament Russia denies any involvement in the attack on exspy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia who have been critical in hospital since they were found unconscious on March 4 on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury May announced the potential freezing of Russian state assets that pose a security threat new laws to counter hostile state activity and a downgrading of Britain8217s attendance at the soccer World Cup in Russia this summer She had given Moscow until midnight on Tuesday to explain how the Sovietmade Novichok nerve agent came to be deployed on the streets of Salisbury saying either the Russian state was responsible or had lost control of a stock of the substance 8220Their response demonstrated complete disdain for the gravity of these events8221 May said in her statement to parliament 8220They have treated the use of a militarygrade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm contempt and defiance8221 The only possible conclusion was that the Russian state was behind the attempted murder of the Skripals and the harm that befell Nick Bailey a police officer who is in a serious condition after being exposed to the nerve agent May said 8220This represents an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom8221 she said The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow would swiftly retaliate against the British measures which had been undertaken for 8220shortsighted political ends8221 8220The British government has made a choice in favor of confrontation with Russia8221 it said Russia8217s Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia on Wednesday repeated Moscow8217s denial that it had anything to do with the poisoning and called for proof of its involvement 8220We demand that material proof be provided of allegedly found Russian trace8221 Nebenzia said at a UN Security Council meeting on the poisoning MAY DENOUNCES PUTIN The two governments blamed each other for the crisis 8220Many of us looked at a postSoviet Russia with hope We wanted a better relationship and it is tragic that President Putin has chosen to act in this way8221 said May Britain which has received statements of support from the United States the European Union and NATO has said it would seek to coordinate an international response to the attack US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the Security Council meeting called by Britain that Washington believes Russia was responsible and she urged the council to take 8220immediate concrete measures to address this now8221 In a phone call between May and US President Donald Trump on Tuesday the two leaders agreed that Russia must provide 8220unambiguous answers8221 about how a Russiandeveloped chemical agent came to be used in the attack Britains Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the House of Commons on her governments reaction to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in London March 14 2018 Parliament TV handout via REUTERS German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she took the British findings seriously and there would be a common European stance although 8220we must still talk responsibly8221 with Russia despite differences of opinion A French government spokesman said Paris was awaiting proof before deciding if it would act in solidarity with London Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britain before being arrested in Moscow and later jailed in 2006 He was freed under a spy swap deal in 2010 and took refuge in Britain The attack on him was likened in Britain to the killing of exKGB agent Alexander Litvinenko a critic of Putin who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium 210 Russia refused to extradite the two Russians identified by Britain as the killers Britain8217s response to the Litvinenko affair which included the expulsion of four Russian diplomats was criticized domestically as too weak and many in British politics and media have called for a much tougher response to the Skripal attack Some Russia experts cast doubt over whether May8217s actions met that test Slideshow 15 Images 8220This is certainly not a strong response from Britain it is a mild response8221 said Mathieu Boul232gue a Russia expert at Chatham House thinktank in London 8220It will not deter Russia because Britain is showing too little steel8221 May said the 23 diplomats identified as undeclared intelligence officers had one week to leave and Russian intelligence capabilities in Britain would be damaged for years May also said Britain would revoke an invitation to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to visit and suspend planned high level bilateral contacts between London and Moscow The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said Lavrov had not accepted the invitation to visit Britain anyway On the soccer World Cup which Russia is hosting in June and July May said no ministers or members of the British royal family would attend 8216CORRUPT ELITES8217 But unlike when the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea May did not name Russian individuals or companies that would be specifically targeted by sanctions Related Coverage US Ambassador Haley tells UN Russia responsible for chemical attack Factbox Britain to freeze Russian state assets and expel 23 diplomats after nerve attack France to coordinate response to UK spy attack at the highest level 8220We will freeze Russian state assets wherever we have the evidence that they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents8221 she said She said checks on private flights customs and freight would be stepped up to better track those traveling to Britain who could represent a security threat She also threatened action against those she described as 8220serious criminals and corrupt elites8221 adding 8220There is no place for these people or their money in our country8221 London has been a venue of choice for many rich Russian to buy property and the inflow of Russian money has led to the capital being nicknamed 8220Londongrad8221 Russian gas giant Gazprom will cut hundreds of jobs at its overseas trading and export offices including Britain where it has its largest such office by far and move them to St Petersburg as part of a drive by Putin to repatriate capital to reduce exposure to sanctions according to two sources familiar with the plan who spoke exclusively to Reuters in Moscow In a separate development British media regulator Ofcom said it could strip Russia Today a Kremlinfunded TV channel of its UK license Russia has said British media would be expelled in retaliation should that happen Reporting by Costas Pitas Estelle Shirbon Guy Faulconbridge Michael Holden Alistair Smout Elizabeth Piper and William James in London Christian Lowe in Moscow writing by Estelle Shirbon Editing by Stephen Addison Richard Balmforth and Grant McCool Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The United States shares Britain8217s assessment that Russia was responsible for a nerve agent attack in Britain against a former Russian double agent and supports Britain8217s decision to expel Russian diplomats the White House said in a statement on Wednesday It said the attack 8220fits into a pattern of behavior in which Russia disregards the international rulesbased order undermines the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide and attempts to subvert and discredit Western democratic institutions and processes8221 Reporting by Eric Beech Editing by Eric Walsh Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The US House of Representatives approved spending more money on metal detectors locks and other school security measures on Wednesday but took no steps to tighten gun control laws a month after a Florida high school shooting that killed 17 people People supporting gun control attend a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland Florida on Capitol Hill in Washington US March 14 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts While students marched nationwide for change on one of America8217s most vexing social issues lawmakers voted 40710 for legislation to spend 50 million to 75 million per year from 2019 through 2028 on school security and safety training No parallel measure was pending in the Senate where a somewhat more ambitious bill was being debated but prospects for meaningful gun control reforms in Congress remained remote in the face of stiff resistance from gun industry lobbyists 8220This bill on its own is not the kind of meaningful congressional action needed to address this crisis of gun violence8221 Representative Steny Hoyer the No 2 House Democrat said in a statement 8220This must be a first step and it must be followed by a serious effort to pass legislation that expands background checks and bans militarystyle assault weapons8221 he said It was not yet clear when the Senate would take up the House bill which would not become law without Senate approval President Donald Trump applauded the House bill the White House said though it falls far short of broader gun control legislation he talked about shortly after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida The measure would not allow any of the funding to be used for arming teachers or other school personnel The White House said the bill would be improved by lifting that restriction Ryan Petty whose daughter was killed during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School attack Katherine Posada a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Michael Beckerman President and CEO of the Internet Association testify to Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland Florida on Capitol Hill in Washington US March 14 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts Since the Parkland massacre student protesters have successfully lobbied for tighter gun controls in Florida Hundreds of them gathered outside the Capitol to urge Congress to take action on placing new limits on firearms and gun sales In the Senate is a bill to strengthen existing background checks of gun purchasers It enjoys broad bipartisan support but has not been scheduled for debate Slideshow 4 Images Congressional aides said discussions were underway about folding the school safety and background check bills into a government funding bill that lawmakers want to pass by March 23 Eleven organizations including some gun control and law enforcement groups wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a Republican and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urging passage this month of the background checks bill Since the Florida shooting the Republicanled Congress and the Trump administration have considered measures to curb gun violence while trying to avoid crossing the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group or threatening the right to bear arms enshrined in the US Constitution8217s Second Amendment Neither the House nor Senate bills address many of the gun control initiatives backed by students teachers and families of shooting victims at the Florida school In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Katherine Posada a teacher at the school recounted the horror she experienced the day of the shooting and urged Congress to ban assaultstyle weapons like the AR15 rifle used by Nikolas Cruz who has been charged in the murders 8220Some of the victims were shot through doors or even through walls 8211 a knife can8217t do that8221 Posada said 8220How many innocent lives could have been saved if these weapons of war weren8217t so readily available8221 Reporting by Richard Cowan Lisa Lambert David Alexander and Sarah N Lynch Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Tom Brown Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>What happens when an inmate locked up at 16 or 17, and never expecting to get out, is released into a very different world at 50, 60 or older?</p> <p>The parole of dozens of former juvenile lifers, set in motion by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, raises a host of questions about how those freed will navigate life on the outside. Some of those involved in the process say not enough is being done to make those transitions work.</p> <p>The court&#8217;s ruling last year &#8212; extending its earlier ban on mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders to more than 2,000 already in prison &#8212; sent states scrambling to resentence inmates and prepare some for release.</p> <p>&#8220;All of the institutions that are serving these guys and monitoring them as they&#8217;re coming into the community could do more. But everybody is struggling to catch up,&#8221; said Barbara Kaban, who previously oversaw juvenile lifer cases for Massachusetts&#8217; public defender agency.</p> <p>A lawsuit filed by Kaban forced that state last year to change rules delaying juvenile lifers&#8217; transfer to minimum security prisons, where inmates are assigned to outside work crews and eventually to jobs where they can get vocational skills. As a result, six or seven juvenile lifers were moved, said Christopher Fallon, a Department of Correction spokesman.</p> <p>Nonprofits and others in some states have stepped in to help these prisoners start over. Most of the responsibility, though, remains with offenders and their families.</p> <p>A unit inside Franklin Correctional Center in Bunn, N.C.</p> <p>PRISONS PREPARE</p> <p>Some states have expanded re-entry programs to former lifers nearing parole. Louisiana, for example, now requires those inmates to take the standard 100 hours of training in subjects like decision-making and money management and to earn a high school equivalency certificate. Prison officials enroll inmates in Medicaid before release, said Ken Pastorick, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Corrections.</p> <p>Michigan is moving juvenile lifers expected to be paroled to a prison near Detroit so they can be near family and participate in education and training programs. Nearly 80 of the state&#8217;s 360 juvenile lifers are there.</p> <p>Pennsylvania now allows juvenile lifers to meet with a psychologist once a month, otherwise reserved for inmates with mental health issues, said corrections spokeswoman Amy Worden. State staffers also conduct financial education seminars for lifers and make virtual reality videos to familiarize them with halfway houses and modern supermarkets. After the Supreme Court banned mandatory life without parole for juveniles homicide offenders in 2012, Pennsylvania prison officials began holding videoconferences to answer lifers&#8217; questions. The state has released 81 of the 517 inmates originally sentenced to mandatory life for crimes committed as juveniles.</p> <p>Most of the juvenile lifers released so far across the U.S. have been out of prison a year or less. Prison officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Louisiana, which together had nearly 1,200 of these inmates, said that, to date, none has been returned to prison for violating parole or committing another crime.</p> <p>PLANNING FOR RELEASE</p> <p>Advocacy groups in several states, working with defense attorneys, are researching lifers&#8217; history in preparation for resentencing and putting together plans showing where the inmate will live and work outside prison.</p> <p>&#8220;Prosecutors, judges, everybody wants to know what their re-entry will look like,&#8221; said Motoki Taniguchi, coordinator of Project Reentry, a program within the Michigan appellate defender&#8217;s office.</p> <p>Mentors from the Pennsylvania Prison Society, most former inmates, have met with about 40 juvenile lifers before parole, said Steve Gotzler, who runs the program. The program includes workshops on 20 topics &#8212; from how to get an ID and put together a resume to how a lifer can explain to the outside world where they&#8217;ve been all these years.</p> <p>OUTSIDE THE GATE</p> <p>The Louisiana Parole Project has coached some of the first few juvenile lifers released through their first week on the outside, matching them with former inmates who can provide guidance. The program was started by Keith Nordyke, an attorney representing many of the state&#8217;s juvenile lifers in parole hearings, and Andrew Hundley, a juvenile lifer released last year after serving nearly two decades for murder. Hundley guides newly released inmates through stores and restaurants, and shows them how to use a phone and navigate everyday interactions. Inmates stay in a halfway house during the program, but most are expected to move in with family. Louisiana has about 300 juvenile lifers, and a handful of parole hearings are scheduled for later this year.</p> <p>In Michigan, Taniguchi&#8217;s group of social work graduate students conducts evening seminars on technology and social relationships and has helped some inmates find short-term housing and connect with family. In Pennsylvania, Gotzler recalled helping one former lifer open a bank account and another with instructions on how to order a meal.</p> <p>Gotzler advises many to do a voluntary stay at a halfway house, allowing time to adjust. In Pennsylvania, only a quarter of those released have gone to such a facility. After four decades in prison, one lifer confided in Gotzler about moving home with his 90-year-old mother and other relatives: &#8220;They&#8217;re treating me like I&#8217;m 15 years old, and I&#8217;m 58.&#8221;</p> <p>Landlords often will not rent to those with a felony record and many offenders who went to prison as teens do not have stable families to go back to, said Kristina Wildeveld, a Las Vegas attorney who has represented juvenile lifers before the parole board. Wildeveld said she and her husband had put up four former inmates in their rental properties without charge in recent years to help them make the transition.</p> <p>FINDING A JOB</p> <p>This fall, former lifer Paulette Carrington has been commuting 2 1/2 hours each way &#8212; by bus, trolley, train and finally another bus &#8212; to reach a job training program in Philadelphia.</p> <p>Paulette Carrington, center, a participant in Uplift Solutions&#8217; job training program for former inmates, stands and cheers with others at the end of their graduation ceremony in Philadelphia.</p> <p>&#8220;Anything good is never easy. Never. I&#8217;ve learned that the hard way,&#8221; said Carrington, jailed at 16 for murder and released in April after serving more than 39 years. Carrington was convicted of killing the 15-year-old son of her father&#8217;s girlfriend. Carrington said the woman had cut her face with a pocket razor during an argument. Not long after, Carrington said she lashed out with a knife when the other teen threatened to tell his mother Carrington had come home late.</p> <p>Carrington, 56, is one of three former lifers who recently completed a program run by Uplift Solutions, a nonprofit started by the owner of a local supermarket chain. After six weeks of training, she began work as a cashier at one of the stores. She&#8217;s been living in a room provided by a host family, and hopes the paycheck will allow her to get her own place.</p> <p>Many former lifers come out with years of experience working prison jobs, but may know little about how to assemble a resume or apply for jobs online.</p> <p>The challenge is complicated by a &#8220;fear that other people will see them as a danger,&#8221; said Hillary Facchine, the job coach in the Philadelphia office of the Center for Employment Opportunities, where about a dozen former juvenile lifers have recently gone through a program to put former inmates to work. Those who enroll get a week of orientation, $12-an-hour work crew jobs at local parks, and advice on finding long-term employment.</p> <p>They include Norman Bryant, 47, released in April after serving 32 years for second-degree murder. During a 1985 break-in with a 14-year-old friend and Bryant&#8217;s 17-year-old brother, his brother shoved the homeowner, who died of a heart attack. All got life sentences.</p> <p>&#8220;Right now I&#8217;m just taking whatever I can get,&#8221; said Bryant, who now works in a friend&#8217;s store. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to crawl before you walk.&#8221;</p> <p>HELPING EACH OTHER</p> <p>Former lifers know better than anyone else what others in their situation are dealing with, said Kaban, the Massachusetts attorney. In her state, she said, there is no formal network of released lifers, and parole often comes on the condition that they stay away from others with a felony record.</p> <p>Paulette Carrington is embraced by her classmates at the Uplift Solutions job training program for ex-inmates.</p> <p>But some released lifers in Pennsylvania have been attending resentencing hearings to back others who may soon be out. And once a month, a group of ex-lifers meets in Philadelphia to hear speakers and exchange information about job searches, adjusting to home life and other issues, said John Pace, a former lifer released in February. Pace, who served more than 31 years on a murder conviction for mugging a man who died from his injuries, earned a college degree in prison and leads the group.</p> <p>&#8220;Now you&#8217;re in this big, vast world and you have to negotiate life on your own and make decisions regarding your life,&#8221; he said. It helps &#8220;being able to talk with someone who&#8217;s going through the same thing.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>AP National Writer Sharon Cohen contributed to this story.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Read more in the AP&#8217;s Locked Up for Life series <a href="" type="internal">here</a> .</p> <p>What happens when an inmate locked up at 16 or 17, and never expecting to get out, is released into a very different world at 50, 60 or older?</p> <p>The parole of dozens of former juvenile lifers, set in motion by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, raises a host of questions about how those freed will navigate life on the outside. Some of those involved in the process say not enough is being done to make those transitions work.</p> <p>The court&#8217;s ruling last year &#8212; extending its earlier ban on mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders to more than 2,000 already in prison &#8212; sent states scrambling to resentence inmates and prepare some for release.</p> <p>&#8220;All of the institutions that are serving these guys and monitoring them as they&#8217;re coming into the community could do more. But everybody is struggling to catch up,&#8221; said Barbara Kaban, who previously oversaw juvenile lifer cases for Massachusetts&#8217; public defender agency.</p> <p>A lawsuit filed by Kaban forced that state last year to change rules delaying juvenile lifers&#8217; transfer to minimum security prisons, where inmates are assigned to outside work crews and eventually to jobs where they can get vocational skills. As a result, six or seven juvenile lifers were moved, said Christopher Fallon, a Department of Correction spokesman.</p> <p>Nonprofits and others in some states have stepped in to help these prisoners start over. Most of the responsibility, though, remains with offenders and their families.</p> <p>A unit inside Franklin Correctional Center in Bunn, N.C.</p> <p>PRISONS PREPARE</p> <p>Some states have expanded re-entry programs to former lifers nearing parole. Louisiana, for example, now requires those inmates to take the standard 100 hours of training in subjects like decision-making and money management and to earn a high school equivalency certificate. Prison officials enroll inmates in Medicaid before release, said Ken Pastorick, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Corrections.</p> <p>Michigan is moving juvenile lifers expected to be paroled to a prison near Detroit so they can be near family and participate in education and training programs. Nearly 80 of the state&#8217;s 360 juvenile lifers are there.</p> <p>Pennsylvania now allows juvenile lifers to meet with a psychologist once a month, otherwise reserved for inmates with mental health issues, said corrections spokeswoman Amy Worden. State staffers also conduct financial education seminars for lifers and make virtual reality videos to familiarize them with halfway houses and modern supermarkets. After the Supreme Court banned mandatory life without parole for juveniles homicide offenders in 2012, Pennsylvania prison officials began holding videoconferences to answer lifers&#8217; questions. The state has released 81 of the 517 inmates originally sentenced to mandatory life for crimes committed as juveniles.</p> <p>Most of the juvenile lifers released so far across the U.S. have been out of prison a year or less. Prison officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Louisiana, which together had nearly 1,200 of these inmates, said that, to date, none has been returned to prison for violating parole or committing another crime.</p> <p>PLANNING FOR RELEASE</p> <p>Advocacy groups in several states, working with defense attorneys, are researching lifers&#8217; history in preparation for resentencing and putting together plans showing where the inmate will live and work outside prison.</p> <p>&#8220;Prosecutors, judges, everybody wants to know what their re-entry will look like,&#8221; said Motoki Taniguchi, coordinator of Project Reentry, a program within the Michigan appellate defender&#8217;s office.</p> <p>Mentors from the Pennsylvania Prison Society, most former inmates, have met with about 40 juvenile lifers before parole, said Steve Gotzler, who runs the program. The program includes workshops on 20 topics &#8212; from how to get an ID and put together a resume to how a lifer can explain to the outside world where they&#8217;ve been all these years.</p> <p>OUTSIDE THE GATE</p> <p>The Louisiana Parole Project has coached some of the first few juvenile lifers released through their first week on the outside, matching them with former inmates who can provide guidance. The program was started by Keith Nordyke, an attorney representing many of the state&#8217;s juvenile lifers in parole hearings, and Andrew Hundley, a juvenile lifer released last year after serving nearly two decades for murder. Hundley guides newly released inmates through stores and restaurants, and shows them how to use a phone and navigate everyday interactions. Inmates stay in a halfway house during the program, but most are expected to move in with family. Louisiana has about 300 juvenile lifers, and a handful of parole hearings are scheduled for later this year.</p> <p>In Michigan, Taniguchi&#8217;s group of social work graduate students conducts evening seminars on technology and social relationships and has helped some inmates find short-term housing and connect with family. In Pennsylvania, Gotzler recalled helping one former lifer open a bank account and another with instructions on how to order a meal.</p> <p>Gotzler advises many to do a voluntary stay at a halfway house, allowing time to adjust. In Pennsylvania, only a quarter of those released have gone to such a facility. After four decades in prison, one lifer confided in Gotzler about moving home with his 90-year-old mother and other relatives: &#8220;They&#8217;re treating me like I&#8217;m 15 years old, and I&#8217;m 58.&#8221;</p> <p>Landlords often will not rent to those with a felony record and many offenders who went to prison as teens do not have stable families to go back to, said Kristina Wildeveld, a Las Vegas attorney who has represented juvenile lifers before the parole board. Wildeveld said she and her husband had put up four former inmates in their rental properties without charge in recent years to help them make the transition.</p> <p>FINDING A JOB</p> <p>This fall, former lifer Paulette Carrington has been commuting 2 1/2 hours each way &#8212; by bus, trolley, train and finally another bus &#8212; to reach a job training program in Philadelphia.</p> <p>Paulette Carrington, center, a participant in Uplift Solutions&#8217; job training program for former inmates, stands and cheers with others at the end of their graduation ceremony in Philadelphia.</p> <p>&#8220;Anything good is never easy. Never. I&#8217;ve learned that the hard way,&#8221; said Carrington, jailed at 16 for murder and released in April after serving more than 39 years. Carrington was convicted of killing the 15-year-old son of her father&#8217;s girlfriend. Carrington said the woman had cut her face with a pocket razor during an argument. Not long after, Carrington said she lashed out with a knife when the other teen threatened to tell his mother Carrington had come home late.</p> <p>Carrington, 56, is one of three former lifers who recently completed a program run by Uplift Solutions, a nonprofit started by the owner of a local supermarket chain. After six weeks of training, she began work as a cashier at one of the stores. She&#8217;s been living in a room provided by a host family, and hopes the paycheck will allow her to get her own place.</p> <p>Many former lifers come out with years of experience working prison jobs, but may know little about how to assemble a resume or apply for jobs online.</p> <p>The challenge is complicated by a &#8220;fear that other people will see them as a danger,&#8221; said Hillary Facchine, the job coach in the Philadelphia office of the Center for Employment Opportunities, where about a dozen former juvenile lifers have recently gone through a program to put former inmates to work. Those who enroll get a week of orientation, $12-an-hour work crew jobs at local parks, and advice on finding long-term employment.</p> <p>They include Norman Bryant, 47, released in April after serving 32 years for second-degree murder. During a 1985 break-in with a 14-year-old friend and Bryant&#8217;s 17-year-old brother, his brother shoved the homeowner, who died of a heart attack. All got life sentences.</p> <p>&#8220;Right now I&#8217;m just taking whatever I can get,&#8221; said Bryant, who now works in a friend&#8217;s store. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to crawl before you walk.&#8221;</p> <p>HELPING EACH OTHER</p> <p>Former lifers know better than anyone else what others in their situation are dealing with, said Kaban, the Massachusetts attorney. In her state, she said, there is no formal network of released lifers, and parole often comes on the condition that they stay away from others with a felony record.</p> <p>Paulette Carrington is embraced by her classmates at the Uplift Solutions job training program for ex-inmates.</p> <p>But some released lifers in Pennsylvania have been attending resentencing hearings to back others who may soon be out. And once a month, a group of ex-lifers meets in Philadelphia to hear speakers and exchange information about job searches, adjusting to home life and other issues, said John Pace, a former lifer released in February. Pace, who served more than 31 years on a murder conviction for mugging a man who died from his injuries, earned a college degree in prison and leads the group.</p> <p>&#8220;Now you&#8217;re in this big, vast world and you have to negotiate life on your own and make decisions regarding your life,&#8221; he said. It helps &#8220;being able to talk with someone who&#8217;s going through the same thing.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>AP National Writer Sharon Cohen contributed to this story.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Read more in the AP&#8217;s Locked Up for Life series <a href="" type="internal">here</a> .</p>

Prisons, nonprofits coach juvenile lifers to rejoin society

https://apnews.com/5b55b4a762764b6b8350d9f9ca3f0e01

2017-10-30

2least

What happens when an inmate locked up at 16 or 17 and never expecting to get out is released into a very different world at 50 60 or older The parole of dozens of former juvenile lifers set in motion by a US Supreme Court ruling raises a host of questions about how those freed will navigate life on the outside Some of those involved in the process say not enough is being done to make those transitions work The court8217s ruling last year 8212 extending its earlier ban on mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders to more than 2000 already in prison 8212 sent states scrambling to resentence inmates and prepare some for release 8220All of the institutions that are serving these guys and monitoring them as they8217re coming into the community could do more But everybody is struggling to catch up8221 said Barbara Kaban who previously oversaw juvenile lifer cases for Massachusetts8217 public defender agency A lawsuit filed by Kaban forced that state last year to change rules delaying juvenile lifers8217 transfer to minimum security prisons where inmates are assigned to outside work crews and eventually to jobs where they can get vocational skills As a result six or seven juvenile lifers were moved said Christopher Fallon a Department of Correction spokesman Nonprofits and others in some states have stepped in to help these prisoners start over Most of the responsibility though remains with offenders and their families A unit inside Franklin Correctional Center in Bunn NC PRISONS PREPARE Some states have expanded reentry programs to former lifers nearing parole Louisiana for example now requires those inmates to take the standard 100 hours of training in subjects like decisionmaking and money management and to earn a high school equivalency certificate Prison officials enroll inmates in Medicaid before release said Ken Pastorick a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Corrections Michigan is moving juvenile lifers expected to be paroled to a prison near Detroit so they can be near family and participate in education and training programs Nearly 80 of the state8217s 360 juvenile lifers are there Pennsylvania now allows juvenile lifers to meet with a psychologist once a month otherwise reserved for inmates with mental health issues said corrections spokeswoman Amy Worden State staffers also conduct financial education seminars for lifers and make virtual reality videos to familiarize them with halfway houses and modern supermarkets After the Supreme Court banned mandatory life without parole for juveniles homicide offenders in 2012 Pennsylvania prison officials began holding videoconferences to answer lifers8217 questions The state has released 81 of the 517 inmates originally sentenced to mandatory life for crimes committed as juveniles Most of the juvenile lifers released so far across the US have been out of prison a year or less Prison officials in Pennsylvania Michigan and Louisiana which together had nearly 1200 of these inmates said that to date none has been returned to prison for violating parole or committing another crime PLANNING FOR RELEASE Advocacy groups in several states working with defense attorneys are researching lifers8217 history in preparation for resentencing and putting together plans showing where the inmate will live and work outside prison 8220Prosecutors judges everybody wants to know what their reentry will look like8221 said Motoki Taniguchi coordinator of Project Reentry a program within the Michigan appellate defender8217s office Mentors from the Pennsylvania Prison Society most former inmates have met with about 40 juvenile lifers before parole said Steve Gotzler who runs the program The program includes workshops on 20 topics 8212 from how to get an ID and put together a resume to how a lifer can explain to the outside world where they8217ve been all these years OUTSIDE THE GATE The Louisiana Parole Project has coached some of the first few juvenile lifers released through their first week on the outside matching them with former inmates who can provide guidance The program was started by Keith Nordyke an attorney representing many of the state8217s juvenile lifers in parole hearings and Andrew Hundley a juvenile lifer released last year after serving nearly two decades for murder Hundley guides newly released inmates through stores and restaurants and shows them how to use a phone and navigate everyday interactions Inmates stay in a halfway house during the program but most are expected to move in with family Louisiana has about 300 juvenile lifers and a handful of parole hearings are scheduled for later this year In Michigan Taniguchi8217s group of social work graduate students conducts evening seminars on technology and social relationships and has helped some inmates find shortterm housing and connect with family In Pennsylvania Gotzler recalled helping one former lifer open a bank account and another with instructions on how to order a meal Gotzler advises many to do a voluntary stay at a halfway house allowing time to adjust In Pennsylvania only a quarter of those released have gone to such a facility After four decades in prison one lifer confided in Gotzler about moving home with his 90yearold mother and other relatives 8220They8217re treating me like I8217m 15 years old and I8217m 588221 Landlords often will not rent to those with a felony record and many offenders who went to prison as teens do not have stable families to go back to said Kristina Wildeveld a Las Vegas attorney who has represented juvenile lifers before the parole board Wildeveld said she and her husband had put up four former inmates in their rental properties without charge in recent years to help them make the transition FINDING A JOB This fall former lifer Paulette Carrington has been commuting 2 12 hours each way 8212 by bus trolley train and finally another bus 8212 to reach a job training program in Philadelphia Paulette Carrington center a participant in Uplift Solutions8217 job training program for former inmates stands and cheers with others at the end of their graduation ceremony in Philadelphia 8220Anything good is never easy Never I8217ve learned that the hard way8221 said Carrington jailed at 16 for murder and released in April after serving more than 39 years Carrington was convicted of killing the 15yearold son of her father8217s girlfriend Carrington said the woman had cut her face with a pocket razor during an argument Not long after Carrington said she lashed out with a knife when the other teen threatened to tell his mother Carrington had come home late Carrington 56 is one of three former lifers who recently completed a program run by Uplift Solutions a nonprofit started by the owner of a local supermarket chain After six weeks of training she began work as a cashier at one of the stores She8217s been living in a room provided by a host family and hopes the paycheck will allow her to get her own place Many former lifers come out with years of experience working prison jobs but may know little about how to assemble a resume or apply for jobs online The challenge is complicated by a 8220fear that other people will see them as a danger8221 said Hillary Facchine the job coach in the Philadelphia office of the Center for Employment Opportunities where about a dozen former juvenile lifers have recently gone through a program to put former inmates to work Those who enroll get a week of orientation 12anhour work crew jobs at local parks and advice on finding longterm employment They include Norman Bryant 47 released in April after serving 32 years for seconddegree murder During a 1985 breakin with a 14yearold friend and Bryant8217s 17yearold brother his brother shoved the homeowner who died of a heart attack All got life sentences 8220Right now I8217m just taking whatever I can get8221 said Bryant who now works in a friend8217s store 8220You8217ve got to crawl before you walk8221 HELPING EACH OTHER Former lifers know better than anyone else what others in their situation are dealing with said Kaban the Massachusetts attorney In her state she said there is no formal network of released lifers and parole often comes on the condition that they stay away from others with a felony record Paulette Carrington is embraced by her classmates at the Uplift Solutions job training program for exinmates But some released lifers in Pennsylvania have been attending resentencing hearings to back others who may soon be out And once a month a group of exlifers meets in Philadelphia to hear speakers and exchange information about job searches adjusting to home life and other issues said John Pace a former lifer released in February Pace who served more than 31 years on a murder conviction for mugging a man who died from his injuries earned a college degree in prison and leads the group 8220Now you8217re in this big vast world and you have to negotiate life on your own and make decisions regarding your life8221 he said It helps 8220being able to talk with someone who8217s going through the same thing8221 ___ AP National Writer Sharon Cohen contributed to this story ___ Read more in the AP8217s Locked Up for Life series here What happens when an inmate locked up at 16 or 17 and never expecting to get out is released into a very different world at 50 60 or older The parole of dozens of former juvenile lifers set in motion by a US Supreme Court ruling raises a host of questions about how those freed will navigate life on the outside Some of those involved in the process say not enough is being done to make those transitions work The court8217s ruling last year 8212 extending its earlier ban on mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders to more than 2000 already in prison 8212 sent states scrambling to resentence inmates and prepare some for release 8220All of the institutions that are serving these guys and monitoring them as they8217re coming into the community could do more But everybody is struggling to catch up8221 said Barbara Kaban who previously oversaw juvenile lifer cases for Massachusetts8217 public defender agency A lawsuit filed by Kaban forced that state last year to change rules delaying juvenile lifers8217 transfer to minimum security prisons where inmates are assigned to outside work crews and eventually to jobs where they can get vocational skills As a result six or seven juvenile lifers were moved said Christopher Fallon a Department of Correction spokesman Nonprofits and others in some states have stepped in to help these prisoners start over Most of the responsibility though remains with offenders and their families A unit inside Franklin Correctional Center in Bunn NC PRISONS PREPARE Some states have expanded reentry programs to former lifers nearing parole Louisiana for example now requires those inmates to take the standard 100 hours of training in subjects like decisionmaking and money management and to earn a high school equivalency certificate Prison officials enroll inmates in Medicaid before release said Ken Pastorick a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Corrections Michigan is moving juvenile lifers expected to be paroled to a prison near Detroit so they can be near family and participate in education and training programs Nearly 80 of the state8217s 360 juvenile lifers are there Pennsylvania now allows juvenile lifers to meet with a psychologist once a month otherwise reserved for inmates with mental health issues said corrections spokeswoman Amy Worden State staffers also conduct financial education seminars for lifers and make virtual reality videos to familiarize them with halfway houses and modern supermarkets After the Supreme Court banned mandatory life without parole for juveniles homicide offenders in 2012 Pennsylvania prison officials began holding videoconferences to answer lifers8217 questions The state has released 81 of the 517 inmates originally sentenced to mandatory life for crimes committed as juveniles Most of the juvenile lifers released so far across the US have been out of prison a year or less Prison officials in Pennsylvania Michigan and Louisiana which together had nearly 1200 of these inmates said that to date none has been returned to prison for violating parole or committing another crime PLANNING FOR RELEASE Advocacy groups in several states working with defense attorneys are researching lifers8217 history in preparation for resentencing and putting together plans showing where the inmate will live and work outside prison 8220Prosecutors judges everybody wants to know what their reentry will look like8221 said Motoki Taniguchi coordinator of Project Reentry a program within the Michigan appellate defender8217s office Mentors from the Pennsylvania Prison Society most former inmates have met with about 40 juvenile lifers before parole said Steve Gotzler who runs the program The program includes workshops on 20 topics 8212 from how to get an ID and put together a resume to how a lifer can explain to the outside world where they8217ve been all these years OUTSIDE THE GATE The Louisiana Parole Project has coached some of the first few juvenile lifers released through their first week on the outside matching them with former inmates who can provide guidance The program was started by Keith Nordyke an attorney representing many of the state8217s juvenile lifers in parole hearings and Andrew Hundley a juvenile lifer released last year after serving nearly two decades for murder Hundley guides newly released inmates through stores and restaurants and shows them how to use a phone and navigate everyday interactions Inmates stay in a halfway house during the program but most are expected to move in with family Louisiana has about 300 juvenile lifers and a handful of parole hearings are scheduled for later this year In Michigan Taniguchi8217s group of social work graduate students conducts evening seminars on technology and social relationships and has helped some inmates find shortterm housing and connect with family In Pennsylvania Gotzler recalled helping one former lifer open a bank account and another with instructions on how to order a meal Gotzler advises many to do a voluntary stay at a halfway house allowing time to adjust In Pennsylvania only a quarter of those released have gone to such a facility After four decades in prison one lifer confided in Gotzler about moving home with his 90yearold mother and other relatives 8220They8217re treating me like I8217m 15 years old and I8217m 588221 Landlords often will not rent to those with a felony record and many offenders who went to prison as teens do not have stable families to go back to said Kristina Wildeveld a Las Vegas attorney who has represented juvenile lifers before the parole board Wildeveld said she and her husband had put up four former inmates in their rental properties without charge in recent years to help them make the transition FINDING A JOB This fall former lifer Paulette Carrington has been commuting 2 12 hours each way 8212 by bus trolley train and finally another bus 8212 to reach a job training program in Philadelphia Paulette Carrington center a participant in Uplift Solutions8217 job training program for former inmates stands and cheers with others at the end of their graduation ceremony in Philadelphia 8220Anything good is never easy Never I8217ve learned that the hard way8221 said Carrington jailed at 16 for murder and released in April after serving more than 39 years Carrington was convicted of killing the 15yearold son of her father8217s girlfriend Carrington said the woman had cut her face with a pocket razor during an argument Not long after Carrington said she lashed out with a knife when the other teen threatened to tell his mother Carrington had come home late Carrington 56 is one of three former lifers who recently completed a program run by Uplift Solutions a nonprofit started by the owner of a local supermarket chain After six weeks of training she began work as a cashier at one of the stores She8217s been living in a room provided by a host family and hopes the paycheck will allow her to get her own place Many former lifers come out with years of experience working prison jobs but may know little about how to assemble a resume or apply for jobs online The challenge is complicated by a 8220fear that other people will see them as a danger8221 said Hillary Facchine the job coach in the Philadelphia office of the Center for Employment Opportunities where about a dozen former juvenile lifers have recently gone through a program to put former inmates to work Those who enroll get a week of orientation 12anhour work crew jobs at local parks and advice on finding longterm employment They include Norman Bryant 47 released in April after serving 32 years for seconddegree murder During a 1985 breakin with a 14yearold friend and Bryant8217s 17yearold brother his brother shoved the homeowner who died of a heart attack All got life sentences 8220Right now I8217m just taking whatever I can get8221 said Bryant who now works in a friend8217s store 8220You8217ve got to crawl before you walk8221 HELPING EACH OTHER Former lifers know better than anyone else what others in their situation are dealing with said Kaban the Massachusetts attorney In her state she said there is no formal network of released lifers and parole often comes on the condition that they stay away from others with a felony record Paulette Carrington is embraced by her classmates at the Uplift Solutions job training program for exinmates But some released lifers in Pennsylvania have been attending resentencing hearings to back others who may soon be out And once a month a group of exlifers meets in Philadelphia to hear speakers and exchange information about job searches adjusting to home life and other issues said John Pace a former lifer released in February Pace who served more than 31 years on a murder conviction for mugging a man who died from his injuries earned a college degree in prison and leads the group 8220Now you8217re in this big vast world and you have to negotiate life on your own and make decisions regarding your life8221 he said It helps 8220being able to talk with someone who8217s going through the same thing8221 ___ AP National Writer Sharon Cohen contributed to this story ___ Read more in the AP8217s Locked Up for Life series here

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<p>BOSTON (AP) - Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes, stealing the spotlight from LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 102-88 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.</p> <p>Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11-point lead, and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21. Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece, and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win.</p> <p>James had 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists, and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland, which lost for the fourth time in five games. Playing on back-to-back nights - the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Year's Eve - Cleveland shot 34.8 percent.</p> <p>It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener, when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race.</p> <p>WARRIORS 125, MAVERICKS 122</p> <p>DALLAS (AP) - Stephen Curry hit a long 3-pointer with three seconds to play, giving Golden State a hard-fought victory over Dallas.</p> <p>Curry finished with 32 points as Golden State's "Big Four" combined for 100 - and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight.</p> <p>Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each, and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds.</p> <p>Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points, including seven 3-pointers, and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21.</p> <p>Dallas, playing from behind most of the game, erased a 12-point deficit with 4:32 to play, tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes' jumper with 39.9 seconds left.</p> <p>THUNDER 133, LAKERS 96</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home, and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat.</p> <p>Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook, the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA.</p> <p>The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzma's 18 points. They shot just 41.3 percent from the field, while the Thunder shot 60.2 percent.</p> <p>76ERS 112, SPURS 106</p> <p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points, grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio.</p> <p>The 76ers snapped a 12-game losing streak to the Spurs. They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off short-handed San Antonio.</p> <p>Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns. Philadelphia's leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldn't shoot.</p> <p>Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills, and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play.</p> <p>The Sixers blew a 16-point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players. Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds.</p> <p>ROCKETS 116, MAGIC 98</p> <p>ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Gerald Green scored 27 points, Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden, routing Orlando.</p> <p>Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring.</p> <p>Green made his first five 3-point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets, who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter.</p> <p>Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State.</p> <p>Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots. Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlando's 12th loss in 13 games.</p> <p>WIZARDS 121, KNICKS 103</p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Bradley Beal scored 27 points, John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York.</p> <p>Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week, Beal followed his 39-point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington, which was won five of six.</p> <p>Marcin Gortat had a season-high 21 points, shooting 9 of 10 from the field.</p> <p>Michael Beasley had 20 points, including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks, who have lost six of seven.</p> <p>Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points. New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington.</p> <p>HEAT 111, PISTONS 104</p> <p>MIAMI (AP) - Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points, including a big layup with 39 seconds left, and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit.</p> <p>Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat, who are three games over .500 for the first time since April 2016.</p> <p>Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami, which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 51-27 from 3-point range. James Johnson scored 16, Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat.</p> <p>Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19.</p> <p>NETS 98, TIMBERWOLVES 97</p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) - Spencer Dinwiddie made the go-ahead jumper with 9.7 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points, leading Brooklyn over Minnesota.</p> <p>Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games.</p> <p>Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 2-0 in the new year - more wins than they had all last January, when they were 1-15. Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points.</p> <p>Butler finished with 30 points, mostly on the strength of 16-of-18 shooting at the foul line. Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>RAPTORS 124, BULLS 115</p> <p>CHICAGO (AP) - DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago.</p> <p>DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchise-record 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Year's Day. Held to nine in the first half this time, he scored 18 in the third quarter. He also shot 5 of 8 on 3-pointers and converted all 10 free throws.</p> <p>Wright had his first career double-double and hit four 3s.</p> <p>Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto. Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games.</p> <p>Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points, and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds. Nikola Mirotic scored 20, but the Bulls dropped their third straight.</p> <p>BUCKS 122, PACERS 101</p> <p>MILWAUKEE (AP) - Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds, Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana.</p> <p>Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups, shooting 12 of 18. He secured his 18th double-double of the season with 1:01 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth.</p> <p>Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo (24.9 points per game) for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury, the Pacers couldn't keep up. Domantas Sabonis had a career-high 24 points on 10-of-13 shooting for Indiana, which lost its season-high fifth in a row.</p> <p>The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3-point range.</p> <p>PELICANS 108, JAZZ 98</p> <p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah.</p> <p>Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 first-half points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans. DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds.</p> <p>Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points, and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench.</p> <p>The Pelicans? 3-point shooting was the difference, as New Orleans went 14 for 30 (46.7 percent) from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 (21.9 percent).</p> <p>The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 12-1 run, including seven points from Davis. He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out.</p> <p>NUGGETS 134, SUNS 111</p> <p>DENVER (AP) - Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix.</p> <p>Harris tied his career high in points, finishing 14 of 17 from the field. Nikola Jokic added 14 points, nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a two-game slide and improve to 13-4 at home this season.</p> <p>Wilson Chandler scored 17 points, Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13.</p> <p>Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points. Greg Monroe, filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler, had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>___</p> <p>More NBA basketball: <a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball</a></p> <p>BOSTON (AP) - Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes, stealing the spotlight from LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 102-88 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.</p> <p>Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11-point lead, and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21. Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece, and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win.</p> <p>James had 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists, and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland, which lost for the fourth time in five games. Playing on back-to-back nights - the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Year's Eve - Cleveland shot 34.8 percent.</p> <p>It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener, when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race.</p> <p>WARRIORS 125, MAVERICKS 122</p> <p>DALLAS (AP) - Stephen Curry hit a long 3-pointer with three seconds to play, giving Golden State a hard-fought victory over Dallas.</p> <p>Curry finished with 32 points as Golden State's "Big Four" combined for 100 - and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight.</p> <p>Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each, and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds.</p> <p>Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points, including seven 3-pointers, and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21.</p> <p>Dallas, playing from behind most of the game, erased a 12-point deficit with 4:32 to play, tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes' jumper with 39.9 seconds left.</p> <p>THUNDER 133, LAKERS 96</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home, and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat.</p> <p>Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook, the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA.</p> <p>The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzma's 18 points. They shot just 41.3 percent from the field, while the Thunder shot 60.2 percent.</p> <p>76ERS 112, SPURS 106</p> <p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points, grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio.</p> <p>The 76ers snapped a 12-game losing streak to the Spurs. They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off short-handed San Antonio.</p> <p>Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns. Philadelphia's leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldn't shoot.</p> <p>Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills, and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play.</p> <p>The Sixers blew a 16-point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players. Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds.</p> <p>ROCKETS 116, MAGIC 98</p> <p>ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Gerald Green scored 27 points, Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden, routing Orlando.</p> <p>Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring.</p> <p>Green made his first five 3-point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets, who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter.</p> <p>Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State.</p> <p>Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots. Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlando's 12th loss in 13 games.</p> <p>WIZARDS 121, KNICKS 103</p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Bradley Beal scored 27 points, John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York.</p> <p>Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week, Beal followed his 39-point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington, which was won five of six.</p> <p>Marcin Gortat had a season-high 21 points, shooting 9 of 10 from the field.</p> <p>Michael Beasley had 20 points, including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks, who have lost six of seven.</p> <p>Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points. New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington.</p> <p>HEAT 111, PISTONS 104</p> <p>MIAMI (AP) - Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points, including a big layup with 39 seconds left, and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit.</p> <p>Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat, who are three games over .500 for the first time since April 2016.</p> <p>Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami, which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 51-27 from 3-point range. James Johnson scored 16, Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat.</p> <p>Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19.</p> <p>NETS 98, TIMBERWOLVES 97</p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) - Spencer Dinwiddie made the go-ahead jumper with 9.7 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points, leading Brooklyn over Minnesota.</p> <p>Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games.</p> <p>Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 2-0 in the new year - more wins than they had all last January, when they were 1-15. Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points.</p> <p>Butler finished with 30 points, mostly on the strength of 16-of-18 shooting at the foul line. Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>RAPTORS 124, BULLS 115</p> <p>CHICAGO (AP) - DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago.</p> <p>DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchise-record 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Year's Day. Held to nine in the first half this time, he scored 18 in the third quarter. He also shot 5 of 8 on 3-pointers and converted all 10 free throws.</p> <p>Wright had his first career double-double and hit four 3s.</p> <p>Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto. Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games.</p> <p>Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points, and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds. Nikola Mirotic scored 20, but the Bulls dropped their third straight.</p> <p>BUCKS 122, PACERS 101</p> <p>MILWAUKEE (AP) - Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds, Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana.</p> <p>Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups, shooting 12 of 18. He secured his 18th double-double of the season with 1:01 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth.</p> <p>Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo (24.9 points per game) for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury, the Pacers couldn't keep up. Domantas Sabonis had a career-high 24 points on 10-of-13 shooting for Indiana, which lost its season-high fifth in a row.</p> <p>The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3-point range.</p> <p>PELICANS 108, JAZZ 98</p> <p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah.</p> <p>Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 first-half points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans. DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds.</p> <p>Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points, and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench.</p> <p>The Pelicans? 3-point shooting was the difference, as New Orleans went 14 for 30 (46.7 percent) from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 (21.9 percent).</p> <p>The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 12-1 run, including seven points from Davis. He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out.</p> <p>NUGGETS 134, SUNS 111</p> <p>DENVER (AP) - Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix.</p> <p>Harris tied his career high in points, finishing 14 of 17 from the field. Nikola Jokic added 14 points, nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a two-game slide and improve to 13-4 at home this season.</p> <p>Wilson Chandler scored 17 points, Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13.</p> <p>Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points. Greg Monroe, filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler, had 16 points and 10 rebounds.</p> <p>___</p> <p>More NBA basketball: <a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball</a></p>

Rozier steals spotlight, leads Celtics past Cavaliers 102-88

https://apnews.com/24ff67f4d7854dbd8bc17560661d58b1

2018-01-04

2least

BOSTON AP Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes stealing the spotlight from LeBron James Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 10288 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11point lead and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21 Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win James had 19 points seven rebounds and six assists and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland which lost for the fourth time in five games Playing on backtoback nights the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Years Eve Cleveland shot 348 percent It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race WARRIORS 125 MAVERICKS 122 DALLAS AP Stephen Curry hit a long 3pointer with three seconds to play giving Golden State a hardfought victory over Dallas Curry finished with 32 points as Golden States Big Four combined for 100 and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points including seven 3pointers and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21 Dallas playing from behind most of the game erased a 12point deficit with 432 to play tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes jumper with 399 seconds left THUNDER 133 LAKERS 96 LOS ANGELES AP Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzmas 18 points They shot just 413 percent from the field while the Thunder shot 602 percent 76ERS 112 SPURS 106 PHILADELPHIA AP Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio The 76ers snapped a 12game losing streak to the Spurs They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off shorthanded San Antonio Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns Philadelphias leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldnt shoot Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play The Sixers blew a 16point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds ROCKETS 116 MAGIC 98 ORLANDO Fla AP Gerald Green scored 27 points Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden routing Orlando Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring Green made his first five 3point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlandos 12th loss in 13 games WIZARDS 121 KNICKS 103 WASHINGTON AP Bradley Beal scored 27 points John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week Beal followed his 39point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington which was won five of six Marcin Gortat had a seasonhigh 21 points shooting 9 of 10 from the field Michael Beasley had 20 points including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks who have lost six of seven Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington HEAT 111 PISTONS 104 MIAMI AP Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points including a big layup with 39 seconds left and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat who are three games over 500 for the first time since April 2016 Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 5127 from 3point range James Johnson scored 16 Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19 NETS 98 TIMBERWOLVES 97 NEW YORK AP Spencer Dinwiddie made the goahead jumper with 97 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points leading Brooklyn over Minnesota Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 20 in the new year more wins than they had all last January when they were 115 Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points Butler finished with 30 points mostly on the strength of 16of18 shooting at the foul line Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and KarlAnthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds RAPTORS 124 BULLS 115 CHICAGO AP DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchiserecord 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Years Day Held to nine in the first half this time he scored 18 in the third quarter He also shot 5 of 8 on 3pointers and converted all 10 free throws Wright had his first career doubledouble and hit four 3s Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds Nikola Mirotic scored 20 but the Bulls dropped their third straight BUCKS 122 PACERS 101 MILWAUKEE AP Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups shooting 12 of 18 He secured his 18th doubledouble of the season with 101 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo 249 points per game for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury the Pacers couldnt keep up Domantas Sabonis had a careerhigh 24 points on 10of13 shooting for Indiana which lost its seasonhigh fifth in a row The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3point range PELICANS 108 JAZZ 98 SALT LAKE CITY AP Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 firsthalf points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench The Pelicans 3point shooting was the difference as New Orleans went 14 for 30 467 percent from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 219 percent The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 121 run including seven points from Davis He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out NUGGETS 134 SUNS 111 DENVER AP Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix Harris tied his career high in points finishing 14 of 17 from the field Nikola Jokic added 14 points nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a twogame slide and improve to 134 at home this season Wilson Chandler scored 17 points Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13 Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points Greg Monroe filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler had 16 points and 10 rebounds ___ More NBA basketball httpsapnewscomtagNBAbasketball BOSTON AP Terry Rozier scored 20 points in 20 minutes stealing the spotlight from LeBron James Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals and leading the Boston Celtics to a 10288 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night Rozier scored the last eight Boston points of the first quarter to give the Celtics an 11point lead and had another eight in a row midway through the fourth when they expanded the lead to 21 Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum had 15 points apiece and Irving and Al Horford each had 11 points and nine rebounds to help Boston to its fourth straight win James had 19 points seven rebounds and six assists and Tristan Thompson had 10 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland which lost for the fourth time in five games Playing on backtoback nights the Celtics had been preparing for them since New Years Eve Cleveland shot 348 percent It was the first time the teams had played since the season opener when top Boston free agent Gordon Hayward broke his leg in a gruesome injury that reshuffled the Eastern Conference playoff race WARRIORS 125 MAVERICKS 122 DALLAS AP Stephen Curry hit a long 3pointer with three seconds to play giving Golden State a hardfought victory over Dallas Curry finished with 32 points as Golden States Big Four combined for 100 and the Warriors needed every one of them against a Mavericks team that had won four straight Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson had 25 points each and Draymond Green added 18 to go with 10 rebounds Wesley Matthews led the Mavericks with 22 points including seven 3pointers and Dwight Powell tied his career high with 21 Dallas playing from behind most of the game erased a 12point deficit with 432 to play tying the score at 120 on Harrison Barnes jumper with 399 seconds left THUNDER 133 LAKERS 96 LOS ANGELES AP Russell Westbrook had 20 points and 12 assists in a successful return home and rookie Terrance Ferguson scored all 24 of his points in the second half of his first career start as Oklahoma City handed Los Angeles its eighth consecutive defeat Paul George also scored 24 points and Carmelo Anthony added 21 to complement Westbrook the reigning MVP who was born in Long Beach and went to college at UCLA The Lakers were led by rookie Kyle Kuzmas 18 points They shot just 413 percent from the field while the Thunder shot 602 percent 76ERS 112 SPURS 106 PHILADELPHIA AP Joel Embiid shook off a sprained right hand that nearly kept him out of the lineup to score 21 points grab 11 rebounds and lead Philadelphia past San Antonio The 76ers snapped a 12game losing streak to the Spurs They needed all 35 minutes from Embiid to knock off shorthanded San Antonio Embiid was injured in a hard fall Saturday against the Suns Philadelphias leading scorer and rebounder sat at his locker before the game and said his hand was swollen and he couldnt shoot Embiid used a soft touch to sink a couple of shots during pregame drills and that was enough to convince the Sixers he could play The Sixers blew a 16point lead and might have been thumped from the outset had the Spurs not sat five players Patty Mills led the Spurs with 26 points and LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and 14 rebounds ROCKETS 116 MAGIC 98 ORLANDO Fla AP Gerald Green scored 27 points Clint Capela had 21 points and eight rebounds and Houston got by without NBA scoring leader James Harden routing Orlando Harden was sidelined by a strained left hamstring Green made his first five 3point shots and finished 7 for 10 from behind the arc for the Rockets who were never behind and led by as many as 28 late in the third quarter Eric Gordon added 17 points and six assists to help Houston tune up for its Thursday night showdown with Golden State Aaron Gordon led the Magic with 16 points after missing his first eight shots Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja added 14 each during Orlandos 12th loss in 13 games WIZARDS 121 KNICKS 103 WASHINGTON AP Bradley Beal scored 27 points John Wall added 25 with nine assists and Washington beat New York Playing for the first time since he was selected Eastern Conference player of the week Beal followed his 39point outburst on Sunday by hitting 11 of his 14 field goal attempts for Washington which was won five of six Marcin Gortat had a seasonhigh 21 points shooting 9 of 10 from the field Michael Beasley had 20 points including 16 in the second half to lead the Knicks who have lost six of seven Kristips Porzingis scored 16 points New York has lost 14 of its last 15 against Washington HEAT 111 PISTONS 104 MIAMI AP Kelly Olynyk scored 25 points including a big layup with 39 seconds left and Goran Dragic added 24 as Miami held off Detroit Olynyk finished with 13 rebounds and Dragic had 13 assists for the Heat who are three games over 500 for the first time since April 2016 Josh Richardson scored 22 for Miami which shot 51 percent and outscored the Pistons 5127 from 3point range James Johnson scored 16 Wayne Ellington had 12 and Hassan Whiteside added 10 for the Heat Tobias Harris led a balanced Detroit effort with 19 NETS 98 TIMBERWOLVES 97 NEW YORK AP Spencer Dinwiddie made the goahead jumper with 97 seconds left and tied his career high with 26 points leading Brooklyn over Minnesota Jimmy Butler missed at the buzzer as the Timberwolves lost for just the second time in nine games Dinwiddie added nine assists as the Nets improved to 20 in the new year more wins than they had all last January when they were 115 Joe Harris came off the bench to score 17 points Butler finished with 30 points mostly on the strength of 16of18 shooting at the foul line Andrew Wiggins added 17 points and KarlAnthony Towns had 16 points and 10 rebounds RAPTORS 124 BULLS 115 CHICAGO AP DeMar DeRozan had 35 points and Delon Wright set career highs with 25 points and 13 rebounds as Toronto beat Chicago DeRozan came up big again after scoring a franchiserecord 52 points in a win over Milwaukee on New Years Day Held to nine in the first half this time he scored 18 in the third quarter He also shot 5 of 8 on 3pointers and converted all 10 free throws Wright had his first career doubledouble and hit four 3s Serge Ibaka scored 16 points for Toronto Fred VanVleet added 13 and the Raptors pulled away in the fourth quarter for their ninth win in 11 games Justin Holiday led Chicago with 26 points and Lauri Markkanen added 22 points and 12 rebounds Nikola Mirotic scored 20 but the Bulls dropped their third straight BUCKS 122 PACERS 101 MILWAUKEE AP Giannis Antetokounmpo had 31 points and 10 rebounds Khris Middleton added 27 points and Milwaukee pulled away from Indiana Antetokounmpo had his way around the rim with his usual array of dunks and layups shooting 12 of 18 He secured his 18th doubledouble of the season with 101 left in the third quarter and was rested for the entire fourth Minus leading scorer Victor Oladipo 249 points per game for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury the Pacers couldnt keep up Domantas Sabonis had a careerhigh 24 points on 10of13 shooting for Indiana which lost its seasonhigh fifth in a row The Pacers shot just 3 of 15 from 3point range PELICANS 108 JAZZ 98 SALT LAKE CITY AP Anthony Davis had 29 points and 15 rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah Jrue Holiday carried the offense early with 18 firsthalf points and finished with 24 for the Pelicans DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and 11 rebounds Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 24 points and Joe Johnson scored 20 off the bench The Pelicans 3point shooting was the difference as New Orleans went 14 for 30 467 percent from beyond the arc while the Jazz were 7 of 32 219 percent The game went back and forth before the Pelicans closed the third quarter on a 121 run including seven points from Davis He added 10 in the fourth to help close it out NUGGETS 134 SUNS 111 DENVER AP Gary Harris scored 28 of his 36 points in the first half and Denver used a big third quarter to beat Phoenix Harris tied his career high in points finishing 14 of 17 from the field Nikola Jokic added 14 points nine rebounds and eight assists to help the Nuggets stop a twogame slide and improve to 134 at home this season Wilson Chandler scored 17 points Trey Lyles had 16 and Jamal Murray 13 Devin Booker led the Suns with 17 points Greg Monroe filling in for starting center Tyson Chandler had 16 points and 10 rebounds ___ More NBA basketball httpsapnewscomtagNBAbasketball

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<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - Metlife Inc:</p> <p>* METLIFE STATEMENT ON COURT DECISION TO DISMISS APPEAL IN SIFI LITIGATION</p> <p>* METLIFE - ISSUED STATEMENT ON DECISION BY COURT OF TO DISMISS FSOC&#8217;S APPEAL OF COURT DECISION RESCINDING CO&#8217;S DECISION AS A NON-BANK SIFI Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SACRAMENTO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Did police tell an unarmed black man who they were before shooting him to death in a dark backyard in Sacramento, California? That question is forcing an examination of policies dictating when and how police identify themselves while encountering suspects.</p> Stephon Clark, 22, is visible on the ground after two police officers (L) shot him, in this still image captured from police aerial video footage released by Sacramento Police Department, California, U.S., on March 21, 2018. Courtesy Sacramento Police Department/Handout via REUTERS <p>Two Sacramento police officers, responding to a report of someone shattering car windows, killed Stephon Alonzo Clark, 22, on Sunday in a hail of bullets.</p> <p>Police video has shown the officers chasing Clark around the side of his grandparents&#8217; house, yelling &#8220;Show me your hands&#8221; and &#8220;Gun&#8221; before firing. Police said they believed Clark held a gun, but it turned out to be a mobile phone.</p> <p>The release of the video late on Wednesday sparked street protests. Clark&#8217;s family, through their attorney Benjamin Crump, disputed the police account that Clark was breaking windows.</p> <p>Many protesters have said police did not appear to have identified themselves when they confronted Clark on that dark night as he stood in his grandparents&#8217; backyard. On the video, the officers cannot be heard saying they are police.</p> <p>&#8220;He (Clark) didn&#8217;t make any threats against the police, there is no evidence he committed a crime, there was no warning from the police, there was no identification from the police,&#8221; Crump said.</p> <p>Crump represented the family of black teenager Michael Brown, whose shooting death in Ferguson, Missouri, by police in 2014 sparked nationwide protests.</p> <p>Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said this week that city officials would examine police protocol for how they identify themselves in such cases.</p> <p>&#8220;I have a 21-year-old son and I never had to teach him the importance of holding his hands high if he is ever stopped by a police officer,&#8221; Steinberg said Friday on Facebook. &#8220;No words can describe how it must feel for an African-American family who has to teach that lesson as a reality of growing up black.&#8221;</p> Demonstrators march to protest the police shooting of Stephon Clark, in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong <p>Sacramento police guidelines posted on the department&#8217;s website do not specify that officers must identify themselves when encountering suspects. Sacramento police spokeswoman Linda Matthew said she did not believe such a policy existed.</p> <p>Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said that policies for departments vary across the country, but it would be impractical under such circumstances to expect officers to identify themselves.</p> <p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re in a chase and everybody&#8217;s running, there isn&#8217;t a lot of talking back and forth going on,&#8221; he said.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>The Sacramento shooting could lead some police departments to change their rules, but such policies can be difficult to follow in the heat of the moment, said Eugene O&#8217;Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.</p> <p>&#8220;It won&#8217;t surprise me if some departments add some other specific rule after this, but the cops are already weighed down with rules,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Sacramento police spokeswoman Matthew said Clark could have assumed police were in the area because a Sacramento County Sheriff&#8217;s Department helicopter was circling overhead.</p> <p>&#8220;The officers were in full uniform and the suspect fled from them,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Investigators are looking into whether the officers, who were searching the neighborhood for several minutes for a suspect, announced to Clark that they were police, Matthew said.</p> <p>&#8220;With this incident and with every incident we have, we always look for ways in which we can improve,&#8221; Matthew said. &#8220;However, this was very rapidly evolving.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Ben Klayman, Toni Reinhold</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - A gendarme who was shot three times after voluntarily taking the place of a hostage during a supermarket siege in southwestern France on Friday has died, France announced on Saturday.</p> A general view shows gendarmes and police officers at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes, France, March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier <p>Arnaud Beltrame, who once served in Iraq, had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after the siege in which he took the place of a female hostage at the Super U store in the town of Trebes, near the Pyrenees mountains.</p> <p>&#8220;He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist,&#8221; President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, not far from Trebes, a tranquil town of about 5,000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon.</p> <p>Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.</p> <p>The attacker, whose rampage began when he shot at a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole, killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday, according to a government readout.</p> <p>Beltrame was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene; most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit.</p> <p>He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding, whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table, line open. When shots rang out, elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant. Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times.</p> <p>The 44-year-old&#8217;s death takes the number killed to four.</p> <p>The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron has said security services are checking that claim.</p> <p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group.</p> <p>France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria, where the group has lost substantial ground in recent months.</p> <p>One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice.</p> <p>Beltrame, who would have turned 45 in April, was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005. He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris, Macron said.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s assault was the first deadly attack since October 2017, when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him.</p> <p>Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations.</p> <p>Macron said of Beltrame: &#8220;In offering himself as a hostage to the terrorist holed up in the Trebes supermarket, lieutenant colonel Beltrame saved the life of a civilian hostage, showing exceptional self-sacrifice and courage.&#8221;</p> <p>The news of Beltrame&#8217;s death was first announced France&#8217;s interior minister, who said in a Twitter post: &#8220;Dead for his country. France will never forget his heroism, bravery and sacrifice.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by BEmmanuel Jarry; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Potter</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TREBES, France (Reuters) - A gunman killed three people in southwestern France on Friday as he held up a car, fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket, screaming &#8220;Allahu Akbar&#8221; before security forces stormed the building and killed him, authorities said.</p> <p>Sixteen other people were wounded, including two who were seriously hurt, in what President Emmanuel Macron called an act of &#8220;Islamist terrorism&#8221;.</p> <p>The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron said security services were checking that claim.</p> <p>&#8220;I want to tell the nation tonight of my absolute determination in leading this fight,&#8221; said Macron, who returned to Paris from Brussels to chair a crisis meeting with ministers and security officials.</p> <p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, 25, from the city of Carcassonne.</p> <p>Two people were killed when he attacked the supermarket in the nearby small town of Trebes.</p> <p>Witnesses said about 20 people in the supermarket found refuge in its cold storage room.</p> <p>A lieutenant-colonel of the gendarmes who swapped himself in exchange for one of the hostages was fighting for his life in hospital, Macron said.</p> <p>Moroccan-born Lakdim was known to authorities for petty crimes, but had been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, who is leading the investigation.</p> <p>&#8220;The monitoring ... did not reveal any apparent signs that could lead (us) to foresee he would act,&#8221; Molins said.</p> <p>He said one woman connected to Lakdim had been arrested.</p> <p>Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters at the scene that he believed Lakdim had acted alone.</p> <p>&#8220;Every day we detect facts and foil new attacks. Alas, this one struck without us being able to counter it,&#8221; Collomb said.</p> <p>Lakdim first killed one person with a bullet in the head while stealing a car in Carcassonne, a walled city with a medieval citadel that is one of France&#8217;s top tourist attractions.</p> <p>He pulled up in the car to four police officers who were jogging in the city and opened fire, hitting one in the shoulder, then sped off to Trebes, about 8 km (5 miles) to the east, where he took the hostages in the supermarket.</p> <p>&#8220;The perpetrator entered the store shouting &#8216;Allahu Akbar&#8217; and indicated that he was an Islamic State soldier who was ready to die for Syria, seeking the release of brothers, before shooting at a client and a store employee who died on the spot,&#8221; Molins said.</p> <p>Police were carrying out searches at Lakdim&#8217;s family home.</p> A general view shows police officers and investigators at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes, France, March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau ESCAPE <p>One supermarket worker said some shoppers had escaped from the building after the gunman burst in.</p> <p>&#8220;I was in my department when I heard gunshots. I went to the area of the gunshots and came face to face with the person,&#8221; said the employee, who gave his name only as Francois.</p> <p>&#8220;He raised his gun and fired, I ran away, he shouted &#8216;Allahu Akbar&#8217; and spoke about the Islamic State. I then evacuated the clients, about 20, who were in my area and we went quietly out of the back,&#8221; said Francois, who has been employed at the supermarket since November.</p> <p>Collomb said the gunman had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam - the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State suicide bombing and mass shooting attacks on a sports stadium, concert hall and restaurants that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015.</p> <p>Abdeslam, a French citizen born and raised in Brussels, went on trial in Belgium last month. He is accused of &#8220;attempted murder in a terrorist context&#8221; over a Brussels shootout in March 2016, four months after he fled Paris on the night of the carnage during which his brother was among the suicide bombers.</p> Slideshow (14 Images) &#8220;THE THREAT IS EVERYWHERE&#8221; <p>France is part of a U.S.-led coalition fighting against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and also has thousands of soldiers in West Africa fighting al Qaeda-linked militants.</p> <p>In February, Collomb said French security forces had foiled two planned attacks so far this year as Islamic State militants set their sights on domestic targets in response to the group&#8217;s military setbacks in Iraq and Syria.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a small, quiet town. Unfortunately the threat is everywhere,&#8221; Collomb told reporters in Trebes.</p> <p>Carcassonne, a UNESCO heritage site, lies in the Languedoc region, known for its wine and picturesque countryside but also one of the poorest areas in France, with unemployment about 3 percentage points above the national average.</p> <p>Nearby Beziers is one of the biggest cities controlled by the far-right, while the smaller town of Lunel further east became a breeding ground for many French jihadists who travelled to Syria to fight.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-france-security-molins/prosecutor-says-one-person-arrested-after-southern-france-attack-idUSKBN1GZ2XN" type="external">Prosecutor says one person arrested after southern France attack</a> <a href="/article/us-france-security-gendarme/french-policeman-who-took-place-of-hostage-dies-of-gunshot-wounds-idUSKBN1GZ2ZF" type="external">French policeman who took place of hostage dies of gunshot wounds</a> <a href="/article/us-france-security-witness/french-supermarket-hostages-dodge-attacker-hide-in-cold-store-idUSKBN1GZ2T4" type="external">French supermarket hostages dodge attacker, hide in cold store</a> <p>Almost six years ago to the day, Islamist gunman Mohammed Merah killed seven people in the Toulouse region, about 90 km from Carcassonne. He was killed by security forces after a more than 30-hour stand-off.</p> <p>The last lethal Islamist attack in France was in October 2017 when a Tunisian-born man stabbed two young women to death in Marseille before he was shot dead by soldiers. Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack.</p> <p>For other stories on the attack, click on:</p> <p>French gendarme fighting for his life after trading places with hostage</p> <p>France supermarket attacker pledged to &#8220;die for Syria&#8221;</p> <p>French supermarket hostages dodge attacker, hide in cold store</p> <p>Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Sophie Louet, John Irish, Michel Rose, Leigh Thomas, Brian Love and Bate Felix in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Catherine Evans</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Friday that bans some transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military, but gives the armed forces latitude in implementing policies.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for Palm Beach, Florida, from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>The memorandum said transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria, defined as &#8220;those who may require substantial medical treatment, including through medical drugs or surgery,&#8221; are disqualified from military service &#8220;except under certain limited circumstances.&#8221;</p> <p>It added that the secretaries of defense and homeland security &#8220;may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals.&#8221;</p> <p>The White House said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had found that individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria presented a risk to military effectiveness.</p> <p>&#8220;This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards ... equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>The Democratic National Committee criticized the move as an insult to transgender service members. In a strongly-worded statement, U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the policy would harm the nation.</p> <p>&#8220;This latest memorandum is the same cowardly, disgusting ban the President announced last summer,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The President&#8217;s hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor and dignity.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s decision is less restrictive than his initial comments in a July Twitter message saying he would prohibit transgender people from military service. That blanket ban reversed former President Barack Obama&#8217;s policy.</p> <p>At the time, Trump said on Twitter, the military &#8220;cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.&#8221;</p> <p>However, a number of federal judges have already issued rulings blocking Trump&#8217;s ban, saying it would probably violate the right, under the U.S. Constitution, to equal protection under the law.</p> <p>On Friday, the Pentagon reaffirmed that it would continue to comply with federal law.</p> <p>&#8220;(The Pentagon) will continue to assess and retain transgender service members,&#8221; Pentagon spokesman Major David Eastburn said.</p> <p>In a February memorandum to the White House, made public on Friday, Mattis said transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria were disqualified from military service.</p> <p>But he added that those currently serving could continue to serve if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since Obama&#8217;s policy took effect.</p> <p>Mattis also recommended that transgender individuals who require or have undergone gender transition be disqualified from military service.</p> <p>&#8220;In my professional judgment, these policies will place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win America&#8217;s wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world,&#8221; Mattis wrote.</p> <p>A court filing by the Trump administration said 8,980 service members reportedly identify as transgender, but only 937 active duty service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria since June 30, 2016.</p> <p>At least one openly transgender recruit has already signed a contract to join the U.S. military since a federal court ruled late last year that the military would have to accept transgender individuals.</p> <p>The Department of Justice said it would continue to defend the defense department&#8217;s authority to create and implement personnel policies.</p> Related Video <p>&#8220;Consistent with this new policy, we are asking the courts to lift all related preliminary injunctions in order to ensure the safety and security of the American people and the best fighting force in the world,&#8221; it said in a statement.</p> <p>Advocates have said they believe dozens, if not hundreds, of transgender people will seek to join those already serving.</p> <p>The Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group, condemned the Trump policy.</p> <p>&#8220;There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops,&#8221; Chad Griffin, its president, said in a statement.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Metlife Issues Statement On Court Decision To Dismiss Appeal In Sifi Litigation California police shooting of unarmed black man forcing look at policies French policeman who took place of hostage dies of gunshot wounds Islamist gunman attacks French supermarket, kills three Trump moves to limit transgender individuals from military service

https://reuters.com/article/brief-metlife-issues-statement-on-court/brief-metlife-issues-statement-on-court-decision-to-dismiss-appeal-in-sifi-litigation-idUSFWN1PI12L

2018-01-23

2least

Jan 23 Reuters Metlife Inc METLIFE STATEMENT ON COURT DECISION TO DISMISS APPEAL IN SIFI LITIGATION METLIFE ISSUED STATEMENT ON DECISION BY COURT OF TO DISMISS FSOC8217S APPEAL OF COURT DECISION RESCINDING CO8217S DECISION AS A NONBANK SIFI Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SACRAMENTOLOS ANGELES Reuters Did police tell an unarmed black man who they were before shooting him to death in a dark backyard in Sacramento California That question is forcing an examination of policies dictating when and how police identify themselves while encountering suspects Stephon Clark 22 is visible on the ground after two police officers L shot him in this still image captured from police aerial video footage released by Sacramento Police Department California US on March 21 2018 Courtesy Sacramento Police DepartmentHandout via REUTERS Two Sacramento police officers responding to a report of someone shattering car windows killed Stephon Alonzo Clark 22 on Sunday in a hail of bullets Police video has shown the officers chasing Clark around the side of his grandparents8217 house yelling 8220Show me your hands8221 and 8220Gun8221 before firing Police said they believed Clark held a gun but it turned out to be a mobile phone The release of the video late on Wednesday sparked street protests Clark8217s family through their attorney Benjamin Crump disputed the police account that Clark was breaking windows Many protesters have said police did not appear to have identified themselves when they confronted Clark on that dark night as he stood in his grandparents8217 backyard On the video the officers cannot be heard saying they are police 8220He Clark didn8217t make any threats against the police there is no evidence he committed a crime there was no warning from the police there was no identification from the police8221 Crump said Crump represented the family of black teenager Michael Brown whose shooting death in Ferguson Missouri by police in 2014 sparked nationwide protests Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said this week that city officials would examine police protocol for how they identify themselves in such cases 8220I have a 21yearold son and I never had to teach him the importance of holding his hands high if he is ever stopped by a police officer8221 Steinberg said Friday on Facebook 8220No words can describe how it must feel for an AfricanAmerican family who has to teach that lesson as a reality of growing up black8221 Demonstrators march to protest the police shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento California US March 23 2018 REUTERSBob Strong Sacramento police guidelines posted on the department8217s website do not specify that officers must identify themselves when encountering suspects Sacramento police spokeswoman Linda Matthew said she did not believe such a policy existed Jim Pasco executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police said that policies for departments vary across the country but it would be impractical under such circumstances to expect officers to identify themselves 8220If you8217re in a chase and everybody8217s running there isn8217t a lot of talking back and forth going on8221 he said Slideshow 5 Images The Sacramento shooting could lead some police departments to change their rules but such policies can be difficult to follow in the heat of the moment said Eugene O8217Donnell a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City 8220It won8217t surprise me if some departments add some other specific rule after this but the cops are already weighed down with rules8221 he said Sacramento police spokeswoman Matthew said Clark could have assumed police were in the area because a Sacramento County Sheriff8217s Department helicopter was circling overhead 8220The officers were in full uniform and the suspect fled from them8221 she said Investigators are looking into whether the officers who were searching the neighborhood for several minutes for a suspect announced to Clark that they were police Matthew said 8220With this incident and with every incident we have we always look for ways in which we can improve8221 Matthew said 8220However this was very rapidly evolving8221 Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles Editing by Ben Klayman Toni Reinhold Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters A gendarme who was shot three times after voluntarily taking the place of a hostage during a supermarket siege in southwestern France on Friday has died France announced on Saturday A general view shows gendarmes and police officers at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes France March 23 2018 REUTERSJeanPaul Pelissier Arnaud Beltrame who once served in Iraq had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after the siege in which he took the place of a female hostage at the Super U store in the town of Trebes near the Pyrenees mountains 8220He fell as a hero giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist8221 President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday Friday8217s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim a 25yearold Moroccanborn French national from the city of Carcassonne not far from Trebes a tranquil town of about 5000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon Lakdim was known to authorities for drugdealing and other petty crimes but had also been under surveillance by security services in 20162017 for links to the radical Salafist movement Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday The attacker whose rampage began when he shot at a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday according to a government readout Beltrame was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table line open When shots rang out elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times The 44yearold8217s death takes the number killed to four The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack Macron has said security services are checking that claim More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria where the group has lost substantial ground in recent months One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice Beltrame who would have turned 45 in April was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005 He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris Macron said Friday8217s assault was the first deadly attack since October 2017 when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations Macron said of Beltrame 8220In offering himself as a hostage to the terrorist holed up in the Trebes supermarket lieutenant colonel Beltrame saved the life of a civilian hostage showing exceptional selfsacrifice and courage8221 The news of Beltrame8217s death was first announced France8217s interior minister who said in a Twitter post 8220Dead for his country France will never forget his heroism bravery and sacrifice8221 Additional reporting by BEmmanuel Jarry Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Potter Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TREBES France Reuters A gunman killed three people in southwestern France on Friday as he held up a car fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket screaming 8220Allahu Akbar8221 before security forces stormed the building and killed him authorities said Sixteen other people were wounded including two who were seriously hurt in what President Emmanuel Macron called an act of 8220Islamist terrorism8221 The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack Macron said security services were checking that claim 8220I want to tell the nation tonight of my absolute determination in leading this fight8221 said Macron who returned to Paris from Brussels to chair a crisis meeting with ministers and security officials More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group Friday8217s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim 25 from the city of Carcassonne Two people were killed when he attacked the supermarket in the nearby small town of Trebes Witnesses said about 20 people in the supermarket found refuge in its cold storage room A lieutenantcolonel of the gendarmes who swapped himself in exchange for one of the hostages was fighting for his life in hospital Macron said Moroccanborn Lakdim was known to authorities for petty crimes but had been under surveillance by security services in 20162017 for links to the radical Salafist movement said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins who is leading the investigation 8220The monitoring did not reveal any apparent signs that could lead us to foresee he would act8221 Molins said He said one woman connected to Lakdim had been arrested Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters at the scene that he believed Lakdim had acted alone 8220Every day we detect facts and foil new attacks Alas this one struck without us being able to counter it8221 Collomb said Lakdim first killed one person with a bullet in the head while stealing a car in Carcassonne a walled city with a medieval citadel that is one of France8217s top tourist attractions He pulled up in the car to four police officers who were jogging in the city and opened fire hitting one in the shoulder then sped off to Trebes about 8 km 5 miles to the east where he took the hostages in the supermarket 8220The perpetrator entered the store shouting 8216Allahu Akbar8217 and indicated that he was an Islamic State soldier who was ready to die for Syria seeking the release of brothers before shooting at a client and a store employee who died on the spot8221 Molins said Police were carrying out searches at Lakdim8217s family home A general view shows police officers and investigators at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes France March 23 2018 REUTERSRegis Duvignau ESCAPE One supermarket worker said some shoppers had escaped from the building after the gunman burst in 8220I was in my department when I heard gunshots I went to the area of the gunshots and came face to face with the person8221 said the employee who gave his name only as Francois 8220He raised his gun and fired I ran away he shouted 8216Allahu Akbar8217 and spoke about the Islamic State I then evacuated the clients about 20 who were in my area and we went quietly out of the back8221 said Francois who has been employed at the supermarket since November Collomb said the gunman had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State suicide bombing and mass shooting attacks on a sports stadium concert hall and restaurants that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015 Abdeslam a French citizen born and raised in Brussels went on trial in Belgium last month He is accused of 8220attempted murder in a terrorist context8221 over a Brussels shootout in March 2016 four months after he fled Paris on the night of the carnage during which his brother was among the suicide bombers Slideshow 14 Images 8220THE THREAT IS EVERYWHERE8221 France is part of a USled coalition fighting against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and also has thousands of soldiers in West Africa fighting al Qaedalinked militants In February Collomb said French security forces had foiled two planned attacks so far this year as Islamic State militants set their sights on domestic targets in response to the group8217s military setbacks in Iraq and Syria 8220This is a small quiet town Unfortunately the threat is everywhere8221 Collomb told reporters in Trebes Carcassonne a UNESCO heritage site lies in the Languedoc region known for its wine and picturesque countryside but also one of the poorest areas in France with unemployment about 3 percentage points above the national average Nearby Beziers is one of the biggest cities controlled by the farright while the smaller town of Lunel further east became a breeding ground for many French jihadists who travelled to Syria to fight Related Coverage Prosecutor says one person arrested after southern France attack French policeman who took place of hostage dies of gunshot wounds French supermarket hostages dodge attacker hide in cold store Almost six years ago to the day Islamist gunman Mohammed Merah killed seven people in the Toulouse region about 90 km from Carcassonne He was killed by security forces after a more than 30hour standoff The last lethal Islamist attack in France was in October 2017 when a Tunisianborn man stabbed two young women to death in Marseille before he was shot dead by soldiers Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack For other stories on the attack click on French gendarme fighting for his life after trading places with hostage France supermarket attacker pledged to 8220die for Syria8221 French supermarket hostages dodge attacker hide in cold store Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry Sophie Louet John Irish Michel Rose Leigh Thomas Brian Love and Bate Felix in Paris Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Catherine Evans Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Friday that bans some transgender individuals from serving in the US military but gives the armed forces latitude in implementing policies US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for Palm Beach Florida from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland US March 23 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts The memorandum said transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria defined as 8220those who may require substantial medical treatment including through medical drugs or surgery8221 are disqualified from military service 8220except under certain limited circumstances8221 It added that the secretaries of defense and homeland security 8220may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals8221 The White House said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had found that individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria presented a risk to military effectiveness 8220This new policy will enable the military to apply wellestablished mental and physical health standards equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen8221 it said The Democratic National Committee criticized the move as an insult to transgender service members In a stronglyworded statement US House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the policy would harm the nation 8220This latest memorandum is the same cowardly disgusting ban the President announced last summer8221 she said 8220The President8217s hateful ban is purposebuilt to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor and dignity8221 Trump8217s decision is less restrictive than his initial comments in a July Twitter message saying he would prohibit transgender people from military service That blanket ban reversed former President Barack Obama8217s policy At the time Trump said on Twitter the military 8220cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail8221 However a number of federal judges have already issued rulings blocking Trump8217s ban saying it would probably violate the right under the US Constitution to equal protection under the law On Friday the Pentagon reaffirmed that it would continue to comply with federal law 8220The Pentagon will continue to assess and retain transgender service members8221 Pentagon spokesman Major David Eastburn said In a February memorandum to the White House made public on Friday Mattis said transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria were disqualified from military service But he added that those currently serving could continue to serve if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since Obama8217s policy took effect Mattis also recommended that transgender individuals who require or have undergone gender transition be disqualified from military service 8220In my professional judgment these policies will place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people to fight and win America8217s wars and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world8221 Mattis wrote A court filing by the Trump administration said 8980 service members reportedly identify as transgender but only 937 active duty service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria since June 30 2016 At least one openly transgender recruit has already signed a contract to join the US military since a federal court ruled late last year that the military would have to accept transgender individuals The Department of Justice said it would continue to defend the defense department8217s authority to create and implement personnel policies Related Video 8220Consistent with this new policy we are asking the courts to lift all related preliminary injunctions in order to ensure the safety and security of the American people and the best fighting force in the world8221 it said in a statement Advocates have said they believe dozens if not hundreds of transgender people will seek to join those already serving The Human Rights Campaign a lesbian gay bisexual and transgender advocacy group condemned the Trump policy 8220There is simply no way to spin it the TrumpPence administration is going all in on its discriminatory unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops8221 Chad Griffin its president said in a statement Additional reporting by Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Richard Pullin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Projects which raise funds through &#8220;initial coin offerings&#8221; (ICOs) are attacked by cyber criminals 100 times a month on average, a report said, underscoring the risks of investing in cryptocurrency ventures online.</p> A padlock is displayed at the Alert Logic booth during the 2016 Black Hat cyber-security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. August 3, 2016. REUTERS/David Becker <p>The research, published by Moscow-based cyber security firm Group-IB on Wednesday, was based on an analysis of 450 attacks on ICOs since the beginning of 2017. Attempts by hackers to steal money from ICO projects increased tenfold over the period.</p> <p>Group-IB also took part in a study published this week by Ernst &amp;amp; Young which showed that roughly $400 million of the $3.7 billion raised via ICOs to date had been stolen.</p> <p>The findings come amid a cryptocurrency investing craze, with young companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars online to fund projects, with often little more than a handful of employees and an outline business plan.</p> A copy of bitcoin standing on PC motherboard is seen in this illustration picture, October 26, 2017. Picture taken October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic <p>There is also growing scrutiny from regulators and investors, some of whom say they have been misled or defrauded via ICO schemes.</p> <p>Group-IB said ICOs and cryptocurrency investors were particularly at risk from so-called phishing attacks - when hackers spoof emails and websites to steal passwords and personal information - with some groups who previously targeted banks now stealing as much as $1.5 million a month this way.</p> <p>In some cases, hackers have also attacked and doctored ICO project websites, changing the information so would-be investors send their money to the wrong digital &#8220;wallets&#8221; used for storing cryptocurrencies.</p> <p>&#8220;Most attacks use traditional and well-proven techniques, which are also very effective for stealing cryptocurrencies,&#8221; said Ruslan Yusufov,&amp;#160;director of private client&amp;#160;services at Group-IB. &#8220;Lots of projects underestimate cybersecurity risks, which leads to an avalanche of threats and successful thefts.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Alexander Smith</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is investigating whether Facebook did enough to protect data after a whistleblower said a London-based political consultancy hired by Donald Trump improperly accessed information on 50 million Facebook users to sway public opinion.</p> <p>Facebook ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) shares closed down nearly 7 percent on Monday, wiping nearly $40 billion off its market value as investors worried that damage to the reputation of the world&#8217;s largest social media network would deter users and advertisers.</p> <p>Elizabeth Denham, the head of Britain&#8217;s Information Commission, is seeking a warrant to search the offices of consultancy Cambridge Analytica after a whistleblower revealed it had harvested the private information of millions of people to support Trump&#8217;s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.</p> <p>&#8220;We are looking at whether or not Facebook secured and safeguarded personal information on the platform and whether when they found out about the loss of the data they acted robustly and whether or not people were informed,&#8221; Denham told BBC Radio.</p> <p>U.S. and European lawmakers have demanded an explanation of how the consulting firm gained access to the data in 2014 and why Facebook failed to inform its users, raising broader industry questions about consumer privacy.</p> <p>In Washington, the Republican chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee sent a letter on Monday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg requesting information and a briefing on the Facebook user data.</p> <p>&#8220;The possibility that Facebook has either not been transparent with consumers or has not been able to verify that third party app developers are transparent with consumers is troubling,&#8221; read the letter which was also addressed to Nigel Oakes, chief executive of Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s affiliate SCL.</p> <p>Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook. Its shares fell a further 1.8 percent.</p> <p>In London, the head of Britain&#8217;s cross-party Media parliamentary committee also wrote to Zuckerberg asking for more information. &#8220;We would like to receive your response by Monday 26 March,&#8221; lawmaker Damian Collins wrote.</p> <p>In Dublin, Ireland&#8217;s privacy watchdog said it was following up with Facebook to clarify its oversight. The Irish body is the lead regulator for Facebook in the European Union because the network&#8217;s European headquarters are in Dublin.</p> <p>Created in 2013, Cambridge Analytica markets itself as a source of consumer research, targeted advertising and other data-related services to both political and corporate clients.</p> <p>According to the New York Times, it was launched with $15 million in backing from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer and a name chosen by the-then future Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon.</p> <p>Facebook says the data were harvested by a British academic, Aleksandr Kogan, who created an app on the platform that was downloaded by 270,000 people, providing access not only to their own personal data but also their friends&#8217;.</p> <p>Facebook said Kogan then violated its policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has since suspended both the consulting firm and SCL (Strategic Communication Laboratories), a government and military contractor.</p> <p>Facebook said it had been told that the data were destroyed.</p> <p>Kogan says he changed the terms and conditions of his personality-test app on Facebook from academic to commercial part way through the project, according to an email to Cambridge University colleagues obtained and cited by CNN.</p> Slideshow (9 Images) <p>Kogan says Facebook made no objection, but Facebook says it was not informed of the change, CNN reported. Kogan was not immediately reachable for comment.</p> GRAVE VIOLATION <p>&#8220;If this data still exists, it would be a grave violation of Facebook&#8217;s policies and an unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments these groups made,&#8221; Facebook said.</p> <p>Cambridge Analytica has denied all the media claims and said it deleted the data after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules.</p> <p>On Tuesday people were seen carrying multiple plastic storage containers into and out of the building that houses Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s London office, among other companies. It was not clear which firm they were going to.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">Facebook Inc</a> 170.975 FB.O Nasdaq +2.83 (+1.68%) FB.O <p>&#8220;We are not alone in using data from social media sites to extract user information,&#8221; Cambridge Analytica said. &#8220;No Facebook data was used by our data science team in the 2016 presidential campaign.&#8221;</p> <p>Denham, head of the Information Commissioner&#8217;s Office (ICO) said on Monday she was seeking a warrant to access the offices of Cambridge Analytica after seeing an investigation by Britain&#8217;s Channel 4 news which secretly recorded its executives boasting of their ability to sway elections.</p> <p>She said it would not take long to obtain the warrant.</p> <p>&#8220;We have offered to share with the ICO all the information that it asked for and for the ICO to attend our office voluntarily, subject to our agreeing the scope of the inspection,&#8221; Cambridge Analytica said.</p> <p>Facebook said it had hired forensic auditors from the firm Stroz Friedberg to investigate and determine whether Cambridge Analytica still had the data. The auditors were in Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s offices on Monday night but left at the request of the British authorities.</p> <p>The Information Commissioner can currently impose fines of up to 500,000 pounds ($700,000) but will gain the power to fine an organization up to 4 percent of its global turnover when new data protection legislation comes into force in May.</p> <p>The criticism of Cambridge Analytica presents a new threat to Facebook, which is already under attack over Russia&#8217;s alleged use of Facebook tools to sway U.S. voters with divisive and false news posts before and after the 2016 election.</p> <p>&#8220;This story comes on the back of increasing scrutiny and societal unease with FB&#8217;s potential impact on kids as well as increasing concerns around the power of mega cap Internet names, setting the stage for deeper investigation,&#8221; Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley wrote in a note, keeping his &#8220;buy&#8221; rating on Facebook stock.</p> <p>Walmsley said he was worried &#8220;about how scrutiny could ultimately impact Facebook&#8217;s ability to gather and deploy data for ad targeting, which has been critical to ad efficacy and budget growth&#8221;.</p> <p>The company said last month it had 1.4 billion active daily users, up 14 percent from a year earlier. But the number of daily users in the United States and Canada fell for the first time in its history, dipping in the company&#8217;s home market by 700,000 from a quarter earlier to 184 million.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-funds/index-provider-msci-says-it-is-reviewing-facebook-data-privacy-issue-idUSKBN1GW22H" type="external">Index provider MSCI says it is reviewing Facebook data privacy issue</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridgeanalytica-malaysia/malaysia-says-never-hired-british-data-firm-at-center-of-scrutiny-idUSKBN1GW1YU" type="external">Malaysia says never hired British data firm at center of scrutiny</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-kogan/uks-cambridge-university-questions-facebook-about-academics-role-in-data-breach-idUSKBN1GW1YR" type="external">UK's Cambridge University questions Facebook about academic's role in data breach</a> <p>($1 = 0.7136 pounds)</p> <p>Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; editing by David Stamp; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and David Stamp</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - British privacy regulators are seeking a warrant to search the offices of the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica late Monday following reports that the company may have improperly gained access to data on 50 million Facebook users, according to a Channel 4 television report.</p> <p>The move came as U.S. and European lawmakers demanded an explanation of how the consulting firm, which worked on President Donald Trump's election campaign, gained access to the data. In the U.S., members of Congress called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about Facebook's actions. ( <a href="http://reut.rs/2pn8btD" type="external">reut.rs/2pn8btD</a>)</p> <p>Facebook said on Monday it had hired forensic auditors from the firm Stroz Friedberg to investigate and determine whether Cambridge Analytica still had the data.</p> <p>&#8220;Auditors from Stroz Friedberg were on site at Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s London office this evening,&#8221; the company said in a statement late Monday. &#8220;At the request of the UK Information Commissioner&#8217;s Office, which has announced it is pursuing a warrant to conduct its own on-site investigation, the Stroz Friedberg auditors stood down.&#8221;</p> <p>Facebook shares closed down nearly 7.0 percent on Monday, wiping nearly $40 billion off its market value as investors worried that new legislation could damage the company&#8217;s advertising business.</p> <p>&#8220;The lid is being opened on the black box of Facebook data practices, and the picture is not pretty,&#8221; said Frank Pasquale, a University of Maryland law professor who has written about Silicon Valley&#8217;s use of data.</p> <p>Also on Monday, a source said that Facebook head of security, Alex Stamos, plans to leave the company over disagreements about the company&#8217;s policies on misinformation. He had been a strong advocate for an aggressive approach to alleged Russian activity on the platform aimed at manipulating elections. His departure was first reported by the New York Times. Facebook declined immediate comment.</p> <p>In a tweet, Stamos did not deny he was leaving but said: &#8220;Despite the rumors, I&#8217;m still fully engaged with my work at Facebook. It&#8217;s true that my role did change.&#8221;</p> <p>The criticism of Cambridge Analytica presents a new threat to Facebook&#8217;s reputation, which is already under attack over Russia&#8217;s alleged use of Facebook tools to sway U.S. voters with divisive and false news posts before and after the 2016 election.</p> <p>London-based Cambridge Analytica said it strongly denied the media claims, and that it deleted all Facebook data it obtained from a third-party application in 2014 after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules.</p> <p>However, further allegations about the firm&#8217;s tactics were reported late Monday by British broadcaster Channel 4 which said it secretly taped interviews with senior Cambridge Analytica executives in which they boasted of their ability to sway elections in countries around the world with digital manipulation and traditional political trickery.</p> <p>Cambridge Analytica rejected the allegations, saying in a statement that the Channel 4 report &#8220;is edited and scripted to grossly misrepresent the nature of those conversations and how the company conducts its business.&#8221;</p> <p>Facebook was already facing calls on Saturday for regulation from the U.S. Congress after the reports in the New York Times and London&#8217;s Observer over the weekend.</p> FILE PHOTO: A picture illustration shows a Facebook logo reflected in a person's eye, in Zenica, March 13, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo <p>Republican Senator John Kennedy called on Zuckerberg to testify before Congress, and Democratic Senator Ron Widen sent a letter to Zuckerberg asking about company policies for sharing user data with third parties.</p> <p>Facebook usually sends lawyers to testify to Congress, or allows trade organizations to represent it and other technology companies in front of lawmakers.</p> <p>Facebook and other social media companies including Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc&#8217;s YouTube have taken voluntary steps to restrict possible foreign interference and combat false news, but they have not been forced by law or regulation to make changes and legislation on the issue has stalled.</p> <p>Late on Monday, the Connecticut Attorney General said the office will initiate an inquiry into Facebook data policies.</p> <p>The Senate was expected to move forward on Monday with a bill that would chip away at the internet industry&#8217;s legal shield, a decades-old law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, with a bill intended to address online sex trafficking. The measure has already passed the House and is expected to soon become law.</p> A 3D-printed Facebook logo are seen in front of displayed binary digits in this illustration taken, March 18, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration <p>Facebook said on Friday it had learned in 2015 that a Cambridge University psychology professor lied to the company and violated its policies by passing data to Cambridge Analytica from a psychology testing application he had built.</p> <p>Facebook said it suspended the firms and researchers involved and said the data had been misused but not stolen, because users gave permission.</p> <p>Facebook shares fell 6.8 percent to $172.56, dragging the U.S. S&amp;amp;P 500 technology sector index down 2.1 percent and broadly weighing on U.S. equities. Fears of increased regulation also weighed on shares of Twitter, Google parent Alphabet and Snapchat parent Snap Inc.</p> <p>&#8220;(Tech companies) are going to get a lot more scrutiny over what data they are collecting and how they are using it,&#8221; said Shawn Cruz, senior trading specialist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-funds-an/socially-responsible-investors-reassess-facebook-ownership-idUSKBN1GV318" type="external">'Socially responsible' investors reassess Facebook ownership</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-privacy-costs-analysis/privacy-issues-emerge-as-major-business-risk-for-facebook-idUSKBN1GW01F" type="external">Privacy issues emerge as major business risk for Facebook</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-executives-stamos/facebooks-security-chief-to-depart-source-says-idUSKBN1GV2Z2" type="external">Facebook's security chief to depart, source says</a> &#8216;VERY CONCERNING&#8217; <p>European officials, who have been more willing to regulate Silicon Valley companies than their U.S. counterparts, were strident in criticism of Facebook.</p> <p>The revelations about Cambridge Analytica were &#8220;horrifying, if confirmed,&#8221; said EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova. &#8220;We don&#8217;t want this in the EU and will take all possible legal measures&#8221; including stricter rules under the bloc&#8217;s General Data Protection Regulation that takes effect in May, she said.</p> <p>A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said the allegations were &#8220;clearly very concerning.&#8221;</p> <p>The head of the European Parliament said EU lawmakers will investigate possible data misuse, calling the allegations an unacceptable violation of citizens&#8217; privacy rights.</p> <p>(This version of the story refiles to fix spell check errors of proper names and ticker symbol)</p> <p>Reporting by Dustin Volz and Munsif Vengattil; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak, Sruthi Shankar, David Ingram and Julia Fioretti; Editing by Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - DZ Bank was the third Wall Street brokerage this week to make a rare cut in price targets for Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) on Wednesday as the social network&#8217;s shares slid for a third day in response to a row over data use by Cambridge Analytica.</p> Figurines are seen in front of the Facebook logo in this illustration taken March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic <p>The brokerage cut its target for the California-based firm by $20 to $210, still way above the current share price of $165 but adding to signs that Wall Street analysts are waking up to the risks to the company.</p> <p>A 1.6 percent fall in Facebook shares in premarket trading brought the losses in the company&#8217;s market value this week to $57 billion, or 10.5 percent - a shock for a company that has risen more than 550 percent in value in the past five years.</p> <p>The suspended chief executive of Cambridge Analytica said in a secretly recorded video broadcast on Tuesday that his UK-based political consultancy&#8217;s online campaign played a decisive role in U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 election victory.</p> <p>CEO Alexander Nix&#8217;s comments, which could not be verified, were potentially a further problem for Facebook as it faces U.S. and European scrutiny of Cambridge&#8217;s improper use of 50 million Facebook users&#8217; personal data to target voters. [nL1N1QZ02Q]</p> <p>&#8220;We ... anticipate that the stock will be subject to further headline risk in the coming weeks as senior management is summoned to DC for hearings with lawmakers,&#8221; Credit Suisse analyst Stephen Ju wrote in a note.</p> <p>Many analysts have now raised concerns that the incident will have a negative impact on user engagement with Facebook, potentially eating into its clout with advertisers. There are mixed views, however, on whether an aggressive regulatory response will materialize.</p> <p>So far, U.S. and European lawmakers have demanded an explanation of how Cambridge Analytica gained access to user data in 2014 and why Facebook failed to inform its users, raising broader industry questions about consumer privacy.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">Facebook Inc</a> 170.975 FB.O Nasdaq +2.83 (+1.68%) FB.O <p>Cowen and Co analyst Paul Gallant said that Congress is unlikely to act on the issue. He said that despite allegations of Russian interference, a bill requiring Internet companies to disclose foreign buyers of political advertising is going nowhere.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t expect Congress to enact online privacy legislation anytime soon, even if Democrats win the House this fall,&#8221; Gallant said.</p> <p>On Tuesday another brokerage Evercore ISI cut their target by $20 to $205, their biggest reduction ever. Macquarie Research also trimmed its by $5 to $200, the first reduction since Oct 2012, five months after Facebook stock market launch.</p> <p>&#8220;Investors now have to consider whether or not the company will conclude that it has grown in a manner that has proven to be untenable or whether it needs to significantly improve how it is managed,&#8221; said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser.</p> <p>Morgan Stanley analysts said they expected Facebook to bring changes to how data are made available to app developers and third parties, adding it could have a negative impact on Facebook Audience Network&#8217;s ability to scale, although minimal.</p> <p>Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

ICO funded projects hit by 100 cyber attacks a month: report UK investigates Facebook over data breach, to raid Cambridge Analytica Facebook under pressure as U.S., EU urge probes of data practices Wall Street starts to trim Facebook targets as shares fall

https://reuters.com/article/crytpo-ico-attacks/ico-funded-projects-hit-by-100-cyber-attacks-a-month-report-idUSL8N1PJ35I

2018-01-24

2least

MOSCOW Reuters Projects which raise funds through 8220initial coin offerings8221 ICOs are attacked by cyber criminals 100 times a month on average a report said underscoring the risks of investing in cryptocurrency ventures online A padlock is displayed at the Alert Logic booth during the 2016 Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas Nevada US August 3 2016 REUTERSDavid Becker The research published by Moscowbased cyber security firm GroupIB on Wednesday was based on an analysis of 450 attacks on ICOs since the beginning of 2017 Attempts by hackers to steal money from ICO projects increased tenfold over the period GroupIB also took part in a study published this week by Ernst ampamp Young which showed that roughly 400 million of the 37 billion raised via ICOs to date had been stolen The findings come amid a cryptocurrency investing craze with young companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars online to fund projects with often little more than a handful of employees and an outline business plan A copy of bitcoin standing on PC motherboard is seen in this illustration picture October 26 2017 Picture taken October 26 2017 REUTERSDado Ruvic There is also growing scrutiny from regulators and investors some of whom say they have been misled or defrauded via ICO schemes GroupIB said ICOs and cryptocurrency investors were particularly at risk from socalled phishing attacks when hackers spoof emails and websites to steal passwords and personal information with some groups who previously targeted banks now stealing as much as 15 million a month this way In some cases hackers have also attacked and doctored ICO project websites changing the information so wouldbe investors send their money to the wrong digital 8220wallets8221 used for storing cryptocurrencies 8220Most attacks use traditional and wellproven techniques which are also very effective for stealing cryptocurrencies8221 said Ruslan Yusufovamp160director of private clientamp160services at GroupIB 8220Lots of projects underestimate cybersecurity risks which leads to an avalanche of threats and successful thefts8221 Reporting by Jack Stubbs Editing by Alexander Smith Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain is investigating whether Facebook did enough to protect data after a whistleblower said a Londonbased political consultancy hired by Donald Trump improperly accessed information on 50 million Facebook users to sway public opinion Facebook FBO shares closed down nearly 7 percent on Monday wiping nearly 40 billion off its market value as investors worried that damage to the reputation of the world8217s largest social media network would deter users and advertisers Elizabeth Denham the head of Britain8217s Information Commission is seeking a warrant to search the offices of consultancy Cambridge Analytica after a whistleblower revealed it had harvested the private information of millions of people to support Trump8217s 2016 US presidential campaign 8220We are looking at whether or not Facebook secured and safeguarded personal information on the platform and whether when they found out about the loss of the data they acted robustly and whether or not people were informed8221 Denham told BBC Radio US and European lawmakers have demanded an explanation of how the consulting firm gained access to the data in 2014 and why Facebook failed to inform its users raising broader industry questions about consumer privacy In Washington the Republican chairman of the Senate Commerce Science and Transportation Committee sent a letter on Monday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg requesting information and a briefing on the Facebook user data 8220The possibility that Facebook has either not been transparent with consumers or has not been able to verify that third party app developers are transparent with consumers is troubling8221 read the letter which was also addressed to Nigel Oakes chief executive of Cambridge Analytica8217s affiliate SCL Bloomberg reported that the US Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook Its shares fell a further 18 percent In London the head of Britain8217s crossparty Media parliamentary committee also wrote to Zuckerberg asking for more information 8220We would like to receive your response by Monday 26 March8221 lawmaker Damian Collins wrote In Dublin Ireland8217s privacy watchdog said it was following up with Facebook to clarify its oversight The Irish body is the lead regulator for Facebook in the European Union because the network8217s European headquarters are in Dublin Created in 2013 Cambridge Analytica markets itself as a source of consumer research targeted advertising and other datarelated services to both political and corporate clients According to the New York Times it was launched with 15 million in backing from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer and a name chosen by thethen future Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon Facebook says the data were harvested by a British academic Aleksandr Kogan who created an app on the platform that was downloaded by 270000 people providing access not only to their own personal data but also their friends8217 Facebook said Kogan then violated its policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica Facebook has since suspended both the consulting firm and SCL Strategic Communication Laboratories a government and military contractor Facebook said it had been told that the data were destroyed Kogan says he changed the terms and conditions of his personalitytest app on Facebook from academic to commercial part way through the project according to an email to Cambridge University colleagues obtained and cited by CNN Slideshow 9 Images Kogan says Facebook made no objection but Facebook says it was not informed of the change CNN reported Kogan was not immediately reachable for comment GRAVE VIOLATION 8220If this data still exists it would be a grave violation of Facebook8217s policies and an unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments these groups made8221 Facebook said Cambridge Analytica has denied all the media claims and said it deleted the data after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules On Tuesday people were seen carrying multiple plastic storage containers into and out of the building that houses Cambridge Analytica8217s London office among other companies It was not clear which firm they were going to Facebook Inc 170975 FBO Nasdaq 283 168 FBO 8220We are not alone in using data from social media sites to extract user information8221 Cambridge Analytica said 8220No Facebook data was used by our data science team in the 2016 presidential campaign8221 Denham head of the Information Commissioner8217s Office ICO said on Monday she was seeking a warrant to access the offices of Cambridge Analytica after seeing an investigation by Britain8217s Channel 4 news which secretly recorded its executives boasting of their ability to sway elections She said it would not take long to obtain the warrant 8220We have offered to share with the ICO all the information that it asked for and for the ICO to attend our office voluntarily subject to our agreeing the scope of the inspection8221 Cambridge Analytica said Facebook said it had hired forensic auditors from the firm Stroz Friedberg to investigate and determine whether Cambridge Analytica still had the data The auditors were in Cambridge Analytica8217s offices on Monday night but left at the request of the British authorities The Information Commissioner can currently impose fines of up to 500000 pounds 700000 but will gain the power to fine an organization up to 4 percent of its global turnover when new data protection legislation comes into force in May The criticism of Cambridge Analytica presents a new threat to Facebook which is already under attack over Russia8217s alleged use of Facebook tools to sway US voters with divisive and false news posts before and after the 2016 election 8220This story comes on the back of increasing scrutiny and societal unease with FB8217s potential impact on kids as well as increasing concerns around the power of mega cap Internet names setting the stage for deeper investigation8221 Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley wrote in a note keeping his 8220buy8221 rating on Facebook stock Walmsley said he was worried 8220about how scrutiny could ultimately impact Facebook8217s ability to gather and deploy data for ad targeting which has been critical to ad efficacy and budget growth8221 The company said last month it had 14 billion active daily users up 14 percent from a year earlier But the number of daily users in the United States and Canada fell for the first time in its history dipping in the company8217s home market by 700000 from a quarter earlier to 184 million Related Coverage Index provider MSCI says it is reviewing Facebook data privacy issue Malaysia says never hired British data firm at center of scrutiny UKs Cambridge University questions Facebook about academics role in data breach 1 07136 pounds Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington editing by David Stamp Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and David Stamp Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters British privacy regulators are seeking a warrant to search the offices of the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica late Monday following reports that the company may have improperly gained access to data on 50 million Facebook users according to a Channel 4 television report The move came as US and European lawmakers demanded an explanation of how the consulting firm which worked on President Donald Trumps election campaign gained access to the data In the US members of Congress called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about Facebooks actions reutrs2pn8btD Facebook said on Monday it had hired forensic auditors from the firm Stroz Friedberg to investigate and determine whether Cambridge Analytica still had the data 8220Auditors from Stroz Friedberg were on site at Cambridge Analytica8217s London office this evening8221 the company said in a statement late Monday 8220At the request of the UK Information Commissioner8217s Office which has announced it is pursuing a warrant to conduct its own onsite investigation the Stroz Friedberg auditors stood down8221 Facebook shares closed down nearly 70 percent on Monday wiping nearly 40 billion off its market value as investors worried that new legislation could damage the company8217s advertising business 8220The lid is being opened on the black box of Facebook data practices and the picture is not pretty8221 said Frank Pasquale a University of Maryland law professor who has written about Silicon Valley8217s use of data Also on Monday a source said that Facebook head of security Alex Stamos plans to leave the company over disagreements about the company8217s policies on misinformation He had been a strong advocate for an aggressive approach to alleged Russian activity on the platform aimed at manipulating elections His departure was first reported by the New York Times Facebook declined immediate comment In a tweet Stamos did not deny he was leaving but said 8220Despite the rumors I8217m still fully engaged with my work at Facebook It8217s true that my role did change8221 The criticism of Cambridge Analytica presents a new threat to Facebook8217s reputation which is already under attack over Russia8217s alleged use of Facebook tools to sway US voters with divisive and false news posts before and after the 2016 election Londonbased Cambridge Analytica said it strongly denied the media claims and that it deleted all Facebook data it obtained from a thirdparty application in 2014 after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules However further allegations about the firm8217s tactics were reported late Monday by British broadcaster Channel 4 which said it secretly taped interviews with senior Cambridge Analytica executives in which they boasted of their ability to sway elections in countries around the world with digital manipulation and traditional political trickery Cambridge Analytica rejected the allegations saying in a statement that the Channel 4 report 8220is edited and scripted to grossly misrepresent the nature of those conversations and how the company conducts its business8221 Facebook was already facing calls on Saturday for regulation from the US Congress after the reports in the New York Times and London8217s Observer over the weekend FILE PHOTO A picture illustration shows a Facebook logo reflected in a persons eye in Zenica March 13 2015 REUTERSDado RuvicIllustrationFile Photo Republican Senator John Kennedy called on Zuckerberg to testify before Congress and Democratic Senator Ron Widen sent a letter to Zuckerberg asking about company policies for sharing user data with third parties Facebook usually sends lawyers to testify to Congress or allows trade organizations to represent it and other technology companies in front of lawmakers Facebook and other social media companies including Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc8217s YouTube have taken voluntary steps to restrict possible foreign interference and combat false news but they have not been forced by law or regulation to make changes and legislation on the issue has stalled Late on Monday the Connecticut Attorney General said the office will initiate an inquiry into Facebook data policies The Senate was expected to move forward on Monday with a bill that would chip away at the internet industry8217s legal shield a decadesold law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act with a bill intended to address online sex trafficking The measure has already passed the House and is expected to soon become law A 3Dprinted Facebook logo are seen in front of displayed binary digits in this illustration taken March 18 2018 REUTERSDado RuvicIllustration Facebook said on Friday it had learned in 2015 that a Cambridge University psychology professor lied to the company and violated its policies by passing data to Cambridge Analytica from a psychology testing application he had built Facebook said it suspended the firms and researchers involved and said the data had been misused but not stolen because users gave permission Facebook shares fell 68 percent to 17256 dragging the US SampampP 500 technology sector index down 21 percent and broadly weighing on US equities Fears of increased regulation also weighed on shares of Twitter Google parent Alphabet and Snapchat parent Snap Inc 8220Tech companies are going to get a lot more scrutiny over what data they are collecting and how they are using it8221 said Shawn Cruz senior trading specialist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago Related Coverage Socially responsible investors reassess Facebook ownership Privacy issues emerge as major business risk for Facebook Facebooks security chief to depart source says 8216VERY CONCERNING8217 European officials who have been more willing to regulate Silicon Valley companies than their US counterparts were strident in criticism of Facebook The revelations about Cambridge Analytica were 8220horrifying if confirmed8221 said EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova 8220We don8217t want this in the EU and will take all possible legal measures8221 including stricter rules under the bloc8217s General Data Protection Regulation that takes effect in May she said A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said the allegations were 8220clearly very concerning8221 The head of the European Parliament said EU lawmakers will investigate possible data misuse calling the allegations an unacceptable violation of citizens8217 privacy rights This version of the story refiles to fix spell check errors of proper names and ticker symbol Reporting by Dustin Volz and Munsif Vengattil Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak Sruthi Shankar David Ingram and Julia Fioretti Editing by Nick Zieminski Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters DZ Bank was the third Wall Street brokerage this week to make a rare cut in price targets for Facebook Inc FBO on Wednesday as the social network8217s shares slid for a third day in response to a row over data use by Cambridge Analytica Figurines are seen in front of the Facebook logo in this illustration taken March 20 2018 REUTERSDado Ruvic The brokerage cut its target for the Californiabased firm by 20 to 210 still way above the current share price of 165 but adding to signs that Wall Street analysts are waking up to the risks to the company A 16 percent fall in Facebook shares in premarket trading brought the losses in the company8217s market value this week to 57 billion or 105 percent a shock for a company that has risen more than 550 percent in value in the past five years The suspended chief executive of Cambridge Analytica said in a secretly recorded video broadcast on Tuesday that his UKbased political consultancy8217s online campaign played a decisive role in US President Donald Trump8217s 2016 election victory CEO Alexander Nix8217s comments which could not be verified were potentially a further problem for Facebook as it faces US and European scrutiny of Cambridge8217s improper use of 50 million Facebook users8217 personal data to target voters nL1N1QZ02Q 8220We anticipate that the stock will be subject to further headline risk in the coming weeks as senior management is summoned to DC for hearings with lawmakers8221 Credit Suisse analyst Stephen Ju wrote in a note Many analysts have now raised concerns that the incident will have a negative impact on user engagement with Facebook potentially eating into its clout with advertisers There are mixed views however on whether an aggressive regulatory response will materialize So far US and European lawmakers have demanded an explanation of how Cambridge Analytica gained access to user data in 2014 and why Facebook failed to inform its users raising broader industry questions about consumer privacy Facebook Inc 170975 FBO Nasdaq 283 168 FBO Cowen and Co analyst Paul Gallant said that Congress is unlikely to act on the issue He said that despite allegations of Russian interference a bill requiring Internet companies to disclose foreign buyers of political advertising is going nowhere 8220We don8217t expect Congress to enact online privacy legislation anytime soon even if Democrats win the House this fall8221 Gallant said On Tuesday another brokerage Evercore ISI cut their target by 20 to 205 their biggest reduction ever Macquarie Research also trimmed its by 5 to 200 the first reduction since Oct 2012 five months after Facebook stock market launch 8220Investors now have to consider whether or not the company will conclude that it has grown in a manner that has proven to be untenable or whether it needs to significantly improve how it is managed8221 said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser Morgan Stanley analysts said they expected Facebook to bring changes to how data are made available to app developers and third parties adding it could have a negative impact on Facebook Audience Network8217s ability to scale although minimal Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru editing by Patrick Graham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Photo by J&#246;rn Schubert | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p> <p>Before long, we will be hearing a lot of talk about &#8220;legitimation crises.&#8221;&amp;#160; Thank Donald Trump.&amp;#160; Thank Benjamin Netanyahu too.</p> <p>The problem with Trump is not that he lost the popular vote but won the election.&amp;#160; We can get over that.</p> <p>George W. Bush lost the popular vote too, and but for five Republican Supreme Court Justices, he would probably have lost in the Electoral College as well. &amp;#160;For a while, this put the legitimacy of his presidency in doubt.&amp;#160; Unfortunately, this didn&#8217;t hobble him for long; even before 9/11, the mood had passed.</p> <p>He was therefore able to go on to break the Greater Middle East and much else too. &amp;#160;The world would have been better off had more been made of the legitimacy of the way he got into the White House; letting the issue go, emboldened him.</p> <p>Tweet by tweet, it becomes harder to deny that Trump&#8217;s ways of thinking and acting defy rational reconstruction. &amp;#160;Therefore, we cannot simply extrapolate from Bush&#8217;s case to his; Bush&#8217;s shortcomings were legion, but he was not out of control crazy.&amp;#160; It was therefore easier to set legitimacy concerns aside in Bush&#8217;s case than in Trump&#8217;s.&amp;#160; For as long as he remains President, they will always be with us.</p> <p>Who knows what Trump will or will not do in these circumstances; the man&#8217;s behavior is too erratic to predict.&amp;#160; Even one of those preternaturally gifted profilers depicted in crime fiction and on television shows like &#8220;Criminal Minds&#8221; would be baffled.</p> <p>This is why Trump&#8217;s presidency is precipitating a legitimation crisis of unprecedented proportions that could cause the world&#8217;s only superpower to become unhinged.</p> <p>If the relevant measures are lethality and damage to world order and stability, Bush is still, by far, the worst President in modern times.&amp;#160; But give the Donald a chance.&amp;#160; He has already outdone George W. in laying siege to the most fundamental of the four freedoms Franklin Roosevelt spoke of, freedom from fear.&amp;#160; When it came to undermining that freedom, Bush and his &#233;minence grise, Dick Cheney, were no slouches, but they were angels compared to Trump.</p> <p>This is why it is urgent that he be impeached or, if that is politically unfeasible, that he be caused to &#8220;self-impeach&#8221; either for vanity&#8217;s sake or for the sake of his and his family&#8217;s bottom lines.</p> <p>Self-impeachment used to seem the more likely prospect, because Democrats are both useless and spineless, and because Republicans of all stripes thought that they could use his presidency to their advantage.&amp;#160; This could change as it becomes clearer to ever-larger swathes of potential Republican voters that the man ought to be carried off in a straightjacket.&amp;#160; Then leading Republicans could well decide that his continuation in office is more of a liability than an asset.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Stay tuned!</p> <p>When Nixon saw the writing on the wall, he quit before the House of Representatives could formally impeach him; he removed himself from office.&amp;#160; As a real estate mogul and casino tycoon, Trump would run away from problems too, often finding ways to enrich himself in the process.&amp;#160; But that skill may not transfer.</p> <p>Self-impeachment &#8211; cut and run &#8212; would be Trump&#8217;s least bad choice, but it now looks like that will only happen if his hard-core base turns against him.&amp;#160; If the polls are right, that isn&#8217;t happening.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the man is too obtuse to realize that everyone who is not willfully blind knows that he is a dangerous buffoon.&amp;#160; He may even be deluded enough himself to believe what he says when he says that he is doing an outstanding job.</p> <p>Astonishingly too, his brand and his daughter&#8217;s are still doing well.&amp;#160; Evidently, there are enough people out there with no taste, no shame, and enough money to keep those emoluments flowing in.</p> <p>This is why our best hope for getting rid of the Trump menace now seems to be the GOP.</p> <p>This could change, of course.&amp;#160; Trump is so plainly unfit for the office the Electoral College handed him &#8211; temperamentally, morally, and intellectually &#8211; that circumstances could arise that would cause a sizeable portion of the Trump base to defect.&amp;#160; The Donald isn&#8217;t have the man, or crook, that Nixon was, but, were that to happen, perhaps even he would see the writing on the wall.</p> <p>Once the assumption that his governance is legitimate wanes sufficiently, he will no longer be able even to muddle through, as he has been up to now &#8211; with the help of House and Senate Republicans, a handful of Generals, and some moneymen.&amp;#160; When it comes to that, even he would have to wonder what the point is in staying on.</p> <p>We do not hear nearly as much about it on cable news, but legitimacy is also an issue in Israel, the &#8220;ally&#8221; that our political class and their media treat, as best they can, as if it were America&#8217;s fifty-first state.</p> <p>The Israeli government is, or pretends to be, obsessed with what it regards as efforts to &#8220;delegitimize&#8221; it.</p> <p>But, unlike the legitimation crisis that the Trump presidency is triggering, that crisis is largely a fabrication of Israeli propagandists.</p> <p>Their goal is to quash the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and, more generally, to suppress all but the most anodyne criticisms of the Israeli state.&amp;#160; The line they promote is that BDS poses an &#8220;existential threat&#8221; to Israel and somehow also to Jews the world over.</p> <p>These are contentions that would hardly be worth taking seriously, except to debunk them, were we not on the brink of a real legitimation crisis that can be instructive to compare and contrast with the one that the Israelis go on about.</p> <p>***</p> <p>Palestinians have been vilified in the West for as long as they have struggled for national recognition; it hardly mattered that there was never much to vilify.</p> <p>They had nothing to do, after all, with the war on European Jewry; that was a European affair.&amp;#160; There is therefore no reason of justice why they should have to pay for what Europeans did to Europe&#8217;s Jews.</p> <p>Neither is there any reason of justice why the state of Israel should be the beneficiary of the sacrifices inflicted upon Palestinians.&amp;#160; Israel did not even exist at the time that the Judeocide was underway, and the harm that the Nazis unleashed befell Jews living in Europe, not Palestine.</p> <p>Nevertheless, the state of Israel inherited a seemingly inexhaustible supply of moral capital.</p> <p>It didn&#8217;t even have to spend any of it to take over and ethnically cleanse Palestine, at least not according to prevailing understandings in the West. &amp;#160;In effect, Israel got a massive inheritance and a get out of jail free card to boot.</p> <p>Thank Zionist ideology for that; without it, it would make no sense to identify Judaism&#8217;s Holy Land with a Jewish homeland, much less to talk about Israel as &#8220;the nation state of the Jewish people.&#8221;</p> <p>In historically Muslim countries, and in most other parts of the world, public opinion has always tended to support the Palestinian cause.&amp;#160; Lately, though, as Israeli governments flagrantly squander the moral capital they still possess, Palestinian calls for justice are finally finding politically receptive audiences in North America, Europe, and Australasia.</p> <p>This was bound to happen eventually.&amp;#160; But Israel&#8217;s rightwing governments have overplayed their hand so often and so egregiously that the process is at last no longer advancing at the glacial pace it was.</p> <p>Founded twelve years ago in response to a call from leading organizations and figures in Palestinian civil society, the BDS movement, along with other expressions of solidarity with Palestinians struggling to end a half-century long Occupation, is therefore on the rise.</p> <p>What BDS asks people to do, and forbear from doing, is utterly non-violent and morally unassailable.</p> <p>Nevertheless, it disturbs even liberal Zionists at the same time that it puts the rest, the vast majority, in such a tizzy that it is hard to believe that they are serious about what they claim.</p> <p>With the Netanyahu government leading the way, they are calling in every political favor they can in order to put the movement down.</p> <p>They are also doing their best to intimidate BDS proponents.&amp;#160; In the United States and elsewhere, they focus especially on progressive activists in colleges and universities, much to the detriment of critical and rational discourse.</p> <p>Their claim, again, is that the BDS movement poses an &#8220;existential threat&#8221; to the state of Israel by putting its &#8220;legitimacy&#8221; in jeopardy.</p> <p>***</p> <p>For political philosophers, political legitimacy has long been Topic A.</p> <p>The general idea is that a state is legitimate if and only if its basic institutions and practices satisfy defensible standards.</p> <p>Some of the standards that are proposed or assumed are so stringent that no actually existing state could ever satisfy them.&amp;#160; When this is the case, notions of political legitimacy may be of philosophical interest &#8211; for what they say, for example, about the forms and limits of political obligation or the nature of authority relations in the political sphere, but they are irrelevant from a real world political point of view.</p> <p>In marked contrast, most philosophical accounts of legitimacy propose standards of such an anodyne nature that most existing states easily satisfy them.&amp;#160; Like philosophers generally political philosophers aim to provide rationally defensible accounts of what already is the case.&amp;#160; They are therefore more likely to be conservative than radical.</p> <p>In any case, descriptive accounts of the ways that institutions come to be regarded as legitimate are of more direct political relevance than normative theories of political legitimacy. &amp;#160;This has been a topic of discussion in academic circles for more than a century.</p> <p>Thus we know that charismatic leaders can sometimes legitimate institutional arrangements.&amp;#160; We also know that, for the most part, people come to accept the legitimacy of the regimes under which they live when and insofar as the politicians and bureaucrats who govern them conform to widely accepted expectations that accord with prevailing social norms.</p> <p>Notwithstanding his belief in his own &#8220;wonderfulness,&#8221; Trump is hardly a charismatic leader, and his seemingly uncontrollable erratic style confounds ordinary expectations and social norms.&amp;#160; This is why a full-fledged legitimation crisis is brewing.</p> <p>Israel&#8217;s real or purported problem with political legitimacy is of a different nature altogether.</p> <p>The regime in place in Israel now would surely horrify leading figures from earlier versions of the Zionist project, but the internal stability of the regime is secure. For as long as the idea that Israel faces existential threats seems credible to most Israelis and Zionists abroad, this is unlikely to change.</p> <p>Settler states in other times and places effectively eliminated the indigenous peoples whose lands they usurped &#8211; militarily or by disease or sometimes, especially in Central and South America, by intermarriage.&amp;#160; &amp;#160;In the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the preferred strategy was outright elimination, coupled with physical separation, when necessary and feasible.</p> <p>A British-only population policy was incompatible with economic development, however &#8212; and so, before long, slaves were imported from Africa and, in time, immigrants from Europe were permitted entry too.&amp;#160; For the past half-century or so, immigration from all over the world into the United States and the British Empire&#8217;s former &#8220;white dominions&#8221; has been so massive that many of the former targets of nativist animosities, &#8220;white ethnics,&#8221; get off scot-free in the Trump era.</p> <p>Settler projects in lands inhabited by African peoples less susceptible to European diseases than Amerindians were less successful.</p> <p>Palestine was more like South Africa or Algeria than the Massachusetts Bay Colony or Peru; and Palestine was part of a larger Arab and Muslim world that, unlike pre-Columbian North and South America, was rising, not fading away into oblivion.</p> <p>Therefore there has never been a shortage of plausible existential threats to Israel &#8211; especially for a population that is predisposed to believe that the whole world is against them.&amp;#160; That deeply entrenched belief is factually incorrect nowadays, but eminently understandable in light of history.</p> <p>Add to that a guilty conscience that, though largely unacknowledged, must surely register in the collective consciousness of Jewish Israelis who could hardly fail to realize, at some level, that the people whose land they have taken harbor grievances that are indisputably just.</p> <p>Therefore even were a genuine peace somehow imposed on Israel/Palestine, it would probably take generations for the &#8220;existential&#8221; fears of Jewish Israelis to become politically inert.</p> <p>It hasn&#8217;t helped that successive Israeli governments have done all they could to prevent the eruption of peace and that it would take an act of God, as it were, for this to change.</p> <p>The West, especially the United States, could, of course, make Israel &#8220;an offer it couldn&#8217;t refuse,&#8221; just by refusing to subsidize ethnic cleansing in territories beyond the so-called Green Line, and by withholding economic, military and diplomatic support until all of Israel&#8217;s citizens enjoy the same social and political rights as Israel&#8217;s Jewish Herrenvolk.</p> <p>Needless to say, the American government is not about to do anything of the sort.&amp;#160; Therefore, for all practical purposes, Israeli perceptions of existential threats are here to stay.</p> <p>Even so, the vilification of BDS currently underway is so thoroughly out of proportion that it is hard to take it seriously.</p> <p>Nevertheless, because its very existence drives home the point that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine was never an unequivocally good idea, true believers in the Zionist cause do have reason to worry about BDS, along with other calls for justice for Palestinians &#8211; many of which have even more far-reaching implications.</p> <p>There were compelling reasons why most people outside the Middle East thought that acceding to Zionist demands seemed like a good idea seventy years ago.&amp;#160; Back then, there were large numbers of displaced Holocaust survivors who could not easily be reabsorbed back into the devastated lands from which they had come.&amp;#160; Meanwhile, the United States and other intact and prosperous countries in North and South America and the Antipodes were unwilling to accept more than a handful of those displaced persons &#8211; thanks, in part, to lingering anti-Semitism and, in part, to Zionist finagling.</p> <p>In those circumstances, where besides Palestine could the refugees go?</p> <p>Outside the Middle East, public opinion &#8211; left, right, and center &#8212; looked kindly upon the Zionist project; even the Communists were on board.</p> <p>And although the future of British, French, Dutch and Portuguese colonialism was already in doubt, and although nationalist ferment was already brewing throughout the Arab world, hardly anyone at the time fully appreciated how problematic the insertion of a European people into the heartland of the Middle East could become.</p> <p>There was therefore never much doubt in the international community about Israel&#8217;s legitimacy &#8211; not, again, in the sense that engages philosophers, but in ways that matter in the real world.</p> <p>Arab states objected &#8211; diplomatically and militarily &#8212; from Day One.&amp;#160; But this came to very little in the absence of an organized Palestinian national movement comparable to the one that Jewish settlers in Palestine had developed in the decades preceding independence.</p> <p>What the Palestinians had instead were pan-Arabist notables claiming to represent their interests, and duplicitous governments in nearby Arab states, purporting to be their allies.&amp;#160; It would be some twenty years before Palestinians had a full-fledged national movement of their own.</p> <p>Grudgingly, but incontrovertibly, the BDS movement has always accepted these understandings.&amp;#160; Realizing that the past cannot be undone, and cognizant of the hand they have been dealt, the delegitimization of the state of Israel is not and never has been on their agenda.</p> <p>Quite to the contrary, they accept the UN resolutions that established Israel&#8217;s &#8220;right to exist&#8221; and subsequent resolutions confirming that position, and call only for the end of a half-century long occupation that is blatantly illegal according to that standard.</p> <p>Even were BDS militants expressly to join those who call for Israel to become a state of its citizens, not just those who are Jewish, their aim would still not be to &#8220;delegitimize&#8221; the state.&amp;#160; It would only be to turn it off its ethnocratic track.&amp;#160; Ironically, this would cause Israel to become more like what its more progressive founders wanted it to be &#8212; a normal, liberal democratic and secular state.</p> <p>The United States, another settler state, was once but is no longer an Anglo-majority country; before long, according to the Census Bureau, it will not even be a white-majority country.&amp;#160; But except in the minds of a few pro-Trumpian &#8220;alt-right&#8221; nativists, the United States hardly faces an &#8220;existential threat&#8221; on that account.</p> <p>It is the same with BDS.&amp;#160; The movement is not asking for anything that would put the security and well being of Israeli Jews in jeopardy or for anything that would diminish their life prospects.&amp;#160; Neither are they calling for anything that would harm either the Jewish religion or the vitality of the Hebrew-speaking culture that Israeli Jews have forged over the past five or six generations.</p> <p>BDS does not even put the idea of a Jewish majority state in jeopardy, provided Jewish Israelis would be willing to accept sovereignty over no more of Mandate Palestine than they had before the Six Day War.</p> <p>There is nothing delegitimizing about that.&amp;#160; Indeed, this is what the &#8220;two state solution&#8221; is about.</p> <p>Netanyahu and his co-thinkers still babble on about two states living side by side, but, thanks to them, that idea is now, for all practical purposes, a dead letter.</p> <p>Something like it though, or confederative arrangements that accord Israeli Jews sovereignty over less of Mandate Palestine than most Israelis nowadays would like, could nevertheless still be implemented if the political will exists.</p> <p>Thus the only existential threat BDS poses is to a bad idea that may have seemed like a good and even necessary idea to a lot of people half a century ago, but that plainly no longer is.&amp;#160; If that is a legitimation crisis, then bring it on!</p> <p>It is nothing like the very real legitimation crisis that becomes worse each day that Trump remains in office.&amp;#160; Unlike BDS, Trumpian rule portends real, not imaginary, catastrophes on many levels &#8212; and literally does threaten &#8220;the world and all that dwell therein&#8221; existentially.</p>

Legitimation Crises

https://counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/legitimation-crises/

2017-05-19

4left

Photo by J246rn Schubert CC BY 20 Before long we will be hearing a lot of talk about 8220legitimation crises8221amp160 Thank Donald Trumpamp160 Thank Benjamin Netanyahu too The problem with Trump is not that he lost the popular vote but won the electionamp160 We can get over that George W Bush lost the popular vote too and but for five Republican Supreme Court Justices he would probably have lost in the Electoral College as well amp160For a while this put the legitimacy of his presidency in doubtamp160 Unfortunately this didn8217t hobble him for long even before 911 the mood had passed He was therefore able to go on to break the Greater Middle East and much else too amp160The world would have been better off had more been made of the legitimacy of the way he got into the White House letting the issue go emboldened him Tweet by tweet it becomes harder to deny that Trump8217s ways of thinking and acting defy rational reconstruction amp160Therefore we cannot simply extrapolate from Bush8217s case to his Bush8217s shortcomings were legion but he was not out of control crazyamp160 It was therefore easier to set legitimacy concerns aside in Bush8217s case than in Trump8217samp160 For as long as he remains President they will always be with us Who knows what Trump will or will not do in these circumstances the man8217s behavior is too erratic to predictamp160 Even one of those preternaturally gifted profilers depicted in crime fiction and on television shows like 8220Criminal Minds8221 would be baffled This is why Trump8217s presidency is precipitating a legitimation crisis of unprecedented proportions that could cause the world8217s only superpower to become unhinged If the relevant measures are lethality and damage to world order and stability Bush is still by far the worst President in modern timesamp160 But give the Donald a chanceamp160 He has already outdone George W in laying siege to the most fundamental of the four freedoms Franklin Roosevelt spoke of freedom from fearamp160 When it came to undermining that freedom Bush and his 233minence grise Dick Cheney were no slouches but they were angels compared to Trump This is why it is urgent that he be impeached or if that is politically unfeasible that he be caused to 8220selfimpeach8221 either for vanity8217s sake or for the sake of his and his family8217s bottom lines Selfimpeachment used to seem the more likely prospect because Democrats are both useless and spineless and because Republicans of all stripes thought that they could use his presidency to their advantageamp160 This could change as it becomes clearer to everlarger swathes of potential Republican voters that the man ought to be carried off in a straightjacketamp160 Then leading Republicans could well decide that his continuation in office is more of a liability than an assetamp160amp160 Stay tuned When Nixon saw the writing on the wall he quit before the House of Representatives could formally impeach him he removed himself from officeamp160 As a real estate mogul and casino tycoon Trump would run away from problems too often finding ways to enrich himself in the processamp160 But that skill may not transfer Selfimpeachment 8211 cut and run 8212 would be Trump8217s least bad choice but it now looks like that will only happen if his hardcore base turns against himamp160 If the polls are right that isn8217t happening Meanwhile the man is too obtuse to realize that everyone who is not willfully blind knows that he is a dangerous buffoonamp160 He may even be deluded enough himself to believe what he says when he says that he is doing an outstanding job Astonishingly too his brand and his daughter8217s are still doing wellamp160 Evidently there are enough people out there with no taste no shame and enough money to keep those emoluments flowing in This is why our best hope for getting rid of the Trump menace now seems to be the GOP This could change of courseamp160 Trump is so plainly unfit for the office the Electoral College handed him 8211 temperamentally morally and intellectually 8211 that circumstances could arise that would cause a sizeable portion of the Trump base to defectamp160 The Donald isn8217t have the man or crook that Nixon was but were that to happen perhaps even he would see the writing on the wall Once the assumption that his governance is legitimate wanes sufficiently he will no longer be able even to muddle through as he has been up to now 8211 with the help of House and Senate Republicans a handful of Generals and some moneymenamp160 When it comes to that even he would have to wonder what the point is in staying on We do not hear nearly as much about it on cable news but legitimacy is also an issue in Israel the 8220ally8221 that our political class and their media treat as best they can as if it were America8217s fiftyfirst state The Israeli government is or pretends to be obsessed with what it regards as efforts to 8220delegitimize8221 it But unlike the legitimation crisis that the Trump presidency is triggering that crisis is largely a fabrication of Israeli propagandists Their goal is to quash the Boycott Divestment Sanctions BDS movement and more generally to suppress all but the most anodyne criticisms of the Israeli stateamp160 The line they promote is that BDS poses an 8220existential threat8221 to Israel and somehow also to Jews the world over These are contentions that would hardly be worth taking seriously except to debunk them were we not on the brink of a real legitimation crisis that can be instructive to compare and contrast with the one that the Israelis go on about Palestinians have been vilified in the West for as long as they have struggled for national recognition it hardly mattered that there was never much to vilify They had nothing to do after all with the war on European Jewry that was a European affairamp160 There is therefore no reason of justice why they should have to pay for what Europeans did to Europe8217s Jews Neither is there any reason of justice why the state of Israel should be the beneficiary of the sacrifices inflicted upon Palestiniansamp160 Israel did not even exist at the time that the Judeocide was underway and the harm that the Nazis unleashed befell Jews living in Europe not Palestine Nevertheless the state of Israel inherited a seemingly inexhaustible supply of moral capital It didn8217t even have to spend any of it to take over and ethnically cleanse Palestine at least not according to prevailing understandings in the West amp160In effect Israel got a massive inheritance and a get out of jail free card to boot Thank Zionist ideology for that without it it would make no sense to identify Judaism8217s Holy Land with a Jewish homeland much less to talk about Israel as 8220the nation state of the Jewish people8221 In historically Muslim countries and in most other parts of the world public opinion has always tended to support the Palestinian causeamp160 Lately though as Israeli governments flagrantly squander the moral capital they still possess Palestinian calls for justice are finally finding politically receptive audiences in North America Europe and Australasia This was bound to happen eventuallyamp160 But Israel8217s rightwing governments have overplayed their hand so often and so egregiously that the process is at last no longer advancing at the glacial pace it was Founded twelve years ago in response to a call from leading organizations and figures in Palestinian civil society the BDS movement along with other expressions of solidarity with Palestinians struggling to end a halfcentury long Occupation is therefore on the rise What BDS asks people to do and forbear from doing is utterly nonviolent and morally unassailable Nevertheless it disturbs even liberal Zionists at the same time that it puts the rest the vast majority in such a tizzy that it is hard to believe that they are serious about what they claim With the Netanyahu government leading the way they are calling in every political favor they can in order to put the movement down They are also doing their best to intimidate BDS proponentsamp160 In the United States and elsewhere they focus especially on progressive activists in colleges and universities much to the detriment of critical and rational discourse Their claim again is that the BDS movement poses an 8220existential threat8221 to the state of Israel by putting its 8220legitimacy8221 in jeopardy For political philosophers political legitimacy has long been Topic A The general idea is that a state is legitimate if and only if its basic institutions and practices satisfy defensible standards Some of the standards that are proposed or assumed are so stringent that no actually existing state could ever satisfy themamp160 When this is the case notions of political legitimacy may be of philosophical interest 8211 for what they say for example about the forms and limits of political obligation or the nature of authority relations in the political sphere but they are irrelevant from a real world political point of view In marked contrast most philosophical accounts of legitimacy propose standards of such an anodyne nature that most existing states easily satisfy themamp160 Like philosophers generally political philosophers aim to provide rationally defensible accounts of what already is the caseamp160 They are therefore more likely to be conservative than radical In any case descriptive accounts of the ways that institutions come to be regarded as legitimate are of more direct political relevance than normative theories of political legitimacy amp160This has been a topic of discussion in academic circles for more than a century Thus we know that charismatic leaders can sometimes legitimate institutional arrangementsamp160 We also know that for the most part people come to accept the legitimacy of the regimes under which they live when and insofar as the politicians and bureaucrats who govern them conform to widely accepted expectations that accord with prevailing social norms Notwithstanding his belief in his own 8220wonderfulness8221 Trump is hardly a charismatic leader and his seemingly uncontrollable erratic style confounds ordinary expectations and social normsamp160 This is why a fullfledged legitimation crisis is brewing Israel8217s real or purported problem with political legitimacy is of a different nature altogether The regime in place in Israel now would surely horrify leading figures from earlier versions of the Zionist project but the internal stability of the regime is secure For as long as the idea that Israel faces existential threats seems credible to most Israelis and Zionists abroad this is unlikely to change Settler states in other times and places effectively eliminated the indigenous peoples whose lands they usurped 8211 militarily or by disease or sometimes especially in Central and South America by intermarriageamp160 amp160In the United States Canada Australia and New Zealand the preferred strategy was outright elimination coupled with physical separation when necessary and feasible A Britishonly population policy was incompatible with economic development however 8212 and so before long slaves were imported from Africa and in time immigrants from Europe were permitted entry tooamp160 For the past halfcentury or so immigration from all over the world into the United States and the British Empire8217s former 8220white dominions8221 has been so massive that many of the former targets of nativist animosities 8220white ethnics8221 get off scotfree in the Trump era Settler projects in lands inhabited by African peoples less susceptible to European diseases than Amerindians were less successful Palestine was more like South Africa or Algeria than the Massachusetts Bay Colony or Peru and Palestine was part of a larger Arab and Muslim world that unlike preColumbian North and South America was rising not fading away into oblivion Therefore there has never been a shortage of plausible existential threats to Israel 8211 especially for a population that is predisposed to believe that the whole world is against themamp160 That deeply entrenched belief is factually incorrect nowadays but eminently understandable in light of history Add to that a guilty conscience that though largely unacknowledged must surely register in the collective consciousness of Jewish Israelis who could hardly fail to realize at some level that the people whose land they have taken harbor grievances that are indisputably just Therefore even were a genuine peace somehow imposed on IsraelPalestine it would probably take generations for the 8220existential8221 fears of Jewish Israelis to become politically inert It hasn8217t helped that successive Israeli governments have done all they could to prevent the eruption of peace and that it would take an act of God as it were for this to change The West especially the United States could of course make Israel 8220an offer it couldn8217t refuse8221 just by refusing to subsidize ethnic cleansing in territories beyond the socalled Green Line and by withholding economic military and diplomatic support until all of Israel8217s citizens enjoy the same social and political rights as Israel8217s Jewish Herrenvolk Needless to say the American government is not about to do anything of the sortamp160 Therefore for all practical purposes Israeli perceptions of existential threats are here to stay Even so the vilification of BDS currently underway is so thoroughly out of proportion that it is hard to take it seriously Nevertheless because its very existence drives home the point that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine was never an unequivocally good idea true believers in the Zionist cause do have reason to worry about BDS along with other calls for justice for Palestinians 8211 many of which have even more farreaching implications There were compelling reasons why most people outside the Middle East thought that acceding to Zionist demands seemed like a good idea seventy years agoamp160 Back then there were large numbers of displaced Holocaust survivors who could not easily be reabsorbed back into the devastated lands from which they had comeamp160 Meanwhile the United States and other intact and prosperous countries in North and South America and the Antipodes were unwilling to accept more than a handful of those displaced persons 8211 thanks in part to lingering antiSemitism and in part to Zionist finagling In those circumstances where besides Palestine could the refugees go Outside the Middle East public opinion 8211 left right and center 8212 looked kindly upon the Zionist project even the Communists were on board And although the future of British French Dutch and Portuguese colonialism was already in doubt and although nationalist ferment was already brewing throughout the Arab world hardly anyone at the time fully appreciated how problematic the insertion of a European people into the heartland of the Middle East could become There was therefore never much doubt in the international community about Israel8217s legitimacy 8211 not again in the sense that engages philosophers but in ways that matter in the real world Arab states objected 8211 diplomatically and militarily 8212 from Day Oneamp160 But this came to very little in the absence of an organized Palestinian national movement comparable to the one that Jewish settlers in Palestine had developed in the decades preceding independence What the Palestinians had instead were panArabist notables claiming to represent their interests and duplicitous governments in nearby Arab states purporting to be their alliesamp160 It would be some twenty years before Palestinians had a fullfledged national movement of their own Grudgingly but incontrovertibly the BDS movement has always accepted these understandingsamp160 Realizing that the past cannot be undone and cognizant of the hand they have been dealt the delegitimization of the state of Israel is not and never has been on their agenda Quite to the contrary they accept the UN resolutions that established Israel8217s 8220right to exist8221 and subsequent resolutions confirming that position and call only for the end of a halfcentury long occupation that is blatantly illegal according to that standard Even were BDS militants expressly to join those who call for Israel to become a state of its citizens not just those who are Jewish their aim would still not be to 8220delegitimize8221 the stateamp160 It would only be to turn it off its ethnocratic trackamp160 Ironically this would cause Israel to become more like what its more progressive founders wanted it to be 8212 a normal liberal democratic and secular state The United States another settler state was once but is no longer an Anglomajority country before long according to the Census Bureau it will not even be a whitemajority countryamp160 But except in the minds of a few proTrumpian 8220altright8221 nativists the United States hardly faces an 8220existential threat8221 on that account It is the same with BDSamp160 The movement is not asking for anything that would put the security and well being of Israeli Jews in jeopardy or for anything that would diminish their life prospectsamp160 Neither are they calling for anything that would harm either the Jewish religion or the vitality of the Hebrewspeaking culture that Israeli Jews have forged over the past five or six generations BDS does not even put the idea of a Jewish majority state in jeopardy provided Jewish Israelis would be willing to accept sovereignty over no more of Mandate Palestine than they had before the Six Day War There is nothing delegitimizing about thatamp160 Indeed this is what the 8220two state solution8221 is about Netanyahu and his cothinkers still babble on about two states living side by side but thanks to them that idea is now for all practical purposes a dead letter Something like it though or confederative arrangements that accord Israeli Jews sovereignty over less of Mandate Palestine than most Israelis nowadays would like could nevertheless still be implemented if the political will exists Thus the only existential threat BDS poses is to a bad idea that may have seemed like a good and even necessary idea to a lot of people half a century ago but that plainly no longer isamp160 If that is a legitimation crisis then bring it on It is nothing like the very real legitimation crisis that becomes worse each day that Trump remains in officeamp160 Unlike BDS Trumpian rule portends real not imaginary catastrophes on many levels 8212 and literally does threaten 8220the world and all that dwell therein8221 existentially

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<p /> <p>On Sept. 19, eight days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Senator Frank Murkowski took to the Senate floor to deny reports that he was trying to affix an amendment containing one of his pet proposals to a fast-moving defense bill. Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, said he resented any suggestion that he was exploiting a national military emergency to slip through a measure that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to energy exploration and development. &#8220;That is certainly not the case,&#8221; a plainly agitated Murkowski told his colleagues. &#8220;It would be inappropriate and in poor taste.&#8221;</p> <p>Just hours later, however, one of Murkowski&#8217;s key allies in the Senate did exactly what Murkowski said he would not do. Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma introduced an amendment-drawn verbatim from an energy bill that Murkowski had written six months earlier-to permit drilling for oil and natural gas in ANWR&#8217;s environmentally sensitive coastal plain. And two days later, Murkowski&#8217;s reticence to link ANWR to the events of Sept. 11 had apparently evaporated. &#8220;I think we&#8217;ve got an issue here whose time has come,&#8221; he told reporters. Soon he was couching his pronouncements in the twin themes of antiterrorism and national security. &#8220;Mideast oil funds terrorism,&#8221; he declared. &#8220;If there was a terrorist attack on our oil supply, such as an attack on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, there would be a significant blow to our national security.&#8221; The ANWR amendment was ultimately removed from the defense appropriations bill, but Murkowski vowed to attach what he now called the &#8220;Homeland Energy Security Act&#8221; to other legislation.</p> <p>Murkowski was not the only elected official trying to slip industry-backed items into unrelated emergency measures. In the wake of Sept. 11, scores of Capitol Hill lawmakers, Washington lobbyists, trade associations, and interest groups rushed to repackage their old proposals in national security wrapping. Bald opportunism and the political exploitation of tragedy is nothing new in the nation&#8217;s capital, but what&#8217;s happened in the months since the terrorist attacks may well show Washington at its worst. &#8220;I think that this was more shameless than anything else I&#8217;ve ever seen in Washington,&#8221; says Ronald Utt, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.</p> <p>Television producer Bill Moyers, in a speech to a group of environmental funders, put a more venal cast on the latest lobbying tactics. &#8220;It didn&#8217;t take long for the wartime opportunists-the mercenaries of Washington, the lobbyists, lawyers, and political fundraisers-to crawl out of their offices on K Street to grab what they can for their clients,&#8221; he said. &#8220;In the wake of this awful tragedy wrought by terrorism, they are cashing in.&#8221;</p> <p>Consider, for example, the lobbying strategy of the nation&#8217;s beleaguered steel industry. The smoke had not yet cleared from the wreckage of the World Trade Center when the nation&#8217;s big steelmakers and their allies in Washington began invoking the terrorist attacks to bolster their arguments for direct subsidies, as well as further restrictions on imports of less-costly foreign steel. &#8220;Without steel, we cannot guarantee our national security,&#8221; said Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia. &#8220;Without steel, we cannot build from our tragedy.&#8221; (Without steel, Rockefeller might have added, the two political parties and their congressional candidates would have been about $2.7 million poorer in the 2000 elections.)</p> <p>&#8220;Absolute baloney,&#8221; Robert Crandall, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says of the argument that propping up the domestic steel industry is vital to the national security. One or two steel mills, he maintains, could produce all the steel plate needed for shipbuilding and other critical defense industries.</p> <p>National security arguments were even used to advance a farm-subsidy bill worth $167 billion. Before Sept. 11, the bill was titled the Agriculture Act of 2001. After the terrorist attacks, it was renamed the Farm Security Act of 2001. On Sept. 24, the growers of more than 20 federally subsidized agriculture commodities sent a letter to Capitol Hill lawmakers in which they said that the attacks had &#8220;bolstered the argument that food production is vital to the national interest.&#8221; No doubt their message got through: The producers of these and other commodities had poured more than $58 million into the 2000 elections. On October 5, the measure passed the House by a vote of 291 to 120.</p> <p>Similar arguments were advanced by the manufacturers of traffic signs, barricades, and other equipment, who gamely recast their perennial plea for more federal highway-safety spending in a national security framework. A spokesman for the 1,800-member American Traffic Safety Services Association said that increased federal spending on highway signs and other traffic-routing devices would help motorists flee cities faster and more safely during a terrorist attack. Rob Dingess, the association&#8217;s director of government relations, pointed out that the evacuation of many federal facilities following the attack on the Pentagon left the nation&#8217;s capital in gridlock. &#8220;If a second plane had come into that city,&#8221; Dingess said, &#8220;you would almost have had to helicopter people to fight fire or evacuate people.&#8221;</p> <p>Then there was the American Bus Association, which represents nearly a thousand private companies that provide intercity bus and motorcoach service. The trade group has been lobbying for legislation that would provide $400 million &#8220;to improve bus security and safety.&#8221; The legislation is important, the association insists, because it would help bus companies retain drivers who, in the wake of Sept. 11, have come to fear potential terrorist attacks.</p> <p>But the most labored stretch may have come from the National Taxpayers Union, a conservative advocacy group that touted a cut in capital-gains taxes as a national security initiative. Eric Schlecht, the organization&#8217;s director of congressional relations, maintains that lowering taxes for the rich would flood the coffers of the irs with more money. &#8220;By reducing the rate at which capital gains are taxed,&#8221; he says, &#8220;President Bush and Congress could help revitalize the sagging economy and bring new revenues to Washington-decidedly aiding our war against terrorism.&#8221;</p> <p>Washington has always been a city of wretched excesses, but never have so many lobbyists for so many different special interests so blatantly wrapped their requests for subsidies, tax breaks, and other forms of federal largesse in patriotic packaging. &#8220;No self-respecting lobbyist in Washington has resisted the temptation to reframe the exact arguments they were making before Septem- ber 11 into a post-Sept. 11 response to terror,&#8221; observes Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.). &#8220;There is no issue-none-where they aren&#8217;t doing it.&#8221;</p> <p>The feeding frenzy was kicked off by the airline industry&#8217;s drive for a fast-track bailout in the days immediately after the terrorist attacks. By Sept. 22, the airlines had sealed an especially sweet deal: $5 billion in cash, plus another $10 billion in loan guarantees based on their pre-Sept. 11 market share rather than their post-Sept. 11 losses. The airlines also won protection from any lawsuits arising from the attacks, a provision of the bailout that may ultimately cost taxpayers many additional billions.</p> <p>The success of the airlines inspired the insurance industry to follow suit. On Sept. 21, during a private meeting at the White House arranged by the American Insurance Association, 16 insurance executives informed President George Bush and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans that the industry would be able to pay all the claims-estimated at $40 billion to $75 billion-arising from what&#8217;s expected to be the costliest disaster in the nation&#8217;s history. During a brief &#8220;photo op,&#8221; the executives assured Bush that the insurance industry, with its $3 trillion in assets in the United States alone, wouldn&#8217;t need federal help.</p> <p>When the cameras were gone, however, the executives-led by CEOs Maurice Greenberg of American International Group and Robert O&#8217;Connell of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance-got down to the real business at hand. They bluntly pressed Bush and Evans for legislation that would shift the lion&#8217;s share of liability for future terrorist attacks to the federal government. Furthermore, Greenberg reportedly asked the White House for its help in keeping claim disputes related to the World Trade Center disaster confined to a federal court in Manhattan-and thereby out of state courts, where insurers could potentially be liable for additional millions, if not billions, in punitive damages. If the White House failed to act, the insurers warned, the industry would refuse to cover damage from future terrorist attacks, potentially triggering a full-scale financial crisis.</p> <p>The executives in the industry&#8217;s delegation were anything but strangers to their White House hosts. In particular, Greenberg and O&#8217;Connell had been among the elite group of fundraisers known as &#8220;Pioneers&#8221; who raised at least $100,000 for Bush&#8217;s presidential campaign under the direction of his finance chairman, Donald Evans. In all, the insurance industry had invested nearly $1.6 million to elect Bush, and Greenberg&#8217;s company and two industry trade associations had chipped in $100,000 apiece to underwrite his inaugural celebration. The industry had also pumped more than $20 million into Republican and Democratic soft-money accounts since 1999- corporate checks bearing such names as Chubb, CNA, Hartford, Kemper, Travelers, and Zurich, all of whom had representatives at the White House meeting.</p> <p>The White House was quick to respond to the industry&#8217;s request. On October 15, it unveiled a plan to cap the industry&#8217;s liability in 2002 by agreeing to use public funds to pay all but $12 billion of the first $100 billion in future terrorism-related claims. The plan would also limit the industry&#8217;s liability to $23 billion in 2003 and $35 billion in 2004.</p> <p>In November, the House voted along party lines to approve the plan, which had been introduced as the &#8220;Terrorism Risk Protection Act&#8221; by Rep. Michael Oxley, a Republican from Ohio. Oxley was clearly the right lawmaker for the job: Even with Election Day more than a year away, he&#8217;d already collected more than $34,000 in contributions from insurance-industry interests.</p> <p>The plan to shift the cost of any future terrorist attacks to taxpayers later stalled in the Senate, but the early successes of the airline and insurance industries emboldened other businesses to think big. &#8220;If you start saying, &#212;Well, the airlines have been hurt because nobody wants to fly on airplanes any longer,&#8217; there are literally hundreds of industries that could make that exact same claim,&#8221; says Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a free-market-oriented think tank. &#8220;It starts with the airlines, and then it&#8217;s insurance businesses, and then it&#8217;s the entertainment industry, and tourism, and then, of course, the Las Vegas casinos. It just becomes a parade of special-interest groups down Pennsylvania Avenue that have their hands out. This is the quintessence of corporate welfare.&#8221;</p> <p>Indeed, the list of post-Sept. 11 petitioners-all asking for a handout, a bailout, or something in between-seems downright endless. Flight schools, operators of skydiving companies, manufacturers of small aircraft, and owners of small airports were among the first in line. They&#8217;ve been seeking a $7.5 billion package of grants and loan guarantees called the General Aviation Reparations Act to compensate them for business lost since the attacks. &#8220;Congress acted swiftly to provide the major airlines with needed relief to keep that industry going,&#8221; explained Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), who introduced the measure. &#8220;Now it should do the same for general aviation.&#8221;</p> <p>Similarly, the National Limousine Association tried to arrange an exemption from the gas-guzzler tax for fleets operated by its members. Early on, some of its members persuaded Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) to introduce legislation that would have provided financial assistance to &#8220;chauffeured ground-transportation companies that incurred losses as a result of the terrorist attacks.&#8221; The measure, which was supposed to be tacked onto the airline bailout, didn&#8217;t make it to the floor. &#8220;Oh boy, that one never got off the ground,&#8221; concedes Bruce Cottew, the association&#8217;s executive director. More recently, the association&#8217;s biggest member, Carey International, retained the heavyweight Washington lobbying firm of Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin &amp;amp; Kahn to seek federal loan guarantees on its behalf.</p> <p>The nation&#8217;s farmers, evidently not content with the goodies in the Farm Security Act, also rushed to get in on the giveaways. In the Senate Finance Committee&#8217;s summary of its proposed economic-stimulus package, a fine-print footnote proposed $220 million in price subsidies for a list of 34 agricultural commodities arranged alphabetically from &#8220;apples&#8221; to &#8220;watermelons.&#8221; In between &#8220;bell peppers&#8221; and &#8220;black beans&#8221; was federal support for &#8220;bison meat.&#8221; A subsidy of $10 million, it turned out, was being proposed by Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, whose state is home to the North America Bison Cooperative. Officials of the cooperative, whose 350 members (including billionaire Ted Turner) produce about half of the world&#8217;s bison steaks, burgers, and roasts, maintain that the fear of additional terrorist attacks has driven patrons out of the high-priced restaurants that serve their products, plunging the industry into an economic tailspin.</p> <p>Other industries also saw their opening. Ethanol producers, already heavily subsidized by the federal government, argued that requiring ethanol to be blended in gasoline would make the United States less reliant on oil from the Middle East. And the American Society of Travel Agents sought $4 billion in grants and no-interest loans. &#8220;Without travel agencies,&#8221; the society warned, &#8220;the nation&#8217;s travel industry cannot function.&#8221;</p> <p>Indeed, as both the Senate and House crafted huge economic-stimulus bills in November, lobbyists from nearly every industry scurried to get a piece of the action. &#8220;As soon as there was an announcement of an aid package, people started coming out of the woodwork,&#8221; acknowledged James Albertine, president of the American League of Lobbyists. &#8220;There are a lot of industries that will be looking at the pot of gold. The federal government is spending more and, obviously, there will be some winners. There&#8217;s lots of opportunities and it cuts across all industries. It&#8217;s pretty much open season.&#8221;</p> <p>Barely a month after the terrorist attacks, Rep. Jim Moran, a Democrat whose Virginia congressional district includes Reagan National Airport, bluntly summed up the attitude of both lawmakers and lobbyists. &#8220;It&#8217;s an open grab bag,&#8221; he said, &#8220;so let&#8217;s grab.&#8221;</p> <p>In a few cases, the lobbying free-for-all proved too brazen even by Washington standards. In November, lobbyist Howard Marlowe scored a modest but impressive victory for the nation&#8217;s seaside resorts, persuading Congress that it was vital for national security to spend a record $135 million to shore up public beaches with sand-nearly $50 million more for beach &#8220;nourishment&#8221; than the Bush administration had requested. Emboldened by their success, Marlowe&#8217;s clients immediately made a pitch for additional subsidies. &#8220;America needs to make a major commitment to its energy and water infrastructure, both for security and economic reasons,&#8221; the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association urged lawmakers. &#8220;Protecting the nation&#8217;s coastline is also vitally important to ensure the recovery of the American economy.&#8221;</p> <p>This time around, though, the appeal went nowhere. &#8220;We haven&#8217;t gotten anything yet, and I don&#8217;t think we will,&#8221; says Marlowe, who concedes that the lobbying frenzy has gotten out of hand. &#8220;It gets to the point where you don&#8217;t want to be associated with it,&#8221; he says. &#8220;So many people saw opportunity in the wake of tragedy that it&#8217;s definitely gotten unseemly.&#8221;</p> <p>Perhaps the most unseemly proposal of all was the juicy platter of corporate tax breaks that formed the centerpiece of the economic-stimulus plan put forward by House Republicans. The GOP plan called for almost doubling the amount that companies can write off for capital expenses they haven&#8217;t yet incurred, allowing corporations that rely on loopholes to pay no taxes at all, and providing immediate rebates for any alternative-minimum taxes they have paid since 1986. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the bill would trigger nearly $13 billion in rebates, with nearly a third going to just 16 Fortune 500 firms. The legislation also proposed making permanent a provision that allows multinational corporations to shelter their U.S. profits from taxation by shifting them, on paper, to offshore tax havens. The provision was included even after an administration official conceded that the measure-which would cost taxpayers $21 billion over 10 years-would have &#8220;zero stimulative effect.&#8221;</p> <p>Much of the lobbying for the tax breaks was orchestrated by Kenneth Kies, a partner at the accounting and lobbying firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers who previously worked on Capitol Hill as staff director of the Joint Committee on Taxation. Like other lobbyists, Kies suggested to reporters that he was only trying to do his patriotic duty by bolstering the bottom lines of some of the nation&#8217;s wealthiest corporations. &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t be doing the job-not necessarily for my clients-but for my country,&#8221; he told the New York Times, &#8220;if I wasn&#8217;t being helpful in terms of offering ideas that can be helpful in stimulating the economy.&#8221;</p> <p>But many didn&#8217;t find the ideas very helpful-especially when Republicans balked at extending direct assistance to workers struggling to pay for health insurance. &#8220;The House bill was a public-relations disaster, because it really read like it was written by K Street corporate lobbyists,&#8221; says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, the free-market think tank. &#8220;And unfortunately, the truth is that it was largely written by K Street corporate lobbyists.&#8221; With Senate Democrats refusing to sign on to the tax breaks, the stimulus package failed to win approval before Congress adjourned at the end of the year.</p> <p>But despite the political setback, many seasoned observers say the lobbying landscape in Washington has shifted dramatically since Sept. 11. The corporate tax breaks are back on the table, they say, as industry lobbyists intent on raiding the federal treasury continue to sell their proposals by waving the flag or stirring public fears of future attacks. &#8220;Lobbyists are in the business of asking for things,&#8221; says the Heritage Foundation&#8217;s Ronald Utt. &#8220;And they adjust their message to whatever they think will sell. Right now that&#8217;s national security, economic stimulus, and disaster relief, and so they link what they want to one of those-better yet, to all three.&#8221;</p> <p>Even the Bush administration is now playing the name game: Early this year White House spokesmen started referring to the president&#8217;s economic-stimulus package as an &#8220;economic security&#8221; plan.</p> <p>&#8220;You know, this stuff never goes away,&#8221; says Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington-based watchdog organization. &#8220;They never close down K Street.&#8221;</p> <p />

Star-Spangled Lobbyists

https://motherjones.com/politics/2002/03/star-spangled-lobbyists/

2018-03-01

4left

On Sept 19 eight days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington Senator Frank Murkowski took to the Senate floor to deny reports that he was trying to affix an amendment containing one of his pet proposals to a fastmoving defense bill Murkowski a Republican from Alaska said he resented any suggestion that he was exploiting a national military emergency to slip through a measure that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ANWR to energy exploration and development 8220That is certainly not the case8221 a plainly agitated Murkowski told his colleagues 8220It would be inappropriate and in poor taste8221 Just hours later however one of Murkowski8217s key allies in the Senate did exactly what Murkowski said he would not do Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma introduced an amendmentdrawn verbatim from an energy bill that Murkowski had written six months earlierto permit drilling for oil and natural gas in ANWR8217s environmentally sensitive coastal plain And two days later Murkowski8217s reticence to link ANWR to the events of Sept 11 had apparently evaporated 8220I think we8217ve got an issue here whose time has come8221 he told reporters Soon he was couching his pronouncements in the twin themes of antiterrorism and national security 8220Mideast oil funds terrorism8221 he declared 8220If there was a terrorist attack on our oil supply such as an attack on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz there would be a significant blow to our national security8221 The ANWR amendment was ultimately removed from the defense appropriations bill but Murkowski vowed to attach what he now called the 8220Homeland Energy Security Act8221 to other legislation Murkowski was not the only elected official trying to slip industrybacked items into unrelated emergency measures In the wake of Sept 11 scores of Capitol Hill lawmakers Washington lobbyists trade associations and interest groups rushed to repackage their old proposals in national security wrapping Bald opportunism and the political exploitation of tragedy is nothing new in the nation8217s capital but what8217s happened in the months since the terrorist attacks may well show Washington at its worst 8220I think that this was more shameless than anything else I8217ve ever seen in Washington8221 says Ronald Utt a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation a conservative Washington think tank Television producer Bill Moyers in a speech to a group of environmental funders put a more venal cast on the latest lobbying tactics 8220It didn8217t take long for the wartime opportuniststhe mercenaries of Washington the lobbyists lawyers and political fundraisersto crawl out of their offices on K Street to grab what they can for their clients8221 he said 8220In the wake of this awful tragedy wrought by terrorism they are cashing in8221 Consider for example the lobbying strategy of the nation8217s beleaguered steel industry The smoke had not yet cleared from the wreckage of the World Trade Center when the nation8217s big steelmakers and their allies in Washington began invoking the terrorist attacks to bolster their arguments for direct subsidies as well as further restrictions on imports of lesscostly foreign steel 8220Without steel we cannot guarantee our national security8221 said Senator Jay Rockefeller a Democrat from West Virginia 8220Without steel we cannot build from our tragedy8221 Without steel Rockefeller might have added the two political parties and their congressional candidates would have been about 27 million poorer in the 2000 elections 8220Absolute baloney8221 Robert Crandall a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution says of the argument that propping up the domestic steel industry is vital to the national security One or two steel mills he maintains could produce all the steel plate needed for shipbuilding and other critical defense industries National security arguments were even used to advance a farmsubsidy bill worth 167 billion Before Sept 11 the bill was titled the Agriculture Act of 2001 After the terrorist attacks it was renamed the Farm Security Act of 2001 On Sept 24 the growers of more than 20 federally subsidized agriculture commodities sent a letter to Capitol Hill lawmakers in which they said that the attacks had 8220bolstered the argument that food production is vital to the national interest8221 No doubt their message got through The producers of these and other commodities had poured more than 58 million into the 2000 elections On October 5 the measure passed the House by a vote of 291 to 120 Similar arguments were advanced by the manufacturers of traffic signs barricades and other equipment who gamely recast their perennial plea for more federal highwaysafety spending in a national security framework A spokesman for the 1800member American Traffic Safety Services Association said that increased federal spending on highway signs and other trafficrouting devices would help motorists flee cities faster and more safely during a terrorist attack Rob Dingess the association8217s director of government relations pointed out that the evacuation of many federal facilities following the attack on the Pentagon left the nation8217s capital in gridlock 8220If a second plane had come into that city8221 Dingess said 8220you would almost have had to helicopter people to fight fire or evacuate people8221 Then there was the American Bus Association which represents nearly a thousand private companies that provide intercity bus and motorcoach service The trade group has been lobbying for legislation that would provide 400 million 8220to improve bus security and safety8221 The legislation is important the association insists because it would help bus companies retain drivers who in the wake of Sept 11 have come to fear potential terrorist attacks But the most labored stretch may have come from the National Taxpayers Union a conservative advocacy group that touted a cut in capitalgains taxes as a national security initiative Eric Schlecht the organization8217s director of congressional relations maintains that lowering taxes for the rich would flood the coffers of the irs with more money 8220By reducing the rate at which capital gains are taxed8221 he says 8220President Bush and Congress could help revitalize the sagging economy and bring new revenues to Washingtondecidedly aiding our war against terrorism8221 Washington has always been a city of wretched excesses but never have so many lobbyists for so many different special interests so blatantly wrapped their requests for subsidies tax breaks and other forms of federal largesse in patriotic packaging 8220No selfrespecting lobbyist in Washington has resisted the temptation to reframe the exact arguments they were making before Septem ber 11 into a postSept 11 response to terror8221 observes Rep Edward Markey DMass 8220There is no issuenonewhere they aren8217t doing it8221 The feeding frenzy was kicked off by the airline industry8217s drive for a fasttrack bailout in the days immediately after the terrorist attacks By Sept 22 the airlines had sealed an especially sweet deal 5 billion in cash plus another 10 billion in loan guarantees based on their preSept 11 market share rather than their postSept 11 losses The airlines also won protection from any lawsuits arising from the attacks a provision of the bailout that may ultimately cost taxpayers many additional billions The success of the airlines inspired the insurance industry to follow suit On Sept 21 during a private meeting at the White House arranged by the American Insurance Association 16 insurance executives informed President George Bush and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans that the industry would be able to pay all the claimsestimated at 40 billion to 75 billionarising from what8217s expected to be the costliest disaster in the nation8217s history During a brief 8220photo op8221 the executives assured Bush that the insurance industry with its 3 trillion in assets in the United States alone wouldn8217t need federal help When the cameras were gone however the executivesled by CEOs Maurice Greenberg of American International Group and Robert O8217Connell of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurancegot down to the real business at hand They bluntly pressed Bush and Evans for legislation that would shift the lion8217s share of liability for future terrorist attacks to the federal government Furthermore Greenberg reportedly asked the White House for its help in keeping claim disputes related to the World Trade Center disaster confined to a federal court in Manhattanand thereby out of state courts where insurers could potentially be liable for additional millions if not billions in punitive damages If the White House failed to act the insurers warned the industry would refuse to cover damage from future terrorist attacks potentially triggering a fullscale financial crisis The executives in the industry8217s delegation were anything but strangers to their White House hosts In particular Greenberg and O8217Connell had been among the elite group of fundraisers known as 8220Pioneers8221 who raised at least 100000 for Bush8217s presidential campaign under the direction of his finance chairman Donald Evans In all the insurance industry had invested nearly 16 million to elect Bush and Greenberg8217s company and two industry trade associations had chipped in 100000 apiece to underwrite his inaugural celebration The industry had also pumped more than 20 million into Republican and Democratic softmoney accounts since 1999 corporate checks bearing such names as Chubb CNA Hartford Kemper Travelers and Zurich all of whom had representatives at the White House meeting The White House was quick to respond to the industry8217s request On October 15 it unveiled a plan to cap the industry8217s liability in 2002 by agreeing to use public funds to pay all but 12 billion of the first 100 billion in future terrorismrelated claims The plan would also limit the industry8217s liability to 23 billion in 2003 and 35 billion in 2004 In November the House voted along party lines to approve the plan which had been introduced as the 8220Terrorism Risk Protection Act8221 by Rep Michael Oxley a Republican from Ohio Oxley was clearly the right lawmaker for the job Even with Election Day more than a year away he8217d already collected more than 34000 in contributions from insuranceindustry interests The plan to shift the cost of any future terrorist attacks to taxpayers later stalled in the Senate but the early successes of the airline and insurance industries emboldened other businesses to think big 8220If you start saying 212Well the airlines have been hurt because nobody wants to fly on airplanes any longer8217 there are literally hundreds of industries that could make that exact same claim8221 says Stephen Moore a senior fellow at the Cato Institute a freemarketoriented think tank 8220It starts with the airlines and then it8217s insurance businesses and then it8217s the entertainment industry and tourism and then of course the Las Vegas casinos It just becomes a parade of specialinterest groups down Pennsylvania Avenue that have their hands out This is the quintessence of corporate welfare8221 Indeed the list of postSept 11 petitionersall asking for a handout a bailout or something in betweenseems downright endless Flight schools operators of skydiving companies manufacturers of small aircraft and owners of small airports were among the first in line They8217ve been seeking a 75 billion package of grants and loan guarantees called the General Aviation Reparations Act to compensate them for business lost since the attacks 8220Congress acted swiftly to provide the major airlines with needed relief to keep that industry going8221 explained Rep John Mica RFla who introduced the measure 8220Now it should do the same for general aviation8221 Similarly the National Limousine Association tried to arrange an exemption from the gasguzzler tax for fleets operated by its members Early on some of its members persuaded Rep Robert Andrews DNJ to introduce legislation that would have provided financial assistance to 8220chauffeured groundtransportation companies that incurred losses as a result of the terrorist attacks8221 The measure which was supposed to be tacked onto the airline bailout didn8217t make it to the floor 8220Oh boy that one never got off the ground8221 concedes Bruce Cottew the association8217s executive director More recently the association8217s biggest member Carey International retained the heavyweight Washington lobbying firm of Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin ampamp Kahn to seek federal loan guarantees on its behalf The nation8217s farmers evidently not content with the goodies in the Farm Security Act also rushed to get in on the giveaways In the Senate Finance Committee8217s summary of its proposed economicstimulus package a fineprint footnote proposed 220 million in price subsidies for a list of 34 agricultural commodities arranged alphabetically from 8220apples8221 to 8220watermelons8221 In between 8220bell peppers8221 and 8220black beans8221 was federal support for 8220bison meat8221 A subsidy of 10 million it turned out was being proposed by Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee whose state is home to the North America Bison Cooperative Officials of the cooperative whose 350 members including billionaire Ted Turner produce about half of the world8217s bison steaks burgers and roasts maintain that the fear of additional terrorist attacks has driven patrons out of the highpriced restaurants that serve their products plunging the industry into an economic tailspin Other industries also saw their opening Ethanol producers already heavily subsidized by the federal government argued that requiring ethanol to be blended in gasoline would make the United States less reliant on oil from the Middle East And the American Society of Travel Agents sought 4 billion in grants and nointerest loans 8220Without travel agencies8221 the society warned 8220the nation8217s travel industry cannot function8221 Indeed as both the Senate and House crafted huge economicstimulus bills in November lobbyists from nearly every industry scurried to get a piece of the action 8220As soon as there was an announcement of an aid package people started coming out of the woodwork8221 acknowledged James Albertine president of the American League of Lobbyists 8220There are a lot of industries that will be looking at the pot of gold The federal government is spending more and obviously there will be some winners There8217s lots of opportunities and it cuts across all industries It8217s pretty much open season8221 Barely a month after the terrorist attacks Rep Jim Moran a Democrat whose Virginia congressional district includes Reagan National Airport bluntly summed up the attitude of both lawmakers and lobbyists 8220It8217s an open grab bag8221 he said 8220so let8217s grab8221 In a few cases the lobbying freeforall proved too brazen even by Washington standards In November lobbyist Howard Marlowe scored a modest but impressive victory for the nation8217s seaside resorts persuading Congress that it was vital for national security to spend a record 135 million to shore up public beaches with sandnearly 50 million more for beach 8220nourishment8221 than the Bush administration had requested Emboldened by their success Marlowe8217s clients immediately made a pitch for additional subsidies 8220America needs to make a major commitment to its energy and water infrastructure both for security and economic reasons8221 the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association urged lawmakers 8220Protecting the nation8217s coastline is also vitally important to ensure the recovery of the American economy8221 This time around though the appeal went nowhere 8220We haven8217t gotten anything yet and I don8217t think we will8221 says Marlowe who concedes that the lobbying frenzy has gotten out of hand 8220It gets to the point where you don8217t want to be associated with it8221 he says 8220So many people saw opportunity in the wake of tragedy that it8217s definitely gotten unseemly8221 Perhaps the most unseemly proposal of all was the juicy platter of corporate tax breaks that formed the centerpiece of the economicstimulus plan put forward by House Republicans The GOP plan called for almost doubling the amount that companies can write off for capital expenses they haven8217t yet incurred allowing corporations that rely on loopholes to pay no taxes at all and providing immediate rebates for any alternativeminimum taxes they have paid since 1986 The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the bill would trigger nearly 13 billion in rebates with nearly a third going to just 16 Fortune 500 firms The legislation also proposed making permanent a provision that allows multinational corporations to shelter their US profits from taxation by shifting them on paper to offshore tax havens The provision was included even after an administration official conceded that the measurewhich would cost taxpayers 21 billion over 10 yearswould have 8220zero stimulative effect8221 Much of the lobbying for the tax breaks was orchestrated by Kenneth Kies a partner at the accounting and lobbying firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers who previously worked on Capitol Hill as staff director of the Joint Committee on Taxation Like other lobbyists Kies suggested to reporters that he was only trying to do his patriotic duty by bolstering the bottom lines of some of the nation8217s wealthiest corporations 8220I wouldn8217t be doing the jobnot necessarily for my clientsbut for my country8221 he told the New York Times 8220if I wasn8217t being helpful in terms of offering ideas that can be helpful in stimulating the economy8221 But many didn8217t find the ideas very helpfulespecially when Republicans balked at extending direct assistance to workers struggling to pay for health insurance 8220The House bill was a publicrelations disaster because it really read like it was written by K Street corporate lobbyists8221 says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute the freemarket think tank 8220And unfortunately the truth is that it was largely written by K Street corporate lobbyists8221 With Senate Democrats refusing to sign on to the tax breaks the stimulus package failed to win approval before Congress adjourned at the end of the year But despite the political setback many seasoned observers say the lobbying landscape in Washington has shifted dramatically since Sept 11 The corporate tax breaks are back on the table they say as industry lobbyists intent on raiding the federal treasury continue to sell their proposals by waving the flag or stirring public fears of future attacks 8220Lobbyists are in the business of asking for things8221 says the Heritage Foundation8217s Ronald Utt 8220And they adjust their message to whatever they think will sell Right now that8217s national security economic stimulus and disaster relief and so they link what they want to one of thosebetter yet to all three8221 Even the Bush administration is now playing the name game Early this year White House spokesmen started referring to the president8217s economicstimulus package as an 8220economic security8221 plan 8220You know this stuff never goes away8221 says Robert McIntyre director of Citizens for Tax Justice a Washingtonbased watchdog organization 8220They never close down K Street8221

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<p /> <p>[The following is the text of a speech entitled, &#8220;Party Loyalty Must Not Demand Too Much,&#8221; attributed to Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage and Free Congress Foundations, and advisor to the Christian Coalition. The text was obtained by Mother Jones contributing writer Adele Stan while on assignment for Ms. magazine, covering the August meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP), an umbrella group for the leaders and funders of the far right that is headed by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III. The Council for National Policy convened the weekend prior to the Republican National Convention at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort &amp;amp; Hotel in San Diego County, California. According to the official CNP agenda, the speech was delivered at 10:00 a.m. on August 10. If used as a source by news media, please credit the MoJo Wire, Mother Jones magazine&#8217;s online sister.]</p> <p>Before I discuss the topic of the morning, I want to make a comment or two about Jack Kemp. I have been asked about fifty times this morning what I think. So for the benefit of those of you who haven't asked, I decided I would save myself some trouble and give you my opinion.</p> <p>Does Kemp help Dole? Yes, he helps him marginally. He helps him with some conservative voters, with some minority voters, probably with some support in the Jewish community. Does he contribute to a Dole victory? I doubt it. I think that the only person who can beat Bill Clinton is Bill Clinton. And that&#8217;s only going to happen if, God forbid, we have some disaster in Bosnia or if Hillary gets indicted. Otherwise, it is unlikely that simply the addition of Jack Kemp is going to make any difference. Although, the vice presidency is importance [sic] in this case, given Dole&#8217;s age.</p> <p>What about Kemp? In comparison to whom? In comparison to Tom Ridge, one of the people who was floated by Bob Dole? Well, of course he&#8217;s much better.</p> <p>But, understand that Jack Kemp is a big-government conservative. In fact, I don&#8217;t know of any government programs that he has advocated cutting. He is pro-life &#8212; and sincerely so &#8212; but it&#8217;s not an important issue for him. He has said repeatedly, &#8220;This is not my priority. Yes, I take that position, but this is not my priority.&#8221;</p> <p>His priority is tax cuts and a return to the gold standard. Those are important issues, don&#8217;t get me wrong. But he is somebody who does not feel comfortable with the platform that Phyllis [Schlafly] and Kay [James] described last night. He&#8217;s on the other side of affirmative action. He&#8217;s on the other side of &#8220;English only.&#8221; He&#8217;s on the other side of immigration and curtailing illegal immigrants. He&#8217;s on the other side of right to work. I could go down the list.</p> <p>What you have now is two candidates who are not going to run on the platform passed by the Republican National Convention. And if I were the other side, I would simply crank up a debate between the just-passed platform and the two candidates running on it and make that the story for the rest of the election. And you can bet that&#8217;s probably what&#8217;s going to happen.</p> <p>So if you are looking for this to be the &#8220;silver bullet&#8221; that is magically going to transform Bob Dole into a winning candidate, I wouldn&#8217;t count on it.</p> <p>There is always some possibility that something will happen, that Clinton will defeat himself. When you build your whole career on lies, things can collapse. And they can collapse in a hurry. But it&#8217;s going to take that because it&#8217;s very clear at this point that the majority of the people in this country affirmatively do not want Bob Dole to be president.</p> <p>Now, on the topic of the morning.</p> <p>It&#8217;ll be thirty years this coming January 11th that I came to Washington. And in that period of time I have had the chance to observe many disturbing things, as you might well imagine. But none is more disturbing than what I am about to report on to you.</p> <p>The circumstances are these: There is a freshman Congresswoman from New York by the name of Sue Kelly who won her primary two years ago with 23% of the vote in a seven-way contest. She was running against six males, five of whom were pro-life and one of whom was neutral on the subject. And she was a radical pro-abortionist.</p> <p>She won the primary and went on to win the election because it&#8217;s a Republican district.</p> <p>She is no ordinary pro-abortionist. When Ham Fish, who was a sort of moderate Republican, her predecessor, was in office, she picketed his office, dressed in medieval clothes, with a big sign reading, &#8220;Ham Fish wants to take women back to the Middle Ages.&#8221;</p> <p>I just wanted to give you a flavor of who this person is. She is listed by the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual group of Republicans, as one of their top people in Congress. And, of course, she votes that way.</p> <p>She was one of handful of Republicans to vote with Bill Clinton on the partial-birth abortion ban. She brags about the fact that, of all the freshmen, she has voted with the Republican leadership the least. And, indeed, she voted against half of the &#8220;Contract with America.&#8221; This is one very liberal Republican.</p> <p>She is being challenged in a one-on-one Republican primary this time by former Congressman Joe DioGuardi. DioGuardi is the fellow who beat Bela Abzug. After a couple of terms in Congress they redistricted him. Now he&#8217;s attempting a comeback in the adjoining district. He says the reason he got into the race is her vote on the partial-birth abortion question, although he had been making noises about getting into the race before that.</p> <p>Well, two sitting members of the House, Bob Dornan [R-Calif.] and Chris Smith of New Jersey, signed a fundraising letter for Joe DioGuardi against Sue Kelly. This got the Republican leadership really cranked up. They considered this an act of treason and demanded that both members withdraw their endorsement.</p> <p>Dornan and Smith declined to do so. The net result was that at a meeting of the Republican caucus, which is a meeting of the House Republicans, the Speaker [Newt Gingrich, R-Georg.] announced that they were to be disciplined. They were going to be stripped of their right to attend conference committees.</p> <p>Now, conference committees are the most important aspect of legislation. When you get all through with passing something through the House and through the Senate, you reconcile it at a conference committee so the conference committee really determines the final outcome of the legislation. Both of them are sub-committee chairmen. It&#8217;s unprecedented to do this.</p> <p>They also were being deprived of funds for any international travel; both of them are subcommittee chairmen with international responsibilities which require them to oversee, for example, what&#8217;s going on in Bosnia, and so on.</p> <p>What has happened since then is that the leadership has tried to go further. A statement was put out saying that neither member would be allowed to offer any amendments for the rest of the year, thus depriving their constituents of their rights. Their constituents presumably elected them to legislate and they would not be recognized for any amendments. Subsequently, that caused so much problem that the leadership withdrew this and blamed it on a staff member, claiming that a staff member had advanced this and that it really wasn&#8217;t the view of the Speaker. I know otherwise because the Speaker has, in fact, now threatened Chris Smith with loss of his subcommittee chairmanship in the next congress because of this position.</p> <p>You should know that, subsequently, Bob Dornan came crawling back to the leadership on his hands and knees and signed a statement saying that he wouldn&#8217;t back DioGuardi. The leadership then lifted their ban. Chris Smith, however, refused to do that, and so the punishment against him remains.</p> <p>Now, here is what is disturbing about all this. First of all, there is no rule in the Republican caucus against a member supporting someone in a primary against another member. So this was Soviet-style justice, imposed after the fact because the leadership didn&#8217;t like it. Secondly, Chris Smith told all members of the leadership, &#8220;For me, this is a matter of conscience.&#8221; The leadership&#8217;s position is, &#8220;That doesn&#8217;t matter. When you belong to the Republican caucus you leave your conscience behind because we will determine who you will support and who you will not.&#8221;</p> <p>When the day comes that we have a situation where a member, in order to join the majority caucus, has to leave his conscience behind, then we have changed the form of government we have, without the consent of the governed.</p> <p>Congressman Mark Neumann of Wisconsin said it exactly right: &#8220;It took the Democrats forty years to become as arrogant as we have become in a year and a half.&#8221; And that is exactly what this is about.</p> <p>Congressman Smith has put forth a Resolution of Conscience. It will take fifty signatures in order for this to be debated by the entire Republican conference. The first thing the Resolution of Conscience says is that any member is free to follow his or her conscience in supporting any candidate at any level. Number two, if a punishment is to be exacted on any member of Congress for doing so, the entire Republican conference is to vote on it, not for it to be imposed unilaterally by the Speaker of the House.</p> <p>This is all the more egregious because we saw in the 104th Congress no punishment of liberals who had deviated from the party line. In fact, they were permitted to go against the leadership repeatedly and not a word was said to them. All the more egregious because their position, that we cannot possibly support anyone against an incumbent, is hypocritical.</p> <p>When, for example, Helen Chenowith had her big primary, they cancelled a big fundraiser for her because she dared vote against them on the budget. And it caused her primary opponent to get a much larger percentage of the vote than he should have because they got all the headlines, in effect, punishing her for that. Where is their effort to protect incumbents when it comes to somebody who dissents from their point of view?</p> <p>Look at Cliff Sterns, a very innocuous member of Congress, created by God to disappear into crowds &#8212; believe me, this guy is no threat to anybody &#8212; but Cliff Sterns dared vote against the Mexican bailout. Cliff Sterns has not been permitted to preside over the House of Representatives one time in the 104th Congress, but the openly homosexual Steve Gundersen who, after saying that he would not run for reelection then mounted a write-in campaign against the Republican nominee out there, has been allowed to preside day after day in an effort by his friend, Speaker Newt Gingrich, to assist him in the write in effort, which he now has dropped.</p> <p>Or how about Wes Cooley? I have no use for Wes Cooley. I called on him to resign. I think he has lied. But nevertheless, he won his party&#8217;s primary. If we&#8217;re to be consistent about supporting all incumbents, which is what they claim, then they should have been supporting Wes Cooley. But instead, they were supporting another candidate, and [sic] independent candidate, against him. They finally pressured Cooley out of the race.</p> <p>So it&#8217;s convenience. We can be for all incumbents when it&#8217;s convenient for us. But when it&#8217;s not convenient for us we can deviate form [sic] that policy.</p> <p>Well, let me tell you something. It is an act of extraordinary arrogance to tell people of conscience that they cannot support who they wish in a free country.</p> <p>The Resolution of Conscience must be voted on by the Republican conference. Unfortunately, it takes fifty signatures on that Resolution. As of the recess of Congress, that resolution had only forty signatures. So the first thing that you can do is see to it, if you have a Republican member, that that member signs that Resolution of Conscience. If your member hasn&#8217;t signed it, you need to ask him to explain why he isn&#8217;t for permitting people of conscience to do what they believe is best or what God is telling them to do.</p> <p>The argument that the leadership makes, and it&#8217;s unanimous by the way, is &#8220;look, we can&#8217;t have members turning against members because it takes all members to elect us to these leadership positions.&#8221;</p> <p>Well, I would find their argument a bit more palatable &#8212; I would still be opposed to it because a matter of conscience is a matter of conscience &#8212; but I would find that argument a bit more palatable if this were a Congress that had abolished the Legal Services Corporation or had done away with the National Endowment for the Arts or had curtailed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and I could go on and on.</p> <p>But this is not a Congress that has done any of those things. In fact, on the bottom line issues that are really important to this country, with the exception of welfare reform, which is a significant victory, all of the issues this group cares about were either completely defeated or watered down virtually to the point of no existence by this Congress.</p> <p>So how, under these circumstances, when there is a clear-cut contest between a guy who is going to vote the way we would have him vote and this radical feminist extremist, how can anyone force a member of Congress to say, &#8220;I am not going to participate in this contest even though my conscience is telling me to&#8221; is beyond comprehension.</p> <p>The second thing we need to do is to teach that membership a lesson. We need to get in there and help Joe DioGuardi beat Sue Kelly in the primary on September 10.</p> <p>I will tell you that this is a bitter turn for me. I have spent thirty years of my life working in Washington, working on the premise that if we simply got our people into leadership that it would make a difference.</p> <p>We can&#8217;t argue that Tom Delay and Dick Armey and Trent Lott and Don Nickles are not our people. If they&#8217;re not our people, then who are our people? And yet we are getting the same policies from them that we got from their Republican predecessors.</p> <p>Now, I feel as if I have wasted thirty years of my life &#8212; I really feel that way. I feel such an utter sense of betrayal that I would have to stand before you and talk about that kind of leadership &#8212; never mind Gingrich, he never was trustworthy, I never considered him trustworthy &#8212; but the rest of them&#8230;such a sense of betrayal that I would have to stand before you and mention as Woody Jenkins did last night, that Trent Lott, in three weeks time, confirmed ten times the number of federal judges that Bob Dole permitted to be confirmed in the first six months of this year. And this is a guy that everybody prayed for to get in to the Republican leadership. I could go on and on.</p> <p>The fact of the matter is that this matter of conscience is so fundamental to what we believe in as a people, that if we permit this thing to stand, I think we have changed our form of government and need to fundamentally examine who it is we are helping in the political process.</p> <p>It is essential that this matter be debated and voted on by the entire Republican caucus.</p> <p>I hope and pray that the standing ovation that they gave Gingrich when he announced his punishment for Smith and Dornan will be retracted. I hope and pray that when a good man of conscience like Chris Smith, a humble man, a man so sincere that he makes a mockery of the rest of the politicians in this Republican caucus, I hope that when he appears before them, that there is enough of a conscience left in some of these people, particularly the newer ones, that maybe they will reconsider their position.</p> <p>This is a very serious matter. In my opinion, the most serious matter that I have seen among lots of serious matters in the past three decades.</p> <p>I remember well when Phil Gramm was punished by the Democrats stripping his seniority from him when he voted with President Reagan on the major tax bill of the early part of the Reagan administration. He resigned from the Democratic Party, ran as a Republican and got elected. That ended their effort to ever punish anybody again in the Democratic caucus.</p> <p>In my opinion, if Joe DioGuardi wins that primary, it will also end this kind of nonsense. But it is a tragedy that we should ever be faced with this sort of question.</p> <p>And while we&#8217;re at it, I want to pay tribute to Steve Stockman. Steve Stockman is in a marginal district. There were lots of threats floating around that, if he didn&#8217;t cooperate, he might get a district that he couldn&#8217;t win. And yet he signed the Resolution of Conscience where lots of people who have the safest districts in America, where if you imported Margaret Thatcher to run against them you couldn&#8217;t beat them, they have refused to sign. We need more people like Steve Stockman in the Congress of the United States.</p> <p>I beg of you, help us get those other ten signatures. Many of you have media outlets. Make this an issue. Many of you have outreach. Make this count. Others of you have influence because you have been contributors to some of these people. Put them on the carpet on this.</p> <p>This is a deciding issue. It will decide whether the Republicans in the House of Representatives have the moral authority to continue operating for the common good for this country or not. In my opinion, it is that important. Thank you.</p> <p />

Weyrich’s Speech

https://motherjones.com/politics/1996/09/weyrichs-speech/

1996-09-01

4left

The following is the text of a speech entitled 8220Party Loyalty Must Not Demand Too Much8221 attributed to Paul Weyrich founder of the Heritage and Free Congress Foundations and advisor to the Christian Coalition The text was obtained by Mother Jones contributing writer Adele Stan while on assignment for Ms magazine covering the August meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy CNP an umbrella group for the leaders and funders of the far right that is headed by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III The Council for National Policy convened the weekend prior to the Republican National Convention at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort ampamp Hotel in San Diego County California According to the official CNP agenda the speech was delivered at 1000 am on August 10 If used as a source by news media please credit the MoJo Wire Mother Jones magazine8217s online sister Before I discuss the topic of the morning I want to make a comment or two about Jack Kemp I have been asked about fifty times this morning what I think So for the benefit of those of you who havent asked I decided I would save myself some trouble and give you my opinion Does Kemp help Dole Yes he helps him marginally He helps him with some conservative voters with some minority voters probably with some support in the Jewish community Does he contribute to a Dole victory I doubt it I think that the only person who can beat Bill Clinton is Bill Clinton And that8217s only going to happen if God forbid we have some disaster in Bosnia or if Hillary gets indicted Otherwise it is unlikely that simply the addition of Jack Kemp is going to make any difference Although the vice presidency is importance sic in this case given Dole8217s age What about Kemp In comparison to whom In comparison to Tom Ridge one of the people who was floated by Bob Dole Well of course he8217s much better But understand that Jack Kemp is a biggovernment conservative In fact I don8217t know of any government programs that he has advocated cutting He is prolife 8212 and sincerely so 8212 but it8217s not an important issue for him He has said repeatedly 8220This is not my priority Yes I take that position but this is not my priority8221 His priority is tax cuts and a return to the gold standard Those are important issues don8217t get me wrong But he is somebody who does not feel comfortable with the platform that Phyllis Schlafly and Kay James described last night He8217s on the other side of affirmative action He8217s on the other side of 8220English only8221 He8217s on the other side of immigration and curtailing illegal immigrants He8217s on the other side of right to work I could go down the list What you have now is two candidates who are not going to run on the platform passed by the Republican National Convention And if I were the other side I would simply crank up a debate between the justpassed platform and the two candidates running on it and make that the story for the rest of the election And you can bet that8217s probably what8217s going to happen So if you are looking for this to be the 8220silver bullet8221 that is magically going to transform Bob Dole into a winning candidate I wouldn8217t count on it There is always some possibility that something will happen that Clinton will defeat himself When you build your whole career on lies things can collapse And they can collapse in a hurry But it8217s going to take that because it8217s very clear at this point that the majority of the people in this country affirmatively do not want Bob Dole to be president Now on the topic of the morning It8217ll be thirty years this coming January 11th that I came to Washington And in that period of time I have had the chance to observe many disturbing things as you might well imagine But none is more disturbing than what I am about to report on to you The circumstances are these There is a freshman Congresswoman from New York by the name of Sue Kelly who won her primary two years ago with 23 of the vote in a sevenway contest She was running against six males five of whom were prolife and one of whom was neutral on the subject And she was a radical proabortionist She won the primary and went on to win the election because it8217s a Republican district She is no ordinary proabortionist When Ham Fish who was a sort of moderate Republican her predecessor was in office she picketed his office dressed in medieval clothes with a big sign reading 8220Ham Fish wants to take women back to the Middle Ages8221 I just wanted to give you a flavor of who this person is She is listed by the Log Cabin Republicans a homosexual group of Republicans as one of their top people in Congress And of course she votes that way She was one of handful of Republicans to vote with Bill Clinton on the partialbirth abortion ban She brags about the fact that of all the freshmen she has voted with the Republican leadership the least And indeed she voted against half of the 8220Contract with America8221 This is one very liberal Republican She is being challenged in a oneonone Republican primary this time by former Congressman Joe DioGuardi DioGuardi is the fellow who beat Bela Abzug After a couple of terms in Congress they redistricted him Now he8217s attempting a comeback in the adjoining district He says the reason he got into the race is her vote on the partialbirth abortion question although he had been making noises about getting into the race before that Well two sitting members of the House Bob Dornan RCalif and Chris Smith of New Jersey signed a fundraising letter for Joe DioGuardi against Sue Kelly This got the Republican leadership really cranked up They considered this an act of treason and demanded that both members withdraw their endorsement Dornan and Smith declined to do so The net result was that at a meeting of the Republican caucus which is a meeting of the House Republicans the Speaker Newt Gingrich RGeorg announced that they were to be disciplined They were going to be stripped of their right to attend conference committees Now conference committees are the most important aspect of legislation When you get all through with passing something through the House and through the Senate you reconcile it at a conference committee so the conference committee really determines the final outcome of the legislation Both of them are subcommittee chairmen It8217s unprecedented to do this They also were being deprived of funds for any international travel both of them are subcommittee chairmen with international responsibilities which require them to oversee for example what8217s going on in Bosnia and so on What has happened since then is that the leadership has tried to go further A statement was put out saying that neither member would be allowed to offer any amendments for the rest of the year thus depriving their constituents of their rights Their constituents presumably elected them to legislate and they would not be recognized for any amendments Subsequently that caused so much problem that the leadership withdrew this and blamed it on a staff member claiming that a staff member had advanced this and that it really wasn8217t the view of the Speaker I know otherwise because the Speaker has in fact now threatened Chris Smith with loss of his subcommittee chairmanship in the next congress because of this position You should know that subsequently Bob Dornan came crawling back to the leadership on his hands and knees and signed a statement saying that he wouldn8217t back DioGuardi The leadership then lifted their ban Chris Smith however refused to do that and so the punishment against him remains Now here is what is disturbing about all this First of all there is no rule in the Republican caucus against a member supporting someone in a primary against another member So this was Sovietstyle justice imposed after the fact because the leadership didn8217t like it Secondly Chris Smith told all members of the leadership 8220For me this is a matter of conscience8221 The leadership8217s position is 8220That doesn8217t matter When you belong to the Republican caucus you leave your conscience behind because we will determine who you will support and who you will not8221 When the day comes that we have a situation where a member in order to join the majority caucus has to leave his conscience behind then we have changed the form of government we have without the consent of the governed Congressman Mark Neumann of Wisconsin said it exactly right 8220It took the Democrats forty years to become as arrogant as we have become in a year and a half8221 And that is exactly what this is about Congressman Smith has put forth a Resolution of Conscience It will take fifty signatures in order for this to be debated by the entire Republican conference The first thing the Resolution of Conscience says is that any member is free to follow his or her conscience in supporting any candidate at any level Number two if a punishment is to be exacted on any member of Congress for doing so the entire Republican conference is to vote on it not for it to be imposed unilaterally by the Speaker of the House This is all the more egregious because we saw in the 104th Congress no punishment of liberals who had deviated from the party line In fact they were permitted to go against the leadership repeatedly and not a word was said to them All the more egregious because their position that we cannot possibly support anyone against an incumbent is hypocritical When for example Helen Chenowith had her big primary they cancelled a big fundraiser for her because she dared vote against them on the budget And it caused her primary opponent to get a much larger percentage of the vote than he should have because they got all the headlines in effect punishing her for that Where is their effort to protect incumbents when it comes to somebody who dissents from their point of view Look at Cliff Sterns a very innocuous member of Congress created by God to disappear into crowds 8212 believe me this guy is no threat to anybody 8212 but Cliff Sterns dared vote against the Mexican bailout Cliff Sterns has not been permitted to preside over the House of Representatives one time in the 104th Congress but the openly homosexual Steve Gundersen who after saying that he would not run for reelection then mounted a writein campaign against the Republican nominee out there has been allowed to preside day after day in an effort by his friend Speaker Newt Gingrich to assist him in the write in effort which he now has dropped Or how about Wes Cooley I have no use for Wes Cooley I called on him to resign I think he has lied But nevertheless he won his party8217s primary If we8217re to be consistent about supporting all incumbents which is what they claim then they should have been supporting Wes Cooley But instead they were supporting another candidate and sic independent candidate against him They finally pressured Cooley out of the race So it8217s convenience We can be for all incumbents when it8217s convenient for us But when it8217s not convenient for us we can deviate form sic that policy Well let me tell you something It is an act of extraordinary arrogance to tell people of conscience that they cannot support who they wish in a free country The Resolution of Conscience must be voted on by the Republican conference Unfortunately it takes fifty signatures on that Resolution As of the recess of Congress that resolution had only forty signatures So the first thing that you can do is see to it if you have a Republican member that that member signs that Resolution of Conscience If your member hasn8217t signed it you need to ask him to explain why he isn8217t for permitting people of conscience to do what they believe is best or what God is telling them to do The argument that the leadership makes and it8217s unanimous by the way is 8220look we can8217t have members turning against members because it takes all members to elect us to these leadership positions8221 Well I would find their argument a bit more palatable 8212 I would still be opposed to it because a matter of conscience is a matter of conscience 8212 but I would find that argument a bit more palatable if this were a Congress that had abolished the Legal Services Corporation or had done away with the National Endowment for the Arts or had curtailed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and I could go on and on But this is not a Congress that has done any of those things In fact on the bottom line issues that are really important to this country with the exception of welfare reform which is a significant victory all of the issues this group cares about were either completely defeated or watered down virtually to the point of no existence by this Congress So how under these circumstances when there is a clearcut contest between a guy who is going to vote the way we would have him vote and this radical feminist extremist how can anyone force a member of Congress to say 8220I am not going to participate in this contest even though my conscience is telling me to8221 is beyond comprehension The second thing we need to do is to teach that membership a lesson We need to get in there and help Joe DioGuardi beat Sue Kelly in the primary on September 10 I will tell you that this is a bitter turn for me I have spent thirty years of my life working in Washington working on the premise that if we simply got our people into leadership that it would make a difference We can8217t argue that Tom Delay and Dick Armey and Trent Lott and Don Nickles are not our people If they8217re not our people then who are our people And yet we are getting the same policies from them that we got from their Republican predecessors Now I feel as if I have wasted thirty years of my life 8212 I really feel that way I feel such an utter sense of betrayal that I would have to stand before you and talk about that kind of leadership 8212 never mind Gingrich he never was trustworthy I never considered him trustworthy 8212 but the rest of them8230such a sense of betrayal that I would have to stand before you and mention as Woody Jenkins did last night that Trent Lott in three weeks time confirmed ten times the number of federal judges that Bob Dole permitted to be confirmed in the first six months of this year And this is a guy that everybody prayed for to get in to the Republican leadership I could go on and on The fact of the matter is that this matter of conscience is so fundamental to what we believe in as a people that if we permit this thing to stand I think we have changed our form of government and need to fundamentally examine who it is we are helping in the political process It is essential that this matter be debated and voted on by the entire Republican caucus I hope and pray that the standing ovation that they gave Gingrich when he announced his punishment for Smith and Dornan will be retracted I hope and pray that when a good man of conscience like Chris Smith a humble man a man so sincere that he makes a mockery of the rest of the politicians in this Republican caucus I hope that when he appears before them that there is enough of a conscience left in some of these people particularly the newer ones that maybe they will reconsider their position This is a very serious matter In my opinion the most serious matter that I have seen among lots of serious matters in the past three decades I remember well when Phil Gramm was punished by the Democrats stripping his seniority from him when he voted with President Reagan on the major tax bill of the early part of the Reagan administration He resigned from the Democratic Party ran as a Republican and got elected That ended their effort to ever punish anybody again in the Democratic caucus In my opinion if Joe DioGuardi wins that primary it will also end this kind of nonsense But it is a tragedy that we should ever be faced with this sort of question And while we8217re at it I want to pay tribute to Steve Stockman Steve Stockman is in a marginal district There were lots of threats floating around that if he didn8217t cooperate he might get a district that he couldn8217t win And yet he signed the Resolution of Conscience where lots of people who have the safest districts in America where if you imported Margaret Thatcher to run against them you couldn8217t beat them they have refused to sign We need more people like Steve Stockman in the Congress of the United States I beg of you help us get those other ten signatures Many of you have media outlets Make this an issue Many of you have outreach Make this count Others of you have influence because you have been contributors to some of these people Put them on the carpet on this This is a deciding issue It will decide whether the Republicans in the House of Representatives have the moral authority to continue operating for the common good for this country or not In my opinion it is that important Thank you

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<p>Each morning, Debra South Jones drives 120 miles into New Orleans to cook and serve over 300 hot free meals each day to people in New Orleans East, where she lived until Katrina took her home. Ms. Jones and several volunteers also distribute groceries to 18,000 families a month through their group, Just the Right Attitude. Who comes for food? &#8220;Most of the people are working on their own houses because they can&#8217;t afford contractors,&#8221; Ms. Jones said. &#8220;They are living in their gutted-out houses with no electricity.&#8221;</p> <p>Why do thousands of people need food and why are people living in gutted-out houses with no electricity? Look at New Orleans eighteen months after Katrina and you will realize why it is so difficult for people to exercise the human right to return to their homes.</p> <p>Half the homes in New Orleans still do not have electricity. Eighteen months after Katrina, a third of a million people in the New Orleans metro area have not returned.</p> <p>FEMA told Congress that 60,000 families in Louisiana still live in 240 square foot trailers usually at least 3 to a trailer. The Louisiana Hurricane Task Force estimated in December 2006 that there was an &#8220;urgent need&#8221; for 30,000 affordable rental apartments in New Orleans alone and another 15,000 around the rest of the state.</p> <p>Eighteen months after Katrina, over 80 percent of the 5100 New Orleans occupied public housing apartments remained closed by order of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which controlled the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) since 2002. HUD pressed ahead even though internal HANO documents revealed the cost for repair and renovation was significantly less than for demolition and redevelopment. A professor from MIT inspected the buildings and declared them structurally sound. Architecture critics applaud the current garden-style buildings. Yet HUD plows ahead planning to spend tens of millions of Katrina dollars to tear down millions of dollars of habitable housing and end up with far fewer affordable apartments a clear loss for the community.</p> <p>Over $100 billion was approved by Congress to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion of that money was allocated to temporary and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.</p> <p>Louisiana received $10 billion to fix up housing. Over 109,000 homeowners applied for federal funds to fix up their homes. Eighteen months later, less than 700 families have received this federal assistance. Renters, who comprised a majority of New Orleans, are worse off they get nothing at all. Some money is scheduled to go to some landlords and apartment developers for some apartments at some time.</p> <p>There were uncountable generous and courageous and heroic acts of people and communities who stretched themselves to assist people displaced by the hurricane. Many of these continue. However, there are several notable exceptions.</p> <p>Obstacles to public funding of affordable housing came from within New Orleans and in neighboring parishes. Many in New Orleans do not want the poor who lived in public housing to return.</p> <p>St. Bernard Parish, a 93 percent white suburb adjoining New Orleans, enacted a post-Katrina ordinance which restricted home owners from renting out single-family homes &#8220;unless the renter is a blood relative&#8221; without securing a permit from the government.</p> <p>Jefferson Parish, another adjoining majority-white suburb, unanimously passed a resolution opposing all low-income tax credit multi-family housing in the areas closest to New Orleans effectively stopping the construction of a 200 unit apartment building on vacant land for people over the age of 62 and any further assisted housing.</p> <p>Across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans, the chief law enforcement officer of St. Tammany Parish, Sheriff Jack Strain, complained openly about the post-Katrina presence of &#8220;thugs and trash&#8221; from &#8220;New Orleans public housing&#8221; and announced that people with dreadlocks or &#8220;chee wee hairstyles&#8221; could &#8220;expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff,s deputy.&#8221;</p> <p>With rebuilding starting up and the previous work force still displaced, tens of thousands of migrant workers have come to the Gulf Coast to work in the recovery. Many were recruited. Most workers tell of being promised good wages and working conditions and plenty of work. Some paid money up front for the chance to come to the area to work. Most of these promises were broken. A tour of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses without electricity, other live out of cars. At various places in the city whole families are living in tents.</p> <p>Many former residents of New Orleans are not welcome back. Race is certainly a factor. So is class. As New Orleans native and professor Adolph Reed notes: &#8220;With each passing day, a crucially significant political distinction in New Orleans gets clearer and clearer: Property owners are able to assert their interests in the polity, while non-owners are nearly as invisible in civic life now as in the early eighteenth century.&#8221;</p> <p>New Orleans is now the charter capital of the U.S. All the public schools on the side of the Mississippi which did not flood were turned into charters within weeks of Katrina. The schools with strongest parental support and high test scores were flipped into charters. The charters have little connection to each other and to state or local supervision. Those in the top half of the pre-Katrina population may be getting a better education. Kids without high scores, with disabilities, with little parental involvement who are not in charters are certainly not getting a good education and are shuttled into the bottom half &#8211; a makeshift system of state and local schools.</p> <p>John McDonogh, a public high school created to take the place of five pre-Katrina high schools, illustrates the challenges facing non-charter public education in New Orleans. Opened by the State school district in the fall, as of November, 2006, there were 775 students but teachers, textbooks and supplies remained in short order months after school opened. Many teens, as many as one-fifth, were living in New Orleans without their parents. Fights were frequent despite the presence of metal detectors, twenty-give security guards and an additional eight police officers. In fact several security guards, who were not much older than the students were injured in fights with students. Students described the school as having a &#8220;prison atmosphere.&#8221; There were no hot lunches and few working water fountains. The girls, bathrooms did not have doors on them. The library had no books at all, not even shelves for books in early November. One 15 year old student caught the 5am bus from Baton Rouge to attend the high school. &#8220;Our school has 39 security guards and three cops on staff and only 27 teachers,&#8221; one McDonogh teacher reported.</p> <p>It took two federal civil rights actions in January 2007 to force the state to abolish a waiting list for entry into public school that stranded hundreds of kids out of school for weeks.</p> <p>Healthcare is in crisis. The main public healthcare provider, Charity Hospital, which saw 350,000 patient visits a year, remains closed, as do half the hospitals in the city. It is not clear it will reopen. Plans are being debated which will shift indigent care and its state and federal compensation to private hospitals. Much of the uncompensated care provided by Charity has shifted to other LSU hospitals with people traveling as far as 85 miles to the Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton Rouge which reports a 50 percent increase in uncompensated care. Waiting lines are long in emergency rooms for those who have insurance. When hundreds of thousands lost their jobs after Katrina, they lost healthcare as well. A recent free medical treatment fair opened their doors at 6 am and stopped signing people up at 8 am because they had already filled the 700 available slots for the day.</p> <p>Mental health is worse. A report by the World Health organization estimates that serious and mild to moderate mental illness doubled in the year after Hurricane Katrina among survivors. Despite a suicide rate triple what it was a year ago, the New York Times reported ten months after the storm New Orleans had still lost half of its psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and other mental health care workers.</p> <p>In the months after Katrina, the 534 psychiatric beds that were in metro New Orleans shrank to less than 80. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed the area and found 45 percent of residents were experiencing &#8220;significant stress or dysfunction&#8221; and another 25 percent were worse.</p> <p>By default, the lack of mental health treatment facilities has forced more of these crises towards law enforcement. &#8220;The lack of mental health options forced the New Orleans Police Department to incarcerate mentally ill people who normally would have been taken to Charity,&#8221; said James Arey, commander of the NOPD crisis negotiation team. &#8220;The only other option is to admit them into emergency rooms ill-equipped to handle psychotics who may have to wait days for care. This is past the point of being unsafe,&#8221; Arey said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just a matter of time before a mental patient goes berserk in one of the ERs and hurts some people.&#8221;</p> <p>With day care scarce down 70 percent, and public transportation down 83 percent of pre-Katrina busses, there is little chance for single moms with kids.</p> <p>It is impossible to begin to understand the continued impact of Katrina without viewing through the lenses of race, gender and poverty. Katrina exposed the region,s deep-rooted inequalities of gender, race, and class. Katrina did not create the inequalities; it provided a window to see them more clearly. But the aftermath of Katrina has aggravated these inequalities. In fact if you plot race, class and gender you can likely tell who has returned to New Orleans. The Institute of Women,s Policy Research pointed out &#8220;The hurricanes uncovered America,s longstanding structural inequalities based on race, gender, and class and laid bare the consequences of ignoring these underlying inequalities.&#8221;</p> <p>The pre-Katrina population of 454,000 people in the city of New Orleans dropped to 187,000. The African-American population of New Orleans shrank by 61 percent or 213,000 people, from a pre-Katrina number of 302,000 down to 89,000. New Orleans now has a much smaller, older, whiter and more affluent population.</p> <p>Crime plagues parts of the city and every spoke of the criminal justice wheel is broken. Hundreds of police left the force and several were just indicted for first degree murder of an unarmed mentally retarded man during Katrina. When the accused police reported to jail, they were accompanied by hundreds of fellow officers holding up signs calling them heroes. The DA and the police are openly feuding and pointing fingers at each other. The judges are fighting with the new public defender system. Victims and witnesses are still displaced. People accused of serious crime walk out of jail because of incompetence and the fear of witnesses to cooperate with police.</p> <p>Others are kept in jail too long because they are lost in the system. For example, Pedro Parra-Sanchez was arrested six days after he arrived in New Orleans to find work in October 2005. He got in a fight and allegedly stabbed a man with a beer bottle. He went through the local temporary jail in a bus station and two other Louisiana prisons. Under Louisiana law he was supposed to be charged within 60 days or released. However, he never went to court or saw a lawyer. When he did not show up for his original arraignment date last May, a warrant was put out for his arrest, but he was already incarcerated. He was found by a Tulane Law Clinic attorney and was released in November 2006. Lost in the system, he was doing what they call in the courthouse &#8220;Katrina time.&#8221;</p> <p>Though crime is issue one in most of the city, crime is not the cause of a city dying. Crime is a symptom of a city dying. Crime is the sound of a city dying.</p> <p>There are major problems with the drinking water system eighteen months after Katrina. According to the City of New Orleans, hundreds of miles of underground pipes were damaged by 480 billion pounds of water that sat in the city after Katrina. They were further damaged by the uprooting of tens of thousands of trees whose roots were wrapped around the pipes.</p> <p>The city of New Orleans now loses more water through faulty pipes and joints in the delivery system than it is uses. More than 135 million gallons are being pumped out daily but only 50 million gallons are being used, leaving 85 million gallons &#8220;unaccounted for and probably leaking out of the system.&#8221; The daily cost of the water leaking away in thousands of leaks is about $200,000 a day.</p> <p>The second major water problem is that the leakage makes maintaining adequate water pressure extremely difficult and costly, particularly in tall office buildings. Water pressure in New Orleans is estimated at half that of other cities, creating significant problems in consumption, sanitation, air-conditioning, and fire prevention.</p> <p>Insurance costs are skyrocketing for homes and businesses. So are rents. Though low-wage jobs pay a little more than before Katrina, they do not pay enough for people to afford rent.</p> <p>The overall planning process for the rebuilding of New Orleans has been derailed by several competing planning operations. The Mayor initially created a Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which met for months. While the Bring Back New Orleans Commission was underway, the Urban Land Institute, a D.C. based think tank, created and released a report of recommendations in January 2006. After several months of hearings, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission issued a report issued from the Mayor,s Office, but it was never funded. In April 2006, the New Orleans City Council awarded a $2.9 million grant, funded by federal grant money, to a Miami consultant to create a plan for the 49 neighborhoods of New Orleans. A fourth planning process, the Unified New Orleans Plan, was launched in spring 2006 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to integrate all the planning processes. In September 2006, the City Council plan was released, while the UNOP process was just getting underway that fourth plan is starting to wind up now.</p> <p>These problems spread far beyond their most graphic illustrations in New Orleans throughout the Gulf Coast. As Oxfam documented, government neglect has plagued the rebuilding of smaller towns like Biloxi Mississippi, and rural parishes of Louisiana, leaving the entire region in distress. In Biloxi, the first to be aided after the hurricane were the casinos, which forced low-income people out of their homes and neighborhoods. In rural Louisiana, contradictory signals by government agencies have slowed and in some cases reversed progress. Small independent family commercial fishing businesses have been imperiled by the lack of recovery funds. The federal assistance that has occurred has tended to favor the affluent and those with economic assets.</p> <p>Visitors to New Orleans can still stay in fine hotels and dine at great restaurants. But less than a five minute drive away lie miles of devastated neighborhoods that shock visitors. Locals call it &#8220;the Grand Canyon effect&#8221; &#8211; you know about it, you have seen it on TV, but when you see it in person it can take your breath away.</p> <p>Our community continues to take hope from the resilience of our people. Despite lack of federal, state and local assistance, people are living their lives and repairing their homes. People are organizing. Many fight for better levee protection. Some work for affordable housing. Some are workers collectively seeking better working conditions. Neighborhoods are coming together to fight for basic services. Small business owners are working together to secure grants and low-cost rebuilding loans. Others organize against crime.</p> <p>We graciously accept the kindnesses of strangers who come by the hundreds every day to help us gut and rebuild our homes. Churches, synagogues, and mosques from around the country come to partner with local congregations to rebuild and resource their sisters and brothers.</p> <p>The new Congress appears poised to give us a hand. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, head the House Subcommittee overseeing HUD, delivered pointed questions and criticisms to federal, state and local foot-draggers recently and promised a new day.</p> <p>Young people are particularly outraged and activated by what they see they give us hope. Over a thousand law students alone will come to the gulf to volunteer over spring break with the Student Hurricane Network.</p> <p>The connections between the lack of resources for Katrina rebuilding and Iraq and Afghanistan are clear to everyone on the gulf coast.</p> <p>Despite the guarantees of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement that people displaced through no fault of their own have the right to return to their homes and have the right to expect the government to help them do so, far too little progress has been made.</p> <p>As U.S. Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver of Kansas City observed in a recent public hearing, &#8220;When it is all said and done, there has been a lot more said than done.&#8221;</p> <p>But still each day, Ms. Debra South Jones and her volunteers drive into New Orleans east to dish out hot food and groceries to people in need. In the past eighteen months, they have given out over 3 million pounds of food to over 130,000 families. We never dreamed we would be still be so needy eighteen months after Katrina. We look forward to the day when she will not have to feed us, when we will not need volunteers to gut and fix up our homes, when we can feed ourselves in our own fixed up homes in a revitalized New Orleans.</p> <p>[ If you would like to learn more about Ms. Debra South Jones and the work of her organization Just the Right Attitude, see <a href="http://www.jtra.org/" type="external">http://www.jtra.org</a> ]</p> <p>BILL QUIGLEY is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:Quigley@loyno.edu" type="external">Quigley@loyno.edu</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

The Right to Return to New Orleans

https://counterpunch.org/2007/02/26/the-right-to-return-to-new-orleans/

2007-02-26

4left

Each morning Debra South Jones drives 120 miles into New Orleans to cook and serve over 300 hot free meals each day to people in New Orleans East where she lived until Katrina took her home Ms Jones and several volunteers also distribute groceries to 18000 families a month through their group Just the Right Attitude Who comes for food 8220Most of the people are working on their own houses because they can8217t afford contractors8221 Ms Jones said 8220They are living in their guttedout houses with no electricity8221 Why do thousands of people need food and why are people living in guttedout houses with no electricity Look at New Orleans eighteen months after Katrina and you will realize why it is so difficult for people to exercise the human right to return to their homes Half the homes in New Orleans still do not have electricity Eighteen months after Katrina a third of a million people in the New Orleans metro area have not returned FEMA told Congress that 60000 families in Louisiana still live in 240 square foot trailers usually at least 3 to a trailer The Louisiana Hurricane Task Force estimated in December 2006 that there was an 8220urgent need8221 for 30000 affordable rental apartments in New Orleans alone and another 15000 around the rest of the state Eighteen months after Katrina over 80 percent of the 5100 New Orleans occupied public housing apartments remained closed by order of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD which controlled the Housing Authority of New Orleans HANO since 2002 HUD pressed ahead even though internal HANO documents revealed the cost for repair and renovation was significantly less than for demolition and redevelopment A professor from MIT inspected the buildings and declared them structurally sound Architecture critics applaud the current gardenstyle buildings Yet HUD plows ahead planning to spend tens of millions of Katrina dollars to tear down millions of dollars of habitable housing and end up with far fewer affordable apartments a clear loss for the community Over 100 billion was approved by Congress to rebuild the Gulf Coast Over 50 billion of that money was allocated to temporary and longterm housing Just under 30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense spending Over 18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure 36 billion was for health social services and job training and 32 for nonhousing cash assistance 19 billion was allocated for education and 12 billion for agriculture Louisiana received 10 billion to fix up housing Over 109000 homeowners applied for federal funds to fix up their homes Eighteen months later less than 700 families have received this federal assistance Renters who comprised a majority of New Orleans are worse off they get nothing at all Some money is scheduled to go to some landlords and apartment developers for some apartments at some time There were uncountable generous and courageous and heroic acts of people and communities who stretched themselves to assist people displaced by the hurricane Many of these continue However there are several notable exceptions Obstacles to public funding of affordable housing came from within New Orleans and in neighboring parishes Many in New Orleans do not want the poor who lived in public housing to return St Bernard Parish a 93 percent white suburb adjoining New Orleans enacted a postKatrina ordinance which restricted home owners from renting out singlefamily homes 8220unless the renter is a blood relative8221 without securing a permit from the government Jefferson Parish another adjoining majoritywhite suburb unanimously passed a resolution opposing all lowincome tax credit multifamily housing in the areas closest to New Orleans effectively stopping the construction of a 200 unit apartment building on vacant land for people over the age of 62 and any further assisted housing Across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans the chief law enforcement officer of St Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain complained openly about the postKatrina presence of 8220thugs and trash8221 from 8220New Orleans public housing8221 and announced that people with dreadlocks or 8220chee wee hairstyles8221 could 8220expect to be getting a visit from a sheriffs deputy8221 With rebuilding starting up and the previous work force still displaced tens of thousands of migrant workers have come to the Gulf Coast to work in the recovery Many were recruited Most workers tell of being promised good wages and working conditions and plenty of work Some paid money up front for the chance to come to the area to work Most of these promises were broken A tour of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses without electricity other live out of cars At various places in the city whole families are living in tents Many former residents of New Orleans are not welcome back Race is certainly a factor So is class As New Orleans native and professor Adolph Reed notes 8220With each passing day a crucially significant political distinction in New Orleans gets clearer and clearer Property owners are able to assert their interests in the polity while nonowners are nearly as invisible in civic life now as in the early eighteenth century8221 New Orleans is now the charter capital of the US All the public schools on the side of the Mississippi which did not flood were turned into charters within weeks of Katrina The schools with strongest parental support and high test scores were flipped into charters The charters have little connection to each other and to state or local supervision Those in the top half of the preKatrina population may be getting a better education Kids without high scores with disabilities with little parental involvement who are not in charters are certainly not getting a good education and are shuttled into the bottom half 8211 a makeshift system of state and local schools John McDonogh a public high school created to take the place of five preKatrina high schools illustrates the challenges facing noncharter public education in New Orleans Opened by the State school district in the fall as of November 2006 there were 775 students but teachers textbooks and supplies remained in short order months after school opened Many teens as many as onefifth were living in New Orleans without their parents Fights were frequent despite the presence of metal detectors twentygive security guards and an additional eight police officers In fact several security guards who were not much older than the students were injured in fights with students Students described the school as having a 8220prison atmosphere8221 There were no hot lunches and few working water fountains The girls bathrooms did not have doors on them The library had no books at all not even shelves for books in early November One 15 year old student caught the 5am bus from Baton Rouge to attend the high school 8220Our school has 39 security guards and three cops on staff and only 27 teachers8221 one McDonogh teacher reported It took two federal civil rights actions in January 2007 to force the state to abolish a waiting list for entry into public school that stranded hundreds of kids out of school for weeks Healthcare is in crisis The main public healthcare provider Charity Hospital which saw 350000 patient visits a year remains closed as do half the hospitals in the city It is not clear it will reopen Plans are being debated which will shift indigent care and its state and federal compensation to private hospitals Much of the uncompensated care provided by Charity has shifted to other LSU hospitals with people traveling as far as 85 miles to the Earl K Long Hospital in Baton Rouge which reports a 50 percent increase in uncompensated care Waiting lines are long in emergency rooms for those who have insurance When hundreds of thousands lost their jobs after Katrina they lost healthcare as well A recent free medical treatment fair opened their doors at 6 am and stopped signing people up at 8 am because they had already filled the 700 available slots for the day Mental health is worse A report by the World Health organization estimates that serious and mild to moderate mental illness doubled in the year after Hurricane Katrina among survivors Despite a suicide rate triple what it was a year ago the New York Times reported ten months after the storm New Orleans had still lost half of its psychiatrists social workers psychologists and other mental health care workers In the months after Katrina the 534 psychiatric beds that were in metro New Orleans shrank to less than 80 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed the area and found 45 percent of residents were experiencing 8220significant stress or dysfunction8221 and another 25 percent were worse By default the lack of mental health treatment facilities has forced more of these crises towards law enforcement 8220The lack of mental health options forced the New Orleans Police Department to incarcerate mentally ill people who normally would have been taken to Charity8221 said James Arey commander of the NOPD crisis negotiation team 8220The only other option is to admit them into emergency rooms illequipped to handle psychotics who may have to wait days for care This is past the point of being unsafe8221 Arey said 8220It8217s just a matter of time before a mental patient goes berserk in one of the ERs and hurts some people8221 With day care scarce down 70 percent and public transportation down 83 percent of preKatrina busses there is little chance for single moms with kids It is impossible to begin to understand the continued impact of Katrina without viewing through the lenses of race gender and poverty Katrina exposed the regions deeprooted inequalities of gender race and class Katrina did not create the inequalities it provided a window to see them more clearly But the aftermath of Katrina has aggravated these inequalities In fact if you plot race class and gender you can likely tell who has returned to New Orleans The Institute of Womens Policy Research pointed out 8220The hurricanes uncovered Americas longstanding structural inequalities based on race gender and class and laid bare the consequences of ignoring these underlying inequalities8221 The preKatrina population of 454000 people in the city of New Orleans dropped to 187000 The AfricanAmerican population of New Orleans shrank by 61 percent or 213000 people from a preKatrina number of 302000 down to 89000 New Orleans now has a much smaller older whiter and more affluent population Crime plagues parts of the city and every spoke of the criminal justice wheel is broken Hundreds of police left the force and several were just indicted for first degree murder of an unarmed mentally retarded man during Katrina When the accused police reported to jail they were accompanied by hundreds of fellow officers holding up signs calling them heroes The DA and the police are openly feuding and pointing fingers at each other The judges are fighting with the new public defender system Victims and witnesses are still displaced People accused of serious crime walk out of jail because of incompetence and the fear of witnesses to cooperate with police Others are kept in jail too long because they are lost in the system For example Pedro ParraSanchez was arrested six days after he arrived in New Orleans to find work in October 2005 He got in a fight and allegedly stabbed a man with a beer bottle He went through the local temporary jail in a bus station and two other Louisiana prisons Under Louisiana law he was supposed to be charged within 60 days or released However he never went to court or saw a lawyer When he did not show up for his original arraignment date last May a warrant was put out for his arrest but he was already incarcerated He was found by a Tulane Law Clinic attorney and was released in November 2006 Lost in the system he was doing what they call in the courthouse 8220Katrina time8221 Though crime is issue one in most of the city crime is not the cause of a city dying Crime is a symptom of a city dying Crime is the sound of a city dying There are major problems with the drinking water system eighteen months after Katrina According to the City of New Orleans hundreds of miles of underground pipes were damaged by 480 billion pounds of water that sat in the city after Katrina They were further damaged by the uprooting of tens of thousands of trees whose roots were wrapped around the pipes The city of New Orleans now loses more water through faulty pipes and joints in the delivery system than it is uses More than 135 million gallons are being pumped out daily but only 50 million gallons are being used leaving 85 million gallons 8220unaccounted for and probably leaking out of the system8221 The daily cost of the water leaking away in thousands of leaks is about 200000 a day The second major water problem is that the leakage makes maintaining adequate water pressure extremely difficult and costly particularly in tall office buildings Water pressure in New Orleans is estimated at half that of other cities creating significant problems in consumption sanitation airconditioning and fire prevention Insurance costs are skyrocketing for homes and businesses So are rents Though lowwage jobs pay a little more than before Katrina they do not pay enough for people to afford rent The overall planning process for the rebuilding of New Orleans has been derailed by several competing planning operations The Mayor initially created a Bring New Orleans Back Commission which met for months While the Bring Back New Orleans Commission was underway the Urban Land Institute a DC based think tank created and released a report of recommendations in January 2006 After several months of hearings the Bring New Orleans Back Commission issued a report issued from the Mayors Office but it was never funded In April 2006 the New Orleans City Council awarded a 29 million grant funded by federal grant money to a Miami consultant to create a plan for the 49 neighborhoods of New Orleans A fourth planning process the Unified New Orleans Plan was launched in spring 2006 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to integrate all the planning processes In September 2006 the City Council plan was released while the UNOP process was just getting underway that fourth plan is starting to wind up now These problems spread far beyond their most graphic illustrations in New Orleans throughout the Gulf Coast As Oxfam documented government neglect has plagued the rebuilding of smaller towns like Biloxi Mississippi and rural parishes of Louisiana leaving the entire region in distress In Biloxi the first to be aided after the hurricane were the casinos which forced lowincome people out of their homes and neighborhoods In rural Louisiana contradictory signals by government agencies have slowed and in some cases reversed progress Small independent family commercial fishing businesses have been imperiled by the lack of recovery funds The federal assistance that has occurred has tended to favor the affluent and those with economic assets Visitors to New Orleans can still stay in fine hotels and dine at great restaurants But less than a five minute drive away lie miles of devastated neighborhoods that shock visitors Locals call it 8220the Grand Canyon effect8221 8211 you know about it you have seen it on TV but when you see it in person it can take your breath away Our community continues to take hope from the resilience of our people Despite lack of federal state and local assistance people are living their lives and repairing their homes People are organizing Many fight for better levee protection Some work for affordable housing Some are workers collectively seeking better working conditions Neighborhoods are coming together to fight for basic services Small business owners are working together to secure grants and lowcost rebuilding loans Others organize against crime We graciously accept the kindnesses of strangers who come by the hundreds every day to help us gut and rebuild our homes Churches synagogues and mosques from around the country come to partner with local congregations to rebuild and resource their sisters and brothers The new Congress appears poised to give us a hand Congresswoman Maxine Waters head the House Subcommittee overseeing HUD delivered pointed questions and criticisms to federal state and local footdraggers recently and promised a new day Young people are particularly outraged and activated by what they see they give us hope Over a thousand law students alone will come to the gulf to volunteer over spring break with the Student Hurricane Network The connections between the lack of resources for Katrina rebuilding and Iraq and Afghanistan are clear to everyone on the gulf coast Despite the guarantees of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement that people displaced through no fault of their own have the right to return to their homes and have the right to expect the government to help them do so far too little progress has been made As US Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver of Kansas City observed in a recent public hearing 8220When it is all said and done there has been a lot more said than done8221 But still each day Ms Debra South Jones and her volunteers drive into New Orleans east to dish out hot food and groceries to people in need In the past eighteen months they have given out over 3 million pounds of food to over 130000 families We never dreamed we would be still be so needy eighteen months after Katrina We look forward to the day when she will not have to feed us when we will not need volunteers to gut and fix up our homes when we can feed ourselves in our own fixed up homes in a revitalized New Orleans If you would like to learn more about Ms Debra South Jones and the work of her organization Just the Right Attitude see httpwwwjtraorg BILL QUIGLEY is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans He can be reached at Quigleyloynoedu amp160

Each/DET morning/NOUN Debra/PROPN South/PROPN Jones/PROPN drives/VERB 120/NUM miles/NOUN into/ADP New/PROPN Orleans/PROPN to/PART cook/VERB and/CCONJ serve/VERB over/ADP 300/NUM hot/ADJ free/ADJ meals/NOUN each/DET day/NOUN to/ADP people/NOUN in/ADP New/PROPN Orleans/PROPN East/PROPN where/SCONJ she/PRON lived/VERB until/SCONJ Katrina/PROPN took/VERB her/PRON home/NOUN Ms/PROPN Jones/PROPN and/CCONJ several/ADJ volunteers/NOUN also/ADV distribute/VERB groceries/NOUN to/ADP 18000/NUM families/NOUN a/DET month/NOUN through/ADP their/PRON group/NOUN Just/ADV the/DET Right/ADJ Attitude/NOUN Who/PRON comes/VERB for/ADP food/NOUN 8220Most/NOUN of/ADP the/DET people/NOUN are/AUX working/VERB on/ADP their/PRON own/ADJ houses/NOUN because/SCONJ they/PRON can8217/VERB t/NOUN afford/NOUN contractors8221/PROPN Ms/PROPN Jones/PROPN said/VERB 8220They/PRON are/AUX living/VERB in/ADP their/PRON guttedout/ADJ houses/NOUN with/ADP no/DET electricity8221/PROPN Why/SCONJ do/AUX thousands/NOUN of/ADP 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<p>Buffalo, New York</p> <p>They say the death of a parent puts you in time because that means there&#8217;s now no generation standing between you and ordinary death: you&#8217;re next. I don&#8217;t buy it. That kind of next is, absent violence or some cells going berserk, a long way off. It&#8217;s an idea; it doesn&#8217;t have the shape or feel of impending fact. What really puts you in time is the clock ticking on your own death when the doctor says &#8220;better pack, you&#8217;re not going to get better from this&#8221; and the deaths of friends and lovers. When friends and lovers die and your world gets quieter; that&#8217;s when the silence comes closer; that&#8217;s when next isn&#8217;t the least bit theoretical or abstract.</p> <p>Who are you? You are the person who has these links to the world. One of Robert Creeley&#8217;s favorite words was &#8220;company.&#8221; He was always talking about being part of a company-a company of family, of poets, of artists, of this group here on this night around this table, eating and drinking and talking, always talking. Company = with bread. When the company constricts so does your world, so do you. The first thing he said when we talked about Allen Ginsberg&#8217;s death in 1997 was, &#8220;The company keeps getting smaller.&#8221; Company, for Bob, was whom you thought in terms of, whom you talked with.</p> <p>Like the narrator of what may be his best-known poem, &#8220;I know a man,&#8221; Bob Creeley was always talking. It was part of the great pleasure of his company.</p> <p>He often said that the authors and producers of &#8220;Murder, She Wrote&#8221; lifted that line from him and, worse, they butchered it, bungled it, missed the point of it. The poem has been widely quoted in the obituaries for him this past week and almost everyone who quotes the poem&#8217;s most famous line-&#8220;drive, he said&#8221;-quotes it incorrectly. It&#8217;s a poem that got away because of punctuation and line breaks, which did not fail to amuse Bob. The poem goes:</p> <p>As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking &#8211; John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we &amp;amp; why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ&#8217;s sake, look out where yr going.</p> <p>&#8220;I know a man&#8221; has two voices: the &#8220;always talking&#8221; narrator and his friend who is not-named-John. People who never heard Creeley read the poem assume the friend starts speaking three lines from the end, telling the author to drive and to look out where he&#8217;s going. But when Creeley read the poem he put the long caesura after &#8220;drive,&#8221; so what the friend said was &#8220;for/christ&#8217;s sake, look/out where yr going,&#8221; just what anyone might say to someone who was walking beside him on the street, mouth running a mile a minute about the darkness surrounding them and getting a car and driving somewhere to keep it at bay, and in the process of talking maybe missing the curb, maybe not seeing a lamppost or garbage can or steel grille sticking up around the base of a tree. People who heard Creeley read the poem all know where that break belongs, but that doesn&#8217;t mean they keep it there. Slip away from his voice and the line break trumps the comma and the friend who is not named John is telling him to drive. Keep the voice in your head and you know they are in all likelihood not in a car at all.</p> <p>In spring 2001, the editors of Substance-TV, an innovative dvd magazine that ran for two years, asked Bob Creeley and me if they could videotape us talking about Bob&#8217;s work. They ran part of the conversation in their first issue with the title &#8220;Robert Creeley and the Persistence of Verse.&#8221; Later this year, Center Working Papers will publish the entire conversation as a small book. Early on in the videotaping, we got to talking about the situation of poetry now. Bob was editing an anthology to be titled &#8220;Best American Poems&#8221; so he was selecting from an enormous mass of stuff, some of which he found interesting, much of which he found dreary. He talked about his delight with the electronic publishing scene (he loved the whole digital word: he carried a tiny laptop with him everywhere and stayed in touch with everybody via email) and then we got on the word &#8220;company.&#8221; This is part of that conversation.</p> <p>&#8212; Bruce Jackson</p> <p>BJ: And what is good stuff now? Are things changing?</p> <p>RC: I suppose good stuff from my sense is not a consistent, but an insistent, attempt to find formal means that are most appropriate, most active and appropriate for what&#8217;s in mind or what&#8217;s there to be said. That aspect of things, try endlessly to try to think of how, what formal agency will best serve.</p> <p>It&#8217;s a fascinating time in that way because it&#8217;s now both simple and practical to engage sound, image and words in a way that was unthinkable back in the forties and fifties. Now one can with really pretty rudimentary information manage a page that has all of these elements interacting, as witness our own website-</p> <p>BJ: <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/" type="external">The Electronic Poetry Center</a>.</p> <p>RC: Electronic Poetry Center, which has its e-poems, its e-magazines, journals. It&#8217;s a whole new ball game. Hypertext, for example, and all its permissions and accommodations. Also the fact that materials can be published in this way, so much more actively and simply than they could be when one had to go through the classic eye of the needle which was the, you know, the literary journal of that time and place, which, whatever its sympathies, couldn&#8217;t accommodate the needs in fact of the poets thus coming in. So either one started one&#8217;s own small modest mimeograph magazine and hoped ten people would read it&#8230;. For this Best American Poems business, I&#8217;m reading, or looking as best I can, at a range of online journals, which now become legitimate place of activity for this publication. That&#8217;s fascinating; I find a lot there.</p> <p>It&#8217;s a funny time. I would say it&#8217;s remarkably conservative in the sense that people are reflective and the basic disposition is reflective. A friend showed me within the last few weeks, photographs of Gregory Corso&#8217;s grave in the English cemetery in Rome. I think one of our country&#8217;s most dear, dear accomplishments was Gregory&#8217;s getting Gregory buried in there. He&#8217;s the first person to be buried in that cemetery in a hundred years. There he is. Right there&#8217;s Shelley, there&#8217;s Gregory. It felt wonderful. If you look at the words on Gregory&#8217;s stone, taken from his own writing, they are of a mind in particularity that almost no one writing today has the power of. It isn&#8217;t simply that Gregory went for broke, but that he claimed and stated the world in an absolutely far beyond confidence way that I just don&#8217;t find. I find echoes of it or tones of it or facts of it.</p> <p>Same is true of poets like Ted Berrigan, whom I felt was great, or Olson or Duncan. In some ways it&#8217;s got to be nostalgia. You can&#8217;t be seventy-five without missing your friends, or else you&#8217;ve never been alive at all. So that&#8217;s true: that these heroic presences of my life are endlessly there. But I miss a scale and an appetite. But I may not know about it-maybe in some very, necessarily edgy place where&#8217;s there no easy way in and they&#8217;re trying to find it.</p> <p>BJ: I was talking to someone the other day about Allen [Ginsberg] and the kind of presence Allen was for us.</p> <p>RC: Yeah, he was great.</p> <p>BJ: Looking for someone like that now, or someone who fills that slot now, and I don&#8217;t see it.</p> <p>RC: No.</p> <p>BJ: It may be that the chemistry just isn&#8217;t adequate for someone like that to flourish. It&#8217;s a different time.</p> <p>RC: I remember Allen, one time, when I was to give a lecture curiously at the Sorbonne-that was later described as the shortest lecture ever delivered in the history of that university, something like twenty minutes-and I gave all the books away at the end. Sort of a hint, you know. Basically the lecture was reading from these books.</p> <p>So in any case, I remember talking to him about this prospect and I was trying to resolve on some writer and some way of coming in. He said, why don&#8217;t you emphasize that American poets are first of all extraordinarily eccentric people? They are cranks, classic social cranks, and that without exception they are all self-invented. They don&#8217;t constitute a lineage or a tradition of the usual imagination, certainly not Parisian, or French. They are Pound, or Whitman, or Emerson equally. I mean they all effectually invent both themselves and the world in which they are living &#8211; invent their modus or their means. Edgar Allen Poe, for example, the person I finally settled on.</p> <p>BJ: And the good doctor.</p> <p>RC: &#8230;Williams took the whole sense of speech particular to people so far beyond the rhetoric that it had had in writers like Sandberg, et cetera, where it was a simulated language. It wasn&#8217;t- out of the mouths of Polish mothers was in fact quite true. He never spoke in an imagined rhetoric such as Frost had. His language was very specific to him, so it was never talked down or dramatic in its base.</p> <p>BJ: Finish about the lecture. You talked about Poe?</p> <p>RC: Yeah, I talked about Poe. I was using the fact that his contemporaries thought he was a bore indeed, and that intellectually and critically and also as a poet he was head and shoulders above almost all his company. He was one of the great critics ever, not just in his ability to nitpick, but his abilities to think were fascinating. Then of course the invention of the classic detective stories and what not. That was, oh he was terrific.</p> <p>BJ: Yes he was.</p> <p>RC: Well the French loved him, I mean I knew that. Mallarm&#233; had made this great translation of &#8220;The Raven,&#8221; which was far more respected than that poem has been in this country.</p> <p>BJ: This leads me to something I wanted to ask you, Bob. You were just talking about American poets inventing themselves.</p> <p>RC: Right.</p> <p>BJ: One of the words I&#8217;ve heard you use again and again over the years is &#8220;company&#8221;.</p> <p>RC: Company. I want company. &#8220;My love and company,&#8221; as I wrote. I think partly because of growing up in a small town, which on the one hand, had a very intimate and to this day has still that, echoes of that real fact of people, both my people from that time but also the habits of this town, although it&#8217;s now largely suburbia. In any case, because my father had moved us in as a family, and although my mother was the town nurse, so that was certainly a real identification, I never felt quite person to the place. I mean I felt, on the one hand, who else could I be, I lived there. I had my friends there. They&#8217;d stay friends all my life. But I curiously never, I didn&#8217;t know quite how I&#8217;d got there. I felt like a foundling, as though I&#8217;d been left on the doorstep. So it was, it was always a curious ambivalence.</p> <p>Also our household didn&#8217;t have much company. There wasn&#8217;t, in the old-fashioned sense of &#8220;company come for dinner&#8221; or something. There weren&#8217;t many people coming and going from our house. It wasn&#8217;t physically isolated, but the nature of my mother&#8217;s work and her fatigue obviously when she had finished. Although she was a warm and responsive person, she was not a comfortably social person. That kind of &#8220;you all come in&#8221; was not her ability.</p> <p>So, company. I remember, for example, a couple years ago when I was trying to persuade graduate students in our Poetics program to let me get them some kind of a digs in the city that would let them have more, not just presence in the city, but let them be more in the city as its information and daily business. I said, you know, &#8220;You need company&#8221;, et cetera et cetera. I kept talking about company. &#8220;You gotta have company.&#8221; One of the terrific women in the group, Anya Levin no less, who actually did eventually establish such a place, she said, &#8220;I thought when you said company you were talking about a small business that you wanted to start.&#8221; I said, &#8220;No, no, no another kind of company.&#8221; And break bread together.</p> <p>And so in any case, the way I came of age as a poet, or came into poetry at the time, it really was a company. I&#8217;d lived in a sort of isolated manner and then suddenly arriving at Black Mountain I found here were all these peers and relationships were just validating and reassuring beyond belief. That company stayed all my life. I&#8217;d blessedly have it, had it.</p> <p>BJ: When was it that you got there, and who was part of it?</p> <p>RC: Initially, the primary person then there was Olson, Charles Olson. This would be &#8217;54 I came. I began writing Olson just at the beginning of the 50s and we had this furious correspondence, which was-</p> <p>BJ: Eight volumes.</p> <p>RC: Yeah, it&#8217;s like ten volumes for something like two years continuing. I don&#8217;t think it will all be published likely in my lifetime. The editor died. I don&#8217;t think we killed him, but-</p> <p>BJ: -you burned out an editor.</p> <p>RC: Dear George. He was Olson&#8217;s primary editor. It was an awful responsibility, terrifying in its implications. He got through ten. Well, he did nine volumes and then a person appointed by him did one more and that&#8217;s where it stopped.</p> <p>In any case, Olson was there, Ed Dorn was there. The nexus of other poets was through the Black Mountain Review, which I was funded to begin. That was a further location. That brought in friends as Duncan, for example, and Paul Blackburn, Denise Levertov, et cetera. It began to be not simply our gang. It really was; it was our emotional and defining cluster.</p> <p>We were not necessarily a happy company all the time. X couldn&#8217;t stand Y. There were endlessly dilemmas of that kind. Just moments before you came I had a call from these terrific musicians&#8230;. He said he wanted to talk to me because one of them thought that the other was [noise]. What did I feel about it? Well, I don&#8217;t know and I&#8217;m not playing the music. So if it works or if it doesn&#8217;t work for you, that&#8217;s the real argument&#8230;.I can&#8217;t tell you. I certainly would understand if you said you can&#8217;t work with X because X doesn&#8217;t work with you or something or just doesn&#8217;t seem to do it. Yeah. Anyhow, so there were those kind of dilemma at times.</p> <p>Or people thought I&#8217;d lost it when I would publish various poets. I remember one was classic &#8211; &#8220;The Goat Man.&#8221; I can&#8217;t remember the name of the writer. Friends thought I&#8217;d really lost it when I published that story. I still like the story, but it&#8217;s a classic, vatic sort of primitive terrific story.</p> <p>BJ: You published it in the Review?</p> <p>RC: Yeah, in the Black Mountain Review. I didn&#8217;t worry about taste in that way at all. The great pleasure was, I never forgot Pound&#8217;s ukase. He says: &#8220;Damn your taste. I want if possible to sharpen your perceptions, after which your taste can take care of itself.&#8221; That was immensely useful advice.</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>Bob Creeley and I were born May 21 ten years apart-he in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1926 and I in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936-so he would have been 75 that day and I would have been 65. He said something else to me in that conversation that, if it didn&#8217;t free me from fear of death brought me to a truce with it. The power that a few words can have never ceases to astonish me, which is a fact poets take joy in every day of their working lives. I never got around to telling Bob how important to me was the thing he&#8217;d said, almost as an aside. We&#8217;d been talking about the deaths of friends and then about how both of us were workaholics and how we&#8217;d probably be hard at it, right to the end. It was a conversation we&#8217;d had before and would have again. But that time Bob said something he&#8217;d never said before, nor did he say it subsequently: &#8220;You know,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you&#8217;re not going to finish anyhow.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not going to finish anyhow.&#8221; That had never occurred to me. I don&#8217;t know when Bob realized it. What a brilliant, liberating notion that is. &#8220;You&#8217;re not going to finish anyhow.&#8221; What a beastly burden that frees you of. It licenses you to take on anything.</p> <p>You don&#8217;t finish. Since you don&#8217;t finish, you don&#8217;t have to worry about finishing. Finishing isn&#8217;t what it&#8217;s about. People for whom finishing is what it&#8217;s about are already finished. It&#8217;s the doing it that&#8217;s the joy, and the talking about it that&#8217;s the joy, doing and having enough pals and family accessible by phone or email or close by so that you can do the talking that has to be done until the breath is no longer there to do the talking with. Which he did, right to the end, when the early morning sun burst through that Odessa, Texas, hospital room window and he saw that his wife Penelope and their dear children Will and Hannah were there and he told them what a nice thing he thought that was, what a nice thing it was.</p> <p>Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture at SUNY Buffalo. He edits the web journal Buffalo Report. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:bjackson@buffalo.edu" type="external">bjackson@buffalo.edu</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

On the Subject of Company

https://counterpunch.org/2005/04/06/on-the-subject-of-company/

2005-04-06

4left

Buffalo New York They say the death of a parent puts you in time because that means there8217s now no generation standing between you and ordinary death you8217re next I don8217t buy it That kind of next is absent violence or some cells going berserk a long way off It8217s an idea it doesn8217t have the shape or feel of impending fact What really puts you in time is the clock ticking on your own death when the doctor says 8220better pack you8217re not going to get better from this8221 and the deaths of friends and lovers When friends and lovers die and your world gets quieter that8217s when the silence comes closer that8217s when next isn8217t the least bit theoretical or abstract Who are you You are the person who has these links to the world One of Robert Creeley8217s favorite words was 8220company8221 He was always talking about being part of a companya company of family of poets of artists of this group here on this night around this table eating and drinking and talking always talking Company with bread When the company constricts so does your world so do you The first thing he said when we talked about Allen Ginsberg8217s death in 1997 was 8220The company keeps getting smaller8221 Company for Bob was whom you thought in terms of whom you talked with Like the narrator of what may be his bestknown poem 8220I know a man8221 Bob Creeley was always talking It was part of the great pleasure of his company He often said that the authors and producers of 8220Murder She Wrote8221 lifted that line from him and worse they butchered it bungled it missed the point of it The poem has been widely quoted in the obituaries for him this past week and almost everyone who quotes the poem8217s most famous line8220drive he said8221quotes it incorrectly It8217s a poem that got away because of punctuation and line breaks which did not fail to amuse Bob The poem goes As I sd to my friend because I am always talking 8211 John I sd which was not his name the darkness sur rounds us what can we do against it or else shall we ampamp why not buy a goddamn big car drive he sd for christ8217s sake look out where yr going 8220I know a man8221 has two voices the 8220always talking8221 narrator and his friend who is notnamedJohn People who never heard Creeley read the poem assume the friend starts speaking three lines from the end telling the author to drive and to look out where he8217s going But when Creeley read the poem he put the long caesura after 8220drive8221 so what the friend said was 8220forchrist8217s sake lookout where yr going8221 just what anyone might say to someone who was walking beside him on the street mouth running a mile a minute about the darkness surrounding them and getting a car and driving somewhere to keep it at bay and in the process of talking maybe missing the curb maybe not seeing a lamppost or garbage can or steel grille sticking up around the base of a tree People who heard Creeley read the poem all know where that break belongs but that doesn8217t mean they keep it there Slip away from his voice and the line break trumps the comma and the friend who is not named John is telling him to drive Keep the voice in your head and you know they are in all likelihood not in a car at all In spring 2001 the editors of SubstanceTV an innovative dvd magazine that ran for two years asked Bob Creeley and me if they could videotape us talking about Bob8217s work They ran part of the conversation in their first issue with the title 8220Robert Creeley and the Persistence of Verse8221 Later this year Center Working Papers will publish the entire conversation as a small book Early on in the videotaping we got to talking about the situation of poetry now Bob was editing an anthology to be titled 8220Best American Poems8221 so he was selecting from an enormous mass of stuff some of which he found interesting much of which he found dreary He talked about his delight with the electronic publishing scene he loved the whole digital word he carried a tiny laptop with him everywhere and stayed in touch with everybody via email and then we got on the word 8220company8221 This is part of that conversation 8212 Bruce Jackson BJ And what is good stuff now Are things changing RC I suppose good stuff from my sense is not a consistent but an insistent attempt to find formal means that are most appropriate most active and appropriate for what8217s in mind or what8217s there to be said That aspect of things try endlessly to try to think of how what formal agency will best serve It8217s a fascinating time in that way because it8217s now both simple and practical to engage sound image and words in a way that was unthinkable back in the forties and fifties Now one can with really pretty rudimentary information manage a page that has all of these elements interacting as witness our own website BJ The Electronic Poetry Center RC Electronic Poetry Center which has its epoems its emagazines journals It8217s a whole new ball game Hypertext for example and all its permissions and accommodations Also the fact that materials can be published in this way so much more actively and simply than they could be when one had to go through the classic eye of the needle which was the you know the literary journal of that time and place which whatever its sympathies couldn8217t accommodate the needs in fact of the poets thus coming in So either one started one8217s own small modest mimeograph magazine and hoped ten people would read it8230 For this Best American Poems business I8217m reading or looking as best I can at a range of online journals which now become legitimate place of activity for this publication That8217s fascinating I find a lot there It8217s a funny time I would say it8217s remarkably conservative in the sense that people are reflective and the basic disposition is reflective A friend showed me within the last few weeks photographs of Gregory Corso8217s grave in the English cemetery in Rome I think one of our country8217s most dear dear accomplishments was Gregory8217s getting Gregory buried in there He8217s the first person to be buried in that cemetery in a hundred years There he is Right there8217s Shelley there8217s Gregory It felt wonderful If you look at the words on Gregory8217s stone taken from his own writing they are of a mind in particularity that almost no one writing today has the power of It isn8217t simply that Gregory went for broke but that he claimed and stated the world in an absolutely far beyond confidence way that I just don8217t find I find echoes of it or tones of it or facts of it Same is true of poets like Ted Berrigan whom I felt was great or Olson or Duncan In some ways it8217s got to be nostalgia You can8217t be seventyfive without missing your friends or else you8217ve never been alive at all So that8217s true that these heroic presences of my life are endlessly there But I miss a scale and an appetite But I may not know about itmaybe in some very necessarily edgy place where8217s there no easy way in and they8217re trying to find it BJ I was talking to someone the other day about Allen Ginsberg and the kind of presence Allen was for us RC Yeah he was great BJ Looking for someone like that now or someone who fills that slot now and I don8217t see it RC No BJ It may be that the chemistry just isn8217t adequate for someone like that to flourish It8217s a different time RC I remember Allen one time when I was to give a lecture curiously at the Sorbonnethat was later described as the shortest lecture ever delivered in the history of that university something like twenty minutesand I gave all the books away at the end Sort of a hint you know Basically the lecture was reading from these books So in any case I remember talking to him about this prospect and I was trying to resolve on some writer and some way of coming in He said why don8217t you emphasize that American poets are first of all extraordinarily eccentric people They are cranks classic social cranks and that without exception they are all selfinvented They don8217t constitute a lineage or a tradition of the usual imagination certainly not Parisian or French They are Pound or Whitman or Emerson equally I mean they all effectually invent both themselves and the world in which they are living 8211 invent their modus or their means Edgar Allen Poe for example the person I finally settled on BJ And the good doctor RC 8230Williams took the whole sense of speech particular to people so far beyond the rhetoric that it had had in writers like Sandberg et cetera where it was a simulated language It wasn8217t out of the mouths of Polish mothers was in fact quite true He never spoke in an imagined rhetoric such as Frost had His language was very specific to him so it was never talked down or dramatic in its base BJ Finish about the lecture You talked about Poe RC Yeah I talked about Poe I was using the fact that his contemporaries thought he was a bore indeed and that intellectually and critically and also as a poet he was head and shoulders above almost all his company He was one of the great critics ever not just in his ability to nitpick but his abilities to think were fascinating Then of course the invention of the classic detective stories and what not That was oh he was terrific BJ Yes he was RC Well the French loved him I mean I knew that Mallarm233 had made this great translation of 8220The Raven8221 which was far more respected than that poem has been in this country BJ This leads me to something I wanted to ask you Bob You were just talking about American poets inventing themselves RC Right BJ One of the words I8217ve heard you use again and again over the years is 8220company8221 RC Company I want company 8220My love and company8221 as I wrote I think partly because of growing up in a small town which on the one hand had a very intimate and to this day has still that echoes of that real fact of people both my people from that time but also the habits of this town although it8217s now largely suburbia In any case because my father had moved us in as a family and although my mother was the town nurse so that was certainly a real identification I never felt quite person to the place I mean I felt on the one hand who else could I be I lived there I had my friends there They8217d stay friends all my life But I curiously never I didn8217t know quite how I8217d got there I felt like a foundling as though I8217d been left on the doorstep So it was it was always a curious ambivalence Also our household didn8217t have much company There wasn8217t in the oldfashioned sense of 8220company come for dinner8221 or something There weren8217t many people coming and going from our house It wasn8217t physically isolated but the nature of my mother8217s work and her fatigue obviously when she had finished Although she was a warm and responsive person she was not a comfortably social person That kind of 8220you all come in8221 was not her ability So company I remember for example a couple years ago when I was trying to persuade graduate students in our Poetics program to let me get them some kind of a digs in the city that would let them have more not just presence in the city but let them be more in the city as its information and daily business I said you know 8220You need company8221 et cetera et cetera I kept talking about company 8220You gotta have company8221 One of the terrific women in the group Anya Levin no less who actually did eventually establish such a place she said 8220I thought when you said company you were talking about a small business that you wanted to start8221 I said 8220No no no another kind of company8221 And break bread together And so in any case the way I came of age as a poet or came into poetry at the time it really was a company I8217d lived in a sort of isolated manner and then suddenly arriving at Black Mountain I found here were all these peers and relationships were just validating and reassuring beyond belief That company stayed all my life I8217d blessedly have it had it BJ When was it that you got there and who was part of it RC Initially the primary person then there was Olson Charles Olson This would be 821754 I came I began writing Olson just at the beginning of the 50s and we had this furious correspondence which was BJ Eight volumes RC Yeah it8217s like ten volumes for something like two years continuing I don8217t think it will all be published likely in my lifetime The editor died I don8217t think we killed him but BJ you burned out an editor RC Dear George He was Olson8217s primary editor It was an awful responsibility terrifying in its implications He got through ten Well he did nine volumes and then a person appointed by him did one more and that8217s where it stopped In any case Olson was there Ed Dorn was there The nexus of other poets was through the Black Mountain Review which I was funded to begin That was a further location That brought in friends as Duncan for example and Paul Blackburn Denise Levertov et cetera It began to be not simply our gang It really was it was our emotional and defining cluster We were not necessarily a happy company all the time X couldn8217t stand Y There were endlessly dilemmas of that kind Just moments before you came I had a call from these terrific musicians8230 He said he wanted to talk to me because one of them thought that the other was noise What did I feel about it Well I don8217t know and I8217m not playing the music So if it works or if it doesn8217t work for you that8217s the real argument8230I can8217t tell you I certainly would understand if you said you can8217t work with X because X doesn8217t work with you or something or just doesn8217t seem to do it Yeah Anyhow so there were those kind of dilemma at times Or people thought I8217d lost it when I would publish various poets I remember one was classic 8211 8220The Goat Man8221 I can8217t remember the name of the writer Friends thought I8217d really lost it when I published that story I still like the story but it8217s a classic vatic sort of primitive terrific story BJ You published it in the Review RC Yeah in the Black Mountain Review I didn8217t worry about taste in that way at all The great pleasure was I never forgot Pound8217s ukase He says 8220Damn your taste I want if possible to sharpen your perceptions after which your taste can take care of itself8221 That was immensely useful advice Bob Creeley and I were born May 21 ten years aparthe in Arlington Massachusetts in 1926 and I in Brooklyn New York in 1936so he would have been 75 that day and I would have been 65 He said something else to me in that conversation that if it didn8217t free me from fear of death brought me to a truce with it The power that a few words can have never ceases to astonish me which is a fact poets take joy in every day of their working lives I never got around to telling Bob how important to me was the thing he8217d said almost as an aside We8217d been talking about the deaths of friends and then about how both of us were workaholics and how we8217d probably be hard at it right to the end It was a conversation we8217d had before and would have again But that time Bob said something he8217d never said before nor did he say it subsequently 8220You know8221 he said 8220you8217re not going to finish anyhow8221 8220You8217re not going to finish anyhow8221 That had never occurred to me I don8217t know when Bob realized it What a brilliant liberating notion that is 8220You8217re not going to finish anyhow8221 What a beastly burden that frees you of It licenses you to take on anything You don8217t finish Since you don8217t finish you don8217t have to worry about finishing Finishing isn8217t what it8217s about People for whom finishing is what it8217s about are already finished It8217s the doing it that8217s the joy and the talking about it that8217s the joy doing and having enough pals and family accessible by phone or email or close by so that you can do the talking that has to be done until the breath is no longer there to do the talking with Which he did right to the end when the early morning sun burst through that Odessa Texas hospital room window and he saw that his wife Penelope and their dear children Will and Hannah were there and he told them what a nice thing he thought that was what a nice thing it was Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P Capen Professor of American Culture at SUNY Buffalo He edits the web journal Buffalo Report He can be reached at bjacksonbuffaloedu amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>When I was growing up in the 1950s, a photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1944) still hung in the homes of some family members and friends. Our only four-term president was remembered by them as the leader-and even the savior-of the country. Those like my parents, who experienced the Great Depression and World War II, were transformed by the experience of Roosevelt&#8217;s New Deal into life long Democrats. Union members, immigrants, and African Americans, and then their children, stuck with the Democrats through thick and thin for fifty years, largely held in place by their experience of the New Deal.</p> <p>Seventy-five years ago President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to put together that series of social and economic institutions that he called the New Deal, measures that profoundly transformed American society. At the same time under FDR&#8217;s leadership, the Democratic Party succeeded in constructing that bloc of social classes, ethnic groups, and organizations that came to be called the New Deal Coalition and that constituted the party&#8217;s social base of political power into the 1970s. FDR&#8217;s New Deal-both the program of reforms and the coalition of forces-represented the most dynamic, durable and ultimately successful political achievement of America in the twentieth century. FDR&#8217;s New Deal also laid the basis for what Henry Luce of Time Magazine called the American Century, less than a century, but more than fifty years of American supremacy.</p> <p>A New New Deal?</p> <p>Today, as the nation once again confronts an economic crisis, some are turning to look back at Roosevelt&#8217;s New Deal in the hope of finding a solution to our country&#8217;s current problems. Perhaps this is in part because some see in Barack Obama a Rooseveltian figure, one who might be the broker of new social pact. We naturally then look back to the 1930s.</p> <p>The Nation, for example, under the heading &#8220;Toward a New New Deal,&#8221; recently asked a dozen prominent Americans, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, SEIU President Andy Stern, and historian Howard Zinn, to comment on the New Deal on its anniversary. By and large those commentators suggested that we might turn to the New Deal for inspiration, as a model for taking political power, and as a program to resolve the country&#8217;s economic difficulties. Zinn suggested that today&#8217;s presidential contenders might ask the American people to undertake a new New Deal and wondered if, &#8220;Perhaps the momentum of such a project could carry the nation past the limits of FDR&#8217;s reforms, especially if there were a popular upsurge that demanded it.&#8221;</p> <p>But does the New Deal of the 1930s represent the way forward for America in the 2000s? Did it even represent the best way forward for America in the 1930s? Do we want to go that route again? And, if we did, would it even be possible? The answers to these questions, I think, point in another direction. What we need today is not a New New Deal but a different sort of coalition under different leadership and with altogether different objectives: a Different Deal. Turning to look back at the New Deal of the 1930s we find that there was another path, a road not taken, an alternative for the country which we might pursue today.</p> <p>The Crash, the Depression, Roosevelt</p> <p>Many think of Roosevelt as a man who took office planning to help workers and to create a fairer economic system. In truth, Roosevelt had no plan. The New Deal emerged from a series of conflicts between the government, the corporations and working people. And much of the initiative for change came from below.</p> <p>The Great Crash of 1929 devastated the American economy: banks failed, businesses closed, and within a short time 25 percent of workers were unemployed. The government of Republican Herbert Hoover failed to respond to the economic crisis, so in 1932 voters elected to the presidency Franklin D. Roosevelt, descendant of a patrician family, cousin of former president Theodore &#8220;Teddy Roosevelt,&#8221; and governor of New York. FDR, who took office without a plan, surrounded himself with advisors of differing ideologies and indicated his willingness to experiment. His approach would be pragmatic; he would see what worked. What was clear from the beginning was that Roosevelt&#8217;s goal, while alleviating some of the pain of the depression, was to save American capitalism.</p> <p>The Crash and the Depression set America&#8217;s working people in motion. The Communist Party organized the unemployed to demand relief and jobs under the slogan &#8220;Fight Don&#8217;t Starve!&#8221; Farmers formed the Farm Holiday Association and, carrying signs reading &#8220;Be a Picket or a Peasant,&#8221; struck and rioted in the Midwest. American veterans, unemployed and desperate, descended on Washington, D.C. in the Bonus March of 1932-only to be driven out of town by tanks and troops with bayonets. Socialists, Communists and Trotskyists formed unemployed workers councils in cities throughout the country.</p> <p>By 1934 a new labor movement began to emerge as workers succeeded in organizing city-wide general strikes in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Toledo and won recognition for new unions of industrial workers. Conservative leader of the United Mine Workers John L. Lewis jumped in front of the workers parade and proclaimed the founding of the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Many people throughout the country wondered if capitalism had failed and would now be replaced by socialism through a working class revolution.</p> <p>The New Deal resulted from the interplay between the Roosevelt administration, the corporations, and the mass movements of farmers and workers. FDR&#8217;s particular genius was in his ability to contain and capture the energy and ideas of those mass movements and to use them for his own ends. Forces that initially chartered their own path, or that challenged or threatened his administration were brought around to support it through a brilliant combination of populist rhetoric, social reforms, and the building of a multi-class coalition.</p> <p>The Roosevelt Style: Pragmatism and Experimentation</p> <p>Breaking with the conservative past, Roosevelt was willing to use government to inhibit the market, to restrain corporations, and to build social welfare programs, though, as would soon become clear, he would not threaten the fundamental capitalist character of the economy. His creativity in using the government, the Democratic Party, and the mass media, through his famous fireside chats, allowed him instead to become the broker of a new coalition and the author of a new social pact.</p> <p>Roosevelt was imaginative and dynamic. During his first 100 days he pushed through Congress an unprecedented series of measures that provided emergency assistance, jobs, and mortgage relief for homeowners and farmers. By the mid-1930s programs such as the Civil Works Administration, Works Progress Administration, and Civil Conservation Corps employed millions in planting trees, building roads and bridges, schools and airports.</p> <p>Roosevelt&#8217;s attention was particularly focused on the problem of preventing capitalist competition from bringing down the entire system. He established the FTC to regulate big business and then the National Industrial Recovery Act to stop cutthroat competition by imposing market shares, production levels, prices, and wages on the corporations. After the Supreme Court declared the NIRA/NRA unconstitutional, Roosevelt continued to try to use government to regulate capital, to build public works programs, and to expand social welfare. To do so, however, he had to rebuild the Democratic Party.</p> <p>The Roosevelt Coalition: The Cross-Class Alliance</p> <p>Some think that Roosevelt transformed the Democratic Party into a progressive coalition of unions, immigrants and blacks on order to move America to the left. But that was simply not what happened.</p> <p>True, Roosevelt realized that if he was to succeed in reforming and reconstructing American capitalism, he would have to broaden the social base of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party that had elected him in 1932 had been based on the corrupt political machines of big cities like Chicago and New York, on the white votes of the Solid South, on the American Federation of Labor, and on financiers like Bernard Baruch who reportedly &#8220;owned&#8221; sixty congressmen whose campaigns he had financed. That base was simply too narrow to deal with the upheavals in the industrial cities of the Great Lakes region and among the farmers of the Midwest.</p> <p>The patrician Roosevelt had by 1936 adopted a populist discourse, calling for the overthrow of America&#8217;s &#8220;economic royalists,&#8221; as symbolized in the public mind by the Morgan Bank. But his radical rhetoric belied the reality, for FDR was also courting capitalist power. Unlike the Republicans who saw the revival of the economy coming through heavy industry and high finance, FDR and his inner circle had become convinced that revival would come through capital-intensive industry and consumer goods. He was constructing a new coalition that included Rockefeller&#8217;s Chase National Bank, and other non-Morgan banks, Lehman Brothers, Standard Oil, Sears Roebuck, Remington Rand, Bendix, and other banks and corporations like them. Roosevelt worked with these capital-intensive industries which were driven by consumer demand to find a way to save the capitalist system. The key to reviving those industries would be through Keynesian policies of deficit spending, programs providing jobs for workers and welfare benefits for the unemployed and the elderly.</p> <p>At the same time FDR also worked to expand his coalition by incorporating more plebeian forces. Roosevelt, his Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and Senator Robert Wagner carefully maneuvered to contain the worker upheaval-sit-down strikes, mass picketlines, conflicts with the police and National Guard-that swept the nation. At the same time, Congress passed the Wagner Act which for the first time at the federal level gave workers the right to unionize, but also channeled their organizing efforts into legal structures that subordinated the unions to the corporations whose workers they represented. The National Labor Relations Board shaped a pattern of industrial relations that brought about a management-labor partnership in the principal industries. Roosevelt&#8217;s labor policies, ambivalent as they were, nevertheless succeeded in bringing into his coalition the Congress of Industrial Organizations with its new unions made up of millions of immigrant and African American workers.</p> <p>Roosevelt, however, refused to reach out to African Americans, believing that he could not even appear to sympathize with them-that was his wife&#8217;s role-since any gesture toward blacks would jeopardize political support in the Solid South where blacks were not permitted to vote. Consequently African Americans in the South remained trapped in Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement, and continued to be the victims of lynching, all of which enforced the labor regime based on low-wages. Blacks got no New Deal from FDR, but they voted for him because some of the jobs and relief programs, though rife with racism, still improved their situation. By 1936 they had left the party of Lincoln for the party of Roosevelt where they have stayed ever since.</p> <p>A New Social Pact</p> <p>Roosevelt succeeded in expanding the Democratic Party to include industrialists from the capital-intensive industries-the dominant force-as well as the workers of the CIO unions, immigrant communities, and even African Americans. And he did so without giving up the backing of the corrupt big-city machines or the southern white supremacists. This broadened support made it possible for Roosevelt to win large majorities in the 1934 congressional and the 1936 presidential elections. By the end of the 1930s Roosevelt and the Democratic Party in Congress had succeeded in laying the foundation of a new social pact based on the pillars of the National Labor Relations Act and Social Security.</p> <p>Some believe that Roosevelt&#8217;s New Deal ended the Great Depression, but that was not the case. By 1938 unemployment levels had risen once again to nearly 20 percent. Roosevelt only brought the country out of the depression by leading the United States into war, the same war for the division of the planet between the great powers that had begun in 1914, paused between 1918 and 1939 so that the rival powers could rearm and harvest a new generation of youth, and then started up again, this time not only in Europe but also in Asia. The multi-class coalition of the Democratic Party and the social pact between capital and labor that Roosevelt had begun to bring together were forged in the crucible of the war. Government brought capital and labor together to win the war of production and that led to a capital-labor partnership that would last into the 1970s.</p> <p>The war which destroyed European and Japanese capitalism through massive bombing, and which did away with a whole generation of class-conscious workers, left the United States virtually the only capitalist power on the planet. Just after the end of the war, the United States with 5 percent of the world&#8217;s population collected 50 percent of its wealth. The U.S. domination of the world economy made it possible for American corporations to produce the revenues that financed the New Deal social pact, but that was only possible by the adoption of a permanent war economy, military Keynesianism, the production of weapons for the permanent war on Asia: from Japan to Korea and Vietnam.</p> <p>What was the Social Pact?</p> <p>Roosevelt&#8217;s social pact, breaking with the laissez-faire past, represented a profound reform of American capitalism. Government regulated corporations to a much greater degree and established the first major national social program: Social Security. At the same time the NLRB created the framework in which labor unions came by the 1950s to represent 35 percent of America&#8217;s work force. The American prosperity which lasted from 1940 to roughly 1970, based on U.S. dominance in the world economy, meant that many Americans&#8217; lives improved under first the New Deal and later under its expansion with Johnson&#8217;s Great Society.</p> <p>Yet the New Deal pact was not all it seemed to be or might have been. While about one-third of working Americans came to benefit from labor unions with their pensions and health and welfare funds, two-thirds of Americans remained in the other economy of the Old Deal. The New Deal, augmented by the Great Society, congealed into a system that could not deliver America from the capitalist boom-bust economic cycle and that could not be separated from the American drive to militarism and war. By the early 1960s writers like Michael Harrington had discovered The Other America of profound poverty in the nation&#8217;s inner cities and the rural hollers.</p> <p>Even the expanded version of the American welfare state, however, never approximated the programs of the social democratic governments of Western Europe with their four- to six-week vacations for all, national public health programs, and free higher education. Western European states created those social programs during the post-war period in competition with Soviet and Eastern European Communism where workers had guaranteed jobs, nearly free housing, and free medical care. The New Deal was not such a great deal when compared to the European states where labor and socialist parties had led the fight for change.</p> <p>Most importantly, the New Deal turned out to be not only a social pact; but also a social trap. Roosevelt had succeeded in capturing the CIO unions and the left as well; the Socialists joined the Democrats virtually en masse, and the Communists, who came to see in the New Deal an American version of the Popular Front, were absorbed into the coalition too. Once inside the Democratic Party the unions and social movements found that it became impossible to reassert their independence. The Democratic Party was not just a coalition; it was also a kind of cage.</p> <p>That New Deal Coalition evolved into the contemporary alliance of the Democratic National Committee, banks and corporations, bureaucratic labor unions, African American civil rights organizations bereft of the movement that had made them, and the National Organization for Women which institutionalized the former feminist movement. By the 1980s the Democrats has lost the social support they once had and had given up on fighting to defend and expand the welfare state. Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, adopting the neoliberal model, committed themselves to dismantling the New Deal social welfare programs and returning to laissez-faire.</p> <p>New Deal Redux?</p> <p>Is a New New Deal Possible? To envision another New Deal is to envision a reform that makes possible the continuation of capitalism with its periodic economic crises and its foreign wars. It is to conjure up another cross-class coalition dominated by capital and subordinating labor. It is to imagine a system that makes life somewhat better for some, but leaves many with the Old Deal. In any case, it is not clear that such a path is possible.</p> <p>A modern replication of the New Deal would require not only the construction of a new regulatory system and new social welfare programs, but also the bolstering of the American economy sufficient to produce the revenues and the profits to pay for it. The expansion of American capitalism today can only come through economic victory in the competition with the European Union, Japan and China and the gaining of control over the world&#8217;s natural resources and raw materials.</p> <p>Central to an American victory in the economic realm is the struggle to control the oil fields of the Middle East and the geopolitically strategic trade routes of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. That is, the Democrats&#8217; hope for a New New Deal lies through the Republicans&#8217; dream of a New American Century. This is precisely the reason that the Democratic candidates can give no straight answers about the future of the U.S. in Iraq.</p> <p>The Road Not Taken</p> <p>How do we find the right road forward this time? Well, that is our project. Looking back on the 1930s, we find that there was also a road not taken, a trail that was being blazed by the industrial unions, independent workers&#8217; parties, and an incipient socialist movement. We might take the path not taken in the 1930s. The alternative to the New New Deal involves envisioning a society founded on equality, democracy, and a peaceful foreign policy. The way forward does not lie through a New New Deal, but through the struggles of the social movements and the building of a working people&#8217;s party to fight for a Different Deal: the end of capitalism and the construction of a democratic socialist society.</p> <p>DAN LA BOTZ is a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer and activist. He can be contacted at <a href="mailto:DanLaBotz@gmail.com" type="external">DanLaBotz@gmail.com</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Confronting the Economic Crisis

https://counterpunch.org/2008/04/09/confronting-the-economic-crisis/

2008-04-09

4left

When I was growing up in the 1950s a photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 19321944 still hung in the homes of some family members and friends Our only fourterm president was remembered by them as the leaderand even the saviorof the country Those like my parents who experienced the Great Depression and World War II were transformed by the experience of Roosevelt8217s New Deal into life long Democrats Union members immigrants and African Americans and then their children stuck with the Democrats through thick and thin for fifty years largely held in place by their experience of the New Deal Seventyfive years ago President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to put together that series of social and economic institutions that he called the New Deal measures that profoundly transformed American society At the same time under FDR8217s leadership the Democratic Party succeeded in constructing that bloc of social classes ethnic groups and organizations that came to be called the New Deal Coalition and that constituted the party8217s social base of political power into the 1970s FDR8217s New Dealboth the program of reforms and the coalition of forcesrepresented the most dynamic durable and ultimately successful political achievement of America in the twentieth century FDR8217s New Deal also laid the basis for what Henry Luce of Time Magazine called the American Century less than a century but more than fifty years of American supremacy A New New Deal Today as the nation once again confronts an economic crisis some are turning to look back at Roosevelt8217s New Deal in the hope of finding a solution to our country8217s current problems Perhaps this is in part because some see in Barack Obama a Rooseveltian figure one who might be the broker of new social pact We naturally then look back to the 1930s The Nation for example under the heading 8220Toward a New New Deal8221 recently asked a dozen prominent Americans including Rev Jesse Jackson SEIU President Andy Stern and historian Howard Zinn to comment on the New Deal on its anniversary By and large those commentators suggested that we might turn to the New Deal for inspiration as a model for taking political power and as a program to resolve the country8217s economic difficulties Zinn suggested that today8217s presidential contenders might ask the American people to undertake a new New Deal and wondered if 8220Perhaps the momentum of such a project could carry the nation past the limits of FDR8217s reforms especially if there were a popular upsurge that demanded it8221 But does the New Deal of the 1930s represent the way forward for America in the 2000s Did it even represent the best way forward for America in the 1930s Do we want to go that route again And if we did would it even be possible The answers to these questions I think point in another direction What we need today is not a New New Deal but a different sort of coalition under different leadership and with altogether different objectives a Different Deal Turning to look back at the New Deal of the 1930s we find that there was another path a road not taken an alternative for the country which we might pursue today The Crash the Depression Roosevelt Many think of Roosevelt as a man who took office planning to help workers and to create a fairer economic system In truth Roosevelt had no plan The New Deal emerged from a series of conflicts between the government the corporations and working people And much of the initiative for change came from below The Great Crash of 1929 devastated the American economy banks failed businesses closed and within a short time 25 percent of workers were unemployed The government of Republican Herbert Hoover failed to respond to the economic crisis so in 1932 voters elected to the presidency Franklin D Roosevelt descendant of a patrician family cousin of former president Theodore 8220Teddy Roosevelt8221 and governor of New York FDR who took office without a plan surrounded himself with advisors of differing ideologies and indicated his willingness to experiment His approach would be pragmatic he would see what worked What was clear from the beginning was that Roosevelt8217s goal while alleviating some of the pain of the depression was to save American capitalism The Crash and the Depression set America8217s working people in motion The Communist Party organized the unemployed to demand relief and jobs under the slogan 8220Fight Don8217t Starve8221 Farmers formed the Farm Holiday Association and carrying signs reading 8220Be a Picket or a Peasant8221 struck and rioted in the Midwest American veterans unemployed and desperate descended on Washington DC in the Bonus March of 1932only to be driven out of town by tanks and troops with bayonets Socialists Communists and Trotskyists formed unemployed workers councils in cities throughout the country By 1934 a new labor movement began to emerge as workers succeeded in organizing citywide general strikes in San Francisco Minneapolis and Toledo and won recognition for new unions of industrial workers Conservative leader of the United Mine Workers John L Lewis jumped in front of the workers parade and proclaimed the founding of the CIO the Congress of Industrial Organizations Many people throughout the country wondered if capitalism had failed and would now be replaced by socialism through a working class revolution The New Deal resulted from the interplay between the Roosevelt administration the corporations and the mass movements of farmers and workers FDR8217s particular genius was in his ability to contain and capture the energy and ideas of those mass movements and to use them for his own ends Forces that initially chartered their own path or that challenged or threatened his administration were brought around to support it through a brilliant combination of populist rhetoric social reforms and the building of a multiclass coalition The Roosevelt Style Pragmatism and Experimentation Breaking with the conservative past Roosevelt was willing to use government to inhibit the market to restrain corporations and to build social welfare programs though as would soon become clear he would not threaten the fundamental capitalist character of the economy His creativity in using the government the Democratic Party and the mass media through his famous fireside chats allowed him instead to become the broker of a new coalition and the author of a new social pact Roosevelt was imaginative and dynamic During his first 100 days he pushed through Congress an unprecedented series of measures that provided emergency assistance jobs and mortgage relief for homeowners and farmers By the mid1930s programs such as the Civil Works Administration Works Progress Administration and Civil Conservation Corps employed millions in planting trees building roads and bridges schools and airports Roosevelt8217s attention was particularly focused on the problem of preventing capitalist competition from bringing down the entire system He established the FTC to regulate big business and then the National Industrial Recovery Act to stop cutthroat competition by imposing market shares production levels prices and wages on the corporations After the Supreme Court declared the NIRANRA unconstitutional Roosevelt continued to try to use government to regulate capital to build public works programs and to expand social welfare To do so however he had to rebuild the Democratic Party The Roosevelt Coalition The CrossClass Alliance Some think that Roosevelt transformed the Democratic Party into a progressive coalition of unions immigrants and blacks on order to move America to the left But that was simply not what happened True Roosevelt realized that if he was to succeed in reforming and reconstructing American capitalism he would have to broaden the social base of the Democratic Party The Democratic Party that had elected him in 1932 had been based on the corrupt political machines of big cities like Chicago and New York on the white votes of the Solid South on the American Federation of Labor and on financiers like Bernard Baruch who reportedly 8220owned8221 sixty congressmen whose campaigns he had financed That base was simply too narrow to deal with the upheavals in the industrial cities of the Great Lakes region and among the farmers of the Midwest The patrician Roosevelt had by 1936 adopted a populist discourse calling for the overthrow of America8217s 8220economic royalists8221 as symbolized in the public mind by the Morgan Bank But his radical rhetoric belied the reality for FDR was also courting capitalist power Unlike the Republicans who saw the revival of the economy coming through heavy industry and high finance FDR and his inner circle had become convinced that revival would come through capitalintensive industry and consumer goods He was constructing a new coalition that included Rockefeller8217s Chase National Bank and other nonMorgan banks Lehman Brothers Standard Oil Sears Roebuck Remington Rand Bendix and other banks and corporations like them Roosevelt worked with these capitalintensive industries which were driven by consumer demand to find a way to save the capitalist system The key to reviving those industries would be through Keynesian policies of deficit spending programs providing jobs for workers and welfare benefits for the unemployed and the elderly At the same time FDR also worked to expand his coalition by incorporating more plebeian forces Roosevelt his Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and Senator Robert Wagner carefully maneuvered to contain the worker upheavalsitdown strikes mass picketlines conflicts with the police and National Guardthat swept the nation At the same time Congress passed the Wagner Act which for the first time at the federal level gave workers the right to unionize but also channeled their organizing efforts into legal structures that subordinated the unions to the corporations whose workers they represented The National Labor Relations Board shaped a pattern of industrial relations that brought about a managementlabor partnership in the principal industries Roosevelt8217s labor policies ambivalent as they were nevertheless succeeded in bringing into his coalition the Congress of Industrial Organizations with its new unions made up of millions of immigrant and African American workers Roosevelt however refused to reach out to African Americans believing that he could not even appear to sympathize with themthat was his wife8217s rolesince any gesture toward blacks would jeopardize political support in the Solid South where blacks were not permitted to vote Consequently African Americans in the South remained trapped in Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement and continued to be the victims of lynching all of which enforced the labor regime based on lowwages Blacks got no New Deal from FDR but they voted for him because some of the jobs and relief programs though rife with racism still improved their situation By 1936 they had left the party of Lincoln for the party of Roosevelt where they have stayed ever since A New Social Pact Roosevelt succeeded in expanding the Democratic Party to include industrialists from the capitalintensive industriesthe dominant forceas well as the workers of the CIO unions immigrant communities and even African Americans And he did so without giving up the backing of the corrupt bigcity machines or the southern white supremacists This broadened support made it possible for Roosevelt to win large majorities in the 1934 congressional and the 1936 presidential elections By the end of the 1930s Roosevelt and the Democratic Party in Congress had succeeded in laying the foundation of a new social pact based on the pillars of the National Labor Relations Act and Social Security Some believe that Roosevelt8217s New Deal ended the Great Depression but that was not the case By 1938 unemployment levels had risen once again to nearly 20 percent Roosevelt only brought the country out of the depression by leading the United States into war the same war for the division of the planet between the great powers that had begun in 1914 paused between 1918 and 1939 so that the rival powers could rearm and harvest a new generation of youth and then started up again this time not only in Europe but also in Asia The multiclass coalition of the Democratic Party and the social pact between capital and labor that Roosevelt had begun to bring together were forged in the crucible of the war Government brought capital and labor together to win the war of production and that led to a capitallabor partnership that would last into the 1970s The war which destroyed European and Japanese capitalism through massive bombing and which did away with a whole generation of classconscious workers left the United States virtually the only capitalist power on the planet Just after the end of the war the United States with 5 percent of the world8217s population collected 50 percent of its wealth The US domination of the world economy made it possible for American corporations to produce the revenues that financed the New Deal social pact but that was only possible by the adoption of a permanent war economy military Keynesianism the production of weapons for the permanent war on Asia from Japan to Korea and Vietnam What was the Social Pact Roosevelt8217s social pact breaking with the laissezfaire past represented a profound reform of American capitalism Government regulated corporations to a much greater degree and established the first major national social program Social Security At the same time the NLRB created the framework in which labor unions came by the 1950s to represent 35 percent of America8217s work force The American prosperity which lasted from 1940 to roughly 1970 based on US dominance in the world economy meant that many Americans8217 lives improved under first the New Deal and later under its expansion with Johnson8217s Great Society Yet the New Deal pact was not all it seemed to be or might have been While about onethird of working Americans came to benefit from labor unions with their pensions and health and welfare funds twothirds of Americans remained in the other economy of the Old Deal The New Deal augmented by the Great Society congealed into a system that could not deliver America from the capitalist boombust economic cycle and that could not be separated from the American drive to militarism and war By the early 1960s writers like Michael Harrington had discovered The Other America of profound poverty in the nation8217s inner cities and the rural hollers Even the expanded version of the American welfare state however never approximated the programs of the social democratic governments of Western Europe with their four to sixweek vacations for all national public health programs and free higher education Western European states created those social programs during the postwar period in competition with Soviet and Eastern European Communism where workers had guaranteed jobs nearly free housing and free medical care The New Deal was not such a great deal when compared to the European states where labor and socialist parties had led the fight for change Most importantly the New Deal turned out to be not only a social pact but also a social trap Roosevelt had succeeded in capturing the CIO unions and the left as well the Socialists joined the Democrats virtually en masse and the Communists who came to see in the New Deal an American version of the Popular Front were absorbed into the coalition too Once inside the Democratic Party the unions and social movements found that it became impossible to reassert their independence The Democratic Party was not just a coalition it was also a kind of cage That New Deal Coalition evolved into the contemporary alliance of the Democratic National Committee banks and corporations bureaucratic labor unions African American civil rights organizations bereft of the movement that had made them and the National Organization for Women which institutionalized the former feminist movement By the 1980s the Democrats has lost the social support they once had and had given up on fighting to defend and expand the welfare state Ronald Reagan and the Republicans adopting the neoliberal model committed themselves to dismantling the New Deal social welfare programs and returning to laissezfaire New Deal Redux Is a New New Deal Possible To envision another New Deal is to envision a reform that makes possible the continuation of capitalism with its periodic economic crises and its foreign wars It is to conjure up another crossclass coalition dominated by capital and subordinating labor It is to imagine a system that makes life somewhat better for some but leaves many with the Old Deal In any case it is not clear that such a path is possible A modern replication of the New Deal would require not only the construction of a new regulatory system and new social welfare programs but also the bolstering of the American economy sufficient to produce the revenues and the profits to pay for it The expansion of American capitalism today can only come through economic victory in the competition with the European Union Japan and China and the gaining of control over the world8217s natural resources and raw materials Central to an American victory in the economic realm is the struggle to control the oil fields of the Middle East and the geopolitically strategic trade routes of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea That is the Democrats8217 hope for a New New Deal lies through the Republicans8217 dream of a New American Century This is precisely the reason that the Democratic candidates can give no straight answers about the future of the US in Iraq The Road Not Taken How do we find the right road forward this time Well that is our project Looking back on the 1930s we find that there was also a road not taken a trail that was being blazed by the industrial unions independent workers8217 parties and an incipient socialist movement We might take the path not taken in the 1930s The alternative to the New New Deal involves envisioning a society founded on equality democracy and a peaceful foreign policy The way forward does not lie through a New New Deal but through the struggles of the social movements and the building of a working people8217s party to fight for a Different Deal the end of capitalism and the construction of a democratic socialist society DAN LA BOTZ is a Cincinnatibased teacher writer and activist He can be contacted at DanLaBotzgmailcom amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>ZAGREB (Reuters) - Olympic champions Denmark became the first nation to reach the European championship semi-finals as other results in main round Group II sent them through without throwing a ball on Tuesday.</p> Handball - Men's EHF European Handball Championship - main round Group II - Slovenia v Spain - Arena Varazdin, Varazdin, Croatia - January 23, 2018. Igor Zabic of Slovenia celebrates after winning the match. REUTERS/Antonio Bronic <p>Slovenia&#8217;s stunning 31-26 win over Spain in the Varazdin Arena was followed by the Czech Republic&#8217;s 25-24 defeat of Macedonia, leaving Denmark top on six points from four games before the final round of matches on Wednesday.</p> <p>Second-placed Spain, third-placed holders Germany and the Czech Republic in fourth have four points each and everything to play for in a dramatic home straight.</p> <p>With a myriad of mind-boggling mathematical combinations at hand, Denmark are assured of finishing in the section&#8217;s top two no matter what they do against Macedonia in their last match, while the section&#8217;s other semi-final berth is up for grabs.</p> Handball - Men's EHF European Handball Championship - main round Group II - Germany v Denmark - Arena Varazdin, Varazdin, Croatia - January 21, 2018. Hans O. Lindberg of Denmark shoots on goal. REUTERS/Antonio Bronic <p>With all 12 teams still in the competition in action on Wednesday, Group I leaders France face a stern test against Croatia while Sweden meet Norway in a Scandinavian derby as all four teams are vying for a pair of medal round berths.</p> <p>Spain started as strong favorites against the Slovenians but were rocked by a string of good saves from goalkeeper Urh Kastelic and a fine attacking display from his team mates as Gasper Marguc led the way with five goals.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>Slovenia, who had 11 different scorers, stretched their 13-12 halftime lead to 26-19 in the last quarter of the game, sparking raucous celebrations amongst a full house of their fans at the final whistle.</p> <p>The Czechs trailed Macedonia for much of their contest and looked out for the count after falling behind 21-17 but turned the match on its head in a frantic finale.</p> <p>Their goalkeeper Tomas Mrkva emerged as the hero after saving a seven-meter penalty on the buzzer.</p> <p>Writing by Zoran Milosavljevic in Belgrade; Editing by Ken Ferris</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union member states agreed at a summit in Brussels to take further punitive steps against Russia in the coming days for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, as Moscow accused the bloc of joining a London-driven hate campaign against it.</p> <p>Late on Thursday, in a boost for British Prime Minister Theresa May, the 28-member EU collectively condemned the attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter and said it was &#8220;highly likely&#8221; that Moscow was responsible for it.</p> <p>They also recalled the EU ambassador to Moscow and, according to diplomats on Friday, were preparing a series of additional national measures in the coming days, including the expulsion of Russian officials by some member states.</p> <p>One senior official familiar with discussions said the extent of measures in the coming weeks could be &#8220;surprising&#8221; and not confined to expulsions. There is no talk of more economic sanctions, whose enforcement has divided the EU in the past.</p> <p>Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said he was likely to announce the expulsion of several people on Monday, after returning to Prague and consulting with his foreign minister.</p> <p>Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said she was ready to expel Russian spies, whose activities she said were deeply harmful: &#8220;It is certain that a coordinated action will be taken next week, maybe at the start of it,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It&#8217;s absolutely obvious that the network exists and that it acts aggressively.&#8221;</p> <p>Romanian President Klaus Iohannis stressed that national governments wanted to retain control of the details in an area where they guard their sovereignty from Brussels. But most of those present would go home and prepare suitable steps.</p> <p>Russia has denied responsibility for the March 4 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the first known offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War Two. A British judge said on Thursday that both victims may have suffered brain damage from the attack.</p> BRITISH EXPELLED <p>Moscow retaliated against May&#8217;s move to expel 23 Russians by announcing the expulsion of the same number of Britons.</p> A general view shows the office of Delegation of European Commission in Russia, in central Moscow, Russia March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin <p>On Friday, the Russian foreign ministry described the EU accusation as &#8220;baseless&#8221; and accused the bloc of spurning cooperation with Moscow and joining &#8220;another anti-Russian campaign deployed by London and its allies overseas with an obvious goal: to put another obstacle on the path to the normalization of the situation on the European continent&#8221;.</p> <p>In Moscow, the expulsion of British diplomats went ahead, a convoy of minibuses speeding out of the embassy compound to applause after British embassy staff said their goodbyes in the courtyard under a light snowfall.</p> <p>A special charter flight is expected to fly the diplomats back to Britain later on Friday.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>France&#8217;s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, on a visit to Kiev, signaled that Paris was considering expelling Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain. &#8220;You will see,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The summit statement hardened previous EU language on Russia&#8217;s alleged role as French President Emmanuel Macron and others helped May overcome hesitation on the part of some of Moscow&#8217;s friendlier states, some of whom questioned how definitive Britain&#8217;s evidence is.</p> <p>&#8220;What we will now consider in the coming days is whether we want to take individual action relating to Russian diplomats in Ireland,&#8221; Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told reporters.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-eu-babis/czech-pm-babis-says-will-probably-expel-russian-spies-idUSKBN1GZ1OC" type="external">Czech PM Babis says will 'probably' expel Russian spies</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-eu-skripal/russia-says-europe-being-drawn-into-anglo-american-anti-russia-campaign-idUSKBN1GZ1BW" type="external">Russia says Europe being drawn into Anglo-American anti-Russia campaign</a> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not going to expel people randomly.&#8221;</p> <p>Welcoming the solidarity she secured from the summit, May told reporters on leaving: &#8220;The threat from Russia is one that respects no borders and I think it is clear that Russia is challenging the values we share as Europeans and it is right that we stand together in defense of those values.&#8221;</p> <p>Still, some said they could ill afford Russian retaliation against their own Moscow embassies, some of which employ barely a handful of accredited diplomats.</p> <p>Austria said it did not plan to expel Russians.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Dmitry Madorsky in Moscow and Richard Lough, Gabriela Baczynska, Robin Emmott and Elizabeth Piper in Brussels; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alastair Macdonald</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - At least one person was killed when a man took hostages in a supermarket in the southwestern French town of Trebes on Friday, the mayor told BFM TV. The station reported that the hostage-taker has claimed allegiance to Islamic State.</p> <p>(Graphic: France hostages - <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2pCMp4m" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2pCMp4m</a>)</p> <p>Mayor Eric Menassi also told LCI TV that the man had entered the shop screaming &#8220;Allahu Akbar, (God is greatest) I&#8217;ll kill you all&#8221;.</p> <p>Another person was hurt but their condition was not known, Menassi said. The hostage-taker was now alone with one police officer in the supermarket and all other hostages had been freed, he added.</p> <p>LCI TV said the second victim was also dead and that 12 people were injured.</p> <p>&#8220;All the information we have as I speak lead us to think that this would be a terrorist act,&#8221; Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said.</p> Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes, Aude, France March 23, 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video. LA VIE A TREBES/via REUTERS <p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to, or were inspired by, Islamic State.</p> <p>A police source had said earlier that eight people were being held hostage and that the hostage-taker had shot at a police officer.</p> Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes, Aude, France March 23, 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video. LA VIE A TREBES/via REUTERS <p>Reuters pictures showed police in helmets and body armor in positions around the Super-U supermarket.</p> <p>The Paris prosecutor&#8217;s office said counter-terrorism prosecutors were investigating the incident but did not comment on the possible Islamic State allegiance.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-france-security-spokesman/interior-ministry-spokesman-says-cannot-confirm-two-killed-in-france-hostage-situation-idUSKBN1GZ1RU" type="external">Interior ministry spokesman says cannot confirm two killed in France hostage situation</a> <p>Earlier, the Interior Ministry had said security forces were carrying out an operation at a supermarket in southern France. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb was on his way.</p> <p>&#8220;There is an ongoing situation ... in the town of Trebes, where shots have been heard and a man entrenched himself in a supermarket,&#8221; Philippe said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a serious situation.&#8221;</p> <p>The UNSA police union also said on Twitter a police operation was underway after an individual had earlier shot at four officers in the Carcassone region, wounding one of them.</p> <p>Reporting by Johanna Decorse in Toulouse, Leigh Thomas, Emmanuel Jarry and Bate Felix in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - The threat of a global trade war sent stock markets sliding and investors rushing for the safety of currencies like the yen and government bonds on Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods.</p> The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tilman Blasshofer <p>Another bruising week for stocks has left global equity markets heading for their first quarterly loss since early 2016 after a spike in volatility, nervousness about rising inflation and the specter of a trade war spooked investors enjoying a multi-year bull run.</p> <p>European stocks fell at the open, with Germany&#8217;s Dax down 1.6 percent, the French CAC 40 1.5 percent lower and Britain&#8217;s FTSE 100 0.6 percent in the red.</p> <p>That followed large falls in the U.S., with the S&amp;amp;P 500 shedding 2.5 percent, and overnight in Asia, where the Japanese Nikkei 225 was the biggest loser slumping 4.5 percent.</p> <p>The MSCI World Index, down 3.4 percent since Monday, is on course for its worst week since early February when a spike in volatility sent markets into a tailspin.</p> <p>Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday that could impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of imports from China, although the measures have a 30-day consultation period.</p> <p>China urged the United States to &#8220;pull back from the brink&#8221;, but investors fear Trump&#8217;s tariffs are leading the world&#8217;s two largest economies into a trade war with potentially dire consequences for the global economy.</p> <p>China disclosed its own plans on Friday to impose tariffs on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports in retaliation against the U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products.</p> <p>&#8220;The equity markets are getting clobbered, which is not that surprising with fears of a trade war breaking out,&#8221; said Paul Fage, a TD Securities emerging markets strategist.</p> <p>With investors seeking out safer assets, many jumped into government bond markets in Europe and the United States.</p> <p>U.S. 10-year Treasury yields, which fell almost 8 basis points on Thursday, were set for their biggest two-week fall since September. In Europe, benchmark issuer Germany&#8217;s 10-year bond yield hovered close to 10-week lows struck a day earlier at around 0.52 percent and was on track for its biggest two-week drop since August, down 13 basis points.</p> FLIGHT TO YEN <p>Many investors also turned to the yen, a currency likely to benefit from a full-fledged trade war. The Japanese currency gained 0.3 percent against the dollar to 104.95 yen, the first time it has been below 105 since November 2016.</p> <p>The Swiss franc, another currency bought in times of market uncertainty, rose 0.2 percent versus the dollar, although it remained flat against the euro.</p> <p>The dollar fell 0.2 percent against a basket of currencies.</p> <p>&#8220;The FX market itself isn&#8217;t sure, and its reaction to risk-off and lower bond yields across the board is to buy the yen and the Swiss franc,&#8221; Kit Juckes, an FX strategist at Societe Generale, wrote in a daily note.</p> <p>In commodity markets, oil prices recouped overnight losses after Saudi Arabia said that OPEC and Russian-led production curbs introduced in 2017 will need to be extended into 2019.</p> <p>U.S. crude futures were up 0.3 percent at $64.48 per barrel after losing 1.3 percent on Thursday and Brent rose 0.45 percent to $69.22 before giving up most of those gains.</p> <p>Safe-haven spot gold rose more than one percent to $1,342 an ounce, its highest since Feb. 20. [GOL/]</p> <p>Copper and iron prices both fell, as investors bet demand for the metals would suffer in a trade war. MET/L.</p> <p>Daniel Lockyer, senior fund manager at Hawksmoor Investment Management, said financial markets had got ahead of themselves and were failing to price in the risk a number of factors could trigger a sell-off.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not that we thought trade wars would cause the market to fall, it&#8217;s that there was too much optimism priced into stock markets,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Elsewhere, South Africa&#8217;s rand firmed 0.4 percent and was set to end the week up around 1.5 percent ahead of a decision by Moody&#8217;s on the fate of South Africa&#8217;s last remaining investment grade credit rating.</p> <p>For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets open a news window on Reuters Eikon by pressing F9 and type in &#8216;Live Markets&#8217; in the search bar</p> <p>Additional reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe, Helen Reid and Marc Jones in London, editing by Larry King and Jane Merriman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress voted early on Friday to approve a $1.3-trillion government funding bill with large increases in military and non-defense spending, sending it to President Donald Trump, who was expected to sign it into law.</p> <p>With Trump&#8217;s signature, the bill will avert a threatened government shutdown and keep federal agencies funded until Sept. 30, ending for now Washington&#8217;s constant budget squabbles and letting lawmakers focus on getting reelected in November.</p> <p>The Senate voted 65-32 for the bill, several hours after the House of Representatives passed it 256-167 on Thursday.</p> <p>The votes capped a long struggle by Congress, which was supposed to have approved the government funding by last Oct. 1.</p> <p>Since then, several stop-gap spending bills have kept the government open, except for two brief shutdowns earlier this year when Congress deadlocked and funding expired.</p> <p>Despite Republican leaders urging passage of the bill, some Republicans voted no. Their party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House, but has struggled since taking power in January 2017 to approve budget legislation.</p> <p>Republican Senator Rand Paul spent part of Thursday on social network Twitter criticizing what he said was unnecessary spending in the sprawling bill.</p> <p>&#8220;Shame, shame. A pox on both Houses - and parties. Here&#8217;s the 2,232 page, $1.3 trillion, budget-busting Omnibus spending bill,&#8221; Paul declared in one message.</p> <p>He decried a &#8220;monstrous bill&#8221; teeming with money for decades-old programs. His last-minute objections played a key role in delaying the Senate&#8217;s vote until the dead of night.</p> <p>On Thursday, Representative Mark Meadows, who heads the far-right Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives, said, &#8220;This omnibus doesn&#8217;t just forget the promises we made to voters - it flatly rejects them.&#8221;</p> <p>He added, &#8220;This is not the limited government conservatism our voters demand.&#8221;</p> <p>Not all of the opposition, however, was over fiscal policy.</p> <p>Before he would let the voting proceed, Republican Senator James Risch insisted on a promise that a wilderness area in his home state of Idaho would not be named after the late former Governor Cecil Andrus, a Democrat.</p> The U.S. Capitol building is seen in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2018. REUTERS/ Leah Millis <p>The legislation has provisions that appeal to conservatives, however, with its $80-billion increase this year to the military budget and more border security funding.</p> <p>But significantly higher non-defense spending put conservatives on edge. In the House, 90 of the chamber&#8217;s 238 Republicans revolted against the measure.</p> <p>Coupled with recent tax cuts, the government funding bill is projected to lead to budget deficits of more than $800 billion for this year. Conservatives warned it could create problems for Republicans running for re-election in November.</p> <p>SCALED-BACK TRUMP PROPOSALS</p> <p>Several Trump initiatives would suffer setbacks. At one point during prolonged negotiations he pushed for $25 billion in funds to fully build his border wall with Mexico.</p> Slideshow (9 Images) <p>The president&#8217;s severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department and other federal agencies would also be scaled back.</p> <p>White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters the legislation &#8220;does a lot of what we wanted &#8211; not everything we wanted &#8211; but a lot of what we wanted on immigration.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump said on Twitter the bill would allow him to start building the wall, which he calls an essential part of efforts to reduce illegal immigration. &#8220;Got $1.6 billion to start wall on southern border, rest will be forthcoming,&#8221; he wrote.</p> <p>But Democrats, who have long opposed the wall, argued the added funds would help build or restore a range of other barriers, including existing fencing, but not a concrete edifice.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-fiscal-congress-factbox/factbox-what-is-in-the-1-3-trillion-spending-bill-before-the-congress-idUSKBN1GY3C9" type="external">Factbox: What is in the $1.3 trillion spending bill before the Congress</a> <p>The $1.6 billion would also be used to hire more border patrol agents. But there would not be a significant increase in immigration agents, or in detention beds needed to step up immigrant deportations.</p> <p>The Department of Homeland Security had sought a big boost in those officers&#8217; ranks to boost deportations of illegal immigrants.</p> <p>Besides the largest defense buildup in 15 years, the measure includes new funds to improve infrastructure and counter Russian election hacking.</p> <p>In response to public anger and frustration over mass shootings, it includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>Those provisions were far short of steps many Democrats and gun control groups urged to prevent repeats of mass killings.</p> <p>Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Clarence Fernandez</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Denmark reach Euro handball semis as Slovenia stun Spain Europeans to unveil new steps against Russia over UK spy attack At least one dead in French supermarket hostage-taking: mayor Global stocks slide, yen jumps, as trade war fears grip markets Congress approves $1.3-trillion spending bill, sends to Trump

https://reuters.com/article/us-handball-europe/denmark-reach-euro-handball-semis-as-slovenia-stun-spain-idUSKBN1FC33M

2018-01-23

2least

ZAGREB Reuters Olympic champions Denmark became the first nation to reach the European championship semifinals as other results in main round Group II sent them through without throwing a ball on Tuesday Handball Mens EHF European Handball Championship main round Group II Slovenia v Spain Arena Varazdin Varazdin Croatia January 23 2018 Igor Zabic of Slovenia celebrates after winning the match REUTERSAntonio Bronic Slovenia8217s stunning 3126 win over Spain in the Varazdin Arena was followed by the Czech Republic8217s 2524 defeat of Macedonia leaving Denmark top on six points from four games before the final round of matches on Wednesday Secondplaced Spain thirdplaced holders Germany and the Czech Republic in fourth have four points each and everything to play for in a dramatic home straight With a myriad of mindboggling mathematical combinations at hand Denmark are assured of finishing in the section8217s top two no matter what they do against Macedonia in their last match while the section8217s other semifinal berth is up for grabs Handball Mens EHF European Handball Championship main round Group II Germany v Denmark Arena Varazdin Varazdin Croatia January 21 2018 Hans O Lindberg of Denmark shoots on goal REUTERSAntonio Bronic With all 12 teams still in the competition in action on Wednesday Group I leaders France face a stern test against Croatia while Sweden meet Norway in a Scandinavian derby as all four teams are vying for a pair of medal round berths Spain started as strong favorites against the Slovenians but were rocked by a string of good saves from goalkeeper Urh Kastelic and a fine attacking display from his team mates as Gasper Marguc led the way with five goals Slideshow 2 Images Slovenia who had 11 different scorers stretched their 1312 halftime lead to 2619 in the last quarter of the game sparking raucous celebrations amongst a full house of their fans at the final whistle The Czechs trailed Macedonia for much of their contest and looked out for the count after falling behind 2117 but turned the match on its head in a frantic finale Their goalkeeper Tomas Mrkva emerged as the hero after saving a sevenmeter penalty on the buzzer Writing by Zoran Milosavljevic in Belgrade Editing by Ken Ferris Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BRUSSELS Reuters European Union member states agreed at a summit in Brussels to take further punitive steps against Russia in the coming days for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury as Moscow accused the bloc of joining a Londondriven hate campaign against it Late on Thursday in a boost for British Prime Minister Theresa May the 28member EU collectively condemned the attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter and said it was 8220highly likely8221 that Moscow was responsible for it They also recalled the EU ambassador to Moscow and according to diplomats on Friday were preparing a series of additional national measures in the coming days including the expulsion of Russian officials by some member states One senior official familiar with discussions said the extent of measures in the coming weeks could be 8220surprising8221 and not confined to expulsions There is no talk of more economic sanctions whose enforcement has divided the EU in the past Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said he was likely to announce the expulsion of several people on Monday after returning to Prague and consulting with his foreign minister Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said she was ready to expel Russian spies whose activities she said were deeply harmful 8220It is certain that a coordinated action will be taken next week maybe at the start of it8221 she said 8220It8217s absolutely obvious that the network exists and that it acts aggressively8221 Romanian President Klaus Iohannis stressed that national governments wanted to retain control of the details in an area where they guard their sovereignty from Brussels But most of those present would go home and prepare suitable steps Russia has denied responsibility for the March 4 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter the first known offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War Two A British judge said on Thursday that both victims may have suffered brain damage from the attack BRITISH EXPELLED Moscow retaliated against May8217s move to expel 23 Russians by announcing the expulsion of the same number of Britons A general view shows the office of Delegation of European Commission in Russia in central Moscow Russia March 23 2018 REUTERSSergei Karpukhin On Friday the Russian foreign ministry described the EU accusation as 8220baseless8221 and accused the bloc of spurning cooperation with Moscow and joining 8220another antiRussian campaign deployed by London and its allies overseas with an obvious goal to put another obstacle on the path to the normalization of the situation on the European continent8221 In Moscow the expulsion of British diplomats went ahead a convoy of minibuses speeding out of the embassy compound to applause after British embassy staff said their goodbyes in the courtyard under a light snowfall A special charter flight is expected to fly the diplomats back to Britain later on Fridayamp160amp160amp160 Slideshow 4 Images France8217s Foreign Minister JeanYves Le Drian on a visit to Kiev signaled that Paris was considering expelling Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain 8220You will see8221 he said The summit statement hardened previous EU language on Russia8217s alleged role as French President Emmanuel Macron and others helped May overcome hesitation on the part of some of Moscow8217s friendlier states some of whom questioned how definitive Britain8217s evidence is 8220What we will now consider in the coming days is whether we want to take individual action relating to Russian diplomats in Ireland8221 Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told reporters Related Coverage Czech PM Babis says will probably expel Russian spies Russia says Europe being drawn into AngloAmerican antiRussia campaign 8220We8217re not going to expel people randomly8221 Welcoming the solidarity she secured from the summit May told reporters on leaving 8220The threat from Russia is one that respects no borders and I think it is clear that Russia is challenging the values we share as Europeans and it is right that we stand together in defense of those values8221 Still some said they could ill afford Russian retaliation against their own Moscow embassies some of which employ barely a handful of accredited diplomats Austria said it did not plan to expel Russians Additional reporting by Gabrielle TetraultFarber and Dmitry Madorsky in Moscow and Richard Lough Gabriela Baczynska Robin Emmott and Elizabeth Piper in Brussels Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alastair Macdonald Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOULOUSE France Reuters At least one person was killed when a man took hostages in a supermarket in the southwestern French town of Trebes on Friday the mayor told BFM TV The station reported that the hostagetaker has claimed allegiance to Islamic State Graphic France hostages tmsnrtrs2pCMp4m Mayor Eric Menassi also told LCI TV that the man had entered the shop screaming 8220Allahu Akbar God is greatest I8217ll kill you all8221 Another person was hurt but their condition was not known Menassi said The hostagetaker was now alone with one police officer in the supermarket and all other hostages had been freed he added LCI TV said the second victim was also dead and that 12 people were injured 8220All the information we have as I speak lead us to think that this would be a terrorist act8221 Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes Aude France March 23 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video LA VIE A TREBESvia REUTERS More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to or were inspired by Islamic State A police source had said earlier that eight people were being held hostage and that the hostagetaker had shot at a police officer Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes Aude France March 23 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video LA VIE A TREBESvia REUTERS Reuters pictures showed police in helmets and body armor in positions around the SuperU supermarket The Paris prosecutor8217s office said counterterrorism prosecutors were investigating the incident but did not comment on the possible Islamic State allegiance Related Coverage Interior ministry spokesman says cannot confirm two killed in France hostage situation Earlier the Interior Ministry had said security forces were carrying out an operation at a supermarket in southern France Interior Minister Gerard Collomb was on his way 8220There is an ongoing situation in the town of Trebes where shots have been heard and a man entrenched himself in a supermarket8221 Philippe said 8220It8217s a serious situation8221 The UNSA police union also said on Twitter a police operation was underway after an individual had earlier shot at four officers in the Carcassone region wounding one of them Reporting by Johanna Decorse in Toulouse Leigh Thomas Emmanuel Jarry and Bate Felix in Paris Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters The threat of a global trade war sent stock markets sliding and investors rushing for the safety of currencies like the yen and government bonds on Friday after US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on up to 60 billion of Chinese goods The German share price index DAX board is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt Germany March 21 2018 REUTERSTilman Blasshofer Another bruising week for stocks has left global equity markets heading for their first quarterly loss since early 2016 after a spike in volatility nervousness about rising inflation and the specter of a trade war spooked investors enjoying a multiyear bull run European stocks fell at the open with Germany8217s Dax down 16 percent the French CAC 40 15 percent lower and Britain8217s FTSE 100 06 percent in the red That followed large falls in the US with the SampampP 500 shedding 25 percent and overnight in Asia where the Japanese Nikkei 225 was the biggest loser slumping 45 percent The MSCI World Index down 34 percent since Monday is on course for its worst week since early February when a spike in volatility sent markets into a tailspin Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion of imports from China although the measures have a 30day consultation period China urged the United States to 8220pull back from the brink8221 but investors fear Trump8217s tariffs are leading the world8217s two largest economies into a trade war with potentially dire consequences for the global economy China disclosed its own plans on Friday to impose tariffs on up to 3 billion of US imports in retaliation against the US tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products 8220The equity markets are getting clobbered which is not that surprising with fears of a trade war breaking out8221 said Paul Fage a TD Securities emerging markets strategist With investors seeking out safer assets many jumped into government bond markets in Europe and the United States US 10year Treasury yields which fell almost 8 basis points on Thursday were set for their biggest twoweek fall since September In Europe benchmark issuer Germany8217s 10year bond yield hovered close to 10week lows struck a day earlier at around 052 percent and was on track for its biggest twoweek drop since August down 13 basis points FLIGHT TO YEN Many investors also turned to the yen a currency likely to benefit from a fullfledged trade war The Japanese currency gained 03 percent against the dollar to 10495 yen the first time it has been below 105 since November 2016 The Swiss franc another currency bought in times of market uncertainty rose 02 percent versus the dollar although it remained flat against the euro The dollar fell 02 percent against a basket of currencies 8220The FX market itself isn8217t sure and its reaction to riskoff and lower bond yields across the board is to buy the yen and the Swiss franc8221 Kit Juckes an FX strategist at Societe Generale wrote in a daily note In commodity markets oil prices recouped overnight losses after Saudi Arabia said that OPEC and Russianled production curbs introduced in 2017 will need to be extended into 2019 US crude futures were up 03 percent at 6448 per barrel after losing 13 percent on Thursday and Brent rose 045 percent to 6922 before giving up most of those gains Safehaven spot gold rose more than one percent to 1342 an ounce its highest since Feb 20 GOL Copper and iron prices both fell as investors bet demand for the metals would suffer in a trade war METL Daniel Lockyer senior fund manager at Hawksmoor Investment Management said financial markets had got ahead of themselves and were failing to price in the risk a number of factors could trigger a selloff 8220It8217s not that we thought trade wars would cause the market to fall it8217s that there was too much optimism priced into stock markets8221 he said Elsewhere South Africa8217s rand firmed 04 percent and was set to end the week up around 15 percent ahead of a decision by Moody8217s on the fate of South Africa8217s last remaining investment grade credit rating For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets open a news window on Reuters Eikon by pressing F9 and type in 8216Live Markets8217 in the search bar Additional reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe Helen Reid and Marc Jones in London editing by Larry King and Jane Merriman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The US Congress voted early on Friday to approve a 13trillion government funding bill with large increases in military and nondefense spending sending it to President Donald Trump who was expected to sign it into law With Trump8217s signature the bill will avert a threatened government shutdown and keep federal agencies funded until Sept 30 ending for now Washington8217s constant budget squabbles and letting lawmakers focus on getting reelected in November The Senate voted 6532 for the bill several hours after the House of Representatives passed it 256167 on Thursday The votes capped a long struggle by Congress which was supposed to have approved the government funding by last Oct 1 Since then several stopgap spending bills have kept the government open except for two brief shutdowns earlier this year when Congress deadlocked and funding expired Despite Republican leaders urging passage of the bill some Republicans voted no Their party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House but has struggled since taking power in January 2017 to approve budget legislation Republican Senator Rand Paul spent part of Thursday on social network Twitter criticizing what he said was unnecessary spending in the sprawling bill 8220Shame shame A pox on both Houses and parties Here8217s the 2232 page 13 trillion budgetbusting Omnibus spending bill8221 Paul declared in one message He decried a 8220monstrous bill8221 teeming with money for decadesold programs His lastminute objections played a key role in delaying the Senate8217s vote until the dead of night On Thursday Representative Mark Meadows who heads the farright Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives said 8220This omnibus doesn8217t just forget the promises we made to voters it flatly rejects them8221 He added 8220This is not the limited government conservatism our voters demand8221 Not all of the opposition however was over fiscal policy Before he would let the voting proceed Republican Senator James Risch insisted on a promise that a wilderness area in his home state of Idaho would not be named after the late former Governor Cecil Andrus a Democrat The US Capitol building is seen in Washington US February 8 2018 REUTERS Leah Millis The legislation has provisions that appeal to conservatives however with its 80billion increase this year to the military budget and more border security funding But significantly higher nondefense spending put conservatives on edge In the House 90 of the chamber8217s 238 Republicans revolted against the measure Coupled with recent tax cuts the government funding bill is projected to lead to budget deficits of more than 800 billion for this year Conservatives warned it could create problems for Republicans running for reelection in November SCALEDBACK TRUMP PROPOSALS Several Trump initiatives would suffer setbacks At one point during prolonged negotiations he pushed for 25 billion in funds to fully build his border wall with Mexico Slideshow 9 Images The president8217s severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency State Department and other federal agencies would also be scaled back White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters the legislation 8220does a lot of what we wanted 8211 not everything we wanted 8211 but a lot of what we wanted on immigration8221 Trump said on Twitter the bill would allow him to start building the wall which he calls an essential part of efforts to reduce illegal immigration 8220Got 16 billion to start wall on southern border rest will be forthcoming8221 he wrote But Democrats who have long opposed the wall argued the added funds would help build or restore a range of other barriers including existing fencing but not a concrete edifice Related Coverage Factbox What is in the 13 trillion spending bill before the Congress The 16 billion would also be used to hire more border patrol agents But there would not be a significant increase in immigration agents or in detention beds needed to step up immigrant deportations The Department of Homeland Security had sought a big boost in those officers8217 ranks to boost deportations of illegal immigrants Besides the largest defense buildup in 15 years the measure includes new funds to improve infrastructure and counter Russian election hacking In response to public anger and frustration over mass shootings it includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence Those provisions were far short of steps many Democrats and gun control groups urged to prevent repeats of mass killings Reporting by Richard Cowan Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Clarence Fernandez Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>I began teaching a class of 28 prisoners at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey during the first week of September. My last class meeting was Friday. The course revolved around plays by August Wilson, James Baldwin, John Herbert, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Miguel Pi&#241;ero, Amiri Baraka and other playwrights who examine and give expression to the realities of America&#8217;s black underclass as well as the prison culture. We also read Michelle Alexander&#8217;s important book &#8220;The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.&#8221; Each week the students were required to write dramatic scenes based on their experiences in and out of prison.</p> <p>My class, although I did not know this when I began teaching, had the most literate and accomplished writers in the prison. And when I read the first batch of scenes it was immediately apparent that among these students was exceptional talent.</p> <p>The class members had a keen eye for detail, had lived through the moral and physical struggles of prison life and had the ability to capture the patois of the urban poor and the prison underclass. They were able to portray in dramatic scenes and dialogue the horror of being locked in cages for years. And although the play they collectively wrote is fundamentally about sacrifice &#8212; the sacrifice of mothers for children, brothers for brothers, prisoners for prisoners &#8212; the title they chose was &#8220;Caged.&#8221; They made it clear that the traps that hold them are as present in impoverished urban communities as in prison.</p> <p>The mass incarceration of primarily poor people of color, people who seldom have access to adequate legal defense and who are often kept behind bars for years for nonviolent crimes or for crimes they did not commit, is one of the most shameful mass injustices committed in the United States. The 28 men in my class have cumulatively spent 515 years in prison. Some of their sentences are utterly disproportionate to the crimes of which they are accused. Most are not even close to finishing their sentences or coming before a parole board, which rarely grants first-time applicants their liberty. Many of them are in for life. One of my students was arrested at the age of 14 for a crime that strong evidence suggests he did not commit. He will not be eligible for parole until he is 70. He never had a chance in court and because he cannot afford a private attorney he has no chance now of challenging the grotesque sentence handed to him as a child.</p> <p /> <p>My stacks of 28 scenes written by the students each week, the paper bearing the musty, sour smell of the prison, rose into an ungainly pile. I laboriously shaped and edited the material. It grew, line by line, scene by scene, into a powerful and deeply moving dramatic vehicle. The voices and reality of those at the very bottom rung of our society &#8212; some of the 2.2 million people in prisons and jails across the country, those we as a society are permitted to demonize and hate, just as African-Americans were once demonized and hated during slavery and Jim Crow &#8212; began to flash across the pages like lightning strikes. There was more brilliance, literacy, passion, wisdom and integrity in that classroom than in any other classroom I have taught in, and I have taught at some of the most elite universities in the country. The mass incarceration of men and women like my students impoverishes not just them, their families and their communities, but the rest of us as well.</p> <p>&#8220;The most valuable blacks are those in prison,&#8221; <a href="http://www.augustwilson.net%20" type="external">August Wilson</a> once said, &#8220;those who have the warrior spirit, who had a sense of being African. They got for their women and children what they needed when all other avenues were closed to them.&#8221; He added: &#8220;The greatest spirit of resistance among blacks [is] found among those in prison.&#8221;</p> <p>I increased the class meetings by one night a week. I read the scenes to my wife, <a href="http://www.eunicewong.com%20" type="external">Eunice Wong</a>, who is a professional actor, and friends such as the cartoonist <a href="http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/artBio.php?artist=a3dff7dd55575b%20" type="external">Joe Sacco</a> and the theologian <a href="http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/james_cone.html%20" type="external">James Cone</a>. Something unique, almost magical, was happening in the prison classroom &#8212; a place I could reach only after passing through two metal doors and a metal detector, subjecting myself to a pat-down by a guard, an X-ray inspection of my canvas bag of books and papers, getting my hand stamped and then checked under an ultraviolet light, and then passing through another metal door into a barred circular enclosure. In every visit I was made to stand in the enclosure for several minutes before being permitted by the guards to pass through a barred gate and then walk up blue metal stairs, through a gantlet of blue-uniformed prison guards, to my classroom.</p> <p>The class, through the creation of the play, became an intense place of reflection, debate and self-discovery. Offhand comments, such as the one made by a student who has spent 22 years behind bars, that &#8220;just because your family doesn&#8217;t visit you doesn&#8217;t mean they don&#8217;t love you,&#8221; reflected the pain, loneliness and abandonment embedded in the lives of my students. There were moments that left the class unable to speak.</p> <p>A student with 19 years behind bars read his half of a phone dialogue between himself and his mother. He was the product of rape and tells his mother that he sacrificed himself to keep his half brother &#8212; the only son his mother loves &#8212; out of prison. He read this passage in the presentation of the play in the prison chapel last Thursday to visitors who included <a href="http://www.cornelwest.com%20" type="external">Cornel West</a> and James Cone.</p> <p>Terrance: You don&#8217;t understand[,] Ma.</p> <p>Pause</p> <p>Terrance: You&#8217;re right. Never mind.</p> <p>Pause</p> <p>Terrance: What you want me to say Ma?</p> <p>Pause</p> <p>Terrance: Ma, they were going to lock up Bruce. The chrome [the gun] was in the car. Everyone in the car would be charged with murder if no one copped to it &#8230;</p> <p>Pause</p> <p>Terrance: I didn&#8217;t kill anyone Ma&#8230; Oh yeah, I forgot, whenever someone says I did, I did it.</p> <p>Pause</p> <p>Terrance: I told &#8217;em what they wanted to hear. That&#8217;s what niggas supposed to do in Newark. I told them what they wanted to hear to keep Bruce out of it. Did they tell you who got killed? Did they say it was my father?</p> <p>Pause</p> <p>Terrance: Then you should know I didn&#8217;t do it. If I ever went to jail for anything it would be killing him &#8230; and he ain&#8217;t dead yet. Rape done brought me into the world. Prison gonna take me out. An&#8217; that&#8217;s the way it is Ma.</p> <p>Pause</p> <p>Terrance: Come on Ma, if Bruce went to jail you would&#8217;uv never forgiven me. Me, on the other hand, I wasn&#8217;t ever supposed to be here.</p> <p>Pause</p> <p>Terrance: I&#8217;m sorry Ma &#8230; I&#8217;m sorry. Don&#8217;t be cryin&#8217;. You got Bruce. You got him home. He&#8217;s your baby. Bye Ma. I call you later.</p> <p>After our final reading of the play I discovered the student who wrote this passage sobbing in the bathroom, convulsed with grief.</p> <p>In the play when a young prisoner contemplates killing another prisoner he is given advice on how to survive prolonged isolation in the management control unit (solitary confinement, known as MCU) by an older prisoner who has spent 30 years in prison under a sentence of double life. There are 80,000 U.S. prisoners held in solitary confinement, which human rights organizations such as Amnesty International define as a form of torture. In this scene the older man tells the young inmate what to expect from the COs, or correction officers.</p> <p>Ojore (speaking slowly and softly): When they come and get you, &#8217;cause they are gonna get you, have your hands out in front of you with your palms showing. You want them to see you have no weapons. Don&#8217;t make no sudden moves. Put your hands behind your head. Drop to your knees as soon as they begin barking out commands.</p> <p>Omar: My knees?</p> <p>Ojore: This ain&#8217;t a debate. I&#8217;m telling you how to survive the hell you &#8217;bout to endure. When you get to the hole you ain&#8217;t gonna be allowed to have nothing but what they give you. If you really piss them off you get a &#8216;dry cell&#8217; where the sink and the toilet are turned on and off from outside. You gonna be isolated. No contact. No communication.</p> <p>Omar: Why?</p> <p>Ojore: &#8217;Cause they don&#8217;t want you sendin&#8217; messages to nobody before dey question some of da brothers on the wing. IA [internal affairs officers] gonna come and see you. They gonna want a statement. If you don&#8217;t talk they gonna try and break you. They gonna open the windows and let the cold in. They gonna take ya sheets and blankets away. They gonna mess with ya food so you can&#8217;t eat it. An&#8217; don&#8217;t eat no food that come in trays from the Vroom Building. Nuts in Vroom be spittin&#8217;, pissin&#8217; and shittin&#8217; in the trays. Now, the COs gonna wake you up every hour on the hour so you can&#8217;t sleep. They gonna put a bright-ass spotlight in front of ya cell and keep it on day and night. They gonna harass you wit&#8217; all kinds of threats to get you to cooperate. They will send in the turtles in their shin guards, gloves, shank-proof vests, forearm guards and helmets with plexiglass shields on every shift to give you beat-downs.</p> <p>Omar: How long this gonna go on?</p> <p>Ojore: Til they break you. Or til they don&#8217;t. Three days. Three weeks. You don&#8217;t break, it go on like this for a long time. An&#8217; if you don&#8217;t think you can take it, then don&#8217;t start puttin&#8217; yerself through this hell. Just tell &#8217;em what they wanna know from the door. You gonna be in MCU for the next two or three years. You&#8217;ll get indicted for murder. You lookin&#8217; at a life bid. An&#8217; remember MCU ain&#8217;t jus&#8217; &#8217;bout isolation. It&#8217;s &#8217;bout keeping you off balance. The COs, dressed up in riot gear, wake you up at 1 a.m., force you to strip and make you grab all your things and move you to another cell just to harass you. They bring in dogs trained to go for your balls. You spend 24 hours alone one day in your cell and 22 the next. They put you in the MCU and wait for you to self-destruct. An&#8217; it works. Men self-mutilate. Men get paranoid. Men have panic attacks. They start hearing voices. They talk crazy to themselves. I seen one prisoner swallow a pack of AA batteries. I seen a man shove a pencil up his dick. I seen men toss human shit around like it was a ball game. I seen men eat their own shit and rub it all over themselves like it was some kinda body lotion. Then, when you really get out of control, when you go really crazy, they got all their torture instruments ready &#8212; four- and five-point restraints, restraint hoods, restraint belts, restraint beds, stun grenades, stun guns, stun belts, spit hoods, tethers, and waist and leg chains. But the physical stuff ain&#8217;t the worst. The worst is the psychological, the humiliation, sleep deprivation, sensory disorientation, extreme light or dark, extreme cold or heat and the long weeks and months of solitary. If you don&#8217;t have a strong sense of purpose you don&#8217;t survive. They want to defeat you mentally. An&#8217; I seen a lot of men defeated.</p> <p>The various drafts of the play, made up of scenes and dialogue contributed by everyone in the class, brought to the surface the suppressed emotions and pain that the students bear with profound dignity. A prisoner who has been incarcerated for 22 years related a conversation with his wife during her final visit in 1997. Earlier his 6-year-old son had innocently revealed that the woman was seeing another man. &#8220;I am aware of what kind of time I got,&#8221; he tells his wife. &#8220;I told you when I got found guilty to move on with your life, because I knew what kind of time I was facing, but you chose to stick around. The reason I told you to move on with your life was because I didn&#8217;t want to be selfish. So look, man, do what the fuck you are going to do, just don&#8217;t keep my son from me. That&#8217;s all I ask.&#8221; He never saw his child again. When he handed me the account he said he was emotionally unable to read it out loud. Those with life sentences wrote about dying in prison. The prisoners are painfully aware that some of them will end their lives in the medical wing without family, friends or even former cellmates. One prisoner, who wrote about how men in prolonged isolation adopt prison mice as pets, naming them, carefully bathing them, talking to them and keeping them on string leashes, worked in the prison infirmary. He said that as some prisoners were dying they would ask him to hold their hand. Often no one comes to collect the bodies. Often, family members and relatives are dead or long estranged. The corpses are taken by the guards and dumped in unmarked graves.</p> <p>A discussion of Wilson&#8217;s play &#8220;Fences&#8221; became an exploration of damaged manhood and how patterns of abuse are passed down from father to son. &#8220;I spent my whole life trying not to be my father,&#8221; a prisoner who has been locked up for 23 years said. &#8220;And when I got to Trenton I was put in his old cell.&#8221;</p> <p>The night we spoke about the brilliant play &#8220;Dutchman,&#8221; by LeRoi Jones, now known as Amira Baraka, the class grappled with whites&#8217; deeply embedded stereotypes and latent fear of black men. I had also passed out copies of Robert Crumb&#8217;s <a href="http://www.heretical.com/miscella/rcnoa.html" type="external">savage cartoon strip</a> &#8220;When the Niggers Take Over America!,&#8221; which portrays whites&#8217; fear of black males &#8212; as well as the legitimate black rage that is rarely understood by white society.</p> <p>The students wanted to be true to the violence and brutality of the streets and prison &#8212; places where one does not usually have the luxury of being nonviolent &#8212; yet affirm themselves as dignified and sensitive human beings. They did not want to paint everyone in the prison as innocents. But they know that transformation and redemption are real.</p> <p>There are many Muslims in the prison. They have a cohesive community, sense of discipline and knowledge of their own history, which is the history of the long repression and subjugation of African-Americans. Most Muslims are very careful about their language in prison and do not curse, meaning I had to be careful when I assigned parts to the class.</p> <p>There is a deep reverence in the prison for Malcolm X. When the class spoke of him one could almost feel Malcolm&#8217;s presence. Malcolm articulated, in a way Martin Luther King Jr. did not, the harsh reality of poor African-Americans trapped in the internal colonies of the urban North.</p> <p>The class wanted the central oracle of the play to be an observant Muslim. Faith, when you live in the totalitarian world of the prison, is important. The conclusion of the play was the result of an intense and heated discussion about the efficacy and nature of violence and forgiveness. But by the end of a nearly hourlong discussion the class had unanimously signed off on the final scene, which I do not want to reveal here because I hope that one day it will be available to be seen or read. It was the core message the prisoners wanted most to leave with outsiders, who often view them as less than human.</p> <p>The play has a visceral, raw anger and undeniable truth that only the lost and the damned can articulate. The students wrote a dedication that read: &#8220;We have been buried alive behind these walls for years, often decades. Most of the outside world has abandoned us. But a few friends and family have never forgotten that we are human beings and worthy of life. It is to them, our saints, that we dedicate this play.&#8221; And they said that if the play was ever produced, and if anyone ever bought tickets, they wanted all the money that might be earned to go to funding the educational program at the prison. This was a decision by men who make, at most, a dollar a day at prison jobs.</p> <p>We read the Wilson play &#8220;Joe Turner&#8217;s Come and Gone.&#8221; The character Bynum Walker, a conjurer, tells shattered African-Americans emerging from the nightmare of slavery that they each have a song but they must seek it out. Once they find their song they will find their unity as a people, their inner freedom and their identity. The search for one&#8217;s song in Wilson&#8217;s play functions like prayer. It gives each person a purpose, strength and hope. It allows a person, even one who has been bitterly oppressed, to speak his or her truth defiantly to the world. Our song affirms us, even if we are dejected and despised, as human beings.</p> <p>Prisoners are given very little time by the guards to line up in the corridor outside the classroom when the prison bell signals the end of class. If they lag behind they can get a &#8220;charge&#8221; from the guards that can restrict their already very limited privileges and freedom of movement. For this reason, my classroom emptied quickly Friday night. I was left alone in the empty space, my eyes damp, my hands trembling as I clutched their manuscript. They had all signed it for me. I made the long and lonely walk down the prison corridors, through the four metal security doors, past the security desk to the dark, frozen parking lot. I looked back, past the coils of razor wire that topped the chain-link fencing, at the shadowy bulk of the prison. I have their song. I will make it heard. I do not know what it takes to fund and mount a theater production. I intend to learn.</p>

The Play's the Thing

https://truthdig.com/articles/the-plays-the-thing/

2013-12-16

4left

I began teaching a class of 28 prisoners at a maximumsecurity prison in New Jersey during the first week of September My last class meeting was Friday The course revolved around plays by August Wilson James Baldwin John Herbert Tarell Alvin McCraney Miguel Pi241ero Amiri Baraka and other playwrights who examine and give expression to the realities of America8217s black underclass as well as the prison culture We also read Michelle Alexander8217s important book 8220The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness8221 Each week the students were required to write dramatic scenes based on their experiences in and out of prison My class although I did not know this when I began teaching had the most literate and accomplished writers in the prison And when I read the first batch of scenes it was immediately apparent that among these students was exceptional talent The class members had a keen eye for detail had lived through the moral and physical struggles of prison life and had the ability to capture the patois of the urban poor and the prison underclass They were able to portray in dramatic scenes and dialogue the horror of being locked in cages for years And although the play they collectively wrote is fundamentally about sacrifice 8212 the sacrifice of mothers for children brothers for brothers prisoners for prisoners 8212 the title they chose was 8220Caged8221 They made it clear that the traps that hold them are as present in impoverished urban communities as in prison The mass incarceration of primarily poor people of color people who seldom have access to adequate legal defense and who are often kept behind bars for years for nonviolent crimes or for crimes they did not commit is one of the most shameful mass injustices committed in the United States The 28 men in my class have cumulatively spent 515 years in prison Some of their sentences are utterly disproportionate to the crimes of which they are accused Most are not even close to finishing their sentences or coming before a parole board which rarely grants firsttime applicants their liberty Many of them are in for life One of my students was arrested at the age of 14 for a crime that strong evidence suggests he did not commit He will not be eligible for parole until he is 70 He never had a chance in court and because he cannot afford a private attorney he has no chance now of challenging the grotesque sentence handed to him as a child My stacks of 28 scenes written by the students each week the paper bearing the musty sour smell of the prison rose into an ungainly pile I laboriously shaped and edited the material It grew line by line scene by scene into a powerful and deeply moving dramatic vehicle The voices and reality of those at the very bottom rung of our society 8212 some of the 22 million people in prisons and jails across the country those we as a society are permitted to demonize and hate just as AfricanAmericans were once demonized and hated during slavery and Jim Crow 8212 began to flash across the pages like lightning strikes There was more brilliance literacy passion wisdom and integrity in that classroom than in any other classroom I have taught in and I have taught at some of the most elite universities in the country The mass incarceration of men and women like my students impoverishes not just them their families and their communities but the rest of us as well 8220The most valuable blacks are those in prison8221 August Wilson once said 8220those who have the warrior spirit who had a sense of being African They got for their women and children what they needed when all other avenues were closed to them8221 He added 8220The greatest spirit of resistance among blacks is found among those in prison8221 I increased the class meetings by one night a week I read the scenes to my wife Eunice Wong who is a professional actor and friends such as the cartoonist Joe Sacco and the theologian James Cone Something unique almost magical was happening in the prison classroom 8212 a place I could reach only after passing through two metal doors and a metal detector subjecting myself to a patdown by a guard an Xray inspection of my canvas bag of books and papers getting my hand stamped and then checked under an ultraviolet light and then passing through another metal door into a barred circular enclosure In every visit I was made to stand in the enclosure for several minutes before being permitted by the guards to pass through a barred gate and then walk up blue metal stairs through a gantlet of blueuniformed prison guards to my classroom The class through the creation of the play became an intense place of reflection debate and selfdiscovery Offhand comments such as the one made by a student who has spent 22 years behind bars that 8220just because your family doesn8217t visit you doesn8217t mean they don8217t love you8221 reflected the pain loneliness and abandonment embedded in the lives of my students There were moments that left the class unable to speak A student with 19 years behind bars read his half of a phone dialogue between himself and his mother He was the product of rape and tells his mother that he sacrificed himself to keep his half brother 8212 the only son his mother loves 8212 out of prison He read this passage in the presentation of the play in the prison chapel last Thursday to visitors who included Cornel West and James Cone Terrance You don8217t understand Ma Pause Terrance You8217re right Never mind Pause Terrance What you want me to say Ma Pause Terrance Ma they were going to lock up Bruce The chrome the gun was in the car Everyone in the car would be charged with murder if no one copped to it 8230 Pause Terrance I didn8217t kill anyone Ma8230 Oh yeah I forgot whenever someone says I did I did it Pause Terrance I told 8217em what they wanted to hear That8217s what niggas supposed to do in Newark I told them what they wanted to hear to keep Bruce out of it Did they tell you who got killed Did they say it was my father Pause Terrance Then you should know I didn8217t do it If I ever went to jail for anything it would be killing him 8230 and he ain8217t dead yet Rape done brought me into the world Prison gonna take me out An8217 that8217s the way it is Ma Pause Terrance Come on Ma if Bruce went to jail you would8217uv never forgiven me Me on the other hand I wasn8217t ever supposed to be here Pause Terrance I8217m sorry Ma 8230 I8217m sorry Don8217t be cryin8217 You got Bruce You got him home He8217s your baby Bye Ma I call you later After our final reading of the play I discovered the student who wrote this passage sobbing in the bathroom convulsed with grief In the play when a young prisoner contemplates killing another prisoner he is given advice on how to survive prolonged isolation in the management control unit solitary confinement known as MCU by an older prisoner who has spent 30 years in prison under a sentence of double life There are 80000 US prisoners held in solitary confinement which human rights organizations such as Amnesty International define as a form of torture In this scene the older man tells the young inmate what to expect from the COs or correction officers Ojore speaking slowly and softly When they come and get you 8217cause they are gonna get you have your hands out in front of you with your palms showing You want them to see you have no weapons Don8217t make no sudden moves Put your hands behind your head Drop to your knees as soon as they begin barking out commands Omar My knees Ojore This ain8217t a debate I8217m telling you how to survive the hell you 8217bout to endure When you get to the hole you ain8217t gonna be allowed to have nothing but what they give you If you really piss them off you get a 8216dry cell8217 where the sink and the toilet are turned on and off from outside You gonna be isolated No contact No communication Omar Why Ojore 8217Cause they don8217t want you sendin8217 messages to nobody before dey question some of da brothers on the wing IA internal affairs officers gonna come and see you They gonna want a statement If you don8217t talk they gonna try and break you They gonna open the windows and let the cold in They gonna take ya sheets and blankets away They gonna mess with ya food so you can8217t eat it An8217 don8217t eat no food that come in trays from the Vroom Building Nuts in Vroom be spittin8217 pissin8217 and shittin8217 in the trays Now the COs gonna wake you up every hour on the hour so you can8217t sleep They gonna put a brightass spotlight in front of ya cell and keep it on day and night They gonna harass you wit8217 all kinds of threats to get you to cooperate They will send in the turtles in their shin guards gloves shankproof vests forearm guards and helmets with plexiglass shields on every shift to give you beatdowns Omar How long this gonna go on Ojore Til they break you Or til they don8217t Three days Three weeks You don8217t break it go on like this for a long time An8217 if you don8217t think you can take it then don8217t start puttin8217 yerself through this hell Just tell 8217em what they wanna know from the door You gonna be in MCU for the next two or three years You8217ll get indicted for murder You lookin8217 at a life bid An8217 remember MCU ain8217t jus8217 8217bout isolation It8217s 8217bout keeping you off balance The COs dressed up in riot gear wake you up at 1 am force you to strip and make you grab all your things and move you to another cell just to harass you They bring in dogs trained to go for your balls You spend 24 hours alone one day in your cell and 22 the next They put you in the MCU and wait for you to selfdestruct An8217 it works Men selfmutilate Men get paranoid Men have panic attacks They start hearing voices They talk crazy to themselves I seen one prisoner swallow a pack of AA batteries I seen a man shove a pencil up his dick I seen men toss human shit around like it was a ball game I seen men eat their own shit and rub it all over themselves like it was some kinda body lotion Then when you really get out of control when you go really crazy they got all their torture instruments ready 8212 four and fivepoint restraints restraint hoods restraint belts restraint beds stun grenades stun guns stun belts spit hoods tethers and waist and leg chains But the physical stuff ain8217t the worst The worst is the psychological the humiliation sleep deprivation sensory disorientation extreme light or dark extreme cold or heat and the long weeks and months of solitary If you don8217t have a strong sense of purpose you don8217t survive They want to defeat you mentally An8217 I seen a lot of men defeated The various drafts of the play made up of scenes and dialogue contributed by everyone in the class brought to the surface the suppressed emotions and pain that the students bear with profound dignity A prisoner who has been incarcerated for 22 years related a conversation with his wife during her final visit in 1997 Earlier his 6yearold son had innocently revealed that the woman was seeing another man 8220I am aware of what kind of time I got8221 he tells his wife 8220I told you when I got found guilty to move on with your life because I knew what kind of time I was facing but you chose to stick around The reason I told you to move on with your life was because I didn8217t want to be selfish So look man do what the fuck you are going to do just don8217t keep my son from me That8217s all I ask8221 He never saw his child again When he handed me the account he said he was emotionally unable to read it out loud Those with life sentences wrote about dying in prison The prisoners are painfully aware that some of them will end their lives in the medical wing without family friends or even former cellmates One prisoner who wrote about how men in prolonged isolation adopt prison mice as pets naming them carefully bathing them talking to them and keeping them on string leashes worked in the prison infirmary He said that as some prisoners were dying they would ask him to hold their hand Often no one comes to collect the bodies Often family members and relatives are dead or long estranged The corpses are taken by the guards and dumped in unmarked graves A discussion of Wilson8217s play 8220Fences8221 became an exploration of damaged manhood and how patterns of abuse are passed down from father to son 8220I spent my whole life trying not to be my father8221 a prisoner who has been locked up for 23 years said 8220And when I got to Trenton I was put in his old cell8221 The night we spoke about the brilliant play 8220Dutchman8221 by LeRoi Jones now known as Amira Baraka the class grappled with whites8217 deeply embedded stereotypes and latent fear of black men I had also passed out copies of Robert Crumb8217s savage cartoon strip 8220When the Niggers Take Over America8221 which portrays whites8217 fear of black males 8212 as well as the legitimate black rage that is rarely understood by white society The students wanted to be true to the violence and brutality of the streets and prison 8212 places where one does not usually have the luxury of being nonviolent 8212 yet affirm themselves as dignified and sensitive human beings They did not want to paint everyone in the prison as innocents But they know that transformation and redemption are real There are many Muslims in the prison They have a cohesive community sense of discipline and knowledge of their own history which is the history of the long repression and subjugation of AfricanAmericans Most Muslims are very careful about their language in prison and do not curse meaning I had to be careful when I assigned parts to the class There is a deep reverence in the prison for Malcolm X When the class spoke of him one could almost feel Malcolm8217s presence Malcolm articulated in a way Martin Luther King Jr did not the harsh reality of poor AfricanAmericans trapped in the internal colonies of the urban North The class wanted the central oracle of the play to be an observant Muslim Faith when you live in the totalitarian world of the prison is important The conclusion of the play was the result of an intense and heated discussion about the efficacy and nature of violence and forgiveness But by the end of a nearly hourlong discussion the class had unanimously signed off on the final scene which I do not want to reveal here because I hope that one day it will be available to be seen or read It was the core message the prisoners wanted most to leave with outsiders who often view them as less than human The play has a visceral raw anger and undeniable truth that only the lost and the damned can articulate The students wrote a dedication that read 8220We have been buried alive behind these walls for years often decades Most of the outside world has abandoned us But a few friends and family have never forgotten that we are human beings and worthy of life It is to them our saints that we dedicate this play8221 And they said that if the play was ever produced and if anyone ever bought tickets they wanted all the money that might be earned to go to funding the educational program at the prison This was a decision by men who make at most a dollar a day at prison jobs We read the Wilson play 8220Joe Turner8217s Come and Gone8221 The character Bynum Walker a conjurer tells shattered AfricanAmericans emerging from the nightmare of slavery that they each have a song but they must seek it out Once they find their song they will find their unity as a people their inner freedom and their identity The search for one8217s song in Wilson8217s play functions like prayer It gives each person a purpose strength and hope It allows a person even one who has been bitterly oppressed to speak his or her truth defiantly to the world Our song affirms us even if we are dejected and despised as human beings Prisoners are given very little time by the guards to line up in the corridor outside the classroom when the prison bell signals the end of class If they lag behind they can get a 8220charge8221 from the guards that can restrict their already very limited privileges and freedom of movement For this reason my classroom emptied quickly Friday night I was left alone in the empty space my eyes damp my hands trembling as I clutched their manuscript They had all signed it for me I made the long and lonely walk down the prison corridors through the four metal security doors past the security desk to the dark frozen parking lot I looked back past the coils of razor wire that topped the chainlink fencing at the shadowy bulk of the prison I have their song I will make it heard I do not know what it takes to fund and mount a theater production I intend to learn

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<p>The story is a familiar one. Amid the collapse of two-party dominance, an independent leader rises to power. In an effort to calm frazzled nerves, he insists he will respect the rule of law and the will of the voters by maintaining the peaceful transfer of power at the end of his legally-established term. &#8220;There&#8217;s no organization that I know that would put somebody in charge for a long period of time,&#8221; he insists, &#8220;you always want turnover and change.&#8221; But in power for nearly eight years, having established a fervent support base and concentrated power in his own hands, our fair leader no longer feels the need to comfort his opponents, and his discourse radicalizes as his view of term limits shifts. Dismissing his opposition as rigid &#8220;dogmatists,&#8221; the leader now insists on the need to change course flexibly to meet circumstances. True and sustained change, he argues, requires the continuity of his successful leadership.</p> <p>Unsurprisingly, his opponents fiercely oppose the move as dangerous: &#8220;It shows a fundamental contempt for the democratic process,&#8221; one maintains, &#8220;and it&#8217;s changing the rules to benefit yourself directly.&#8221; Ironically, it was this very same argument that the leader himself had made five years prior, when vetoing efforts to loosen term limits. Not without controversy, then, was the decision of the region&#8217;s largest newspaper&#8211;aligned politically with the leader&#8211;to wade into these conflictive waters with the following declaration:</p> <p>The bedrock of&#8230; democracy is the voters&#8217; right to choose. Though well intentioned&#8230; the term limits law severely limits that right, which is why this page has opposed term limits from the outset&#8230; Term limits are seductive, promising relief from mediocre, self-perpetuating incumbents and gridlocked legislatures. They are also profoundly undemocratic, arbitrarily denying voters the ability to choose between good politicians and bad.</p> <p>While the paper had previously insisted that any change to term limits come through popular referendum, it now reverses this view, taking the position that for reasons of political expediency, a simple vote in the small executive council will do.</p> <p>Of which banana republic are we speaking, where thinly-veiled authoritarianism threatens democratic checks and balances, and weak-kneed apologists parade about under the banner of free press? Why, the place is none other than New York City, the leader none other than Michael Bloomberg, and the newspaper none other than the New York Times. Patience: we haven&#8217;t even gotten to the hypocrisy part yet.</p> <p>&#8220;Hugo Ch&#225;vez&#8217;s Choice&#8221;</p> <p>Term limits have a long history, dating from ancient Greece and Rome and Aristotle&#8217;s concept of &#8220;ruling and being ruled in turn.&#8221; With a trademark selectiveness (see, e.g., Senate Report 104-158), those upholding the sanctity of this standard in U.S. politics do so with no mention of the other elements Aristotle would associate with democracy, most obviously the filling of all positions by random lot (except for generals, or strategoi, who in an intriguing inversion of our own system, were to be elected). And nor is there much mention of those countries in the wealthy world which see no need for such limitations, or those celebrated leaders who have accomplished purportedly historic tasks without such fetters: Tony Blair served for 10 years, Margaret Thatcher for 11. Franklin D. Roosevelt, consistently ranked among the greatest U.S. presidents served for 12, and would have served for 16 had he survived. And this is not to mention the unlimited terms available to U.S. senators and representatives.</p> <p>In fact, the North American obsession with term limits as political cure-all is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating largely to the 1990s and the cynical populism of House Republicans, who raised the mantle of term limits as a silver bullet against corruption. Some even seem impervious to this fervent faith: most notably, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), who recently proposed lifting presidential term limits in the aftermath of Barack Obama&#8217;s election. Obama himself would add, &#8220;I&#8217;m generally not in favor of term limits&#8230; I believe in one form of term limits. They&#8217;re called elections.&#8221; Given all this, then, we might expect Obama, but also Mayor Bloomberg and the editorial team at the New York Times to wholeheartedly embrace efforts at rolling back such undemocratic limitations worldwide. And who knows? Were it possible to exclude the most popular democratically-elected leader in the Western Hemisphere, they might.</p> <p>But for anyone familiar with past Times coverage of Venezuela (including the paper&#8217;s now-notorious celebration of Ch&#225;vez&#8217;s 2002 overthrow at the hands of an authoritarian group of right-wing leaders), it would be of little surprise to know that the paper breathed a sigh of relief when &#8220;Venezuela&#8217;s voters wisely blocked his plans for indefinite re-election&#8221; in 2007. And facing what the Times incorrectly considered a defeat in recent local elections, the paper&#8217;s tone turned simultaneously celebratory and stern:</p> <p>The lesson from Sunday&#8217;s defeat &#8212; less than a year after voters rejected his plan for a power-grabbing constitutional reform &#8212; is that Venezuelans don&#8217;t want to give Mr. Ch&#225;vez even more power. He should heed the message&#8230; He should abandon for good his push to change the Constitution so that he can run for a third term in 2013. Venezuelans deserve the chance to choose a competent government.</p> <p>But this is where it gets interesting for the elephant in the room named Colombia.</p> <p>&#8220;Mr. Uribe&#8217;s Choice&#8221;</p> <p>Now the New York Times has never been bashful about the crush it has on this tale of hypocrisy&#8217;s third character: the narco-terrorist president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe. Uribe is currently engaged in an effort to change the Colombian constitution for a second time to allow his own re-election, doing so not through popular plebiscite, but rather indirect legislative vote. But not that you would know this from reading the press: a recent report by FAIR shows that press coverage of Colombia and Venezuela represent an inverted mirror-image of reality, exaggerating abuses in the latter while downplaying them in the former and condemning re-election in one while ignoring it in the other. And so one might expect the paper to champion the diminutive Colombian strongman&#8217;s own efforts to eliminate term limits for himself, doing so, as in New York, through indirect vote in the legislature rather than the popular referendum Ch&#225;vez has pursued. But rather than take the more openly-hypocritical route of supporting Uribe&#8217;s bid for unlimited re-election, the Times has elected a more subtle, if no less hypocritical path.</p> <p>In parallel editorials published three months apart, we needn&#8217;t get past the titles to realize where we&#8217;re headed: whereas Ch&#225;vez is diminutively called by his first name, Uribe is &#8220;Mr.&#8221; But both men have a choice, according to the Times. For Ch&#225;vez, who has wrought unprecedented destruction, the broadsheet recommends quitting while he&#8217;s ahead, and before the people lose patience with his childish, anti-democratic antics. For Uribe, on the other hand, the suggestion is the same, but for very different reasons: to assume his place in the Pantheon of great Latin Americans &#8220;the leader who brought Colombia back from the brink and onto a path toward peace.&#8221; Ch&#225;vez must leave because he is evil; Uribe should choose to do so because he is great.</p> <p>So let us review, briefly, the record of this harbinger of peace that is &#8220;Mr. Uribe&#8221;:</p> <p>According to a declassified 1991 report by the U.S. government&#8217;s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Uribe was described as &#8220;a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar&#8230; dedicated to collaboration with the Medell&#237;n cartel a high government levels.&#8221; &amp;#160;His legitimacy is questionable, since in a country as divided as Colombia only 27% of the population voted in the last presidential election (compared to 43% in neighboring Venezuela). &amp;#160;And even among that limited electorate, the &#8220;Para-Politics&#8221; scandal made clear that Uribe&#8217;s election depended on the violent duress provided by paramilitaries who have admitted to forcing local populations to vote for Uribe. By mid-2008, 62 members of Congress, mostly Uribe allies,were considered official suspects. &amp;#160;And from the Times glowing review: &#8220;After the Supreme Court started investigating dozens of his Congressional allies for alleged ties to right-wing paramilitaries, he accused the court of being politically motivated. He has now proposed reforms that would remove the investigation of members of Congress from the Supreme Court&#8217;s jurisdiction.&#8221; All of this is not even to mention the accusations of bribery in Uribe&#8217;s prior effort to change the constitution, or his role in the recent pyramid investment scheme controversy.</p> <p>But if Colombia&#8217;s friendliness toward U.S. interests is enough to explain the inverse correlation between Uribe&#8217;s reality and Times coverage, this political alliance falls short of the paper&#8217;s endorsing his unlimited re-election, as their political principles might suggest. It seems as though the racist assumptions of who is capable of self-government trumps principles, and for the New York Times institutional flexibility is to be determined more by the division of First versus Third world than the simple Manichaeism of friends versus enemies.</p> <p>Ch&#225;vez Poised to Win</p> <p>If the western and opposition media is to be believed, the idea of lifting term limits in Venezuela has already been defeated in an election, namely the constitutional reform effort that was narrowly voted down in December of 2007. But while the U.S press focused on unlimited re-election as the cause of the loss for the Chavistas in that election, this is simply incorrect. Let this be clear: were the 2007 reform solely about Ch&#225;vez&#8217;s re-election, it would have passed. This much is clear to those on the ground, and attested to by both Chavista and opposition strategy during the election, as the Chavistas sought to associate the reform with Ch&#225;vez, and the opposition sought to oppose it without seeming &#8220;anti-Chavista.&#8221; Rather than the question of re-election, what sunk the 2007 constitutional reform effort was its complexity (it contained 69 provisions), poor campaigns (by conservative Chavistas who felt threatened by the changes), clear opposition to some elements (i.e. education, etc), and above all a failure to mobilize or even interest the Chavista base.</p> <p>As Sunday&#8217;s referendum vote approaches, all indications are that it enjoys the support of a clear, and increasing, majority of the Venezuelan electorate. This fact is borne out in recent polling data released in Venezuela by polling firm GIS XXI. According to the polling firm, 52.9% of voters currently support the effort to eliminate presidential term limits, with only 40% opposing. Moreover, when faced with the statement, &#8220;If the people support him, President Ch&#225;vez has the right to run in the elections as many times as he likes,&#8221; nearly 70% expressed agreement, and almost 75% characterize the President&#8217;s leadership as either &#8220;very good&#8221; or &#8220;good.&#8221; The more independent Venezuelan Data Analysis Institute (IVAD) has, surprisingly, given a more significant margin of victory to the &#8220;yes&#8221; vote, which it estimates at 54.6% versus 45.5% against (the margin separating the two having increased a full 3 points in recent weeks).</p> <p>Even Datan&#225;lisis, a notoriously anti-Chavista polling firm whose director once insisted to the Los Angeles Times that Ch&#225;vez needs to be assassinated, currently gives the referendum a margin of more than 3 points.&amp;#160; While such a margin may seem unsurprising to anyone familiar with the reigning political atmosphere in Venezuela, it comes as somewhat of a surprise from Datan&#225;lisis, which just in December had the referendum losing by nearly 15 percentage points. And another opposition pollster, Hinterlaces, shows the election to be a dead heat, but does so only on the basis of misleading, urban-only polling, knowing full well that Ch&#225;vez regularly outpolls the opposition by more than 20% in rural areas.</p> <p>But if there is one thing that Chavista and anti-Chavista pollers share, it&#8217;s a significant shift in support for the referendum in recent weeks. To fully grasp why this has happened, we need to look more closely at the political dynamics underlying the process, and how these dynamics have come to bear on the impending election.</p> <p>&#8220;Military Targets&#8221;</p> <p>As is by now customary in Venezuelan electoral seasons, the dialectic of conflict and polarization has kicked in full-force, deepening contradictions and clarifying the degree of support that either side can claim. This is a risky business for both sides: heightened tension could well chase away moderate Chavistas, but it can equally well damage the opposition, and if the recent shifts in polling data are of any indication, the effect has been more to Ch&#225;vez&#8217;s benefit. But this was as much through opposition bungling as through Chavista stage-management.</p> <p>In late January, anti-Ch&#225;vez students led a march against the referendum effort through the streets of Caracas. While the mayor of western Caracas rejected their request to march on the Supreme Court, since a pro-Ch&#225;vez march would be gathering there and confrontations would be inevitable, the recently-elected metropolitan mayor Antonio Ledezma, a ferocious anti-Chavista, granted a permit. At points, students hurled bottles and rocks at the police, who responded with tear gas (a scenario repeated in various other cities). When a large truck that had been leading the march was detained by police, however, it was found to contain 100 Molotov cocktails, some fully prepared and ready for deployment.</p> <p>This certainly won the opposition students no sympathy from undecided voters, the so-called &#8220;ni-ni&#8217;s&#8221; (the neither-nors), notwithstanding their efforts (against all video proof) to claim that the Molotovs had been planted. But such a claim would be readily accepted by their far-right base, and seemingly impermeable to hypocrisy, the opposition students continued their efforts to cultivate their image as victims of a tyrannical government by running a half-page ad in El Nacional showing the fierce repression of students by police, under the slogan: &#8220;Punish the Criminals, Don&#8217;t Repress Our Children &#8211; No to Indefinite Re-election.&#8221; The problem? The picture was not even taken in Venezuela, but rather at a 2003 march in Greece. Much like the whisky these opposition students sip at luxurious bars on the weekends, it seems even their own repression is in short supply domestically and must be imported.</p> <p>But it hasn&#8217;t been only the opposition who have sought to heighten tensions in the run-up to the February 15th referendum vote. Radical Chavistas, perhaps knowing that the President has tended to gain more than he has lost as a result of conflicts with the opposition, have also sought to raise the electoral temperature. The revolutionary La Piedrita Collective, whose members told me in a recent interview that such heightened tensions have a purgative effect on the revolutionary process, have recently taken the fight to the opposition, declaring various opposition parties, far-right television station Globovisi&#243;n, and the Vatican offices to be &#8220;military targets,&#8221; carrying out tear gas attacks against them. But this was merely a warning, according to an interview given by La Piedrita founder Valent&#237;n Santana to the newspaper Quinto D&#237;a: up to this point, Santana insists, the violence has come from the opposition, and La Piedrita&#8217;s targets are precisely those who &#8220;call for war, for hatred, for magnicide.&#8221; Repeating what he told me earlier, Santana insists that Ch&#225;vez is the only thing preventing open conflict in Venezuela, and if the referendum doesn&#8217;t pass, &#8220;we&#8217;re headed for a war.&#8221;</p> <p>Initially, the government&#8217;s position was subtle. Without endorsing La Piedrita&#8217;s actions, Interior and Justice minister Tarek El-Aissami insisted on shifting the discourse of violence back toward those more deserving of it: the students caught with Molotovs and the opposition press that has been calling for violence against a legitimate government for nearly a decade. However, after Santana&#8217;s interview in Quinto D&#237;a, in which the leader tacitly threatened the lives of opposition leaders, including media magnate Marcel Granier, Ch&#225;vez himself stepped into the fray, calling for Santana&#8217;s arrest. But the effort to appear presidential by opposing the threats issued by his supporters is a double-edged sword, one which threatens to alienate Ch&#225;vez&#8217;s most fiercely devoted base, and it&#8217;s unclear if arresting Santana (if this is even possible given the de facto autonomy enjoyed by La Piedrita, would be at all desirable from a political standpoint).</p> <p>Puerto Rican Vacation</p> <p>But in this case the strategy of tension encouraged by both far left and far right would have produced little more than a stalemate on its own, with radicalized bases contemplating one another across a chasm populated by undecideds, were it not for the latest in blunders by the anti-Chavista opposition. Returning from a trip to Puerto Rico, representatives of all major opposition parties alongside Globovisi&#243;n director Federico Ravell were surprised at the airport by a young reporter, Pedro Carvajalino, from the government-sponsored youth-oriented &#193;vila-TV. When the journalist accused the opposition leaders of meeting with representatives of the United States&#8217; government, and specifically deemed Ravell a palangrista, or a corrupt journalist, the situation became tense, with Ravell spouting offensive slurs and threatening to punch Carvajalino. Luckily for the Chavistas, Ravell displayed a surprising lack of media saavy for a media magnate, and the whole thing played out in front of the cameras.</p> <p>Things were not going well for the opposition&#8217;s electoral strategy. Carvajalino, it seems, had been leaked an email in which Ravell discusses with opposition political leaders a meeting with U.S. embassy officials in Puerto Rico, insinuating that some $3 million would be provided toward defeating the February 15th referendum. On this basis, those involved were subpoenaed to testify before the state Attorney General, where Ravell insisted that, rather than meeting with U.S. government officials, they had instead met with Chilean strategists involved in the unseating of former dictator Augusto Pinochet. As to why a meeting with Chileans took place on U.S. soil, Ravell provided the rather unconvincing answer that the Chileans, who had braved the Pinochet dictatorship, were deterred from entering Venezuela by the high crime rates.</p> <p>This is ertainly not the press the Venezuelan opposition needed in the run-up to next week&#8217;s vote. But is it surprising? Not particularly, for those who have unashamedly eaten out of the poisoned hand of the North far too many times without learning their lesson. While financial support from the U.S. is probably tempting for a discredited opposition utterly lacking any mass base, it is still worth wondering if the money is worth the risk it entails when the media hypocrisy is free.</p> <p>George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley. He is currently writing a people&#8217;s history of the Bolivarian Revolution entitled We Created Him, and can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.</p>

Venezuela’s Term Limits

https://counterpunch.org/2009/02/13/venezuela-s-term-limits/

2009-02-13

4left

The story is a familiar one Amid the collapse of twoparty dominance an independent leader rises to power In an effort to calm frazzled nerves he insists he will respect the rule of law and the will of the voters by maintaining the peaceful transfer of power at the end of his legallyestablished term 8220There8217s no organization that I know that would put somebody in charge for a long period of time8221 he insists 8220you always want turnover and change8221 But in power for nearly eight years having established a fervent support base and concentrated power in his own hands our fair leader no longer feels the need to comfort his opponents and his discourse radicalizes as his view of term limits shifts Dismissing his opposition as rigid 8220dogmatists8221 the leader now insists on the need to change course flexibly to meet circumstances True and sustained change he argues requires the continuity of his successful leadership Unsurprisingly his opponents fiercely oppose the move as dangerous 8220It shows a fundamental contempt for the democratic process8221 one maintains 8220and it8217s changing the rules to benefit yourself directly8221 Ironically it was this very same argument that the leader himself had made five years prior when vetoing efforts to loosen term limits Not without controversy then was the decision of the region8217s largest newspaper8211aligned politically with the leader8211to wade into these conflictive waters with the following declaration The bedrock of8230 democracy is the voters8217 right to choose Though well intentioned8230 the term limits law severely limits that right which is why this page has opposed term limits from the outset8230 Term limits are seductive promising relief from mediocre selfperpetuating incumbents and gridlocked legislatures They are also profoundly undemocratic arbitrarily denying voters the ability to choose between good politicians and bad While the paper had previously insisted that any change to term limits come through popular referendum it now reverses this view taking the position that for reasons of political expediency a simple vote in the small executive council will do Of which banana republic are we speaking where thinlyveiled authoritarianism threatens democratic checks and balances and weakkneed apologists parade about under the banner of free press Why the place is none other than New York City the leader none other than Michael Bloomberg and the newspaper none other than the New York Times Patience we haven8217t even gotten to the hypocrisy part yet 8220Hugo Ch225vez8217s Choice8221 Term limits have a long history dating from ancient Greece and Rome and Aristotle8217s concept of 8220ruling and being ruled in turn8221 With a trademark selectiveness see eg Senate Report 104158 those upholding the sanctity of this standard in US politics do so with no mention of the other elements Aristotle would associate with democracy most obviously the filling of all positions by random lot except for generals or strategoi who in an intriguing inversion of our own system were to be elected And nor is there much mention of those countries in the wealthy world which see no need for such limitations or those celebrated leaders who have accomplished purportedly historic tasks without such fetters Tony Blair served for 10 years Margaret Thatcher for 11 Franklin D Roosevelt consistently ranked among the greatest US presidents served for 12 and would have served for 16 had he survived And this is not to mention the unlimited terms available to US senators and representatives In fact the North American obsession with term limits as political cureall is a relatively recent phenomenon dating largely to the 1990s and the cynical populism of House Republicans who raised the mantle of term limits as a silver bullet against corruption Some even seem impervious to this fervent faith most notably Rep Jose Serrano DNY who recently proposed lifting presidential term limits in the aftermath of Barack Obama8217s election Obama himself would add 8220I8217m generally not in favor of term limits8230 I believe in one form of term limits They8217re called elections8221 Given all this then we might expect Obama but also Mayor Bloomberg and the editorial team at the New York Times to wholeheartedly embrace efforts at rolling back such undemocratic limitations worldwide And who knows Were it possible to exclude the most popular democraticallyelected leader in the Western Hemisphere they might But for anyone familiar with past Times coverage of Venezuela including the paper8217s nownotorious celebration of Ch225vez8217s 2002 overthrow at the hands of an authoritarian group of rightwing leaders it would be of little surprise to know that the paper breathed a sigh of relief when 8220Venezuela8217s voters wisely blocked his plans for indefinite reelection8221 in 2007 And facing what the Times incorrectly considered a defeat in recent local elections the paper8217s tone turned simultaneously celebratory and stern The lesson from Sunday8217s defeat 8212 less than a year after voters rejected his plan for a powergrabbing constitutional reform 8212 is that Venezuelans don8217t want to give Mr Ch225vez even more power He should heed the message8230 He should abandon for good his push to change the Constitution so that he can run for a third term in 2013 Venezuelans deserve the chance to choose a competent government But this is where it gets interesting for the elephant in the room named Colombia 8220Mr Uribe8217s Choice8221 Now the New York Times has never been bashful about the crush it has on this tale of hypocrisy8217s third character the narcoterrorist president of Colombia Alvaro Uribe Uribe is currently engaged in an effort to change the Colombian constitution for a second time to allow his own reelection doing so not through popular plebiscite but rather indirect legislative vote But not that you would know this from reading the press a recent report by FAIR shows that press coverage of Colombia and Venezuela represent an inverted mirrorimage of reality exaggerating abuses in the latter while downplaying them in the former and condemning reelection in one while ignoring it in the other And so one might expect the paper to champion the diminutive Colombian strongman8217s own efforts to eliminate term limits for himself doing so as in New York through indirect vote in the legislature rather than the popular referendum Ch225vez has pursued But rather than take the more openlyhypocritical route of supporting Uribe8217s bid for unlimited reelection the Times has elected a more subtle if no less hypocritical path In parallel editorials published three months apart we needn8217t get past the titles to realize where we8217re headed whereas Ch225vez is diminutively called by his first name Uribe is 8220Mr8221 But both men have a choice according to the Times For Ch225vez who has wrought unprecedented destruction the broadsheet recommends quitting while he8217s ahead and before the people lose patience with his childish antidemocratic antics For Uribe on the other hand the suggestion is the same but for very different reasons to assume his place in the Pantheon of great Latin Americans 8220the leader who brought Colombia back from the brink and onto a path toward peace8221 Ch225vez must leave because he is evil Uribe should choose to do so because he is great So let us review briefly the record of this harbinger of peace that is 8220Mr Uribe8221 According to a declassified 1991 report by the US government8217s Defense Intelligence Agency DIA Uribe was described as 8220a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar8230 dedicated to collaboration with the Medell237n cartel a high government levels8221 amp160His legitimacy is questionable since in a country as divided as Colombia only 27 of the population voted in the last presidential election compared to 43 in neighboring Venezuela amp160And even among that limited electorate the 8220ParaPolitics8221 scandal made clear that Uribe8217s election depended on the violent duress provided by paramilitaries who have admitted to forcing local populations to vote for Uribe By mid2008 62 members of Congress mostly Uribe allieswere considered official suspects amp160And from the Times glowing review 8220After the Supreme Court started investigating dozens of his Congressional allies for alleged ties to rightwing paramilitaries he accused the court of being politically motivated He has now proposed reforms that would remove the investigation of members of Congress from the Supreme Court8217s jurisdiction8221 All of this is not even to mention the accusations of bribery in Uribe8217s prior effort to change the constitution or his role in the recent pyramid investment scheme controversy But if Colombia8217s friendliness toward US interests is enough to explain the inverse correlation between Uribe8217s reality and Times coverage this political alliance falls short of the paper8217s endorsing his unlimited reelection as their political principles might suggest It seems as though the racist assumptions of who is capable of selfgovernment trumps principles and for the New York Times institutional flexibility is to be determined more by the division of First versus Third world than the simple Manichaeism of friends versus enemies Ch225vez Poised to Win If the western and opposition media is to be believed the idea of lifting term limits in Venezuela has already been defeated in an election namely the constitutional reform effort that was narrowly voted down in December of 2007 But while the US press focused on unlimited reelection as the cause of the loss for the Chavistas in that election this is simply incorrect Let this be clear were the 2007 reform solely about Ch225vez8217s reelection it would have passed This much is clear to those on the ground and attested to by both Chavista and opposition strategy during the election as the Chavistas sought to associate the reform with Ch225vez and the opposition sought to oppose it without seeming 8220antiChavista8221 Rather than the question of reelection what sunk the 2007 constitutional reform effort was its complexity it contained 69 provisions poor campaigns by conservative Chavistas who felt threatened by the changes clear opposition to some elements ie education etc and above all a failure to mobilize or even interest the Chavista base As Sunday8217s referendum vote approaches all indications are that it enjoys the support of a clear and increasing majority of the Venezuelan electorate This fact is borne out in recent polling data released in Venezuela by polling firm GIS XXI According to the polling firm 529 of voters currently support the effort to eliminate presidential term limits with only 40 opposing Moreover when faced with the statement 8220If the people support him President Ch225vez has the right to run in the elections as many times as he likes8221 nearly 70 expressed agreement and almost 75 characterize the President8217s leadership as either 8220very good8221 or 8220good8221 The more independent Venezuelan Data Analysis Institute IVAD has surprisingly given a more significant margin of victory to the 8220yes8221 vote which it estimates at 546 versus 455 against the margin separating the two having increased a full 3 points in recent weeks Even Datan225lisis a notoriously antiChavista polling firm whose director once insisted to the Los Angeles Times that Ch225vez needs to be assassinated currently gives the referendum a margin of more than 3 pointsamp160 While such a margin may seem unsurprising to anyone familiar with the reigning political atmosphere in Venezuela it comes as somewhat of a surprise from Datan225lisis which just in December had the referendum losing by nearly 15 percentage points And another opposition pollster Hinterlaces shows the election to be a dead heat but does so only on the basis of misleading urbanonly polling knowing full well that Ch225vez regularly outpolls the opposition by more than 20 in rural areas But if there is one thing that Chavista and antiChavista pollers share it8217s a significant shift in support for the referendum in recent weeks To fully grasp why this has happened we need to look more closely at the political dynamics underlying the process and how these dynamics have come to bear on the impending election 8220Military Targets8221 As is by now customary in Venezuelan electoral seasons the dialectic of conflict and polarization has kicked in fullforce deepening contradictions and clarifying the degree of support that either side can claim This is a risky business for both sides heightened tension could well chase away moderate Chavistas but it can equally well damage the opposition and if the recent shifts in polling data are of any indication the effect has been more to Ch225vez8217s benefit But this was as much through opposition bungling as through Chavista stagemanagement In late January antiCh225vez students led a march against the referendum effort through the streets of Caracas While the mayor of western Caracas rejected their request to march on the Supreme Court since a proCh225vez march would be gathering there and confrontations would be inevitable the recentlyelected metropolitan mayor Antonio Ledezma a ferocious antiChavista granted a permit At points students hurled bottles and rocks at the police who responded with tear gas a scenario repeated in various other cities When a large truck that had been leading the march was detained by police however it was found to contain 100 Molotov cocktails some fully prepared and ready for deployment This certainly won the opposition students no sympathy from undecided voters the socalled 8220nini8217s8221 the neithernors notwithstanding their efforts against all video proof to claim that the Molotovs had been planted But such a claim would be readily accepted by their farright base and seemingly impermeable to hypocrisy the opposition students continued their efforts to cultivate their image as victims of a tyrannical government by running a halfpage ad in El Nacional showing the fierce repression of students by police under the slogan 8220Punish the Criminals Don8217t Repress Our Children 8211 No to Indefinite Reelection8221 The problem The picture was not even taken in Venezuela but rather at a 2003 march in Greece Much like the whisky these opposition students sip at luxurious bars on the weekends it seems even their own repression is in short supply domestically and must be imported But it hasn8217t been only the opposition who have sought to heighten tensions in the runup to the February 15th referendum vote Radical Chavistas perhaps knowing that the President has tended to gain more than he has lost as a result of conflicts with the opposition have also sought to raise the electoral temperature The revolutionary La Piedrita Collective whose members told me in a recent interview that such heightened tensions have a purgative effect on the revolutionary process have recently taken the fight to the opposition declaring various opposition parties farright television station Globovisi243n and the Vatican offices to be 8220military targets8221 carrying out tear gas attacks against them But this was merely a warning according to an interview given by La Piedrita founder Valent237n Santana to the newspaper Quinto D237a up to this point Santana insists the violence has come from the opposition and La Piedrita8217s targets are precisely those who 8220call for war for hatred for magnicide8221 Repeating what he told me earlier Santana insists that Ch225vez is the only thing preventing open conflict in Venezuela and if the referendum doesn8217t pass 8220we8217re headed for a war8221 Initially the government8217s position was subtle Without endorsing La Piedrita8217s actions Interior and Justice minister Tarek ElAissami insisted on shifting the discourse of violence back toward those more deserving of it the students caught with Molotovs and the opposition press that has been calling for violence against a legitimate government for nearly a decade However after Santana8217s interview in Quinto D237a in which the leader tacitly threatened the lives of opposition leaders including media magnate Marcel Granier Ch225vez himself stepped into the fray calling for Santana8217s arrest But the effort to appear presidential by opposing the threats issued by his supporters is a doubleedged sword one which threatens to alienate Ch225vez8217s most fiercely devoted base and it8217s unclear if arresting Santana if this is even possible given the de facto autonomy enjoyed by La Piedrita would be at all desirable from a political standpoint Puerto Rican Vacation But in this case the strategy of tension encouraged by both far left and far right would have produced little more than a stalemate on its own with radicalized bases contemplating one another across a chasm populated by undecideds were it not for the latest in blunders by the antiChavista opposition Returning from a trip to Puerto Rico representatives of all major opposition parties alongside Globovisi243n director Federico Ravell were surprised at the airport by a young reporter Pedro Carvajalino from the governmentsponsored youthoriented 193vilaTV When the journalist accused the opposition leaders of meeting with representatives of the United States8217 government and specifically deemed Ravell a palangrista or a corrupt journalist the situation became tense with Ravell spouting offensive slurs and threatening to punch Carvajalino Luckily for the Chavistas Ravell displayed a surprising lack of media saavy for a media magnate and the whole thing played out in front of the cameras Things were not going well for the opposition8217s electoral strategy Carvajalino it seems had been leaked an email in which Ravell discusses with opposition political leaders a meeting with US embassy officials in Puerto Rico insinuating that some 3 million would be provided toward defeating the February 15th referendum On this basis those involved were subpoenaed to testify before the state Attorney General where Ravell insisted that rather than meeting with US government officials they had instead met with Chilean strategists involved in the unseating of former dictator Augusto Pinochet As to why a meeting with Chileans took place on US soil Ravell provided the rather unconvincing answer that the Chileans who had braved the Pinochet dictatorship were deterred from entering Venezuela by the high crime rates This is ertainly not the press the Venezuelan opposition needed in the runup to next week8217s vote But is it surprising Not particularly for those who have unashamedly eaten out of the poisoned hand of the North far too many times without learning their lesson While financial support from the US is probably tempting for a discredited opposition utterly lacking any mass base it is still worth wondering if the money is worth the risk it entails when the media hypocrisy is free George CiccarielloMaher is a PhD candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley He is currently writing a people8217s history of the Bolivarian Revolution entitled We Created Him and can be reached at gjcmatberkeleyedu

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<p>Illustration: Victor Juhasz</p> <p /> <p>for casual readers of business coverage&#8212;that is, most of us&#8212;the past 18 months have been a crash course in things we never knew existed but that, we are told, have already done us all irreparable harm. Not only are the problems catastrophic, goes the somewhat frustrating message, but it is already too late to do anything about them&#8212;other, that is, than pay for them.</p> <p>In looking back on how we got here, the business press assumes a tone of rueful omniscience, as in this late-2007 New York Times piece on regulatory laxity under Alan Greenspan: &#8220;Had officials bothered to look, frightening clues of the coming crisis were available.&#8221; Of course, the clues the Times cites in the very next sentence&#8212;the ceaseless research of the North Carolina-based Center for Responsible Lending&#8212;were available had anyone bothered to look. So, a reader might well ask, why didn&#8217;t the media?</p> <p>I worked as a Wall Street Journal staff writer for eight years ending in December 2004 and now critique the business media full time at the Columbia Journalism Review. I&#8217;ll attest that business journalists as a rule are as smart, sophisticated, and plugged-in as they seem. And yet that army of professional business reporters&#8212;an estimated 9,000 or so nationwide in print alone&#8212;for all practical purposes missed the biggest story on the beat. Why?</p> <p>In October, Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post media critic, rounded up the opinions of a few practitioners. Some bravely took the blame (&#8220;We all failed,&#8221; ventured cnbc&#8216;s Charlie Gasparino), but the majority chose to blame the audience: &#8220;If we had written stories in late 2000 saying this whole thing&#8217;s going to collapse,&#8221; said Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer, &#8220;people would have said, &#8216;Ha ha, maybe,&#8217; and gone about their business.&#8221; Ditto Marcus Brauchli, a top Wall Street Journal editor during the bubble before taking over last July as executive editor of the Washington Post: &#8220;I regret that when I was at the Journal, we didn&#8217;t keep the focus on some of these questions, including the possible moral hazard posed by the structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These are really difficult issues to convey to a popular audience.&#8221;</p> <p>There was a handful of heroes at the major publications who tried to get the word out. But the good, hard-hitting, arm&#8217;s-length stories will have to be compared to what else was gushing out of the 30-inch business-news drainpipe&#8212;those Citigroup earnings stories, those edgy-yet-flattering profiles of Merrill Lynch&#8217;s Stan O&#8217;Neal, Lehman Brothers&#8217; Dick Fuld, et al., the pieces noting how Countrywide Financial&#8217;s Angelo Mozilo liked to dress well, etc., not to mention the Home Depot marketing stories, the personal finance columns, and all the cheerleading and Flip That House fluff that diverted resources from the real task at hand. What was really the business-press message? It was certainly not that mortgage lenders and Wall Street had linked up to flood the market with defective products.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>it is true, though, that the circumstances conspired to make the press&#8217; job harder&#8212;much harder&#8212;than usual. Consider, first, the industry&#8217;s own failing financial health. In 1998, the New York Times Company&#8217;s newspaper segment generated profit margins of 24 percent&#8212;about the sector&#8217;s average then&#8212;according to John Morton, a leading industry analyst. The comparable figure for the first half of 2008 is 8.5 percent. This so-called margin compression affects the newspaper industry generally, extends to the magazine business, and has led to a collapse in stock prices across the board. The Times Company traded for $50 a share as recently as 2002. Today, it&#8217;s around $10 and still considered a &#8220;sell&#8221; by some analysts. Its market capitalization&#8212;stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding&#8212;is $1.5 billion, half of which is its stake in its new Eighth Avenue headquarters. The value the market places on its prospects is basically zero.</p> <p>The demise of the mainstream media, especially newspapers, has been forecast for decades, but the years following the tech wreck of 2000&#8212;the period of the housing bubble&#8212;opened a new, defining chapter. The most shocking plunge in values came, Morton says, around mid-2007, just about the time the credit crisis burst into full view. For instance, the market capitalization of the Journal Register Company, publisher of the New Haven Register and hundreds of smaller papers, has fallen more than 99 percent since the start of 2007&#8212;long before, it&#8217;s worth remembering, the credit crisis made business flameouts commonplace. In newspapering, it was the business model itself that fell apart.</p> <p>Around the same time, the drip of newsroom cuts became a deluge&#8212;in all, newspapers lost 13,000 jobs last year&#8212;and business news hasn&#8217;t been spared. Chris Roush, director of the Carolina Business News Initiative at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, estimates that the number of print business reporters around the country has fallen 25 percent since 2000, to 9,000. Business pages of major regional papers have been especially hard-hit: Since 2004, the Washington Post business staff has lost 30 of its top reporters. The Los Angeles Times has lost at least 15, leaving it with a total of around 50. Yes, we&#8217;ve seen the launch of a brand-new TV news channel, Fox Business News&#8212;but that&#8217;s just another competitor chasing the same shrinking advertising market. And in any case, no one should be under the illusion that TV business news, with its gaze narrowly focused on the gyrations of the stock market concerns, could ever have offered the kind of long-term warnings that would have saved its viewers&#8217; nest eggs. Newspapers were supposed to be different.</p> <p>When I arrived at the Journal as a staff writer in the law group, in 1996, Dow Jones&#8217; &amp;amp; Co.&#8217;s market cap was more than $4 billion. That was back when the paper had a law group, and a Philadelphia bureau, a Pittsburgh bureau, and several Canadian bureaus. It also used to have a cafeteria and a guy who pushed a coffee cart around the floor twice a day. Dow Jones was never a corporate giant, but it was a big, sturdy company, about the same size as many of the Wall Street firms it covered. (Morgan Stanley was about a $5 billion company in the mid-1990s.) You can argue that size doesn&#8217;t matter; all I can say is that it made for a confident, freewheeling environment, where the staff was encouraged to take a chance once in a while, maybe even think big. A Journal reporter had swagger.</p> <p>Penelope Muse Abernathy, a Journal executive until 2006 and now a professor of media economics at Chapel Hill, says the late-1990s economic expansion fed a virtuous cycle in which profits funded good journalism that would attract more readers and profit. &#8220;If you were a business reporter, these were the gravy train days,&#8221; she says.</p> <p>Indeed. I rode in black cars, lunched at all the places you read about, and more than once flew across the country to report a 1,200-word story. Every year, Dow Jones dropped an amount equivalent to 15 percent of my gross pay into a pension account, just like that. When I picked up the Journal on my doorstep in the late 1990s, the Monday edition was the size of the Brooklyn phone book.</p> <p>But not for long.</p> <p>Dow Jones made particular strategic missteps that need not trouble us here, but those merely left it somewhat more unprepared than other media companies when the tech meltdown ushered in a severe advertising recession, one made permanent by the rise of the Internet. By the time I left at the end of 2004, the newsroom had gone through at least three rounds of layoffs, all white-knuckle, morale-crushing affairs. Benefits were cut to the point that the once-gung-ho staff took to picketing around a giant inflatable rat. Office politics became Byzantine, and productivity demands on the newsroom&#8212;more, faster&#8212;grew ever more pronounced. Time-consuming investigations were undertaken at the reporter&#8217;s own risk: If a lead didn&#8217;t pan out&#8212;no matter why&#8212;it hit your productivity numbers, putting your career in peril. This wasn&#8217;t subtle stuff.</p> <p>The paper, despite occasional bright spots, became rote, formulaic, dull. The Journal&#8216;s weakened condition, financially and journalistically, cleared the way for Rupert Murdoch&#8217;s News Corporation to buy it in 2007. Since then, the new owner&#8217;s experimentation&#8212;more political news, cutting back the copy desk, revamping sections&#8212;has not helped the journalism. The paper has done some fine work, but in no sense did it dominate the crisis story as the Journal dominated core financial stories in the past.</p> <p>The disintegration of the financial media&#8217;s own financial underpinnings could not have come at a worse time. Low morale, lost expertise, and constant cutbacks, especially in investigative reporting&#8212;these are not conditions that produce an appetite for confrontation and muckraking. In 2002, the Times&#8216; Gretchen Morgenson won a Pulitzer for beat reporting on Wall Street, beating single-handedly, in the view of some, the entire Journal staff.</p> <p>Jesse Eisinger, a former financial columnist for the Journal and now a senior writer for Portfolio, says the paper, like business journalism generally, clung to outdated formulas. Wall Street coverage tilted toward personality-driven stories, not deconstructing balance sheets or figuring out risks. Stocks were the focus, when the problems were brewing in derivatives. &#8220;We were following the old model,&#8221; he says.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>but it wasn&#8217;t just the media abdicating their watchdog role: Just as financial news outlets were weakening, regulators were also abandoning the field, leaving business reporters starved of the investigative leads they rely on. Back in the 1980s, a great deal of tough Wall Street coverage was driven by the aggressive work of prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission (sec). But then came the Clinton-era push toward deregulation that reached its extremes during the Bush administration as the federal government unceremoniously pulled the finance cops off the beat. For a time, Eliot Spitzer filled the void with his aggressive prosecution of Wall Street misdeeds, but for the most part, covering financial corruption without regulators was like trying to clap with one hand.</p> <p>Take the Federal Trade Commission. In 2002, the agency announced a then-record $240 million predatory lending settlement involving Citigroup&#8217;s giant subprime units, and covering no fewer than 2 million customers. Since then the ftc has brought no major consumer lending cases. Zero. The last such case brought by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, against Providian National Bank, came in 2000.</p> <p>The haplessness of the sec under Chairman Christopher Cox is now widely recognized as a major contributor to the collapse. But the commission&#8217;s passivity also hamstrung Wall Street reporters: It is worth remembering that prior to the Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and Tyco scandals earlier this decade, the sec had already opened formal investigations into each doomed company&#8212;forcing disclosures that tipped off investors, yes, but also providing road maps and official cover to the financial press. (The problems at Enron, a special case, were first uncovered by a short seller, who tipped off reporters.)</p> <p>Contrast that with the most recent disasters: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, aig, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac had all collapsed before the sec had even launched an investigation. The spectacle of Lehman employees carrying out boxes of records&#8212;on television!&#8212;was too much for Jonathan Weil, a Bloomberg columnist who is known for breaking an early Enron story in 2000 while at the Journal. In a column last September, he wrote &#8220;Is there anybody left in the government with a pulse? Where&#8217;s the yellow police tape? How about a cease-and-desist order to prevent document destruction? Can anyone give me a good reason why Lehman offices shouldn&#8217;t be treated as a crime scene now?&#8221;</p> <p>But the regulatory absence only goes so far as an excuse for the press, says Michael Hudson, who began reporting on subprimes in the 1990s at the Roanoke Times and joined the Journal in 2006. He&#8217;s now with the Center for Responsible Lending. &#8220;It&#8217;s true the federal regulators disappeared,&#8221; Hudson says. &#8220;But there were lots of state regulators who were going after this in a big way, lots of people on the ground, lawyers, consumer advocates, scholars, who saw what was happening, and the press didn&#8217;t give them much attention.&#8221;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>in may 1990, the Wall Street Journal published &#8220;The Reckoning,&#8221; a devastating, 7,000-word account by Susan Faludi, then a staff writer, of the human toll wrought by the leveraged buyout of the Safeway grocery chain. It is safe to say that that piece, which tied the Safeway lbo to workers&#8217; suicides, heart attacks, and more, would never be proposed, let alone published, today.</p> <p>Faludi&#8217;s article was distinguished by more than its scope and length. It also took on a practice that at the time was at the very heart of Wall Street&#8217;s business model, not to mention one of the preeminent firms of the era, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts &amp;amp; Co. It then expanded the story&#8217;s scope to take into account the social costs of high finance. Similarly, the Journal&#8216;s Alix Freedman took on the tobacco industry at the height of its power in 1996, when she won a Pulitzer for stories exposing how ammonia additives heighten nicotine&#8217;s potency.</p> <p>By contrast, in the past few years, business-news outlets, increasingly burdened financially, less confident editorially, competing ever more fiercely among themselves, torn by the tradeoff between access and scrutiny, have slowly given away their sense of perspective. The result was an insiders&#8217; conversation&#8212;journalism that, while well executed on Wall Street&#8217;s terms, in the end missed the point. There have been exceptions&#8212;a preliminary list would include Shawn Tully at Fortune, John Hechinger and others at the Journal, Mara Der Hovanesian at BusinessWeek, Diana Henriques and others at the New York Times, and Scott Reckard at the LA Times. But to this day, and even after the collapse, the most complete accounts of the mortgage mess have been provided not by the mainstream business press, but by This American Life&#8216;s &#8220;Giant Pool of Money,&#8221; and Chain of Blame, a book published last year by reporters for the Orange County Register and National Mortgage News.</p> <p>Over the past decade, business news has become ever more inward looking, more incremental, and more specialized. In covering Merrill Lynch, for instance, news outlets focused on Stan O&#8217;Neal&#8217;s hard-charging style, but entirely from a perspective of whether it would help Merrill shareholders. A Fortune headline from 2004 read, &#8220;Stan O&#8217;Neal may be the toughest&#8212;some say the most ruthless&#8212;ceo in America. Merrill Lynch couldn&#8217;t be luckier to have him.&#8221; There was no exploration, in Fortune or elsewhere, of Merrill&#8217;s huge push into subprimes until after O&#8217;Neal was ousted in 2007.</p> <p>Increasingly, business coverage has addressed its audience as investors rather than citizens, a subtle but powerful shift in perspective that has led to some curious choices. The Journal, for example, at times seemed to strain to find someone other than Wall Street to blame for the mortgage mess: A December 2007 story announced that borrower fraud &#8220;goes a long way toward explaining why mortgage defaults and foreclosures are rocking financial institutions,&#8221; though no such evidence exists. Another Journal story last March accused &#8220;about half&#8221;of foreclosed-upon borrowers of trashing their homes. The source for the &#8220;half&#8221; bit: a PR firm working for real estate clients. Forbes, meanwhile, in a misbegotten investigation last March of Martin Eakes, the head of the Center for Responsible Lending and one of the few heroes of the subprime mess, suggested Eakes had fought to ban abusive lending in order to help the tiny nonprofit credit union he runs. Seriously.</p> <p>Competition has only exacerbated this narrowing of vision. Mergers-and-acquisition coverage rose from its place as one beat among many to a full-fledged obsession generating multiple stand-alone sections and publications. But no matter how titillating, deal stories are of limited relevance to most readers, and dependent entirely on the good graces of Wall Street sources. The rise of M&amp;amp;A coverage represents the triumph of Wall Street insiderism. It is the opposite of Faludi&#8217;s vision. Significantly, M&amp;amp;A has become a business-press career launching pad: Andrew Ross Sorkin, who writes the Times&#8216; DealBook column, and former Wall Street Journal M&amp;amp;A reporter Nik Deogun are among the field&#8217;s superstars.</p> <p>Another insider obsession is outsize personalities in the corner office: Coverage of Citigroup produced reams of profiles of its influential former chief, Sandy Weill, his successor, Chuck Prince, and his prot&#233;g&#233;-turned-rival, Jaime Dimon, but precious little about Citigroup&#8217;s role in bringing subprime lending from the mortgage industry&#8217;s margins into the mainstream. It was left to Hudson, then freelancing for the 3,000-circulation Southern Exposure, to tell that story (and win a Polk Award).</p> <p>Personality profiles, critical as they may be, are comfortably within the narrowing business-press discourse. Plus they&#8217;re a lot easier, and less risky, than investigations&#8212;and it&#8217;s that part of business journalism that has been allowed to wither, says Katie Benner, a Fortune writer. &#8220;It&#8217;s much easier to write a story saying something is a bubble than saying it&#8217;s a fraud,&#8221; she notes. &#8220;If business-news organizations want to be taken seriously, they need to invest in investigative journalism.&#8221; Needless to say, chances for that look slim right now&#8212;but it is more than just a question of resources. Predatory lending happened in plain sight; it didn&#8217;t take a muckraker to see what was wrong. Yet business journalism kept its blinders on, played it safe, fixated on stock market concerns, and allowed its BS detector to atrophy just when it was needed most.</p> <p>Sure, there has been, and will be, excellent retrospective work&#8212;similar to the Journal&#8216;s 2002 look back on the Enron-WorldCom-Tyco period, which won a Pulitzer, but in my view was akin to kicking the wreckage after the plane had crashed. This kind of &#8220;explanatory&#8221; reporting is by definition too late. It is a lower form of journalism than probing coverage before the fact, which is the hardest to do but in the end what readers&#8212;investors, citizens&#8212;really need. Who will blow the whistle on the next disaster in the making? Where&#8217;s the next subprime mess? Barring a major reordering of resources and priorities, don&#8217;t count on the business media to find out. &#8220;The press were kind of prisoners of respectability,&#8221; Hudson says. &#8220;With exceptions, they really want official sources; they want official approval; they don&#8217;t want to be too out front. They do a good job after the fact, but not beforehand, when it counts.&#8221;</p> <p />

How Could 9,000 Business Reporters Blow It?

https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/how-could-9000-business-reporters-blow-it/

2018-01-01

4left

Illustration Victor Juhasz for casual readers of business coverage8212that is most of us8212the past 18 months have been a crash course in things we never knew existed but that we are told have already done us all irreparable harm Not only are the problems catastrophic goes the somewhat frustrating message but it is already too late to do anything about them8212other that is than pay for them In looking back on how we got here the business press assumes a tone of rueful omniscience as in this late2007 New York Times piece on regulatory laxity under Alan Greenspan 8220Had officials bothered to look frightening clues of the coming crisis were available8221 Of course the clues the Times cites in the very next sentence8212the ceaseless research of the North Carolinabased Center for Responsible Lending8212were available had anyone bothered to look So a reader might well ask why didn8217t the media I worked as a Wall Street Journal staff writer for eight years ending in December 2004 and now critique the business media full time at the Columbia Journalism Review I8217ll attest that business journalists as a rule are as smart sophisticated and pluggedin as they seem And yet that army of professional business reporters8212an estimated 9000 or so nationwide in print alone8212for all practical purposes missed the biggest story on the beat Why In October Howard Kurtz the Washington Post media critic rounded up the opinions of a few practitioners Some bravely took the blame 8220We all failed8221 ventured cnbc8216s Charlie Gasparino but the majority chose to blame the audience 8220If we had written stories in late 2000 saying this whole thing8217s going to collapse8221 said Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer 8220people would have said 8216Ha ha maybe8217 and gone about their business8221 Ditto Marcus Brauchli a top Wall Street Journal editor during the bubble before taking over last July as executive editor of the Washington Post 8220I regret that when I was at the Journal we didn8217t keep the focus on some of these questions including the possible moral hazard posed by the structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac These are really difficult issues to convey to a popular audience8221 There was a handful of heroes at the major publications who tried to get the word out But the good hardhitting arm8217slength stories will have to be compared to what else was gushing out of the 30inch businessnews drainpipe8212those Citigroup earnings stories those edgyyetflattering profiles of Merrill Lynch8217s Stan O8217Neal Lehman Brothers8217 Dick Fuld et al the pieces noting how Countrywide Financial8217s Angelo Mozilo liked to dress well etc not to mention the Home Depot marketing stories the personal finance columns and all the cheerleading and Flip That House fluff that diverted resources from the real task at hand What was really the businesspress message It was certainly not that mortgage lenders and Wall Street had linked up to flood the market with defective products amp160 it is true though that the circumstances conspired to make the press8217 job harder8212much harder8212than usual Consider first the industry8217s own failing financial health In 1998 the New York Times Company8217s newspaper segment generated profit margins of 24 percent8212about the sector8217s average then8212according to John Morton a leading industry analyst The comparable figure for the first half of 2008 is 85 percent This socalled margin compression affects the newspaper industry generally extends to the magazine business and has led to a collapse in stock prices across the board The Times Company traded for 50 a share as recently as 2002 Today it8217s around 10 and still considered a 8220sell8221 by some analysts Its market capitalization8212stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding8212is 15 billion half of which is its stake in its new Eighth Avenue headquarters The value the market places on its prospects is basically zero The demise of the mainstream media especially newspapers has been forecast for decades but the years following the tech wreck of 20008212the period of the housing bubble8212opened a new defining chapter The most shocking plunge in values came Morton says around mid2007 just about the time the credit crisis burst into full view For instance the market capitalization of the Journal Register Company publisher of the New Haven Register and hundreds of smaller papers has fallen more than 99 percent since the start of 20078212long before it8217s worth remembering the credit crisis made business flameouts commonplace In newspapering it was the business model itself that fell apart Around the same time the drip of newsroom cuts became a deluge8212in all newspapers lost 13000 jobs last year8212and business news hasn8217t been spared Chris Roush director of the Carolina Business News Initiative at the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill estimates that the number of print business reporters around the country has fallen 25 percent since 2000 to 9000 Business pages of major regional papers have been especially hardhit Since 2004 the Washington Post business staff has lost 30 of its top reporters The Los Angeles Times has lost at least 15 leaving it with a total of around 50 Yes we8217ve seen the launch of a brandnew TV news channel Fox Business News8212but that8217s just another competitor chasing the same shrinking advertising market And in any case no one should be under the illusion that TV business news with its gaze narrowly focused on the gyrations of the stock market concerns could ever have offered the kind of longterm warnings that would have saved its viewers8217 nest eggs Newspapers were supposed to be different When I arrived at the Journal as a staff writer in the law group in 1996 Dow Jones8217 ampamp Co8217s market cap was more than 4 billion That was back when the paper had a law group and a Philadelphia bureau a Pittsburgh bureau and several Canadian bureaus It also used to have a cafeteria and a guy who pushed a coffee cart around the floor twice a day Dow Jones was never a corporate giant but it was a big sturdy company about the same size as many of the Wall Street firms it covered Morgan Stanley was about a 5 billion company in the mid1990s You can argue that size doesn8217t matter all I can say is that it made for a confident freewheeling environment where the staff was encouraged to take a chance once in a while maybe even think big A Journal reporter had swagger Penelope Muse Abernathy a Journal executive until 2006 and now a professor of media economics at Chapel Hill says the late1990s economic expansion fed a virtuous cycle in which profits funded good journalism that would attract more readers and profit 8220If you were a business reporter these were the gravy train days8221 she says Indeed I rode in black cars lunched at all the places you read about and more than once flew across the country to report a 1200word story Every year Dow Jones dropped an amount equivalent to 15 percent of my gross pay into a pension account just like that When I picked up the Journal on my doorstep in the late 1990s the Monday edition was the size of the Brooklyn phone book But not for long Dow Jones made particular strategic missteps that need not trouble us here but those merely left it somewhat more unprepared than other media companies when the tech meltdown ushered in a severe advertising recession one made permanent by the rise of the Internet By the time I left at the end of 2004 the newsroom had gone through at least three rounds of layoffs all whiteknuckle moralecrushing affairs Benefits were cut to the point that the oncegungho staff took to picketing around a giant inflatable rat Office politics became Byzantine and productivity demands on the newsroom8212more faster8212grew ever more pronounced Timeconsuming investigations were undertaken at the reporter8217s own risk If a lead didn8217t pan out8212no matter why8212it hit your productivity numbers putting your career in peril This wasn8217t subtle stuff The paper despite occasional bright spots became rote formulaic dull The Journal8216s weakened condition financially and journalistically cleared the way for Rupert Murdoch8217s News Corporation to buy it in 2007 Since then the new owner8217s experimentation8212more political news cutting back the copy desk revamping sections8212has not helped the journalism The paper has done some fine work but in no sense did it dominate the crisis story as the Journal dominated core financial stories in the past The disintegration of the financial media8217s own financial underpinnings could not have come at a worse time Low morale lost expertise and constant cutbacks especially in investigative reporting8212these are not conditions that produce an appetite for confrontation and muckraking In 2002 the Times8216 Gretchen Morgenson won a Pulitzer for beat reporting on Wall Street beating singlehandedly in the view of some the entire Journal staff Jesse Eisinger a former financial columnist for the Journal and now a senior writer for Portfolio says the paper like business journalism generally clung to outdated formulas Wall Street coverage tilted toward personalitydriven stories not deconstructing balance sheets or figuring out risks Stocks were the focus when the problems were brewing in derivatives 8220We were following the old model8221 he says amp160 but it wasn8217t just the media abdicating their watchdog role Just as financial news outlets were weakening regulators were also abandoning the field leaving business reporters starved of the investigative leads they rely on Back in the 1980s a great deal of tough Wall Street coverage was driven by the aggressive work of prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission sec But then came the Clintonera push toward deregulation that reached its extremes during the Bush administration as the federal government unceremoniously pulled the finance cops off the beat For a time Eliot Spitzer filled the void with his aggressive prosecution of Wall Street misdeeds but for the most part covering financial corruption without regulators was like trying to clap with one hand Take the Federal Trade Commission In 2002 the agency announced a thenrecord 240 million predatory lending settlement involving Citigroup8217s giant subprime units and covering no fewer than 2 million customers Since then the ftc has brought no major consumer lending cases Zero The last such case brought by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency against Providian National Bank came in 2000 The haplessness of the sec under Chairman Christopher Cox is now widely recognized as a major contributor to the collapse But the commission8217s passivity also hamstrung Wall Street reporters It is worth remembering that prior to the Enron WorldCom Adelphia and Tyco scandals earlier this decade the sec had already opened formal investigations into each doomed company8212forcing disclosures that tipped off investors yes but also providing road maps and official cover to the financial press The problems at Enron a special case were first uncovered by a short seller who tipped off reporters Contrast that with the most recent disasters Bear Stearns Lehman Brothers aig Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had all collapsed before the sec had even launched an investigation The spectacle of Lehman employees carrying out boxes of records8212on television8212was too much for Jonathan Weil a Bloomberg columnist who is known for breaking an early Enron story in 2000 while at the Journal In a column last September he wrote 8220Is there anybody left in the government with a pulse Where8217s the yellow police tape How about a ceaseanddesist order to prevent document destruction Can anyone give me a good reason why Lehman offices shouldn8217t be treated as a crime scene now8221 But the regulatory absence only goes so far as an excuse for the press says Michael Hudson who began reporting on subprimes in the 1990s at the Roanoke Times and joined the Journal in 2006 He8217s now with the Center for Responsible Lending 8220It8217s true the federal regulators disappeared8221 Hudson says 8220But there were lots of state regulators who were going after this in a big way lots of people on the ground lawyers consumer advocates scholars who saw what was happening and the press didn8217t give them much attention8221 amp160 in may 1990 the Wall Street Journal published 8220The Reckoning8221 a devastating 7000word account by Susan Faludi then a staff writer of the human toll wrought by the leveraged buyout of the Safeway grocery chain It is safe to say that that piece which tied the Safeway lbo to workers8217 suicides heart attacks and more would never be proposed let alone published today Faludi8217s article was distinguished by more than its scope and length It also took on a practice that at the time was at the very heart of Wall Street8217s business model not to mention one of the preeminent firms of the era Kohlberg Kravis Roberts ampamp Co It then expanded the story8217s scope to take into account the social costs of high finance Similarly the Journal8216s Alix Freedman took on the tobacco industry at the height of its power in 1996 when she won a Pulitzer for stories exposing how ammonia additives heighten nicotine8217s potency By contrast in the past few years businessnews outlets increasingly burdened financially less confident editorially competing ever more fiercely among themselves torn by the tradeoff between access and scrutiny have slowly given away their sense of perspective The result was an insiders8217 conversation8212journalism that while well executed on Wall Street8217s terms in the end missed the point There have been exceptions8212a preliminary list would include Shawn Tully at Fortune John Hechinger and others at the Journal Mara Der Hovanesian at BusinessWeek Diana Henriques and others at the New York Times and Scott Reckard at the LA Times But to this day and even after the collapse the most complete accounts of the mortgage mess have been provided not by the mainstream business press but by This American Life8216s 8220Giant Pool of Money8221 and Chain of Blame a book published last year by reporters for the Orange County Register and National Mortgage News Over the past decade business news has become ever more inward looking more incremental and more specialized In covering Merrill Lynch for instance news outlets focused on Stan O8217Neal8217s hardcharging style but entirely from a perspective of whether it would help Merrill shareholders A Fortune headline from 2004 read 8220Stan O8217Neal may be the toughest8212some say the most ruthless8212ceo in America Merrill Lynch couldn8217t be luckier to have him8221 There was no exploration in Fortune or elsewhere of Merrill8217s huge push into subprimes until after O8217Neal was ousted in 2007 Increasingly business coverage has addressed its audience as investors rather than citizens a subtle but powerful shift in perspective that has led to some curious choices The Journal for example at times seemed to strain to find someone other than Wall Street to blame for the mortgage mess A December 2007 story announced that borrower fraud 8220goes a long way toward explaining why mortgage defaults and foreclosures are rocking financial institutions8221 though no such evidence exists Another Journal story last March accused 8220about half8221of foreclosedupon borrowers of trashing their homes The source for the 8220half8221 bit a PR firm working for real estate clients Forbes meanwhile in a misbegotten investigation last March of Martin Eakes the head of the Center for Responsible Lending and one of the few heroes of the subprime mess suggested Eakes had fought to ban abusive lending in order to help the tiny nonprofit credit union he runs Seriously Competition has only exacerbated this narrowing of vision Mergersandacquisition coverage rose from its place as one beat among many to a fullfledged obsession generating multiple standalone sections and publications But no matter how titillating deal stories are of limited relevance to most readers and dependent entirely on the good graces of Wall Street sources The rise of MampampA coverage represents the triumph of Wall Street insiderism It is the opposite of Faludi8217s vision Significantly MampampA has become a businesspress career launching pad Andrew Ross Sorkin who writes the Times8216 DealBook column and former Wall Street Journal MampampA reporter Nik Deogun are among the field8217s superstars Another insider obsession is outsize personalities in the corner office Coverage of Citigroup produced reams of profiles of its influential former chief Sandy Weill his successor Chuck Prince and his prot233g233turnedrival Jaime Dimon but precious little about Citigroup8217s role in bringing subprime lending from the mortgage industry8217s margins into the mainstream It was left to Hudson then freelancing for the 3000circulation Southern Exposure to tell that story and win a Polk Award Personality profiles critical as they may be are comfortably within the narrowing businesspress discourse Plus they8217re a lot easier and less risky than investigations8212and it8217s that part of business journalism that has been allowed to wither says Katie Benner a Fortune writer 8220It8217s much easier to write a story saying something is a bubble than saying it8217s a fraud8221 she notes 8220If businessnews organizations want to be taken seriously they need to invest in investigative journalism8221 Needless to say chances for that look slim right now8212but it is more than just a question of resources Predatory lending happened in plain sight it didn8217t take a muckraker to see what was wrong Yet business journalism kept its blinders on played it safe fixated on stock market concerns and allowed its BS detector to atrophy just when it was needed most Sure there has been and will be excellent retrospective work8212similar to the Journal8216s 2002 look back on the EnronWorldComTyco period which won a Pulitzer but in my view was akin to kicking the wreckage after the plane had crashed This kind of 8220explanatory8221 reporting is by definition too late It is a lower form of journalism than probing coverage before the fact which is the hardest to do but in the end what readers8212investors citizens8212really need Who will blow the whistle on the next disaster in the making Where8217s the next subprime mess Barring a major reordering of resources and priorities don8217t count on the business media to find out 8220The press were kind of prisoners of respectability8221 Hudson says 8220With exceptions they really want official sources they want official approval they don8217t want to be too out front They do a good job after the fact but not beforehand when it counts8221

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<p>Photo: Marc Shoul</p> <p /> <p>What the peasants call &#8220;the river&#8221; is no more than a puddle, really, a shallow accumulation of muddy brown water in Embabe village on the outskirts of Empangeni in South Africa&#8217;s KwaZulu-Natal province. The river is maybe a quarter mile from Metolina Mthembu&#8217;s mud hut, and to get there you walk through a breathlessly gorgeous expanse of green savanna, runaway hills, and sugarcane fields that tumbles along the coast of the Indian Ocean.</p> <p>Mthembu makes the shoeless trek to the river virtually every day, walking past the tap that was installed just a few feet from her house two years ago. It is bone-dry. With two jobless adult children to feed, and only her pension of roughly $50 a month to support them, the 70-year-old Mthembu can&#8217;t always find the money to pay the equivalent of $7 a month for water. And so a well-rehearsed dance has evolved between the old woman and her local utility, a sequence that plays out every few months or so: She falls behind in her payments; they disconnect her tap; she turns to the river until she finds the money to pay her bill. &#8220;I know the water is unsafe,&#8221; she said on a July morning as a young girl in a formless yellow dress crouched in the river behind her, dipping her plastic bucket.</p> <p>&#8220;I was a victim of cholera in February, and then my daughter and my neighbor became sick with cholera as well.&#8221;</p> <p>During what Mthembu calls &#8220;the old government&#8221; &#8212; the brutal, white-minority regime that was ousted by South Africa&#8217;s first all-races election in 1994 &#8212; she had to walk half a mile to get clean water from a standpipe. She&#8217;s glad the new government installed a tap outside her home two years ago. But now the water costs money, she notes, and people here are poor. &#8220;There are no jobs. We must choose between food and water, so we buy food and pray that the water does not make us ill. It is a bad gamble. Many, many of us have grown sick from the water.&#8221;</p> <p>South Africa is only now beginning to emerge from the worst cholera outbreak in its history, a plague of almost epic proportions that began two years ago, just weeks after local authorities began shutting off water service to residents who were late on their bills. Pressured by international lenders such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the government adopted a conservative fiscal measure, known as &#8220;cost recovery,&#8221; which requires public services such as water, electricity, and telecommunications to pay for themselves, often through increased fees; it also encourages turning those utilities over to private companies. Several South African cities have already turned over their water operations to multinational companies like France-based Vivendi Universal and Suez. For the nation&#8217;s remaining municipal authorities, the first step toward privatization is to try to turn public utilities into profit centers that can attract investors.</p> <p>Across the globe &#8212; from China to Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa to South America &#8212; cash-strapped local and national governments are selling off state-owned water operations, making privatization an estimated $200-billion-a-year business worldwide. Private water companies promise to improve delivery and maximize scarce public resources. But the result has often been far different, according to relief agencies, unions, and nonprofits. They contend that corporations are taking advantage of public resources and subsidies while driving up the price of water and cutting off the poorest users.</p> <p>At the U.N. World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last summer, delegates designated water as one of the key issues facing poor countries. About 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water, and dwindling supplies could push that number even higher in years to come. &#8220;There&#8217;s a global water crisis, and at the same time water is being increasingly commodified,&#8221; says Vandana Shiva, founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India. &#8220;We are trusting corporations to be the protectors of our environment and the protectors of our human needs.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Empangeni&#8221; derives its name from the Zulu word &#8220;phanga,&#8221; which, roughly translated, means &#8220;to grab.&#8221; It is a reference to the uncommonly high number of crocodile attacks that once occurred on the Mlathuze River. Home to South Africa&#8217;s largest sugar mill, as well as paper factories, aluminum smelters, mines, and upscale game farms, Empangeni is surrounded by Ngwelezana, an all-black township, and the villages of the Madlebe tribe, which during apartheid were autonomous black homelands, or bantustans, that provided white-owned business with cheap labor.</p> <p>For people living in these communities and others like them, the &#8220;cost recovery&#8221; policy has meant a dramatic increase in the price of utilities such as electricity and water &#8212; even as South Africa&#8217;s economy has rapidly shed jobs for unskilled workers. To force customers to pay the higher bills, local governments are making use of a tool seldom employed even by the apartheid regime: disconnection of services. Nearly a quarter of South Africa&#8217;s 44 million people live in households that have had their water cut off at least once since 1996. In Empangeni, local authorities began disconnecting water for nonpaying customers in mid-2000.</p> <p>As the cutoffs have spread, so too has cholera, with increasing numbers of poor South Africans heading to polluted rivers, streams, even open pits to draw water for bathing, cooking, and drinking. Public-health researchers have concluded that the epidemic began in the Empangeni region within weeks of the first water disconnection, and from there the waterborne disease quickly fanned out into seven of South Africa&#8217;s nine provinces. &#8220;No one doubts our government&#8217;s good intentions,&#8221; says David Hemson, research director of the government-funded Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). &#8220;But in the name of development, in the name of progress and modernization, we have exposed our most vulnerable populations to this very colonial disease, a disease that is by definition a by-product of backwardness. What does that say about policies like cost recovery?&#8221;</p> <p>In the last two years, KwaZulu-Natal&#8217;s public hospitals have reported nearly 114,000 cases of cholera, more than five times as many as had been reported in the province over the previous 20 years combined. Nearly 260 South Africans have died from cholera since the epidemic began. Early on, the disease was so rampant that hospitals in and around Empangeni opened 14 hydration centers, tents where medics worked in 24-hour shifts to provide fluids to patients. When the city ran short of ambulances, the local government appealed to the South African defense forces for help, and for nearly six months soldiers shuttled patients to hospitals and makeshift clinics.</p> <p>&#8220;We were simply running out of capacity and out of space,&#8221; says Peter Haselau, the manager of Empangeni&#8217;s main public medical center. &#8220;We would get a handle on it in one place and it would break out somewhere else. We got to the point where we thought we might collapse if we got any more cases. The problem was that so many people didn&#8217;t have money for water, so they were going to traditional sources of water. And that water&#8217;s no good.&#8221;</p> <p>When Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa&#8217;s first democratically elected president in 1994, a third of the country&#8217;s population had no electricity or access to clean water, and half had no indoor toilet. In rural areas, it was not uncommon for a single tap to serve whole communities. Since 1994, the African National Congress government has dramatically closed the gap between prosperous whites and poor blacks, building more than 1 million new homes and reducing by almost two-thirds the number of South Africans without running water.</p> <p>But like the water that flows through Mbabe, the ANC&#8217;s policies have been both a blessing and curse to poor South Africans, who have overwhelmingly supported the governing party. In its attempt to attract foreign investment, the ANC has all but shed its Marxist roots for a market-driven fiscal plan called Growth, Employment, and Redistribution, or gear. So far, gear&#8217;s attempts to privatize state-owned industries, open domestic markets to foreign competition, and keep a lid on public spending have left many South Africans materially worse off than they were in the years before apartheid&#8217;s collapse. Nearly 500,000 jobs have vanished and more than a third of South Africa&#8217;s 44 million people survive on less than $2 a day, a figure unchanged since apartheid. Government statistics indicate that a quarter of the workforce is unemployed, and many economists put the number closer to 40 percent.</p> <p>The coupling of soaring utility costs with higher unemployment has proved especially punishing to poor blacks. As the government prepares to sell the state-owned power company, EKSOM, new pricing policies have caused electricity costs in townships like Soweto to rise by as much as 400 percent. Meanwhile, EKSOM offers lower rates to businesses and municipalities &#8212; mostly well-off, white suburbs &#8212; that can afford to buy electricity in bulk. According to a study released last year by the Municipal Services Project at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (commonly referred to as Wits University), EKSOM cut power to nearly 20,000 households and businesses in Soweto each month last year. &#8220;In the hearts and minds of every black South African, nothing will ever compare to apartheid,&#8221; says Guy Mhone, an economist at Wits University. &#8220;But there is a very real frustration now that we have only exchanged the savagery of apartheid for the savagery of an untethered free market.&#8221;</p> <p>One South African municipality that has begun to privatize its water operations is Johannesburg, the nation&#8217;s largest city, which has a utility district that includes dozens of impoverished, all-black suburbs like Soweto and Alexandra. In 2001, the city entered into a partnership with Suez and some of its subsidiaries &#8212; despite the fact that Suez tendered the lowest bid. Suez&#8217;s history of raising prices did not bode well for poor residents, especially since the new utility, Johannesburg Water Management Company, had inherited an apartheid-era white elephant known as the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. This $8 billion scheme to build six new dams in the water-rich country of Lesotho &#8212; which is completely surrounded by South Africa &#8212; has already caused the cost of water in Johannesburg to nearly triple since the anc came to power, and many of Alexandra&#8217;s residents complain that they can no longer afford to pay their bills. Conceived by the apartheid government, the project was supported by the World Bank and other international lenders, who sidestepped international sanctions to finance the deal in 1986. The ANC denounced the arrangement at the time, saying that it strengthened apartheid. But after the ANC took office in 1994, party leaders decided to plow ahead. The first of the six dams, the tallest on the continent, was completed in 1998. Developers expect to build the remaining five over the next 18 years.</p> <p>The project is partially financed by international loans that will be repaid by passing the cost on to consumers. A disproportionate share will be paid for by residents of Alexandra. All-white suburbs, home to less than one-tenth of South Africa&#8217;s population, account for more than half the country&#8217;s residential water use. But since these communities can take advantage of discounted bulk rates, a household in Johannesburg&#8217;s white suburbs can fill its swimming pool and water its garden at less than half the cost per liter paid by a family in Alexandra.</p> <p>Unions, environmentalists, and community groups have appealed to the government to cancel the Lesotho dam project and repair the apartheid-era infrastructure instead. &#8220;We don&#8217;t need the water from the dams,&#8221; says Sam Moiloa, a conservation activist who lives in Alexandra with his wife and two children. &#8220;We lose half of our available water through leaks. We should just fix the leaks and our government can use that money they&#8217;re spending on dams for the rich to improve our standard of living.&#8221; Advocates also propose charging higher rates to bigger users, allowing well-off households and businesses to subsidize the poor.</p> <p>Government officials, however, say that making utilities profitable is critical to South Africa&#8217;s competitiveness at a time when foreign investment is badly needed. &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of polemics around this issue,&#8221; says Mike Muller, director general of South Africa&#8217;s Department of Water and Forestry. &#8220;But the truth is that operating costs have to be recaptured, or there is no way to sustain basic services.&#8221;</p> <p>Many government officials and business executives also argue that a national habit dating back to the apartheid era &#8212; when entire communities boycotted white rule by refusing to pay rent and utilities &#8212; is responsible for many of the cutoffs. &#8220;You will find in South Africa there exists a culture of nonpayment,&#8221; says Jacob Maroga, managing director of distribution for eskom, the electric utility that the state is preparing to sell. &#8220;There are people who have very legitimate reasons for not paying their bills, but there are many more who grew accustomed through our liberation movement to simply not paying a bill. That&#8217;s not the kind of attitude that&#8217;s constructive to building a modern, productive economy.&#8221;</p> <p>Studies by research organizations such as Wits University&#8217;s Municipal Services Project, however, suggest that for many families, utility bills have become a major financial burden. Households earning less than 1,000 rand, or $100, a month &#8212; about 1 in 2 nationally &#8212; pay nearly a quarter of their income for utility bills, notes HSRC&#8217;s Hemson. &#8220;This notion of a culture of nonpayment is clearly fantasy,&#8221; he says.</p> <p>Historically, Zulus and other African tribes have had little use for dates. Instead, they mark time by great events; so, if you ask a man in what year he was born, he may respond &#8220;in the year of the great flood&#8221; or in the &#8220;time of the great famine.&#8221; If you ask Josephine Mhiyne about her youngest grandchild, Nomsa, she will tell you that the two-year-old was born in the &#8220;time of the great cholera&#8221; &#8212; in 2000, the year the epidemic began.</p> <p>&#8220;We all had it,&#8221; she says, sitting on a rug in front of her mud hut while her granddaughter mauls a stalk of sugarcane. &#8220;We just thank God that no one died. I got it right after she was born. My stomach was running so bad. It was because we were drinking from the river. I live in fear of the river, but I still return to it for water every day. I have no other option.&#8221;</p> <p>Until the recent outbreak, the Empangeni region had not seen a major cholera epidemic since a bad drought in 1982, when some 12,000 cases &#8212; less than 10 percent of the number reported in the current epidemic &#8212; occurred. In response to that outbreak, town officials built nine communal taps providing clean water to Ngwelezana and the Madlebe villages. It was not uncommon for residents to make several trips a day to fetch water, sometimes walking a mile each way.</p> <p>In the months before the December 2000 nationwide municipal elections, with unemployment rates soaring and the patience of poor South Africans wearing thin, President Thabo Mbeki and other anc politicians took to the campaign trail and promised more water and electricity hookups for the poor. Within eight months of the vote, municipal workers in Empangeni completed the extension of the water pipes to about 7,000 homes in the outlying villages. There was just one catch: To use the newly installed taps, residents would have to insert a prepaid card into a meter. If someone fell behind in paying their water bill, municipal authorities would cancel the card, leaving residents unable to access their tap.</p> <p>&#8220;We have come to hate those meters,&#8221; says 59-year-old Busisiwe Nkwanyana as she and her two daughters fetch water to cook their supper from a muddy pit. &#8220;At first we would go to neighbors who still had water and ask to use theirs, but soon no one here could afford the water. No one could use their taps. It was like we had traveled back in time.&#8221; Nkwanyana came down with cholera late in 2000 after her tap was shut off. Both her daughters soon fell ill, as did two of their grandchildren, a niece, and neighbors on each side of her mud hut.</p> <p>Part of the problem, says David Sanders, a professor of public health at the University of the Western Cape, is that while the government has expanded delivery of clean water, it has not made much of a dent in providing sewage systems. &#8220;The problem is very simple,&#8221; he says. &#8220;People didn&#8217;t have sanitation and so they shit in the river. People didn&#8217;t have money to pay for their water and so they went to the river for water.&#8221;</p> <p>The government has scored one major success in the epidemic: It has kept cholera from killing most of its victims, a remarkable feat especially given South Africa&#8217;s high HIV infection rate. Only a quarter of one percent of those who contracted the cholera virus since August of 2000 died, notes HSRC&#8217;s Hemson, one of the lowest fatality rates on record in a major cholera epidemic. But, he adds, &#8220;even that came at great expense to the government, and it could have been offset with some adjustments in their policy of cost recovery. The cutoffs cost them more money in the end in dealing with the disease that resulted from it.&#8221;</p> <p>In recent months, South Africa&#8217;s cholera infection rate has finally slowed &#8212; in part, experts say, because people have gotten more cautious about the water they use. Still, Metolina Mthembu continues to make her daily trek to the river, navigating the hilly footpaths with an ease that seems impossible for a woman of her age and slight physique. &#8220;Sometimes the river gets totally dry,&#8221; she says, &#8220;and you have to walk for two or three kilometers to find water. Or you go without for days at a time.&#8221; Mthembu cannot imagine any hell worse than apartheid; she makes sure to preface any criticism of the government with that caveat. &#8220;But we still live with misery,&#8221; she says as she climbs the hill separating her home from the copper-colored stream on which she once again depends. &#8220;If we could only get water, then we would be really free.&#8221;</p> <p />

South Africa’s Driest Season

https://motherjones.com/politics/2002/11/south-africas-driest-season/

2018-11-01

4left

Photo Marc Shoul What the peasants call 8220the river8221 is no more than a puddle really a shallow accumulation of muddy brown water in Embabe village on the outskirts of Empangeni in South Africa8217s KwaZuluNatal province The river is maybe a quarter mile from Metolina Mthembu8217s mud hut and to get there you walk through a breathlessly gorgeous expanse of green savanna runaway hills and sugarcane fields that tumbles along the coast of the Indian Ocean Mthembu makes the shoeless trek to the river virtually every day walking past the tap that was installed just a few feet from her house two years ago It is bonedry With two jobless adult children to feed and only her pension of roughly 50 a month to support them the 70yearold Mthembu can8217t always find the money to pay the equivalent of 7 a month for water And so a wellrehearsed dance has evolved between the old woman and her local utility a sequence that plays out every few months or so She falls behind in her payments they disconnect her tap she turns to the river until she finds the money to pay her bill 8220I know the water is unsafe8221 she said on a July morning as a young girl in a formless yellow dress crouched in the river behind her dipping her plastic bucket 8220I was a victim of cholera in February and then my daughter and my neighbor became sick with cholera as well8221 During what Mthembu calls 8220the old government8221 8212 the brutal whiteminority regime that was ousted by South Africa8217s first allraces election in 1994 8212 she had to walk half a mile to get clean water from a standpipe She8217s glad the new government installed a tap outside her home two years ago But now the water costs money she notes and people here are poor 8220There are no jobs We must choose between food and water so we buy food and pray that the water does not make us ill It is a bad gamble Many many of us have grown sick from the water8221 South Africa is only now beginning to emerge from the worst cholera outbreak in its history a plague of almost epic proportions that began two years ago just weeks after local authorities began shutting off water service to residents who were late on their bills Pressured by international lenders such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund the government adopted a conservative fiscal measure known as 8220cost recovery8221 which requires public services such as water electricity and telecommunications to pay for themselves often through increased fees it also encourages turning those utilities over to private companies Several South African cities have already turned over their water operations to multinational companies like Francebased Vivendi Universal and Suez For the nation8217s remaining municipal authorities the first step toward privatization is to try to turn public utilities into profit centers that can attract investors Across the globe 8212 from China to Eastern Europe subSaharan Africa to South America 8212 cashstrapped local and national governments are selling off stateowned water operations making privatization an estimated 200billionayear business worldwide Private water companies promise to improve delivery and maximize scarce public resources But the result has often been far different according to relief agencies unions and nonprofits They contend that corporations are taking advantage of public resources and subsidies while driving up the price of water and cutting off the poorest users At the UN World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last summer delegates designated water as one of the key issues facing poor countries About 11 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water and dwindling supplies could push that number even higher in years to come 8220There8217s a global water crisis and at the same time water is being increasingly commodified8221 says Vandana Shiva founder of the Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology in India 8220We are trusting corporations to be the protectors of our environment and the protectors of our human needs8221 8220Empangeni8221 derives its name from the Zulu word 8220phanga8221 which roughly translated means 8220to grab8221 It is a reference to the uncommonly high number of crocodile attacks that once occurred on the Mlathuze River Home to South Africa8217s largest sugar mill as well as paper factories aluminum smelters mines and upscale game farms Empangeni is surrounded by Ngwelezana an allblack township and the villages of the Madlebe tribe which during apartheid were autonomous black homelands or bantustans that provided whiteowned business with cheap labor For people living in these communities and others like them the 8220cost recovery8221 policy has meant a dramatic increase in the price of utilities such as electricity and water 8212 even as South Africa8217s economy has rapidly shed jobs for unskilled workers To force customers to pay the higher bills local governments are making use of a tool seldom employed even by the apartheid regime disconnection of services Nearly a quarter of South Africa8217s 44 million people live in households that have had their water cut off at least once since 1996 In Empangeni local authorities began disconnecting water for nonpaying customers in mid2000 As the cutoffs have spread so too has cholera with increasing numbers of poor South Africans heading to polluted rivers streams even open pits to draw water for bathing cooking and drinking Publichealth researchers have concluded that the epidemic began in the Empangeni region within weeks of the first water disconnection and from there the waterborne disease quickly fanned out into seven of South Africa8217s nine provinces 8220No one doubts our government8217s good intentions8221 says David Hemson research director of the governmentfunded Human Sciences Research Council HSRC 8220But in the name of development in the name of progress and modernization we have exposed our most vulnerable populations to this very colonial disease a disease that is by definition a byproduct of backwardness What does that say about policies like cost recovery8221 In the last two years KwaZuluNatal8217s public hospitals have reported nearly 114000 cases of cholera more than five times as many as had been reported in the province over the previous 20 years combined Nearly 260 South Africans have died from cholera since the epidemic began Early on the disease was so rampant that hospitals in and around Empangeni opened 14 hydration centers tents where medics worked in 24hour shifts to provide fluids to patients When the city ran short of ambulances the local government appealed to the South African defense forces for help and for nearly six months soldiers shuttled patients to hospitals and makeshift clinics 8220We were simply running out of capacity and out of space8221 says Peter Haselau the manager of Empangeni8217s main public medical center 8220We would get a handle on it in one place and it would break out somewhere else We got to the point where we thought we might collapse if we got any more cases The problem was that so many people didn8217t have money for water so they were going to traditional sources of water And that water8217s no good8221 When Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa8217s first democratically elected president in 1994 a third of the country8217s population had no electricity or access to clean water and half had no indoor toilet In rural areas it was not uncommon for a single tap to serve whole communities Since 1994 the African National Congress government has dramatically closed the gap between prosperous whites and poor blacks building more than 1 million new homes and reducing by almost twothirds the number of South Africans without running water But like the water that flows through Mbabe the ANC8217s policies have been both a blessing and curse to poor South Africans who have overwhelmingly supported the governing party In its attempt to attract foreign investment the ANC has all but shed its Marxist roots for a marketdriven fiscal plan called Growth Employment and Redistribution or gear So far gear8217s attempts to privatize stateowned industries open domestic markets to foreign competition and keep a lid on public spending have left many South Africans materially worse off than they were in the years before apartheid8217s collapse Nearly 500000 jobs have vanished and more than a third of South Africa8217s 44 million people survive on less than 2 a day a figure unchanged since apartheid Government statistics indicate that a quarter of the workforce is unemployed and many economists put the number closer to 40 percent The coupling of soaring utility costs with higher unemployment has proved especially punishing to poor blacks As the government prepares to sell the stateowned power company EKSOM new pricing policies have caused electricity costs in townships like Soweto to rise by as much as 400 percent Meanwhile EKSOM offers lower rates to businesses and municipalities 8212 mostly welloff white suburbs 8212 that can afford to buy electricity in bulk According to a study released last year by the Municipal Services Project at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg commonly referred to as Wits University EKSOM cut power to nearly 20000 households and businesses in Soweto each month last year 8220In the hearts and minds of every black South African nothing will ever compare to apartheid8221 says Guy Mhone an economist at Wits University 8220But there is a very real frustration now that we have only exchanged the savagery of apartheid for the savagery of an untethered free market8221 One South African municipality that has begun to privatize its water operations is Johannesburg the nation8217s largest city which has a utility district that includes dozens of impoverished allblack suburbs like Soweto and Alexandra In 2001 the city entered into a partnership with Suez and some of its subsidiaries 8212 despite the fact that Suez tendered the lowest bid Suez8217s history of raising prices did not bode well for poor residents especially since the new utility Johannesburg Water Management Company had inherited an apartheidera white elephant known as the Lesotho Highlands Water Project This 8 billion scheme to build six new dams in the waterrich country of Lesotho 8212 which is completely surrounded by South Africa 8212 has already caused the cost of water in Johannesburg to nearly triple since the anc came to power and many of Alexandra8217s residents complain that they can no longer afford to pay their bills Conceived by the apartheid government the project was supported by the World Bank and other international lenders who sidestepped international sanctions to finance the deal in 1986 The ANC denounced the arrangement at the time saying that it strengthened apartheid But after the ANC took office in 1994 party leaders decided to plow ahead The first of the six dams the tallest on the continent was completed in 1998 Developers expect to build the remaining five over the next 18 years The project is partially financed by international loans that will be repaid by passing the cost on to consumers A disproportionate share will be paid for by residents of Alexandra Allwhite suburbs home to less than onetenth of South Africa8217s population account for more than half the country8217s residential water use But since these communities can take advantage of discounted bulk rates a household in Johannesburg8217s white suburbs can fill its swimming pool and water its garden at less than half the cost per liter paid by a family in Alexandra Unions environmentalists and community groups have appealed to the government to cancel the Lesotho dam project and repair the apartheidera infrastructure instead 8220We don8217t need the water from the dams8221 says Sam Moiloa a conservation activist who lives in Alexandra with his wife and two children 8220We lose half of our available water through leaks We should just fix the leaks and our government can use that money they8217re spending on dams for the rich to improve our standard of living8221 Advocates also propose charging higher rates to bigger users allowing welloff households and businesses to subsidize the poor Government officials however say that making utilities profitable is critical to South Africa8217s competitiveness at a time when foreign investment is badly needed 8220There8217s a lot of polemics around this issue8221 says Mike Muller director general of South Africa8217s Department of Water and Forestry 8220But the truth is that operating costs have to be recaptured or there is no way to sustain basic services8221 Many government officials and business executives also argue that a national habit dating back to the apartheid era 8212 when entire communities boycotted white rule by refusing to pay rent and utilities 8212 is responsible for many of the cutoffs 8220You will find in South Africa there exists a culture of nonpayment8221 says Jacob Maroga managing director of distribution for eskom the electric utility that the state is preparing to sell 8220There are people who have very legitimate reasons for not paying their bills but there are many more who grew accustomed through our liberation movement to simply not paying a bill That8217s not the kind of attitude that8217s constructive to building a modern productive economy8221 Studies by research organizations such as Wits University8217s Municipal Services Project however suggest that for many families utility bills have become a major financial burden Households earning less than 1000 rand or 100 a month 8212 about 1 in 2 nationally 8212 pay nearly a quarter of their income for utility bills notes HSRC8217s Hemson 8220This notion of a culture of nonpayment is clearly fantasy8221 he says Historically Zulus and other African tribes have had little use for dates Instead they mark time by great events so if you ask a man in what year he was born he may respond 8220in the year of the great flood8221 or in the 8220time of the great famine8221 If you ask Josephine Mhiyne about her youngest grandchild Nomsa she will tell you that the twoyearold was born in the 8220time of the great cholera8221 8212 in 2000 the year the epidemic began 8220We all had it8221 she says sitting on a rug in front of her mud hut while her granddaughter mauls a stalk of sugarcane 8220We just thank God that no one died I got it right after she was born My stomach was running so bad It was because we were drinking from the river I live in fear of the river but I still return to it for water every day I have no other option8221 Until the recent outbreak the Empangeni region had not seen a major cholera epidemic since a bad drought in 1982 when some 12000 cases 8212 less than 10 percent of the number reported in the current epidemic 8212 occurred In response to that outbreak town officials built nine communal taps providing clean water to Ngwelezana and the Madlebe villages It was not uncommon for residents to make several trips a day to fetch water sometimes walking a mile each way In the months before the December 2000 nationwide municipal elections with unemployment rates soaring and the patience of poor South Africans wearing thin President Thabo Mbeki and other anc politicians took to the campaign trail and promised more water and electricity hookups for the poor Within eight months of the vote municipal workers in Empangeni completed the extension of the water pipes to about 7000 homes in the outlying villages There was just one catch To use the newly installed taps residents would have to insert a prepaid card into a meter If someone fell behind in paying their water bill municipal authorities would cancel the card leaving residents unable to access their tap 8220We have come to hate those meters8221 says 59yearold Busisiwe Nkwanyana as she and her two daughters fetch water to cook their supper from a muddy pit 8220At first we would go to neighbors who still had water and ask to use theirs but soon no one here could afford the water No one could use their taps It was like we had traveled back in time8221 Nkwanyana came down with cholera late in 2000 after her tap was shut off Both her daughters soon fell ill as did two of their grandchildren a niece and neighbors on each side of her mud hut Part of the problem says David Sanders a professor of public health at the University of the Western Cape is that while the government has expanded delivery of clean water it has not made much of a dent in providing sewage systems 8220The problem is very simple8221 he says 8220People didn8217t have sanitation and so they shit in the river People didn8217t have money to pay for their water and so they went to the river for water8221 The government has scored one major success in the epidemic It has kept cholera from killing most of its victims a remarkable feat especially given South Africa8217s high HIV infection rate Only a quarter of one percent of those who contracted the cholera virus since August of 2000 died notes HSRC8217s Hemson one of the lowest fatality rates on record in a major cholera epidemic But he adds 8220even that came at great expense to the government and it could have been offset with some adjustments in their policy of cost recovery The cutoffs cost them more money in the end in dealing with the disease that resulted from it8221 In recent months South Africa8217s cholera infection rate has finally slowed 8212 in part experts say because people have gotten more cautious about the water they use Still Metolina Mthembu continues to make her daily trek to the river navigating the hilly footpaths with an ease that seems impossible for a woman of her age and slight physique 8220Sometimes the river gets totally dry8221 she says 8220and you have to walk for two or three kilometers to find water Or you go without for days at a time8221 Mthembu cannot imagine any hell worse than apartheid she makes sure to preface any criticism of the government with that caveat 8220But we still live with misery8221 she says as she climbs the hill separating her home from the coppercolored stream on which she once again depends 8220If we could only get water then we would be really free8221

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a/DET tap/NOUN outside/ADP her/PRON home/NOUN two/NUM years/NOUN ago/ADV But/CCONJ now/ADV the/DET water/NOUN costs/VERB money/NOUN she/PRON notes/VERB and/CCONJ people/NOUN here/ADV are/AUX poor/ADJ 8220There/NUM are/AUX no/DET jobs/NOUN We/PRON must/AUX choose/VERB between/ADP food/NOUN and/CCONJ water/NOUN so/ADV we/PRON buy/VERB food/NOUN and/CCONJ pray/VERB that/SCONJ the/DET water/NOUN does/AUX not/PART make/VERB us/PRON ill/ADJ It/PRON is/AUX a/DET bad/ADJ gamble/NOUN Many/ADJ many/ADJ of/ADP us/PRON have/AUX grown/VERB sick/ADJ from/ADP the/DET water8221/PROPN South/PROPN Africa/PROPN is/AUX only/ADV now/ADV beginning/VERB to/PART emerge/VERB from/ADP the/DET worst/ADJ cholera/NOUN outbreak/NOUN in/ADP its/PRON history/NOUN a/DET plague/NOUN of/ADP almost/ADV epic/ADJ proportions/NOUN that/PRON began/VERB two/NUM years/NOUN ago/ADV just/ADV weeks/NOUN after/SCONJ local/ADJ authorities/NOUN began/VERB shutting/VERB off/ADP water/NOUN service/NOUN to/ADP residents/NOUN who/PRON 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<p>Here is the order of events producing this bizarre &#8220;controversy.&#8221;</p> <p>2009: A Muslim organization having arranged to purchase an abandoned Burlington Coat factory on Park Place in Lower Manhattan plans to build a 13-story Islamic community center. It will feature a culinary school, conference hall, basketball court, swimming pool, and place of worship among other things and while principally servicing the Muslim community be open to all. It is to be called the Cordoba House, an apparent allusion to Muslim Spain in which Islam flourished alongside Christianity and Judaism from the eighth century up to the &#8220;Reconquest.&#8221;</p> <p>In its mission statement the group says the center &#8220;will be dedicated to pluralism, service, arts and culture, education and empowerment, appreciation for our city and a deep respect for our planet.&amp;#160; [It] will join New York to the world, offering a welcoming community center with multiple points of entry. With world-class facilities, a global scope and strong local roots, [the center]&amp;#160; will offer a friendly and accessible platform for conversations across our&amp;#160;identities.&#8221;</p> <p>It will be four big city blocks away from where the World Trade Center once stood (&#8220;Ground Zero&#8221;). But since there are already about eight mosques in Manhattan, and a significant Muslim population in that highly diverse section of New York City, there is nothing remarkable about the group&#8217;s application to tear down the old factory building and construct the center.</p> <p>The key organizer, Kuwait-born Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an imam of the Sufi school of Islam, generally described as &#8220;moderate&#8221; and mystical. He holds a degree in physics from Columbia University, had been hired by the FBI to conduct sensitivity training among their agents, and had worked with the U.S. State Department. He had met New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, who strongly supports the plan for the center.</p> <p>In December 2009 the New York Times runs an article on the project. It is generally positive, citing two Jewish leaders and the mother of a 9-11 victim in support. In the same month conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, guest-hosting FOX News&#8217; &#8220;The O&#8217;Reilly Factor,&#8221; interviews Rauf&#8217;s wife, Daisy Khan. The interview is as Salon&#8217;s Justin Elliot later notes &#8220;remarkable for its cordiality.&#8221; &amp;#160;&#8220;I can&#8217;t find many people who really have a problem with [the project],&amp;#160; declares Ingraham.&amp;#160; &#8220;I like what you&#8217;re trying to do.&#8221;</p> <p>On May 6, 2010, after a public hearing in which New Yorkers express strong feelings pro and con, the New York City community board committee unanimously votes to approve the project. Enter Pamela Geller, who maintains a blog called Atlas Shrugs. She has written a book about Barack Obama in which she alleges his real father was Malcolm X.&amp;#160; She leads an apparently tiny wacko group called Stop the Islamization of America. Seeing the opportunity to have her moment in the sun (and she is soon interviewed by FOX News and CNN), she lashes out at Cordoba House. She declares on her blog, &#8220;this is not about religious liberty. No one has suggested abridging the First Amendment to stop the mosque, and to oppose the Ground Zero mosque is not to oppose the First Amendment. There are hundreds of mosques in New York, thousands in America.&amp;#160;This is not a religious issue. This is an issue of national dignity and respect for those who were murdered at that site in the name of Islam.&#8221; She begins to organize a protest at the Park Place site.</p> <p>Soon New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser references Geller&#8217;s group, falsely describing it as a &#8220;human rights group.&#8221; This brings the movement against the &#8220;Ground Zero mosque&#8221; out of the blogosphere and into the mainstream press. She sensationalizes the issue, falsely reporting that the center is to open on Sept. 11, 2011. A &#8220;controversy&#8221; erupts.</p> <p>On July 16 Sarah Palin weighs in. Addressing not Muslims specifically but &#8220;Peaceful New Yorkers,&#8221; Sarah Palin twittered: &#8220; pls refudiate [sic] the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.&#8221; She adds two days later (after ammending &#8220;refudiate&#8221; to &#8220;refute&#8221;), &#8220;Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. . .&#8221; Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich expresses outrage in multiple statements over the next month: &#8220;There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.&#8221; &amp;#160;&#8220;It&#8217;s not about religion,&#8221; he&amp;#160; insists, &#8220;and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.&#8221; He says the center will be a symbol of Muslim &#8220;triumphalism,&#8221; and that building the mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks &#8220;would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.&#8221;</p> <p>He writes, &#8220;&#8216;Cordoba House&#8217; is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain&#8211;the capital of Muslim conquerors, who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world&#8217;s third-largest mosque complex&#8230; every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest.&#8221; In response to this absurb allegation the center organizers change the name to &#8220;Park51.&#8221;</p> <p>(Gingrich who postures as an historian and scholar might have noted the Visigothic church was purchased by the conquering emir after 718 and that the Arabs during their rule in Spain pursued a policy of far greater religious tolerance than the Christians had before them. They allowed churches and synagogues to operate freely. When the Christians regained power, they expelled all Jews and Muslims, or forced them to convert, and conducted the Spanish Inquisition.)</p> <p>Republican politicians smelling blood and opportunity continue to lash out. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty says, &#8220;I think it&#8217;s inappropriate&#8230; From a patriotic standpoint, it&#8217;s hallowed ground, it&#8217;s sacred ground, and we should respect that. We shouldn&#8217;t have images or activities that degrade or disrespect that in any way.&#8221; Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee asks on his FOX program August 4, &#8220;Even if the Muslims have the right to build it, don&#8217;t they do more to serve the public interest by exercising the responsible judgment to not build it?&#8221;&amp;#160; &#8220;The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn&#8217;t necessarily make it the right thing to do,&#8221; echoed Ohio Rep. John Boehner.</p> <p>Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney&#8217;s spokesman adds: &#8220;Governor Romney opposes the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero.&amp;#160;The wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential for&amp;#160;extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda compel&amp;#160;rejection of this site.&#8221;</p> <p>On August 13 President Obama hosts representatives of the Muslim community at the White House. &#8220;As a citizen,&#8221; he tells them, &#8220;and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.&#8221;</p> <p>A Republican running for Congress in Maryland, Andrew Harris, denounces the statement: &#8220;He is thinking like a lawyer and not an American, making declarations without America&#8217;s best interest in mind.&#8221; Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., also responds immediately: &#8220;President Obama is wrong. It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero.&#8221;</p> <p>Bob Schieffer, CBS News&#8217; chief Washington correspondent observes that Obama&#8217;s attention to the mosque issue &#8220;elevates it to a national issue. Clearly, Republicans are trying to take every advantage of this they can&#8230; every single Democratic candidate now running for office is going to be asked about it.&#8221;</p> <p>Democratic Party leaders quickly distance themselves from the president&#8217;s remarks. . &#8220;The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,&#8221; says a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid adding that the senator &#8220;respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.&#8221;</p> <p>Obama himself, startled by the response to his comments, has to elaborate almost immediately. &#8220;I was not commenting, and I will not comment,&#8221; he said, &#8220;on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That&#8217;s what our country is about.&#8221;</p> <p>A CNN poll published in August 11 shows 68% of Americans opposed to the center, and a FOX poll published August 13 shows that 61% of U.S. residents support the legal right to construct Park 51 but 64% don&#8217;t want the Muslim group to construct it. This becomes the mandatory position of all politicians: they&#8217;ve got a right to do it, but they shouldn&#8217;t. It would not be politically wise to suggest a general ban on mosques or Islamic community centers. But everyone has to say, this particular project is wrong because it shows insensitivity to the feelings of &#8220;Americans&#8221; particularly family members of the 9-11 victims. Justin Quinn, who maintains the &#8220;U.S. Conservative Politics Blog&#8221; for example, justifies his disapproval by suggesting the building will hurt &#8220;thousands of people who continue to mourn the loss of loved ones who were turned to dust in the attacks.&#8221;</p> <p>But there is another issue as well. New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, Gingrich, and Quinn all call for an investigation of the center&#8217;s funding, suggesting that some of it might come from &#8220;Islamic terrorists.&#8221; Lazio speaks ominously about the &#8220;the questionable backers of the Cordoba Mosque at Ground Zero&#8221; and calls for a public investigation. Quinn says, &#8220;let&#8217;s at least find out where the money is coming from to pay for this thing.&#8221; Soon House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on board the program, although, alarmed at the backlash from Obama&#8217;s remarks, she suggests the &#8220;anti-mosque&#8221; movement should also be investigated.</p> <p>By innuendo they assert that Rauf is linked to international terrorism. That seems unlikely since he&#8217;s been hired by the FBI since 2001 to offer sensitivity training to agents and has also just been asked by the State Department recently to tour the Middle East to &#8220;foster greater understanding&#8221; about the U.S. and its Muslims.</p> <p>The charge seems based solely on the fact that in a June 2010 interview with Aaron Klein of New York&#8217;s WABC Radio, he declined to say whether he agreed with the listing of Hamas as a &#8220;terrorist organization.&#8221;</p> <p>He declined to do, replying, &#8220;I&#8217;m not a politician. I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question&#8230;. I&#8217;m a bridge builder. I define my work as a bridge builder. I do not want to be placed, nor do I accept to be placed in a position of being put in a position where I am the target of one side or another.&#8221;</p> <p>(I see nothing damning here. Hamas, initially promoted by Israel as an alternative to secular Palestinian nationalism, has resisted Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. It maintained long-term ceasefires with Israel ended due to Israeli action. It won a fair election in 2006. The U.S. State Department has considered it a &#8220;terrorist organization&#8221; since at least 1994 but the European Union only added it to its blacklist in 2003 under U.S. pressure. Many people including former President Jimmy Carter have asked that it be removed from that list, which is highly political and arbitrary and under no meaningful Congressional oversight. A U.S. Appeals Court recently ruled that the State Department must review its decision to list the People&#8217;s Mujahadeen Organization of Iran as &#8220;terrorist.&#8221; These things are very political, and no one should demand that Rauf endorse the listing. Certainly not those opposed to &#8220;Big Government&#8221; and its expectations of passive obedience from the citizenry.)</p> <p>There are also wild accusations (aside from Gingrich&#8217;s cited above) that the center is designed to rub 9-11 in our noses. &#8220;The mosque at Ground Zero,&#8221; Quinn insists, &#8220;is being pursued to prove a simple political point &#8212; that Islamic fundamentalists can knock our buildings down, murder our citizens and then use our own laws against us so they can laugh in our faces.&#8221;</p> <p>There are also hateful, provocative comments. Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams blogs his followers: &#8220;The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists&#8217; monkey-god (repeat: &#8216;the terrorists&#8217; monkey-god.&#8221; if you feel that fits a description of Allah then that is your own deep-seated emotional baggage not mine, talk to the terrorists who use Allah as their excuse and the Muslims who apologize for and rationalize them) and a &#8216;cultural center&#8217; to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult. It is a project of American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, essentially the same group of apologists (but under 2 different names) for terrorists and the animals who use it as a terrorist ideology. They cloak their evil with new age gibberish that suggests Islam is just misunderstood.&#8221;</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>Thus by mid-August a modest project by a mainstream U.S. Muslim group backed by the New York City mayor and unanimously approved by the New York City community committee has been transformed into a general attack on Muslim rights in this country. The scary thing is that disapproval is so widespread, bipartisan, and driven by irrational fear if not hatred.</p> <p>What does this tell us about this country? It tells us that nine years after 9-11 (and nice centuries after the First Crusade), Islamophobia is rampant and politically useful.&amp;#160; Even though U.S. troops are supposedly fighting to help Muslims in two countries and both Bush and Obama have officially (for whatever reasons) emphasized that the U.S. is not against Islam, Islam is a religion of peace, we value our Muslim citizens, etc. the &#8220;us vs. them&#8221; mentality remains strong.</p> <p>The prevalent argument against the center&#8212;that it may hurt people&#8217;s feelings&#8212;is an argument that people should be hurt by the mere existence of an Islamic site near &#8220;Ground Zero.&#8221; That they should feel hurt at the site of a Muslim establishment as they walk around Lower Manhattan, associating it with the 9-11 hijackers. That they should conflate Mohamed Atta and Rauf, or that at least if they do, their feelings should be respected. Of course Rauf&#8217;s hope is to counter precisely such feels by encouraging understanding and dialogue. (The fact in any case is that according to an August 10 Marist poll only 31% of Manhattan residents oppose the center!)</p> <p>What about the feelings of U.S. Muslims, including those who had family members perish in the 9-11 bombing?&amp;#160; They read about the plans of the &#8220;Dove World Outreach Center&#8221; in Gainesville, Florida&#8212;a &#8220;New Testament church, based on the Bible&#8221;&#8212;to promote an &#8220;International Burn a Quran Day&#8221; this September 11. They read about anti-mosque campaigns in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Temecula, California; Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The Tea Party movement and mainstream politicians enthusiastically embrace the anti-mosque movement. I imagine there are some hurt feelings among people unfairly associated with terrorism just because a handful of Saudis attacked the U.S. nine years ago. To be told &#8220;this sacred ground&#8212;our American ground&#8221; so we don&#8217;t want your Muslim center here &#8220;degrading&#8221; and &#8220;disrespecting&#8221; it (Pawlenty&#8217;s terms) is to be told you&#8217;re not really a full citizen and your religion (as opposed to, say, Catholicism) isn&#8217;t an American one. It must be insulting.</p> <p>The notion that &#8220;they attacked us&#8221;&#8212;that the whole Muslim world attacked &#8220;us&#8221;&#8212;is so preposterous that only the simplest minds can believe it and the most devious exploit their ignorance for political gain. The U.S. has attacked Muslim countries, or intervened to impose regime change, repeatedly in the post-war period. Since 1967 it has provided nearly unconditional support to Israel, inevitably endorsing or accepting its grotesque mistreatment of the Palestinians. It cruelly maintained sanctions against Iraq throughout the 1990s, resulting in at least half a million children&#8217;s deaths. It provides massive aid to hated dictators like Egypt&#8217;s Hosni Mubarak. It has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in its latest attack on Iraq. It maintains an increasingly unpopular occupation of Afghanistan and by its drone attacks on Pakistan has thoroughly alienated the Pakistani people. It is natural for Muslims globally to see themselves under U.S. attack. That a few have responded with terrorist attacks is unsurprising; the CIA calls it &#8220;blowback.&#8221; It is also natural for most, like Rauf, to want to respond to all this with peaceful education and dialogue.</p> <p>The problem isn&#8217;t limited to the U.S. Other western countries are also manifesting Islamophobia, placing Muslims on the defensive. In March 2005 the French parliament voted to ban Islamic head scarves in public schools. This has forced French Muslim schoolgirls to choose between following rules set down in the Qur&#8217;an and receiving public education. In 2005 the Danish right-wing newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten &#8220;invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him.&#8221; Since Muslim teaching forbids depiction of the prophet, and since it was assumed many cartoons would depict him a terrorist, this was a deliberate provocation. In December 2009 Swiss voters voted in a referendum to ban further construction of minarets in the country.&amp;#160; There are only four.</p> <p>There are a lot of hurt feelings about violent attacks, and Muslims in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere frankly have more cause for them than the people of New York City. The loss of&amp;#160; 2976 people on 9-11 was tragic. But more than that number of civilians were killed by U.S. bombing between October 2001 and March 2002, and the loss of life in Iraq due a war based on lies (including the Islamophobic conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam) has been catastrophic. And there are lots of hurt feelings over discrimination, experienced throughout the western world.</p> <p>The controversy over the Islamic center shows us that neither the politicians nor pundits nor people in general understand that, and so seem hell-bent on generating more Muslim resentment. Nothing good can come out of that.</p> <p>GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of <a href="" type="internal">Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan</a>; <a href="" type="internal">Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan</a>; and <a href="" type="internal">Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900</a>. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch&#8217;s merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Imperial Crusades</a>. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:gleupp@granite.tufts.edu" type="external">gleupp@granite.tufts.edu</a>.</p>

Hurt Feelings and the Ground Zero Mosque

https://counterpunch.org/2010/08/20/hurt-feelings-and-the-ground-zero-mosque/

2010-08-20

4left

Here is the order of events producing this bizarre 8220controversy8221 2009 A Muslim organization having arranged to purchase an abandoned Burlington Coat factory on Park Place in Lower Manhattan plans to build a 13story Islamic community center It will feature a culinary school conference hall basketball court swimming pool and place of worship among other things and while principally servicing the Muslim community be open to all It is to be called the Cordoba House an apparent allusion to Muslim Spain in which Islam flourished alongside Christianity and Judaism from the eighth century up to the 8220Reconquest8221 In its mission statement the group says the center 8220will be dedicated to pluralism service arts and culture education and empowerment appreciation for our city and a deep respect for our planetamp160 It will join New York to the world offering a welcoming community center with multiple points of entry With worldclass facilities a global scope and strong local roots the centeramp160 will offer a friendly and accessible platform for conversations across ouramp160identities8221 It will be four big city blocks away from where the World Trade Center once stood 8220Ground Zero8221 But since there are already about eight mosques in Manhattan and a significant Muslim population in that highly diverse section of New York City there is nothing remarkable about the group8217s application to tear down the old factory building and construct the center The key organizer Kuwaitborn Feisal Abdul Rauf is an imam of the Sufi school of Islam generally described as 8220moderate8221 and mystical He holds a degree in physics from Columbia University had been hired by the FBI to conduct sensitivity training among their agents and had worked with the US State Department He had met New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg who strongly supports the plan for the center In December 2009 the New York Times runs an article on the project It is generally positive citing two Jewish leaders and the mother of a 911 victim in support In the same month conservative commentator Laura Ingraham guesthosting FOX News8217 8220The O8217Reilly Factor8221 interviews Rauf8217s wife Daisy Khan The interview is as Salon8217s Justin Elliot later notes 8220remarkable for its cordiality8221 amp1608220I can8217t find many people who really have a problem with the projectamp160 declares Ingrahamamp160 8220I like what you8217re trying to do8221 On May 6 2010 after a public hearing in which New Yorkers express strong feelings pro and con the New York City community board committee unanimously votes to approve the project Enter Pamela Geller who maintains a blog called Atlas Shrugs She has written a book about Barack Obama in which she alleges his real father was Malcolm Xamp160 She leads an apparently tiny wacko group called Stop the Islamization of America Seeing the opportunity to have her moment in the sun and she is soon interviewed by FOX News and CNN she lashes out at Cordoba House She declares on her blog 8220this is not about religious liberty No one has suggested abridging the First Amendment to stop the mosque and to oppose the Ground Zero mosque is not to oppose the First Amendment There are hundreds of mosques in New York thousands in Americaamp160This is not a religious issue This is an issue of national dignity and respect for those who were murdered at that site in the name of Islam8221 She begins to organize a protest at the Park Place site Soon New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser references Geller8217s group falsely describing it as a 8220human rights group8221 This brings the movement against the 8220Ground Zero mosque8221 out of the blogosphere and into the mainstream press She sensationalizes the issue falsely reporting that the center is to open on Sept 11 2011 A 8220controversy8221 erupts On July 16 Sarah Palin weighs in Addressing not Muslims specifically but 8220Peaceful New Yorkers8221 Sarah Palin twittered 8220 pls refudiate sic the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused Twin Towers site is too raw too real8221 She adds two days later after ammending 8220refudiate8221 to 8220refute8221 8220Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation it stabs hearts 8221 Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich expresses outrage in multiple statements over the next month 8220There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia8221 amp1608220It8217s not about religion8221 heamp160 insists 8220and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive8221 He says the center will be a symbol of Muslim 8220triumphalism8221 and that building the mosque near the site of the 911 attacks 8220would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum8221 He writes 82208216Cordoba House8217 is a deliberately insulting term It refers to Cordoba Spain8211the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world8217s thirdlargest mosque complex8230 every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest8221 In response to this absurb allegation the center organizers change the name to 8220Park518221 Gingrich who postures as an historian and scholar might have noted the Visigothic church was purchased by the conquering emir after 718 and that the Arabs during their rule in Spain pursued a policy of far greater religious tolerance than the Christians had before them They allowed churches and synagogues to operate freely When the Christians regained power they expelled all Jews and Muslims or forced them to convert and conducted the Spanish Inquisition Republican politicians smelling blood and opportunity continue to lash out Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty says 8220I think it8217s inappropriate8230 From a patriotic standpoint it8217s hallowed ground it8217s sacred ground and we should respect that We shouldn8217t have images or activities that degrade or disrespect that in any way8221 Former Arkansas Gov Mike Huckabee asks on his FOX program August 4 8220Even if the Muslims have the right to build it don8217t they do more to serve the public interest by exercising the responsible judgment to not build it8221amp160 8220The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn8217t necessarily make it the right thing to do8221 echoed Ohio Rep John Boehner Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney8217s spokesman adds 8220Governor Romney opposes the construction of the mosque at Ground Zeroamp160The wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential foramp160extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda compelamp160rejection of this site8221 On August 13 President Obama hosts representatives of the Muslim community at the White House 8220As a citizen8221 he tells them 8220and as president I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan in accordance with local laws and ordinances This is America and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable8221 A Republican running for Congress in Maryland Andrew Harris denounces the statement 8220He is thinking like a lawyer and not an American making declarations without America8217s best interest in mind8221 Rep Peter King RNY also responds immediately 8220President Obama is wrong It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero8221 Bob Schieffer CBS News8217 chief Washington correspondent observes that Obama8217s attention to the mosque issue 8220elevates it to a national issue Clearly Republicans are trying to take every advantage of this they can8230 every single Democratic candidate now running for office is going to be asked about it8221 Democratic Party leaders quickly distance themselves from the president8217s remarks 8220The First Amendment protects freedom of religion8221 says a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid adding that the senator 8220respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else8221 Obama himself startled by the response to his comments has to elaborate almost immediately 8220I was not commenting and I will not comment8221 he said 8220on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding That8217s what our country is about8221 A CNN poll published in August 11 shows 68 of Americans opposed to the center and a FOX poll published August 13 shows that 61 of US residents support the legal right to construct Park 51 but 64 don8217t want the Muslim group to construct it This becomes the mandatory position of all politicians they8217ve got a right to do it but they shouldn8217t It would not be politically wise to suggest a general ban on mosques or Islamic community centers But everyone has to say this particular project is wrong because it shows insensitivity to the feelings of 8220Americans8221 particularly family members of the 911 victims Justin Quinn who maintains the 8220US Conservative Politics Blog8221 for example justifies his disapproval by suggesting the building will hurt 8220thousands of people who continue to mourn the loss of loved ones who were turned to dust in the attacks8221 But there is another issue as well New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio Gingrich and Quinn all call for an investigation of the center8217s funding suggesting that some of it might come from 8220Islamic terrorists8221 Lazio speaks ominously about the 8220the questionable backers of the Cordoba Mosque at Ground Zero8221 and calls for a public investigation Quinn says 8220let8217s at least find out where the money is coming from to pay for this thing8221 Soon House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on board the program although alarmed at the backlash from Obama8217s remarks she suggests the 8220antimosque8221 movement should also be investigated By innuendo they assert that Rauf is linked to international terrorism That seems unlikely since he8217s been hired by the FBI since 2001 to offer sensitivity training to agents and has also just been asked by the State Department recently to tour the Middle East to 8220foster greater understanding8221 about the US and its Muslims The charge seems based solely on the fact that in a June 2010 interview with Aaron Klein of New York8217s WABC Radio he declined to say whether he agreed with the listing of Hamas as a 8220terrorist organization8221 He declined to do replying 8220I8217m not a politician I try to avoid the issues The issue of terrorism is a very complex question8230 I8217m a bridge builder I define my work as a bridge builder I do not want to be placed nor do I accept to be placed in a position of being put in a position where I am the target of one side or another8221 I see nothing damning here Hamas initially promoted by Israel as an alternative to secular Palestinian nationalism has resisted Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands It maintained longterm ceasefires with Israel ended due to Israeli action It won a fair election in 2006 The US State Department has considered it a 8220terrorist organization8221 since at least 1994 but the European Union only added it to its blacklist in 2003 under US pressure Many people including former President Jimmy Carter have asked that it be removed from that list which is highly political and arbitrary and under no meaningful Congressional oversight A US Appeals Court recently ruled that the State Department must review its decision to list the People8217s Mujahadeen Organization of Iran as 8220terrorist8221 These things are very political and no one should demand that Rauf endorse the listing Certainly not those opposed to 8220Big Government8221 and its expectations of passive obedience from the citizenry There are also wild accusations aside from Gingrich8217s cited above that the center is designed to rub 911 in our noses 8220The mosque at Ground Zero8221 Quinn insists 8220is being pursued to prove a simple political point 8212 that Islamic fundamentalists can knock our buildings down murder our citizens and then use our own laws against us so they can laugh in our faces8221 There are also hateful provocative comments Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams blogs his followers 8220The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists8217 monkeygod repeat 8216the terrorists8217 monkeygod8221 if you feel that fits a description of Allah then that is your own deepseated emotional baggage not mine talk to the terrorists who use Allah as their excuse and the Muslims who apologize for and rationalize them and a 8216cultural center8217 to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult It is a project of American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative essentially the same group of apologists but under 2 different names for terrorists and the animals who use it as a terrorist ideology They cloak their evil with new age gibberish that suggests Islam is just misunderstood8221 Thus by midAugust a modest project by a mainstream US Muslim group backed by the New York City mayor and unanimously approved by the New York City community committee has been transformed into a general attack on Muslim rights in this country The scary thing is that disapproval is so widespread bipartisan and driven by irrational fear if not hatred What does this tell us about this country It tells us that nine years after 911 and nice centuries after the First Crusade Islamophobia is rampant and politically usefulamp160 Even though US troops are supposedly fighting to help Muslims in two countries and both Bush and Obama have officially for whatever reasons emphasized that the US is not against Islam Islam is a religion of peace we value our Muslim citizens etc the 8220us vs them8221 mentality remains strong The prevalent argument against the center8212that it may hurt people8217s feelings8212is an argument that people should be hurt by the mere existence of an Islamic site near 8220Ground Zero8221 That they should feel hurt at the site of a Muslim establishment as they walk around Lower Manhattan associating it with the 911 hijackers That they should conflate Mohamed Atta and Rauf or that at least if they do their feelings should be respected Of course Rauf8217s hope is to counter precisely such feels by encouraging understanding and dialogue The fact in any case is that according to an August 10 Marist poll only 31 of Manhattan residents oppose the center What about the feelings of US Muslims including those who had family members perish in the 911 bombingamp160 They read about the plans of the 8220Dove World Outreach Center8221 in Gainesville Florida8212a 8220New Testament church based on the Bible82218212to promote an 8220International Burn a Quran Day8221 this September 11 They read about antimosque campaigns in Murfreesboro Tennessee Temecula California Sheboygan Wisconsin The Tea Party movement and mainstream politicians enthusiastically embrace the antimosque movement I imagine there are some hurt feelings among people unfairly associated with terrorism just because a handful of Saudis attacked the US nine years ago To be told 8220this sacred ground8212our American ground8221 so we don8217t want your Muslim center here 8220degrading8221 and 8220disrespecting8221 it Pawlenty8217s terms is to be told you8217re not really a full citizen and your religion as opposed to say Catholicism isn8217t an American one It must be insulting The notion that 8220they attacked us82218212that the whole Muslim world attacked 8220us82218212is so preposterous that only the simplest minds can believe it and the most devious exploit their ignorance for political gain The US has attacked Muslim countries or intervened to impose regime change repeatedly in the postwar period Since 1967 it has provided nearly unconditional support to Israel inevitably endorsing or accepting its grotesque mistreatment of the Palestinians It cruelly maintained sanctions against Iraq throughout the 1990s resulting in at least half a million children8217s deaths It provides massive aid to hated dictators like Egypt8217s Hosni Mubarak It has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in its latest attack on Iraq It maintains an increasingly unpopular occupation of Afghanistan and by its drone attacks on Pakistan has thoroughly alienated the Pakistani people It is natural for Muslims globally to see themselves under US attack That a few have responded with terrorist attacks is unsurprising the CIA calls it 8220blowback8221 It is also natural for most like Rauf to want to respond to all this with peaceful education and dialogue The problem isn8217t limited to the US Other western countries are also manifesting Islamophobia placing Muslims on the defensive In March 2005 the French parliament voted to ban Islamic head scarves in public schools This has forced French Muslim schoolgirls to choose between following rules set down in the Qur8217an and receiving public education In 2005 the Danish rightwing newspaper Morgenavisen JyllandsPosten 8220invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him8221 Since Muslim teaching forbids depiction of the prophet and since it was assumed many cartoons would depict him a terrorist this was a deliberate provocation In December 2009 Swiss voters voted in a referendum to ban further construction of minarets in the countryamp160 There are only four There are a lot of hurt feelings about violent attacks and Muslims in Gaza Lebanon Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan and elsewhere frankly have more cause for them than the people of New York City The loss ofamp160 2976 people on 911 was tragic But more than that number of civilians were killed by US bombing between October 2001 and March 2002 and the loss of life in Iraq due a war based on lies including the Islamophobic conflation of alQaeda and Saddam has been catastrophic And there are lots of hurt feelings over discrimination experienced throughout the western world The controversy over the Islamic center shows us that neither the politicians nor pundits nor people in general understand that and so seem hellbent on generating more Muslim resentment Nothing good can come out of that GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion He is the author of Servants Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan Male Colors The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan and Interracial Intimacy in Japan Western Men and Japanese Women 15431900 He is also a contributor to CounterPunch8217s merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq Afghanistan and Yugoslavia Imperial Crusades He can be reached at gleuppgranitetuftsedu

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<p>The Israeli Wall-the so-called security fence&#173; is a daunting and ominous matrix of social control and demographic separation that is currently planned to be 670 km long. It is thick and concrete, 8 meters high, and at some points 104 meters deep. It is three times as high and twice as wide as the Berlin Wall. It is surrounded at a distance by nests of barbed wires, rolled up like stacks of hay piled high around it. High voltage circuits run through the so-called &#8220;smart fences,&#8221; three meters tall that line the perimeter of the barrier. Between the fence and the wall is trench, over two meters deep, studded with piercing metal spikes.</p> <p>Outside the smaller fence, the Israeli military has paved a path of finely ground sand that is groomed to make footprints visible. At certain intervals, there are 10m vertical steel poles housing highly powered stadium lights and surveillance cameras. Adjacent to the Wall, on the Israeli side, stand huge and foreboding turrets and watchtowers where Israeli observers and snipers are stationed. The Israeli military has defined the area of the Wall to be a &#8220;military zone,&#8221; and soldiers have orders to shoot to kill upon the discretion of the commanding officer.</p> <p>As part of the ongoing process of settlement that began in the Occupied Territories after Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza in 1967, the wall dramatically alters the conditions of life in the Occupied Territories of Palestine by establishing and consolidating a set of territorial arrangements that attempts to physically ensure that most of the existing and illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are there to stay. By virtue of its route, which is not along the internationally recognized borders of 1967 (the Green line), the wall annexes fifty-eight percent of the West Bank and confines the Palestinians to a ghetto-like existence. Extending from the north of the West Bank area around Jenin and far southwest to Tulkarm, it essentially closes off the entirety of the Palestinian town of Qalqilya. Winding its way south towards East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it physically encloses over seventy-eight Palestinian and Arab communities, such as Battir, Nahhalin, Ras Al-&#8216;Amud, Ras Atiya, Abu Farad to cite only a few.</p> <p>The Wall, the construction of began in June 2002, has severely disrupted and profoundly encumbered daily life. It has undermined and wretchedly destroyed the social and economic fabric Palestinian civil society. To make room for its path, entire orchards and olive groves have been uprooted. Farmers have no access to what little remains of their arable land. Thousands of Palestinian homes-over 42,165 in the West Bank&#173;have been demolished by the Israeli military. Tens of thousands of dunams (1 dunam = 1000 square meters) have been confiscated by the Israeli military in this systematic process. Check-points and road-blocks obstruct Palestinians&#8217; unfettered access to schools, health clinics, and work. Families have been physically separated; and, in one instance, a house was purportedly divided in half. In Qalqilya, the wall rises to such a height that, it is said, one can no longer see the sun set.</p> <p>Life in the Occupied Territories of Palestine has been reduced generally to an utterly debased form of collective imprisonment. In the area surrounding the town of Qalqilya alone&#173;&#173;includes Ras Atiya and Arab Abu Farad&#173;&#173;about forty thousand Palestinians remain virtually enclosed by the Wall. In October 2003, the check-point at Qalqilya was completed closed for a period that lasted several weeks, shutting off Palestinians in the surrounding area from the rest of the world in what is essentially a more or less closed ghetto. Villages such as Rafat, Deir Ballut, Az-Zawiya, have one only one exit, and, in the case of Deir Ballut, the military checkpoint is closed every evening at 19:00. In the town of Jayyus, in the district of Qalqilya, the Israeli military opens the check-point briefly. An Israeli military sign in Arabic announces the check-point is open from 7:40 to 8:00 am, 2:00 to 2:15, and 18:45-19:00, only fifty minutes a day.</p> <p>The human cost of the occupation in general and the construction of the Wall in particular is enormous. Since September 29, 2000 to June 20, 2005, 3,625 Palestinians have been killed, nearly 30,000 injured, over 7,000 with live ammunition fire. In the long history of the occupation that began in 1967, roughly 400,000 Palestinian have been detained at one point or another. Calculated as proportion of the total Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, 40 percent of Palestinian men have, at one time or another in their lives, been imprisoned.</p> <p>The wall has severely disrupted the free movement of Palestinian, Druze, Bedouin and Arab residents of the Palestine Occupied Territories. In its current configuration, the Israeli Wall intersects Route 65 from Qalqilya to Nablus at five different and separate points, making travel to the larger city of Nablus, where most life-saving surgical procedures are performed, almost completely inaccessible. It geographically divides the West Bank latitudinally in half, making travel between the north and south impossible. What was once only a short distance&#173;20km&#173;between Qalqilya and Nablus is made all the more insurmountable by a series of obstacles, checkpoints, road blocks, and the physical barrier of the Wall which together as a system of geographical enclosure forces Palestinians to drive an extra few hundred kilometers&#173;at least several hours&#173;to get to the nearest major hospital that us equipped to deal with critically ill patients. In one recent case, a woman with a complicated pregnancy was denied an exit permit at Israeli checkpoint near Qalqilya. She was giving birth to twins on the spot, yet the Israeli soldiers refused to let her drive to the nearest hospital for surgery. Both babies died.</p> <p>Entire villages are cut off from their crops-mostly citrus and olive groves. In the Salfit area, the Israelis seized roughly ninety percent of the land in order to incorporate the Jewish settlements of Ariel and Kaddom on the Israeli side of the wall. At certain points the wall literally juts abruptly into Palestinian territory in order to claim the Salfit area for Israeli settlements. As if that were not enough, the Wall&#8217;s trajectory seizes some of the most fertile soil in the region on the Israeli side, between the Green Line and the Wall itself.</p> <p>Daily existence in Gaza fares no better. Although widely celebrated as the end of the occupation of Gaza, the Sharon disengagement is actually the exact opposite: it is the armed, military encirclement of Gaza by the Israeli military. &amp;gt;From September 29, 2000 to December 2004, 18,311 homes in Gaza have been destroyed. In Rafah alone, which Israel invaded in October 2003, the Israeli military destroyed 120 houses, shut down 114 refugee shelters, and in that month alone left 1,240 left Palestinians homeless. From the period of September 2000 to December 2004, over 16,000 people were rendered homeless.</p> <p>The aim of all this, which Ariel Sharon has admitted quite candidly, is to prevent Gaza from having any external contact with the outside world by land, by air, and by sea. Indeed, it is far more costly for Israel military to continue to occupy Gaza from within its borders, than to control Gaza from outside of it as a prison-like entity. Through a process of systematic demolition and armed encirclement, Israel has established a 200-300 meter buffer (the so-called Philadelphia corridor) between the entrance to Gaza at the mouth of Salah Edin Gate&#8211;the main entrance to Rafah&#8217;s central throughway&#173;Jamal Abdel Nasser Street&#173;&#173; and demolished entire blocks of houses in front of the gate. In addition, it has razed the houses along the borders of Gaza and Egypt-the Al Brazil Block, As Salam Block, and other make-shift residences that are simply called &#8220;Block D&#8221;&#173;&#173;to the ground. In the Rafah camp alone, eighty children under the age of fourteen were killed by the Israelis in the process. To put the housing demolition into some relative perspective would be say it is equivalent of 1.2 million homes in the United States were destroyed. &#8220;What the army is doing in Rafah camp is nothing less than ethnic cleansing,&#8221; says Dr. Moustafa Barghouti, the head of the Palestinian National Initiative</p> <p>What is actually occurring is Israel&#8217;s territorial consolidation of four principles which have guided Israeli political imagination since 1968:</p> <p>1) that no Palestinian state shall share any borders with any other country other than Israel;</p> <p>2) a Palestinian state will have no real or meaningful sovereignty, only a functional one subordinate to Israel&#8217;s sovereignty;</p> <p>3) that Israel will preserve and institutionalize the existing conditions in the Occupied Territories by protecting existing Jewish settlements; and</p> <p>4) Israel will continue to build illegal settlements to create the illusion that any cessation of construction is actually a sign of Israel&#8217;s willingness to compromise and a sign of its &#8220;good faith&#8221;-a strategy that is practiced by both the Labor Party and Likkud, with the only real difference being the conservative or liberal ideology that is used to justify its ongoing colonial expansion in the West Bank.</p> <p>The Israeli ideological strategy has been part of a systematic process that involves four general practices: the ongoing military occupation of the Palestine Occupied Territories in general; the preservation and expansion of existing and illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza; the construction of new settlements (roughly a 102 new ones), and the construction of the Wall to preserve and make these practices seemingly physically irreversible realities on the ground. The function of part of the latter strategy&#8211;the building of the Wall&#173;&#173; is as obvious as lines on the maps that represent its trajectory. A comparison between the 1993 maps of Oslo Accords and existing plans for all three phases of the Wall incontrovertibly shows that the Wall is nothing less than the physical and concrete institutionalization of precisely those aspects of Oslo that Israel had agreed to: the establishment of tiny cloisters and pockets of Palestinian self-rule, with no meaningful sovereignty, that Edward Said compared to the bantustans which the British had devised as a means of exerting its colonial authority in Africa; it established small areas of relative autonomy with local tribal leaders subjected to Britain&#8217;s overall rule.</p> <p>Yet the comparisons with British forms of colonial rule ends with the establishment of numerous, non-contiguous bantustans. Whereas from 1918-1948 in British Mandate Palestine, Britain had dredged and designed the Port of Haifa, constructed six power stations for Palestinians and Jews, built public roads and buildings for everyone, all Israel has done is to shore up its military presence with more check-points, more prisons, more and expanding settlements, more rerouted irrigation systems (for the settlements), more de-development (of Palestinian infrastructure and agriculture), more barriers and more of its a massive $3.4 billion Wall. In others words, it&#8217;s colonialism without development, or &#8220;de-development&#8221; as Sara Roy as called it, whose sole aim is the complete destruction of the foundations of all aspects of Palestinian civil society.</p> <p>Meaningful political resistance to this ongoing process has taken mostly two forms, the first of which is an emerging movement of a non-violent protest that has vigorously and mostly peacefully decried the wall and Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land. As I write this there are spirited protests by agricultural workers in Marda, a village of some 2,000 inhabitants, much of whose land has been taken by the nearby Jewish settlement of Ariel, and more of which Israeli forces are trying to confiscate to build the Wall. On June 17 in Bil&#8217;in, near Ramallah and part of the Salfit area, a group of several hundred demonstrators clashed with Israeli soldiers who came to enclose more land, only to be dispersed with rounds of live ammunition fire and clouds of tear gas. On June 7th, villagers in the town of Arab Rammadin brought bulldozers, which were razing 2239 dunams (2.2 square km) for the Wall, to a halt.</p> <p>In addition to these promising signs of an emerging non-violent political resistance movement, there is the often overlooked decision of the International Court of Justice, which issued its advisory opinion a year ago on July 9th, 2004. A truly enlightened decision, it is the reaffirmation of some of the most humane and principled documents of our times. It flatly put to rest Israeli&#8217;s disingenuous claims that the Wall was needed to protect Israeli security (if it were needed for that purpose, the Israeli government could have legally built the Wall along the 1967 Green Line).</p> <p>What was remarkable about the decision was how conceptually unremarkable it was. No new principles, except for the precedents of the 1907 Hague and Geneva Convention and countless UN resolutions, were needed to decide the patent illegality of the Wall under the authority of a canon of international law. In an essentially unanimous decision, the Court found that the Israeli Wall was illegal in all respects and in its existing dimensions and that it must be removed. The decision arose from a prevailing consensus among nearly all the nations of the world that the matter was subject to the advice of the ICJ. The Court not only accepted the offer to judicially review the legal consequences of Wall to international law, but also dismissed Israel&#8217;s numerous contentions that there was essentially no existing occupation de jure; that the Court had no jurisdiction over matters of Israeli Occupation, and that the Israel Supreme Court had the last say in the matter.</p> <p>This decision provides the real possibility of legal recourse of Palestinians, who have no meaningful sovereignty, no self-determination as a state, and therefore cannot litigate its damages to a body it has historically be denied membership as a nation of people. Moreover it denied the ultimate legitimacy of the Israeli Supreme Court, whose ideals and principles lawyers like Alan Dershowitz cannot seem to live without. Indeed, the Israel Supreme Court has an impoverished record insofar as Palestinian human rights are concerned. For example, this is a court that had for years condoned torture, rarely stood up the government and military policy of detention, human rights abuses, the destruction of houses, the imposition of seemingly endless curfews, and extra-judicial assassination, and the collective denial of Palestinian human rights. In one case it valued-actually ascribed a precise economic value&#173;&#173;to Palestinian life. A Palestinian life was worth no more than about 5 shekels.</p> <p>The court&#8217;s decision, like all other world court decisions, entails what are called erga omnes, obligations that require that other signatories to the ICJ&#8217;s charter enforce and compel Israel&#8217;s compliance with its decisions: namely international agreements such as the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Conventions on the Rights of the Child, and the Geneva Convention which Israel is, in spite of its attorneys best attempts to deny its material relevance, a signatory to. What this means in terms of the diplomatic practices of other nations remains to be seen, but it clearly opens up other arenas of resistance to the Wall that may take several forms. Nations could impose a &#8220;Human Rights Tax&#8221; on companies contracted to supply goods (bulldozers for example) and services to the Israeli governments efforts to build and reinforce the Wall, its ongoing occupation, and it expansion of existing and new settlements in the Occupied Territories. It may serve as a kind of prelude to what appears to be a growing and globally orchestrated movement to divest from Israel so long as it continues its illegal occupation and refuses to remove the Wall in its existing form.</p> <p>All of this is to say that the ICJ decision provides the framework for developing new political and legal strategies of resistance which may take the forms of various instruments of financial, political and diplomatic pressure-boycotts, embargoes, human rights taxes, sanctions, and other restriction on the flow of Israeli capital, like the buying and selling of Israeli bonds in Canadian, European, or Asian markets. It perhaps even raises the possibility of the civil prosecution of those military and Israeli government official and those twenty or so corporations, engineers, architects, military planners, and CEOs that were and remain either commercially or politically involved in constructing, designing, planning the Wall. Indeed, the Secretary General of United Nations announced in January 2005, that the United Nations was in the process of compiling a registry of those Palestinians who had directly suffered damages-the loss of land, homes, crops, employment, etc. While some critics saw this as the UN&#8217;s tacit acceptance of the irreversibility of the wall, the registry remains an important document in the same way that Walid Khalidi&#8217;s All That Remains provides a more or less complete material, historical, territorial, geographic and archival account of the displacing effects of 1948 War of Dispossession.</p> <p>Yet whatever the Wall signifies for the precarious political and existential future of Palestinians, one thing is for certain: it is part of Israel&#8217;s willful repudiation of Palestinian existence in general and Palestinian rights to meaningful sovereignty and self-determination in particular. But it is more than that as well. It is an attempt to make Palestinians physically invisible from the experience of Israeli daily life which goes on at times as if the Wall were merely the comforting and soothing perimeter of Israeli lebensraum.</p> <p>When Guy de Maupassant ate lunch under the Eiffel tower, someone asked him &#8220;Why?&#8221;. &#8220;Because,&#8221; he said, &#8220;it is the only place in all of Paris where I don&#8217;t have to look at the thing.&#8221; Perhaps the Wall, as long as it exists, will serve as a constant reminder that a large population of humanity manages by a sheer will alone to survive as a culture in a place where the sunset is no longer visible to the naked eye&#173;&#173; except in its dreams. On the other side of the grey, storm clouds of a military occupation, there is a blue sky where the sun will always, in a matter of speaking, set&#173;&#173;imagined or not.</p> <p>ANDREW N. RUBIN, an assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University, is the co-editor of The Edward Said Reader and Adorno: A Critical Reader. His book Archives of Authority is forthcoming in 2006. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:anr5@georgetown.edu" type="external">anr5@georgetown.edu</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

"We are No Longer Able to See the Sun Set"

https://counterpunch.org/2005/07/13/quot-we-are-no-longer-able-to-see-the-sun-set-quot/

2005-07-13

4left

The Israeli Wallthe socalled security fence173 is a daunting and ominous matrix of social control and demographic separation that is currently planned to be 670 km long It is thick and concrete 8 meters high and at some points 104 meters deep It is three times as high and twice as wide as the Berlin Wall It is surrounded at a distance by nests of barbed wires rolled up like stacks of hay piled high around it High voltage circuits run through the socalled 8220smart fences8221 three meters tall that line the perimeter of the barrier Between the fence and the wall is trench over two meters deep studded with piercing metal spikes Outside the smaller fence the Israeli military has paved a path of finely ground sand that is groomed to make footprints visible At certain intervals there are 10m vertical steel poles housing highly powered stadium lights and surveillance cameras Adjacent to the Wall on the Israeli side stand huge and foreboding turrets and watchtowers where Israeli observers and snipers are stationed The Israeli military has defined the area of the Wall to be a 8220military zone8221 and soldiers have orders to shoot to kill upon the discretion of the commanding officer As part of the ongoing process of settlement that began in the Occupied Territories after Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza in 1967 the wall dramatically alters the conditions of life in the Occupied Territories of Palestine by establishing and consolidating a set of territorial arrangements that attempts to physically ensure that most of the existing and illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are there to stay By virtue of its route which is not along the internationally recognized borders of 1967 the Green line the wall annexes fiftyeight percent of the West Bank and confines the Palestinians to a ghettolike existence Extending from the north of the West Bank area around Jenin and far southwest to Tulkarm it essentially closes off the entirety of the Palestinian town of Qalqilya Winding its way south towards East Jerusalem and Bethlehem it physically encloses over seventyeight Palestinian and Arab communities such as Battir Nahhalin Ras Al8216Amud Ras Atiya Abu Farad to cite only a few The Wall the construction of began in June 2002 has severely disrupted and profoundly encumbered daily life It has undermined and wretchedly destroyed the social and economic fabric Palestinian civil society To make room for its path entire orchards and olive groves have been uprooted Farmers have no access to what little remains of their arable land Thousands of Palestinian homesover 42165 in the West Bank173have been demolished by the Israeli military Tens of thousands of dunams 1 dunam 1000 square meters have been confiscated by the Israeli military in this systematic process Checkpoints and roadblocks obstruct Palestinians8217 unfettered access to schools health clinics and work Families have been physically separated and in one instance a house was purportedly divided in half In Qalqilya the wall rises to such a height that it is said one can no longer see the sun set Life in the Occupied Territories of Palestine has been reduced generally to an utterly debased form of collective imprisonment In the area surrounding the town of Qalqilya alone173173includes Ras Atiya and Arab Abu Farad173173about forty thousand Palestinians remain virtually enclosed by the Wall In October 2003 the checkpoint at Qalqilya was completed closed for a period that lasted several weeks shutting off Palestinians in the surrounding area from the rest of the world in what is essentially a more or less closed ghetto Villages such as Rafat Deir Ballut AzZawiya have one only one exit and in the case of Deir Ballut the military checkpoint is closed every evening at 1900 In the town of Jayyus in the district of Qalqilya the Israeli military opens the checkpoint briefly An Israeli military sign in Arabic announces the checkpoint is open from 740 to 800 am 200 to 215 and 18451900 only fifty minutes a day The human cost of the occupation in general and the construction of the Wall in particular is enormous Since September 29 2000 to June 20 2005 3625 Palestinians have been killed nearly 30000 injured over 7000 with live ammunition fire In the long history of the occupation that began in 1967 roughly 400000 Palestinian have been detained at one point or another Calculated as proportion of the total Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza 40 percent of Palestinian men have at one time or another in their lives been imprisoned The wall has severely disrupted the free movement of Palestinian Druze Bedouin and Arab residents of the Palestine Occupied Territories In its current configuration the Israeli Wall intersects Route 65 from Qalqilya to Nablus at five different and separate points making travel to the larger city of Nablus where most lifesaving surgical procedures are performed almost completely inaccessible It geographically divides the West Bank latitudinally in half making travel between the north and south impossible What was once only a short distance17320km173between Qalqilya and Nablus is made all the more insurmountable by a series of obstacles checkpoints road blocks and the physical barrier of the Wall which together as a system of geographical enclosure forces Palestinians to drive an extra few hundred kilometers173at least several hours173to get to the nearest major hospital that us equipped to deal with critically ill patients In one recent case a woman with a complicated pregnancy was denied an exit permit at Israeli checkpoint near Qalqilya She was giving birth to twins on the spot yet the Israeli soldiers refused to let her drive to the nearest hospital for surgery Both babies died Entire villages are cut off from their cropsmostly citrus and olive groves In the Salfit area the Israelis seized roughly ninety percent of the land in order to incorporate the Jewish settlements of Ariel and Kaddom on the Israeli side of the wall At certain points the wall literally juts abruptly into Palestinian territory in order to claim the Salfit area for Israeli settlements As if that were not enough the Wall8217s trajectory seizes some of the most fertile soil in the region on the Israeli side between the Green Line and the Wall itself Daily existence in Gaza fares no better Although widely celebrated as the end of the occupation of Gaza the Sharon disengagement is actually the exact opposite it is the armed military encirclement of Gaza by the Israeli military ampgtFrom September 29 2000 to December 2004 18311 homes in Gaza have been destroyed In Rafah alone which Israel invaded in October 2003 the Israeli military destroyed 120 houses shut down 114 refugee shelters and in that month alone left 1240 left Palestinians homeless From the period of September 2000 to December 2004 over 16000 people were rendered homeless The aim of all this which Ariel Sharon has admitted quite candidly is to prevent Gaza from having any external contact with the outside world by land by air and by sea Indeed it is far more costly for Israel military to continue to occupy Gaza from within its borders than to control Gaza from outside of it as a prisonlike entity Through a process of systematic demolition and armed encirclement Israel has established a 200300 meter buffer the socalled Philadelphia corridor between the entrance to Gaza at the mouth of Salah Edin Gate8211the main entrance to Rafah8217s central throughway173Jamal Abdel Nasser Street173173 and demolished entire blocks of houses in front of the gate In addition it has razed the houses along the borders of Gaza and Egyptthe Al Brazil Block As Salam Block and other makeshift residences that are simply called 8220Block D8221173173to the ground In the Rafah camp alone eighty children under the age of fourteen were killed by the Israelis in the process To put the housing demolition into some relative perspective would be say it is equivalent of 12 million homes in the United States were destroyed 8220What the army is doing in Rafah camp is nothing less than ethnic cleansing8221 says Dr Moustafa Barghouti the head of the Palestinian National Initiative What is actually occurring is Israel8217s territorial consolidation of four principles which have guided Israeli political imagination since 1968 1 that no Palestinian state shall share any borders with any other country other than Israel 2 a Palestinian state will have no real or meaningful sovereignty only a functional one subordinate to Israel8217s sovereignty 3 that Israel will preserve and institutionalize the existing conditions in the Occupied Territories by protecting existing Jewish settlements and 4 Israel will continue to build illegal settlements to create the illusion that any cessation of construction is actually a sign of Israel8217s willingness to compromise and a sign of its 8220good faith8221a strategy that is practiced by both the Labor Party and Likkud with the only real difference being the conservative or liberal ideology that is used to justify its ongoing colonial expansion in the West Bank The Israeli ideological strategy has been part of a systematic process that involves four general practices the ongoing military occupation of the Palestine Occupied Territories in general the preservation and expansion of existing and illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza the construction of new settlements roughly a 102 new ones and the construction of the Wall to preserve and make these practices seemingly physically irreversible realities on the ground The function of part of the latter strategy8211the building of the Wall173173 is as obvious as lines on the maps that represent its trajectory A comparison between the 1993 maps of Oslo Accords and existing plans for all three phases of the Wall incontrovertibly shows that the Wall is nothing less than the physical and concrete institutionalization of precisely those aspects of Oslo that Israel had agreed to the establishment of tiny cloisters and pockets of Palestinian selfrule with no meaningful sovereignty that Edward Said compared to the bantustans which the British had devised as a means of exerting its colonial authority in Africa it established small areas of relative autonomy with local tribal leaders subjected to Britain8217s overall rule Yet the comparisons with British forms of colonial rule ends with the establishment of numerous noncontiguous bantustans Whereas from 19181948 in British Mandate Palestine Britain had dredged and designed the Port of Haifa constructed six power stations for Palestinians and Jews built public roads and buildings for everyone all Israel has done is to shore up its military presence with more checkpoints more prisons more and expanding settlements more rerouted irrigation systems for the settlements more dedevelopment of Palestinian infrastructure and agriculture more barriers and more of its a massive 34 billion Wall In others words it8217s colonialism without development or 8220dedevelopment8221 as Sara Roy as called it whose sole aim is the complete destruction of the foundations of all aspects of Palestinian civil society Meaningful political resistance to this ongoing process has taken mostly two forms the first of which is an emerging movement of a nonviolent protest that has vigorously and mostly peacefully decried the wall and Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land As I write this there are spirited protests by agricultural workers in Marda a village of some 2000 inhabitants much of whose land has been taken by the nearby Jewish settlement of Ariel and more of which Israeli forces are trying to confiscate to build the Wall On June 17 in Bil8217in near Ramallah and part of the Salfit area a group of several hundred demonstrators clashed with Israeli soldiers who came to enclose more land only to be dispersed with rounds of live ammunition fire and clouds of tear gas On June 7th villagers in the town of Arab Rammadin brought bulldozers which were razing 2239 dunams 22 square km for the Wall to a halt In addition to these promising signs of an emerging nonviolent political resistance movement there is the often overlooked decision of the International Court of Justice which issued its advisory opinion a year ago on July 9th 2004 A truly enlightened decision it is the reaffirmation of some of the most humane and principled documents of our times It flatly put to rest Israeli8217s disingenuous claims that the Wall was needed to protect Israeli security if it were needed for that purpose the Israeli government could have legally built the Wall along the 1967 Green Line What was remarkable about the decision was how conceptually unremarkable it was No new principles except for the precedents of the 1907 Hague and Geneva Convention and countless UN resolutions were needed to decide the patent illegality of the Wall under the authority of a canon of international law In an essentially unanimous decision the Court found that the Israeli Wall was illegal in all respects and in its existing dimensions and that it must be removed The decision arose from a prevailing consensus among nearly all the nations of the world that the matter was subject to the advice of the ICJ The Court not only accepted the offer to judicially review the legal consequences of Wall to international law but also dismissed Israel8217s numerous contentions that there was essentially no existing occupation de jure that the Court had no jurisdiction over matters of Israeli Occupation and that the Israel Supreme Court had the last say in the matter This decision provides the real possibility of legal recourse of Palestinians who have no meaningful sovereignty no selfdetermination as a state and therefore cannot litigate its damages to a body it has historically be denied membership as a nation of people Moreover it denied the ultimate legitimacy of the Israeli Supreme Court whose ideals and principles lawyers like Alan Dershowitz cannot seem to live without Indeed the Israel Supreme Court has an impoverished record insofar as Palestinian human rights are concerned For example this is a court that had for years condoned torture rarely stood up the government and military policy of detention human rights abuses the destruction of houses the imposition of seemingly endless curfews and extrajudicial assassination and the collective denial of Palestinian human rights In one case it valuedactually ascribed a precise economic value173173to Palestinian life A Palestinian life was worth no more than about 5 shekels The court8217s decision like all other world court decisions entails what are called erga omnes obligations that require that other signatories to the ICJ8217s charter enforce and compel Israel8217s compliance with its decisions namely international agreements such as the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights the Conventions on the Rights of the Child and the Geneva Convention which Israel is in spite of its attorneys best attempts to deny its material relevance a signatory to What this means in terms of the diplomatic practices of other nations remains to be seen but it clearly opens up other arenas of resistance to the Wall that may take several forms Nations could impose a 8220Human Rights Tax8221 on companies contracted to supply goods bulldozers for example and services to the Israeli governments efforts to build and reinforce the Wall its ongoing occupation and it expansion of existing and new settlements in the Occupied Territories It may serve as a kind of prelude to what appears to be a growing and globally orchestrated movement to divest from Israel so long as it continues its illegal occupation and refuses to remove the Wall in its existing form All of this is to say that the ICJ decision provides the framework for developing new political and legal strategies of resistance which may take the forms of various instruments of financial political and diplomatic pressureboycotts embargoes human rights taxes sanctions and other restriction on the flow of Israeli capital like the buying and selling of Israeli bonds in Canadian European or Asian markets It perhaps even raises the possibility of the civil prosecution of those military and Israeli government official and those twenty or so corporations engineers architects military planners and CEOs that were and remain either commercially or politically involved in constructing designing planning the Wall Indeed the Secretary General of United Nations announced in January 2005 that the United Nations was in the process of compiling a registry of those Palestinians who had directly suffered damagesthe loss of land homes crops employment etc While some critics saw this as the UN8217s tacit acceptance of the irreversibility of the wall the registry remains an important document in the same way that Walid Khalidi8217s All That Remains provides a more or less complete material historical territorial geographic and archival account of the displacing effects of 1948 War of Dispossession Yet whatever the Wall signifies for the precarious political and existential future of Palestinians one thing is for certain it is part of Israel8217s willful repudiation of Palestinian existence in general and Palestinian rights to meaningful sovereignty and selfdetermination in particular But it is more than that as well It is an attempt to make Palestinians physically invisible from the experience of Israeli daily life which goes on at times as if the Wall were merely the comforting and soothing perimeter of Israeli lebensraum When Guy de Maupassant ate lunch under the Eiffel tower someone asked him 8220Why8221 8220Because8221 he said 8220it is the only place in all of Paris where I don8217t have to look at the thing8221 Perhaps the Wall as long as it exists will serve as a constant reminder that a large population of humanity manages by a sheer will alone to survive as a culture in a place where the sunset is no longer visible to the naked eye173173 except in its dreams On the other side of the grey storm clouds of a military occupation there is a blue sky where the sun will always in a matter of speaking set173173imagined or not ANDREW N RUBIN an assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University is the coeditor of The Edward Said Reader and Adorno A Critical Reader His book Archives of Authority is forthcoming in 2006 He can be reached at anr5georgetownedu amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>A drive down the 5700 block of West Belmont Avenue, the hub of the Northwest Side community of Belmont Cragin, is like a scene from another era. Stores such as Dom &amp;amp; Ksiazki Polish Bookstore, Gene&#8217;s Old World Sausage Shop and Staropolska&#8217;s Restaurant dot almost every corner.</p> <p>A dense commercial thoroughfare, the street is crammed with mom-and-pop storefronts proud to display their hand-made signs, written in Polish and English, enticing customers with their daily specials or the week&#8217;s bargain buy.</p> <p>This is an immigrant community of working-class families, explained the Rev. Stephen Kanonik, who grew up in the neighborhood and is now pastor of nearby St. Ladislaus Roman Catholic Church, at 5345 W. Roscoe St. &#8220;People [here] aren&#8217;t goofy enough to spend four bucks on a cup of coffee,&#8221; Kanonik said.</p> <p>Belmont Cragin was once known as a haven for white ethnic families. But the area near Belmont and Central avenues is now one of their few remaining enclaves in the neighborhood.</p> <p>The rest of Belmont Cragin is filled with scenes like the one about a mile southeast, where retail shops offer trips to Mexico City and restaurants advertise weekend specials on Menudo soup with signs in Spanish and English.</p> <p>&#8220;This is where that &#8211;&#732;American Dream&#8217; plays itself out for some Latinos who try to do better,&#8221; said the Rev. Carmelo M&#233;ndez of St. James Catholic Church, 5730 W. Fullerton Ave. &#8220;This is the second neighborhood [Hispanics] move into&#8211;&#8221;it&#8217;s the area where those who have saved up enough and are doing financially better move.&#8221;</p> <p>In the last decade, Belmont Cragin has undergone a quiet but dramatic change. Once mostly made up of Polish Americans, it is now a predominantly Latino neighborhood. Leaders say many of the new residents have moved from older, more established Hispanic communities like Humboldt Park and Pilsen.</p> <p>Residents say the transition has gone smoothly, unlike in Chicago neighborhoods that shifted&#8211;&#8221;often violently&#8211;&#8221;from white to black in the 1960s and 1970s. Property values in Belmont Cragin have not plummeted. Commercial districts continue to thrive. And, with median household income above the citywide figure, the area remains stable.</p> <p>But beneath the surface are signs of the racial tensions that typically mark a community in transition.</p> <p>&#8220;There are a few people who can&#8217;t let go. &#8211;&#166; [Others] move because they are afraid. I encourage people to stay,&#8221; 30th Ward Democratic Committeeman Michael Wojcik said of the area&#8217;s white ethnic residents. The 30th Ward includes parts of Belmont Cragin.</p> <p>&#8220;I want to keep the stability,&#8221; Wojcik said. &#8220;Stability engenders safe schools, low crime, jobs and political participation.&#8221;</p> <p>Wojcik, who is Polish American, served as 35th Ward alderman from 1991 to 1994 and 30th Ward alderman from 1995 until April. After a remap left the 30th Ward majority Latino, Wojcik and the Chicago-based Polish National Alliance filed a lawsuit, which is still pending, and Wojcik chose not to run for re-election. In February, voters elected Ariel E. Reboyras to be their first Latino alderman.</p> <p>In 1980, most of Belmont Cragin&#8217;s residents were Polish, with significant numbers of Greeks, Germans and Italians, census data show. Only 6 percent were Hispanic.</p> <p>But by 1990, Latinos represented 30 percent of the community&#8217;s population; by 2000, they made up 65 percent. The white population dropped 27 percent in the 1980s and 41 percent in the 1990s, according to the census.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t care who moves into the neighborhood. I just want the area kept nice, &#8211;&#166; [as] a place where families can raise their children,&#8221; said Robert Pietryka, 35, a longtime resident who is of Polish descent.</p> <p>But some residents are upset that single-family homes have been illegally converted into apartments and rooms for low-income renters. They also worry about neighborhood crime and associate it with young people who have moved into the area&#8211;&#8221;though they say it is not a racial or ethnic issue.</p> <p>&#8220;A lot of it is the way you look at it,&#8221; said Arthur D. Felgenhauer, secretary of the Belmont-Central Chamber of Commerce. &#8220;You see something happen, and your mind goes off, &#8211;&#732;Well, see, there are robberies all over now.'&#8221; Even if it&#8217;s not true, he said, &#8220;people want to associate them with all the change that&#8217;s going on.&#8221;</p> <p>Most Latinos say they&#8217;re not concerned about whites leaving Belmont Cragin. Instead, they are focused on getting the schools to perform better, reducing crime and maintaining a high quality of life in the neighborhood.</p> <p>&#8220;Latino residents feel comfortable living here,&#8221; M&#233;ndez said. &#8220;Latino families are very active in neighborhood organizations, and they vigorously advocate for better schools and safer neighborhoods.&#8221;</p> <p>Bungalow Belt A quiet community 11 miles northwest of the Loop, Belmont Cragin has seldom attracted front-page news. After a surge in the development of single-family brick bungalows in the early 20th century, first- and second-generation Europeans populated the area.</p> <p>But today the only part of the neighborhood that houses a majority-white population is its northwest tip, according to census data. And communities such as Portage Park, Dunning and Montclare that skirt Belmont Cragin to the north and west remain at least 70 percent white, while, to the south and east, the Hermosa and Humboldt Park areas are largely Latino.</p> <p>For white residents, &#8220;it speaks to familiarity: They don&#8217;t know their [Hispanic] neighbors, they don&#8217;t know their culture and they don&#8217;t know their customs,&#8221; said John Gaudette, executive director of the Northwest Neighborhood Federation, which works with residents on community issues.</p> <p>Many of the white residents who have remained in Belmont Cragin are 62 years old or older. Almost half of the 7,612 seniors in the community reside in that northwest corner, an area that accounts for 35 percent of Belmont Cragin&#8217;s total population, according to the census.</p> <p>Seniors are now &#8220;seeing fewer and fewer folks like themselves, and [they] wonder if it&#8217;s worth staying,&#8221; Gaudette said. &#8220;They become more and more isolated.&#8221;</p> <p>Belmont Cragin&#8217;s younger white residents are on the move. &#8220;I&#8217;m the last guy to stay from my old neighborhood,&#8221; said Pietryka, owner of the Pietryka-De Nicolo Funeral Home at 5734 W. Diversey Ave.</p> <p>Pietryka said people he grew up with have moved to other neighborhoods like Wicker Park and Lincoln Park, or to the suburbs&#8211;&#8221;areas that they see offering more restaurants, bars and coffeehouses. &#8220;They move because they see Belmont Cragin as their parents&#8217; old neighborhood,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Now, as adults, there just isn&#8217;t enough to keep them here.&#8221;</p> <p>The Rev. Anthony Dziorek, who for 16 years has served as pastor of St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Catholic Church, 5352 W. Belden Ave., said the neighborhood change has been smooth.</p> <p>&#8220;We just coexist,&#8221; said Dziorek, 52, who was born in Poland and moved to Chicago in 1981. &#8220;Latinos want a nice neighborhood, and the remaining Poles, mostly aging Polish Americans now, just want to be able to live out their remaining days here.&#8221;</p> <p>St. Stanislaus has mostly served Polish parishioners since it was founded in 1893, he said. &#8220;The parish was like a staple, an anchor to the community. People were coming to the church because they lived around the neighborhood.&#8221;</p> <p>Now, though, only about 10 percent of its parishioners live in the neighborhood. Most of the others are from other areas in Chicago and northwest suburbs such as River Grove, Schiller Park, Norridge and Niles. But they come because Polish customs and traditions are incorporated into St. Stanislaus masses, especially on holidays, Dziorek said. The church has six masses every Sunday, three offered in Polish and three in English.</p> <p>At the same time, the church has attracted some Latino families, and almost two-thirds of the 216 students enrolled in its elementary school are Hispanic, according to the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. In 1995, 64 percent of its 415 pupils were white.</p> <p>Dziorek said he has been working to get a priest who can lead a mass in Spanish at the church, and he is learning to speak Spanish himself.</p> <p>&#8220;The whole neighborhood within the boundary of our church is Latino,&#8221; he said, and St. Stanislaus should &#8220;be able to provide the kind of customs [and traditions] we would like to offer for Spanish-speaking people.&#8221;</p> <p>M&#233;ndez, an associate pastor at St. James parish, said Hispanic residents may not always feel comfortable attending or seeking help from some of the local churches because staff and administrators are mostly Polish. But pastors of these neighborhood churches want to help bridge those gaps, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;The one barrier is obvious: language,&#8221; said M&#233;ndez. &#8220;But there is also a culture difference, and we will have to work on melding those differences.&#8221;</p> <p>Neighborhood Flux Police data show that the area&#8217;s crime has remained relatively steady over the last five years. In 2001, Belmont Cragin residents reported 4,039 index crimes&#8211;&#8221;serious offenses such as murders, assaults and auto thefts&#8211;&#8221;which ranked 18th among the city&#8217;s 77 community areas, according to police data. In 2002, the community recorded 4,089 index crimes. But residents maintain that crime has become an increasing problem.</p> <p>In July, Maria Poznanski and her husband, Greg, attended their first Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) meeting after growing concerned about neighborhood crime. The Poznanskis live on North Mango Avenue, in the house where Maria has lived since moving there with her parents in 1967, when she was 5 years old.</p> <p>&#8220;We would notice things like more garage break-ins, questionable people walking around the neighborhood, more [parked cars] on our streets &#8211;&#166; and loud parties,&#8221; she said. She added that they also started seeing more stories about crime in their neighborhood newspaper.</p> <p>Poznanski noted that the neighborhood has changed &#8220;dramatically.&#8221; And &#8220;it wouldn&#8217;t matter what kind of people come into the neighborhood&#8211;&#8221;they just have to care about the neighborhood,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Crime is also a major complaint among Latino residents. Carmen Martinez, who moved to Belmont Cragin in 1990, doesn&#8217;t want to see the quality of life decline there.</p> <p>&#8220;Latinos like myself and my neighbors, who were here when the area was quiet and stable, want to maintain that,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We are trying to get the new people who have come into our neighborhoods to realize that &#8211;&#732;You moved here because you liked the area. You have a responsibility to keep it that way.'&#8221;</p> <p>Michael McCotter, commander of the Grand Central Police District, said crime in the area &#8220;has gotten tougher&#8221; in recent years. The district includes Belmont Cragin and parts of several adjacent communities.</p> <p>McCotter said gentrification in the Wicker Park and Humboldt Park neighborhoods to the southeast had pushed criminal activity into Belmont Cragin. He said his district has set up task forces to reduce these offenses.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re holding our own, trying to crack down on the problem spots and keep it from getting out of control,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Gang activity&#8211;&#8221;including recruitment in and around schools and graffiti with gang markings&#8211;&#8221;has increased due to the community&#8217;s population growth, especially among young people, McCotter said. Census data show that Belmont Cragin&#8217;s population of youth 17 years old and younger has nearly doubled since 1990, to 23,298. It now makes up about 30 percent of the area&#8217;s total.</p> <p>Martha Roman, 59, who is Puerto Rican, has lived on the 4800 block of West Medill Avenue for eight years. She said she and her husband have decided to move out of state, in part because they have grown tired of seeing young people selling drugs.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to deal with these young punks,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Property Values Many in Belmont Cragin also worry that residents will not maintain their property and that the neighborhood will physically deteriorate in the next few years.</p> <p>Jackie Pledger and her husband, Arthur Skwerski, rent out a three-flat on the 2300 block of North Lockwood Avenue. Pledger, who grew up in Belmont Cragin and now lives in Oak Park, still takes her 100-year-old mother, Gladys, to the Community Savings Bank near the corner of West Belmont and North Cicero avenues. Her mother has banked there for more than 60 years.</p> <p>Parts of the neighborhood near Fullerton and Central &#8220;have been completely abandoned by whites,&#8221; said Pledger, 66. &#8220;The homes aren&#8217;t as kept up, and the area is considered by the elder Poles to be unsafe.&#8221; In order to preserve the community, residents have to take a vested interest and keep up their property, she said.</p> <p>Poznanski said not enough people attend CAPS meetings or are involved in the community. Some newer residents, she said, &#8220;don&#8217;t care as much as the older people who have been living here. All they want is four walls and a roof. &#8211;&#166; They&#8217;re not interested in things you need to be interested in &#8211;&#166; to be part of a community. We need more people who care.&#8221;</p> <p>Still, housing prices in Belmont Cragin have gone up, said Larry R. Lynch, a managing broker at Century 21 Beaulieu Real Estate, 5341 W. Belmont Ave. Houses that sold for $40,000 or $50,000 in the late 1970s now sell for $220,000 and more, according to Lynch, who&#8217;s worked at the realty company for 18 years. According to the census, Belmont Cragin&#8217;s median household income is $43,159.</p> <p>It&#8217;s much harder than it used to be for a family to buy a home, he said, because the area &#8220;really had a tremendous amount of people that came in the past six years.&#8221; In some instances, several family members or even different families have purchased a house together, Lynch said.</p> <p>In other cases, owners have illegally converted homes into apartments or rented out rooms to those who couldn&#8217;t afford anything else, according to both police and realtors. Police say the conversions have left the houses dangerously overcrowded, caused a parking shortage on the streets and raised the ire of neighbors.</p> <p>Police frequently receive tips about illegal conversions, or discover them when officers visit homes on routine calls, said police Officer Cathy Sandow.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;d go into the house and we&#8217;d see that it was chopped up [illegally converted],&#8221; Sandow said. Residents &#8220;don&#8217;t know who their neighbors are because these houses have 10 or 15 people just renting a mattress in the basement. &#8211;&#166; It&#8217;s a serious concern. &#8211;&#166; And with our present economy, it&#8217;s going to get worse before it gets better.&#8221;</p> <p>Police turn the information over to the city, Sandow said. Since 2000, the Chicago Department of Buildings has received 1,110 complaints about illegal conversions from residents of the 30th and 31st wards, which together make up most of Belmont Cragin, according to department spokeswoman Breelyn Pete.</p> <p>Many residents note that houses have been illegally converted since the first influx of European immigrants into Belmont Cragin. But longtime residents say things are different now.</p> <p>&#8220;Back then it was always the spinster aunt or the quiet uncle who had a room in the attic. Now I have residents who complain that there are two or three families living in a house,&#8221; said Pietryka, who leads CAPS meetings as a beat facilitator. &#8220;And they have loud parties and have at least three cars that need to be parked on the streets.&#8221;</p> <p>But not everyone identifies conversions as a problem. M&#233;ndez said some neighborhood Latinos are willing to let family members and others stay in their homes as a way to do &#8220;something good.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;A lot of the Latino families who immigrated came in under the same situation. And now they [want] to help in some way because they went through the same experience themselves,&#8221; he said. People who haven&#8217;t had this kind of experience might &#8220;see it as something weird or different: &#8211;&#732;How can they share a house with three or four families?'&#8221;</p> <p>Roman said conversions have been less of a concern since residents banded together and complained to city officials. She added: &#8220;It&#8217;s not a race thing.&#8221;</p> <p>Holding On Both white and Latino residents are concerned about overcrowding in the area&#8217;s public schools. Constantine P. Kiamos, principal for 19 years at Charles P. Steinmetz Academic Centre High School, 3030 N. Mobile Ave., said school officials are doing their best to alleviate the problem. Some schools have built annexes or added trailers, Kiamos said.</p> <p>He believes the neighborhood is going through a cycle. &#8220;For a long time these homes were inhabited by couples whose children had left &#8211;&#166; [or] grown older and moved out. And these homes are now being inhabited by younger people with families.&#8221;</p> <p>The student population at Steinmetz has increased by a third since 1997, to about 3,000. White students made up 34 percent of the enrollment in 1997; by last year, the number was down to 26 percent, Chicago Public Schools data show. Latinos make up 48 percent of the student body, up from 39 percent. The school&#8217;s black population has remained steady at about 23 percent.</p> <p>Last winter, snow-flecked yard signs supporting Ariel E. Reboyras for alderman were posted in the frozen lawns in the 30th Ward. Four years ago, similar eye-catching red, white and blue signs carried Wojcik&#8217;s name.</p> <p>Reboyras, 49, who moved into the neighborhood 16 years ago, is of Puerto Rican descent. Noting that he has Polish neighbors, he said the area still has a very strong Polish community and that he wants to help preserve it.</p> <p>Reboyras pledged to bring Latinos and whites together to fight crime and maintain &#8220;stability.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The community will be more stable if it&#8217;s integrated,&#8221; Reboyras said. &#8220;There is a balance that has to be met. &#8211;&#166; Getting both groups involved is the key, and letting them know that these streets are [both of] theirs.&#8221;</p> <p>But most Belmont Cragin residents recognize that their area is changing. And many predict that by 2010 the community will be almost completely Latino.</p> <p>Kiamos, the Steinmetz principal, isn&#8217;t concerned. &#8220;I see people investing good dollars into nice homes,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And I don&#8217;t see the associated negatives coming in with what people perceive as a neighborhood in change.&#8221;</p> <p>Others&#8211;&#8221;both Latinos and whites&#8211;&#8221;are more ambivalent. &#8220;It&#8217;s doesn&#8217;t concern me so much that whites are moving out,&#8221; Roman said. But, she added, many new residents don&#8217;t seem to be helping to keep up the neighborhood, &#8220;and that&#8217;s what bothers me.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;In 10 years, if we don&#8217;t have some major changes&#8211;&#8221;with more police and more people in the community interested&#8211;&#8221;I don&#8217;t see it [going] well,&#8221; said Poznanski. &#8220;This is a big neighborhood. We need more people who care.&#8221;</p> <p>Fernando D&#237;&#173;az helped research this article.</p>

Whites struggle to adjust in newly Latino neighborhood

http://chicagoreporter.com/whites-struggle-adjust-newly-latino-neighborhood/

2003-05-01

3left-center

A drive down the 5700 block of West Belmont Avenue the hub of the Northwest Side community of Belmont Cragin is like a scene from another era Stores such as Dom ampamp Ksiazki Polish Bookstore Gene8217s Old World Sausage Shop and Staropolska8217s Restaurant dot almost every corner A dense commercial thoroughfare the street is crammed with momandpop storefronts proud to display their handmade signs written in Polish and English enticing customers with their daily specials or the week8217s bargain buy This is an immigrant community of workingclass families explained the Rev Stephen Kanonik who grew up in the neighborhood and is now pastor of nearby St Ladislaus Roman Catholic Church at 5345 W Roscoe St 8220People here aren8217t goofy enough to spend four bucks on a cup of coffee8221 Kanonik said Belmont Cragin was once known as a haven for white ethnic families But the area near Belmont and Central avenues is now one of their few remaining enclaves in the neighborhood The rest of Belmont Cragin is filled with scenes like the one about a mile southeast where retail shops offer trips to Mexico City and restaurants advertise weekend specials on Menudo soup with signs in Spanish and English 8220This is where that 8211732American Dream8217 plays itself out for some Latinos who try to do better8221 said the Rev Carmelo M233ndez of St James Catholic Church 5730 W Fullerton Ave 8220This is the second neighborhood Hispanics move into82118221it8217s the area where those who have saved up enough and are doing financially better move8221 In the last decade Belmont Cragin has undergone a quiet but dramatic change Once mostly made up of Polish Americans it is now a predominantly Latino neighborhood Leaders say many of the new residents have moved from older more established Hispanic communities like Humboldt Park and Pilsen Residents say the transition has gone smoothly unlike in Chicago neighborhoods that shifted82118221often violently82118221from white to black in the 1960s and 1970s Property values in Belmont Cragin have not plummeted Commercial districts continue to thrive And with median household income above the citywide figure the area remains stable But beneath the surface are signs of the racial tensions that typically mark a community in transition 8220There are a few people who can8217t let go 8211166 Others move because they are afraid I encourage people to stay8221 30th Ward Democratic Committeeman Michael Wojcik said of the area8217s white ethnic residents The 30th Ward includes parts of Belmont Cragin 8220I want to keep the stability8221 Wojcik said 8220Stability engenders safe schools low crime jobs and political participation8221 Wojcik who is Polish American served as 35th Ward alderman from 1991 to 1994 and 30th Ward alderman from 1995 until April After a remap left the 30th Ward majority Latino Wojcik and the Chicagobased Polish National Alliance filed a lawsuit which is still pending and Wojcik chose not to run for reelection In February voters elected Ariel E Reboyras to be their first Latino alderman In 1980 most of Belmont Cragin8217s residents were Polish with significant numbers of Greeks Germans and Italians census data show Only 6 percent were Hispanic But by 1990 Latinos represented 30 percent of the community8217s population by 2000 they made up 65 percent The white population dropped 27 percent in the 1980s and 41 percent in the 1990s according to the census 8220I don8217t care who moves into the neighborhood I just want the area kept nice 8211166 as a place where families can raise their children8221 said Robert Pietryka 35 a longtime resident who is of Polish descent But some residents are upset that singlefamily homes have been illegally converted into apartments and rooms for lowincome renters They also worry about neighborhood crime and associate it with young people who have moved into the area82118221though they say it is not a racial or ethnic issue 8220A lot of it is the way you look at it8221 said Arthur D Felgenhauer secretary of the BelmontCentral Chamber of Commerce 8220You see something happen and your mind goes off 8211732Well see there are robberies all over now8221 Even if it8217s not true he said 8220people want to associate them with all the change that8217s going on8221 Most Latinos say they8217re not concerned about whites leaving Belmont Cragin Instead they are focused on getting the schools to perform better reducing crime and maintaining a high quality of life in the neighborhood 8220Latino residents feel comfortable living here8221 M233ndez said 8220Latino families are very active in neighborhood organizations and they vigorously advocate for better schools and safer neighborhoods8221 Bungalow Belt A quiet community 11 miles northwest of the Loop Belmont Cragin has seldom attracted frontpage news After a surge in the development of singlefamily brick bungalows in the early 20th century first and secondgeneration Europeans populated the area But today the only part of the neighborhood that houses a majoritywhite population is its northwest tip according to census data And communities such as Portage Park Dunning and Montclare that skirt Belmont Cragin to the north and west remain at least 70 percent white while to the south and east the Hermosa and Humboldt Park areas are largely Latino For white residents 8220it speaks to familiarity They don8217t know their Hispanic neighbors they don8217t know their culture and they don8217t know their customs8221 said John Gaudette executive director of the Northwest Neighborhood Federation which works with residents on community issues Many of the white residents who have remained in Belmont Cragin are 62 years old or older Almost half of the 7612 seniors in the community reside in that northwest corner an area that accounts for 35 percent of Belmont Cragin8217s total population according to the census Seniors are now 8220seeing fewer and fewer folks like themselves and they wonder if it8217s worth staying8221 Gaudette said 8220They become more and more isolated8221 Belmont Cragin8217s younger white residents are on the move 8220I8217m the last guy to stay from my old neighborhood8221 said Pietryka owner of the PietrykaDe Nicolo Funeral Home at 5734 W Diversey Ave Pietryka said people he grew up with have moved to other neighborhoods like Wicker Park and Lincoln Park or to the suburbs82118221areas that they see offering more restaurants bars and coffeehouses 8220They move because they see Belmont Cragin as their parents8217 old neighborhood8221 he said 8220Now as adults there just isn8217t enough to keep them here8221 The Rev Anthony Dziorek who for 16 years has served as pastor of St Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Catholic Church 5352 W Belden Ave said the neighborhood change has been smooth 8220We just coexist8221 said Dziorek 52 who was born in Poland and moved to Chicago in 1981 8220Latinos want a nice neighborhood and the remaining Poles mostly aging Polish Americans now just want to be able to live out their remaining days here8221 St Stanislaus has mostly served Polish parishioners since it was founded in 1893 he said 8220The parish was like a staple an anchor to the community People were coming to the church because they lived around the neighborhood8221 Now though only about 10 percent of its parishioners live in the neighborhood Most of the others are from other areas in Chicago and northwest suburbs such as River Grove Schiller Park Norridge and Niles But they come because Polish customs and traditions are incorporated into St Stanislaus masses especially on holidays Dziorek said The church has six masses every Sunday three offered in Polish and three in English At the same time the church has attracted some Latino families and almost twothirds of the 216 students enrolled in its elementary school are Hispanic according to the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago In 1995 64 percent of its 415 pupils were white Dziorek said he has been working to get a priest who can lead a mass in Spanish at the church and he is learning to speak Spanish himself 8220The whole neighborhood within the boundary of our church is Latino8221 he said and St Stanislaus should 8220be able to provide the kind of customs and traditions we would like to offer for Spanishspeaking people8221 M233ndez an associate pastor at St James parish said Hispanic residents may not always feel comfortable attending or seeking help from some of the local churches because staff and administrators are mostly Polish But pastors of these neighborhood churches want to help bridge those gaps he said 8220The one barrier is obvious language8221 said M233ndez 8220But there is also a culture difference and we will have to work on melding those differences8221 Neighborhood Flux Police data show that the area8217s crime has remained relatively steady over the last five years In 2001 Belmont Cragin residents reported 4039 index crimes82118221serious offenses such as murders assaults and auto thefts82118221which ranked 18th among the city8217s 77 community areas according to police data In 2002 the community recorded 4089 index crimes But residents maintain that crime has become an increasing problem In July Maria Poznanski and her husband Greg attended their first Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy CAPS meeting after growing concerned about neighborhood crime The Poznanskis live on North Mango Avenue in the house where Maria has lived since moving there with her parents in 1967 when she was 5 years old 8220We would notice things like more garage breakins questionable people walking around the neighborhood more parked cars on our streets 8211166 and loud parties8221 she said She added that they also started seeing more stories about crime in their neighborhood newspaper Poznanski noted that the neighborhood has changed 8220dramatically8221 And 8220it wouldn8217t matter what kind of people come into the neighborhood82118221they just have to care about the neighborhood8221 she said Crime is also a major complaint among Latino residents Carmen Martinez who moved to Belmont Cragin in 1990 doesn8217t want to see the quality of life decline there 8220Latinos like myself and my neighbors who were here when the area was quiet and stable want to maintain that8221 she said 8220We are trying to get the new people who have come into our neighborhoods to realize that 8211732You moved here because you liked the area You have a responsibility to keep it that way8221 Michael McCotter commander of the Grand Central Police District said crime in the area 8220has gotten tougher8221 in recent years The district includes Belmont Cragin and parts of several adjacent communities McCotter said gentrification in the Wicker Park and Humboldt Park neighborhoods to the southeast had pushed criminal activity into Belmont Cragin He said his district has set up task forces to reduce these offenses 8220We8217re holding our own trying to crack down on the problem spots and keep it from getting out of control8221 he said Gang activity82118221including recruitment in and around schools and graffiti with gang markings82118221has increased due to the community8217s population growth especially among young people McCotter said Census data show that Belmont Cragin8217s population of youth 17 years old and younger has nearly doubled since 1990 to 23298 It now makes up about 30 percent of the area8217s total Martha Roman 59 who is Puerto Rican has lived on the 4800 block of West Medill Avenue for eight years She said she and her husband have decided to move out of state in part because they have grown tired of seeing young people selling drugs 8220I don8217t want to deal with these young punks8221 she said Property Values Many in Belmont Cragin also worry that residents will not maintain their property and that the neighborhood will physically deteriorate in the next few years Jackie Pledger and her husband Arthur Skwerski rent out a threeflat on the 2300 block of North Lockwood Avenue Pledger who grew up in Belmont Cragin and now lives in Oak Park still takes her 100yearold mother Gladys to the Community Savings Bank near the corner of West Belmont and North Cicero avenues Her mother has banked there for more than 60 years Parts of the neighborhood near Fullerton and Central 8220have been completely abandoned by whites8221 said Pledger 66 8220The homes aren8217t as kept up and the area is considered by the elder Poles to be unsafe8221 In order to preserve the community residents have to take a vested interest and keep up their property she said Poznanski said not enough people attend CAPS meetings or are involved in the community Some newer residents she said 8220don8217t care as much as the older people who have been living here All they want is four walls and a roof 8211166 They8217re not interested in things you need to be interested in 8211166 to be part of a community We need more people who care8221 Still housing prices in Belmont Cragin have gone up said Larry R Lynch a managing broker at Century 21 Beaulieu Real Estate 5341 W Belmont Ave Houses that sold for 40000 or 50000 in the late 1970s now sell for 220000 and more according to Lynch who8217s worked at the realty company for 18 years According to the census Belmont Cragin8217s median household income is 43159 It8217s much harder than it used to be for a family to buy a home he said because the area 8220really had a tremendous amount of people that came in the past six years8221 In some instances several family members or even different families have purchased a house together Lynch said In other cases owners have illegally converted homes into apartments or rented out rooms to those who couldn8217t afford anything else according to both police and realtors Police say the conversions have left the houses dangerously overcrowded caused a parking shortage on the streets and raised the ire of neighbors Police frequently receive tips about illegal conversions or discover them when officers visit homes on routine calls said police Officer Cathy Sandow 8220We8217d go into the house and we8217d see that it was chopped up illegally converted8221 Sandow said Residents 8220don8217t know who their neighbors are because these houses have 10 or 15 people just renting a mattress in the basement 8211166 It8217s a serious concern 8211166 And with our present economy it8217s going to get worse before it gets better8221 Police turn the information over to the city Sandow said Since 2000 the Chicago Department of Buildings has received 1110 complaints about illegal conversions from residents of the 30th and 31st wards which together make up most of Belmont Cragin according to department spokeswoman Breelyn Pete Many residents note that houses have been illegally converted since the first influx of European immigrants into Belmont Cragin But longtime residents say things are different now 8220Back then it was always the spinster aunt or the quiet uncle who had a room in the attic Now I have residents who complain that there are two or three families living in a house8221 said Pietryka who leads CAPS meetings as a beat facilitator 8220And they have loud parties and have at least three cars that need to be parked on the streets8221 But not everyone identifies conversions as a problem M233ndez said some neighborhood Latinos are willing to let family members and others stay in their homes as a way to do 8220something good8221 8220A lot of the Latino families who immigrated came in under the same situation And now they want to help in some way because they went through the same experience themselves8221 he said People who haven8217t had this kind of experience might 8220see it as something weird or different 8211732How can they share a house with three or four families8221 Roman said conversions have been less of a concern since residents banded together and complained to city officials She added 8220It8217s not a race thing8221 Holding On Both white and Latino residents are concerned about overcrowding in the area8217s public schools Constantine P Kiamos principal for 19 years at Charles P Steinmetz Academic Centre High School 3030 N Mobile Ave said school officials are doing their best to alleviate the problem Some schools have built annexes or added trailers Kiamos said He believes the neighborhood is going through a cycle 8220For a long time these homes were inhabited by couples whose children had left 8211166 or grown older and moved out And these homes are now being inhabited by younger people with families8221 The student population at Steinmetz has increased by a third since 1997 to about 3000 White students made up 34 percent of the enrollment in 1997 by last year the number was down to 26 percent Chicago Public Schools data show Latinos make up 48 percent of the student body up from 39 percent The school8217s black population has remained steady at about 23 percent Last winter snowflecked yard signs supporting Ariel E Reboyras for alderman were posted in the frozen lawns in the 30th Ward Four years ago similar eyecatching red white and blue signs carried Wojcik8217s name Reboyras 49 who moved into the neighborhood 16 years ago is of Puerto Rican descent Noting that he has Polish neighbors he said the area still has a very strong Polish community and that he wants to help preserve it Reboyras pledged to bring Latinos and whites together to fight crime and maintain 8220stability8221 8220The community will be more stable if it8217s integrated8221 Reboyras said 8220There is a balance that has to be met 8211166 Getting both groups involved is the key and letting them know that these streets are both of theirs8221 But most Belmont Cragin residents recognize that their area is changing And many predict that by 2010 the community will be almost completely Latino Kiamos the Steinmetz principal isn8217t concerned 8220I see people investing good dollars into nice homes8221 he said 8220And I don8217t see the associated negatives coming in with what people perceive as a neighborhood in change8221 Others82118221both Latinos and whites82118221are more ambivalent 8220It8217s doesn8217t concern me so much that whites are moving out8221 Roman said But she added many new residents don8217t seem to be helping to keep up the neighborhood 8220and that8217s what bothers me8221 8220In 10 years if we don8217t have some major changes82118221with more police and more people in the community interested82118221I don8217t see it going well8221 said Poznanski 8220This is a big neighborhood We need more people who care8221 Fernando D237173az helped research this article

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<p>MOSCOW, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The supply of gas from Russia&#8217;s Sakhalin-1 project to a pipeline in the country&#8217;s Far East has been suspended due to a problem at a compressor station, the Russian Energy Ministry said on Thursday.</p> <p>The ministry said it was looking into the incident and that a power station in the Khabarovsk region was still supplying gas to the surrounding area where the temperature was minus 17 degrees Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit). (Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Polina Devitt)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON/DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Western powers have no plans for further missile strikes on Syria but will assess their options if Damascus uses chemical weapons again, Britain&#8217;s foreign minister said on Sunday as debate raged over the legality and effectiveness of the raids.</p> Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson attends the BBC's Marr Show in London, April 15, 2018. Jeff Overs/BBC handout via REUTERS <p>U.S., French and British missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program on Saturday in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack a week ago, and the three countries insisted they were not aimed at toppling President Bashar al-Assad or intervening in a seven-year civil war.</p> <p>The bombings, hailed by U.S. President Donald Trump as a success but denounced by Damascus and its allies as an act of aggression, marked the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his ally Russia, whose foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called them &#8220;unacceptable and lawless&#8221;.</p> <p>In Damascus, Syria&#8217;s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official.</p> <p>The inspectors were due to try to visit the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings before attacking.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-strategy/despite-trumps-mission-accomplished-question-raised-over-u-s-syria-strategy-idUSKBN1HL17X" type="external">Despite Trump's 'Mission accomplished', question raised over U.S. Syria strategy</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-assad-russia/syrias-assad-tells-russian-lawmakers-western-strikes-were-act-of-aggression-idUSKBN1HM083" type="external">Syria's Assad tells Russian lawmakers Western strikes were act of aggression</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-britain/no-new-attacks-planned-against-syria-for-now-says-britain-idUSKBN1HM0FU" type="external">No new attacks planned against Syria for now, says Britain</a> <p>As he left the hotel where the meeting took place, Mekdad declined to comment to reporters waiting outside.</p> <p>British Foreign Secretary (Minister) Boris Johnson defended Prime Minister Theresa May&#8217;s decision to take part in the attack, saying it was to deter further use of chemical weapons.</p> <p>&#8220;This is not about regime change &#8230; This is not about trying to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria,&#8221; he told the BBC.</p> <p>&#8220;There is no proposal on the table at the moment for further attacks because so far thank heavens the Assad regime have not been so foolish as to launch another chemical weapons attack.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;If and when such a thing were to happen, then clearly with allies we would study what the options were,&#8221; he said, echoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who told an emergency Security Council meeting that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, &#8220;The United States is locked and loaded.&#8221;</p> <p>Asked if this meant Assad could carry on using barrel bombs and other means in the war provided he did not use chemical weapons, Johnson said that was the &#8220;unhappy&#8221; consequence.</p> <p>Assad was determined &#8220;to butcher his way&#8221; to an overwhelming victory and only the Russians could pressure him to come to the negotiating table in Geneva, Johnson said.</p> <p>British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the legal basis used to support the British role was debatable, adding that he would only support action backed by the UN Security Council.</p> Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain's Labour Party attends the BBC's Marr Show in London, April 15, 2018. Jeff Overs/BBC handout via REUTERS <p>&#8220;I say to the foreign secretary, I say to the prime minister, where is the legal basis for this?&#8221; Corbyn said in an interview with the BBC.</p> <p>The Western countries blame Assad&#8217;s government for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 that killed up to 75 people. Russia, whose ties with the West have sunk to levels of the Cold War-era, denies any gas attack in Douma and said Britain staged it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.</p> &#8220;RESILIENCE&#8221; <p>In Damascus, Assad told a group of visiting Russian lawmakers that the Western missile strikes were an act of aggression, Russian news agencies reported.</p> <p>Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption &#8220;Morning of resilience&#8221; and there were no immediate reports of casualties.</p> <p>The Russian agencies quoted the lawmakers as saying Assad was in a &#8220;good mood&#8221;, had praised the Soviet-era air defense systems Syria used to repel the Western attacks and had accepted an invitation to visit Russia at an unspecified time.</p> <p>Russian Foreign Ministry official Vladimir Ermakov struck a apparently conciliatory tone on Sunday, saying Washington would want to maintain a dialogue with Moscow about strategic stability after the raids, Russian media reported.</p> <p>&#8220;In the U.S. administration there are specific people who it is possible to talk with,&#8221; said Ermakov, head of the ministry&#8217;s department for non-proliferation and arms control.</p> <p>President Trump had said &#8220;Mission accomplished&#8221; on Twitter on Saturday following the strikes, although U.S. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie at the Pentagon acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.</p> <p>Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him.</p> Slideshow (8 Images) <p>The United States, Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years, arming rebels, bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops to fight the militants. But they have refrained from targeting Assad&#8217;s government, apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.</p> RED LINE BREACHED? <p>The strikes suggest Trump may have reset America&#8217;s red line for military intervention in Syria over the use of chemical weapons.</p> <p>In Washington, a senior administration official said that &#8220;while the available information is much greater on the chlorine use, we do have significant information that also points to sarin use&#8221; in the attack.</p> <p>Sarin had previously appeared to be the threshold for intervention. Chlorine, in contrast, has been used more widely in Syria&#8217;s conflict without past U.S. reprisals, and the chemical is far easier to find and weaponize, experts say.</p> <p>Washington described the strike targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons; a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs; and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.</p> <p>Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the attack a crime and the Western leaders criminals, while U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to use restraint, but said charges of chemical weapons use demand investigation.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Pope Francis called on world leaders to renew efforts to bring peace to Syria, saying he was deeply troubled by their failure to agree on a joint plan to end the bloodshed.</p> <p>GRAPHIC - Details of air strikes on Syria ( <a href="https://tmsnrt.rs/2EKgAMN" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2EKgAMN</a>)</p> <p>Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Tom Perry; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Matt Spetalnick and Joel Schectman in Washington; Michelle Nichols in New York; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clercq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Andrey Ostroukh and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Alison Bevege in Sydney,; Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Adrian Croft and Alexander Smith</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told a group of Russian lawmakers on Sunday that Western missile strikes on his country were an act of aggression.</p> FILE PHOTO - Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visit the Hmeymim air base in Latakia Province, Syria December 11, 2017. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/ via REUTERS/File Photo <p>The meeting followed missile strikes by the United States, France and Britain against Syrian government targets over a suspected poison gas attack a week ago.</p> <p>Russia, which is helping Assad fight militants and rebels opposed to his rule, immediately condemned the strikes and called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.</p> <p>&#8220;From the point of view of the president, this was aggression and we share this position,&#8221; Russia&#8217;s TASS news agency quoted lawmaker Sergei Zheleznyak as saying after the meeting with Assad in the Syrian capital Damascus.</p> <p>The president was in a &#8220;good mood&#8221; and continuing his work in Damascus, agencies cited the lawmakers as saying, and praised the Soviet-era air defense systems Syria used to help to repel the Western attacks.</p> <p>&#8220;The tripartite aggression against Syria accompanied a campaign of disinformation,&#8221; Assad&#8217;s office quoted him as saying on Sunday. Moscow and Damascus are &#8220;waging one battle, not only against terrorism&#8221; but also to protect the sovereignty of states, he told the Russian officials.</p> <p>Both countries have dismissed the reports of the alleged gas attack as bogus, accusing Washington of using it as a pretext for the strikes.</p> <p>A senior Russian military official said on Saturday that Syria&#8217;s air defenses, which mostly consist of systems made in the former Soviet Union, had intercepted 71 of the 105 American, British and French missiles.</p> <p>The Pentagon has said the strikes successfully hit the three chemical weapons facilities which were targeted.</p> <p>&#8220;Yesterday we saw American aggression. And we were able to repel it with Soviet missiles from the 70s,&#8221; Russian lawmaker Dmitry Sablin quoted Assad as saying, TASS reported.</p> <p>Sablin also said Assad accepted an invitation to visit the Siberian region of Khanty-Mansi in Russia. It was not clear when the visit would take place.</p> <p>Russia said on Saturday it would consider supplying S-300 surface to-air missile systems to Syria following the Western strikes, but this was not discussed at the meeting with Assad, agencies reported.</p> <p>Assad also declined to comment on calls by the U.S. State Department to declare alleged Syrian stockpiles of chemical weapons, Zheleznyak said.</p> <p>Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Additional reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Jane Merriman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Martin Sorrell, who built WPP into the world&#8217;s biggest advertising agency through 33 years of dealmaking, quit on Saturday after an allegation of personal misconduct.</p> FILE PHOTO: Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive Officer of WPP, attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo <p>The departure of the CEO who built a two-man outfit into one of Britain&#8217;s biggest companies with 200,000 staff in 112 countries leaves WPP without a boss at a pivotal time for the industry and when the group is under great strain.</p> <p>WPP stunned the market last week when it said it had appointed lawyers to investigate alleged misconduct by Sorrell. He denied the allegations but in a letter to WPP staff published late on Saturday he said the &#8220;current disruption&#8221; was &#8220;putting too much unnecessary pressure on the business&#8221;.</p> <p>He said he had decided that &#8220;in your interest, in the interest of our clients, in the interest of all shareowners, both big and small, and in the interest of all our other stakeholders, it is best for me to step aside&#8221;.</p> <p>Chairman Roberto Quarta will become executive chairman until a new chief executive is found, while Mark Read, a WPP digital executive, and Andrew Scott, chief operating officer, Europe, have been appointed as joint chief operating officers.</p> <p>Read, who previously sat on WPP&#8217;s main board, is well regarded in the industry while Scott was involved in its acquisition strategy and was not involved with clients.</p> <p>The company will consider internal and external candidates for the top job in a process that could take several months.</p> <p>&#8220;Obviously I am sad to leave WPP after 33 years,&#8221; Sorrell said in a statement. &#8220;It has been a passion, focus and source of energy for so long. However, I believe it is in the best interests of the business if I step down now.&#8221;</p> <p>WPP said the investigation, which regarded financial impropriety, had concluded. It made no further comment but repeated a previous statement that the allegation did not involve amounts that were material to the company.</p> <p>A source close to Sorrell said he had been unhappy with how the investigation was handled, leaving him uncertain whether he could work with the board again.</p> <p>Analysts have speculated that the sprawling group, which was being restructured after a year of lower spending from some clients, could now sell off some assets if led by different management.</p> PASSION AND FOCUS <p>The longest-serving CEO on the FTSE 100 blue chip index, Sorrell built WPP into one of Britain&#8217;s biggest companies by three decades of relentless dealmaking. He is one of the most high profile, and best paid, executives in the country.</p> <p>In his time the group expanded to own top creative agencies including J. Walter Thompson and Young &amp;amp; Rubicam, as well as media planners and buyers, market-research firms and public relations groups such as Finsbury.</p> <p>Present in 112 countries, WPP serves clients including Ford, Unilever, P&amp;amp;G and a string of major corporations around the world.</p> <p>It largely outperformed its peers Omnicom, Publicis and IPG in the years that followed the financial crisis as the group pitched aggressively for new work. But it has been hit in the last 18 months by a downturn in spending from consumer goods groups Unilever and P&amp;amp;G, and the loss of some big accounts.</p> <p>The migration of advertising online and the encroachment into market research of consultancies such as Accenture have compounded the pressures. Its shares are down around 30 percent this year.</p> <p>The company said Sorrell would be available to assist with the transition, and the man synonymous with the British marketing group told the staff they would come through this difficult time.</p> <p>&#8220;As a founder, I can say that WPP is not just a matter of life or death, it was, is and will be more important than that,&#8221; Sorrell said. &#8220;Good fortune and Godspeed to all of you. Now back to the future.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Alistair Bell and Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A high-stakes showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will determine whether states can force out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes in a fight between South Dakota and e-commerce businesses.</p> FILE PHOTO: The South Dakota state capitol building is seen in Pierre, South Dakota, U.S., February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Lawrence Hurley/File Photo <p>South Dakota is asking the nine justices to overturn a 1992 Supreme Court precedent that states cannot require retailers to collect state sales taxes on purchases unless the businesses have a &#8220;physical presence&#8221; in the state.</p> <p>The state, appealing a lower court decision that favored Wayfair Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=W.N" type="external">W.N</a>), Overstock.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=OSTK.O" type="external">OSTK.O</a>) and Newegg Inc, is being supported by President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration.</p> <p>A ruling favoring South Dakota could help small brick-and-mortar retailers compete with online rivals while funneling up to $18 billion into the coffers of the affected states, according to a 2017 federal report.</p> <p>The justices will hear arguments in the case on Tuesday against a backdrop of Trump&#8217;s harsh criticism of Amazon.com Inc( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>), the dominant player in online retail, on the issue of taxes and other matters. Trump has assailed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, a newspaper that the Republican president also has disparaged.</p> <p>Amazon, which is not involved in the Supreme Court case, collects sales taxes on direct purchases on its site but does not collect taxes for items sold on its platform by third-party venders, constituting around half of total sales.</p> <p>South Dakota depends more than most states on sales taxes because it is one of nine that do not have a state income tax. South Dakota projects its revenue losses because of online sales that do not collect state taxes at around $50 million annually, while its opponents in the case estimate it as less than half that figure.</p> FILE PHOTO: A view of the U.S. Supreme Court building is seen in Washington, DC, U.S., October 13, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo <p>Major retailers that have brick-and-mortar stores, and therefore already collect taxes, are represented by industry groups that back South Dakota. The National Retail Federation, which supports the state, has a membership list that includes Walmart Inc( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WMT.N" type="external">WMT.N</a>) and Target Corp( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TGT.N" type="external">TGT.N</a>), as well as Amazon.</p> <p>Stephanie Martz, the federation&#8217;s general counsel, said in an interview the case gives the Supreme Court a chance to adapt the law to new circumstances prompted by the rise of internet shopping.</p> <p>&#8220;Things have changed a lot since 1992. The entire nature of interstate commerce has changed,&#8221; Martz said.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=W.N" type="external">Wayfair Inc</a> 66.81 W.N New York Stock Exchange -0.91 (-1.34%) W.N OSTK.O AMZN.O WMT.N TGT.N <p>E-commerce companies supporting Wayfair, Overstock and Newegg include two that provide online platforms for individuals to sell online: eBay Inc( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EBAY.O" type="external">EBAY.O</a>) and Etsy Inc( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ETSY.O" type="external">ETSY.O</a>).</p> <p>&#8220;Win or lose at the Supreme Court, we will continue to advocate for a legislative solution and a level playing field where all retailers collect and remit sales tax on the same basis,&#8221; Wayfair spokeswoman Jane Carpenter said in a statement.</p> <p>Brian Bieron, eBay&#8217;s senior director of government relations, said in an interview the 1992 precedent &#8220;provides the many small businesses that use the internet with a very clear and simple and stable legal environment in which to grow their business.&#8221;</p> <p>Overturning the ruling while not replacing it with a new national framework &#8220;is really going to be a negative move in terms of e-commerce,&#8221; Bieron added.</p> <p>A 2016 South Dakota law requires out-of-state online retailers to collect sales tax if they clear $100,000 in sales or 200 separate transactions. State legislators knew the measure was unlawful under the 1992 precedent.</p> <p>The state sued a group of online retailers after the law was enacted to force them to collect the state sale taxes, with the aim of overturning the precedent.</p> <p>Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Supply of gas from Russia's Sakhalin-1 project suspended - Energy Ministry Allies keep Syria options open as Britain says no strikes planned Syria's Assad tells Russian lawmakers Western strikes were act of aggression Martin Sorrell quits as head of world's biggest ad group WPP South Dakota e-commerce sale tax fight reaches U.S. Supreme Court

https://reuters.com/article/russia-sakhalin-suspension/supply-of-gas-from-russias-sakhalin-1-project-suspended-energy-ministry-idUSR4N1PB00O

2018-01-18

2least

MOSCOW Jan 18 Reuters The supply of gas from Russia8217s Sakhalin1 project to a pipeline in the country8217s Far East has been suspended due to a problem at a compressor station the Russian Energy Ministry said on Thursday The ministry said it was looking into the incident and that a power station in the Khabarovsk region was still supplying gas to the surrounding area where the temperature was minus 17 degrees Celsius 14 Fahrenheit Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova Writing by Andrew Osborn Editing by Polina Devitt Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDONDAMASCUS Reuters Western powers have no plans for further missile strikes on Syria but will assess their options if Damascus uses chemical weapons again Britain8217s foreign minister said on Sunday as debate raged over the legality and effectiveness of the raids Britains Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson attends the BBCs Marr Show in London April 15 2018 Jeff OversBBC handout via REUTERS US French and British missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria8217s chemical weapons program on Saturday in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack a week ago and the three countries insisted they were not aimed at toppling President Bashar alAssad or intervening in a sevenyear civil war The bombings hailed by US President Donald Trump as a success but denounced by Damascus and its allies as an act of aggression marked the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his ally Russia whose foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called them 8220unacceptable and lawless8221 In Damascus Syria8217s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official The inspectors were due to try to visit the site of the suspected gas attack Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings before attacking Related Coverage Despite Trumps Mission accomplished question raised over US Syria strategy Syrias Assad tells Russian lawmakers Western strikes were act of aggression No new attacks planned against Syria for now says Britain As he left the hotel where the meeting took place Mekdad declined to comment to reporters waiting outside British Foreign Secretary Minister Boris Johnson defended Prime Minister Theresa May8217s decision to take part in the attack saying it was to deter further use of chemical weapons 8220This is not about regime change 8230 This is not about trying to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria8221 he told the BBC 8220There is no proposal on the table at the moment for further attacks because so far thank heavens the Assad regime have not been so foolish as to launch another chemical weapons attack8221 8220If and when such a thing were to happen then clearly with allies we would study what the options were8221 he said echoing US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley who told an emergency Security Council meeting that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again 8220The United States is locked and loaded8221 Asked if this meant Assad could carry on using barrel bombs and other means in the war provided he did not use chemical weapons Johnson said that was the 8220unhappy8221 consequence Assad was determined 8220to butcher his way8221 to an overwhelming victory and only the Russians could pressure him to come to the negotiating table in Geneva Johnson said British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the legal basis used to support the British role was debatable adding that he would only support action backed by the UN Security Council Jeremy Corbyn the leader of Britains Labour Party attends the BBCs Marr Show in London April 15 2018 Jeff OversBBC handout via REUTERS 8220I say to the foreign secretary I say to the prime minister where is the legal basis for this8221 Corbyn said in an interview with the BBC The Western countries blame Assad8217s government for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 that killed up to 75 people Russia whose ties with the West have sunk to levels of the Cold Warera denies any gas attack in Douma and said Britain staged it to whip up antiRussian hysteria 8220RESILIENCE8221 In Damascus Assad told a group of visiting Russian lawmakers that the Western missile strikes were an act of aggression Russian news agencies reported Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombedout research lab but also of Assad arriving at work as usual with the caption 8220Morning of resilience8221 and there were no immediate reports of casualties The Russian agencies quoted the lawmakers as saying Assad was in a 8220good mood8221 had praised the Sovietera air defense systems Syria used to repel the Western attacks and had accepted an invitation to visit Russia at an unspecified time Russian Foreign Ministry official Vladimir Ermakov struck a apparently conciliatory tone on Sunday saying Washington would want to maintain a dialogue with Moscow about strategic stability after the raids Russian media reported 8220In the US administration there are specific people who it is possible to talk with8221 said Ermakov head of the ministry8217s department for nonproliferation and arms control President Trump had said 8220Mission accomplished8221 on Twitter on Saturday following the strikes although US Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie at the Pentagon acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him Slideshow 8 Images The United States Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years arming rebels bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops to fight the militants But they have refrained from targeting Assad8217s government apart from a volley of US missiles last year RED LINE BREACHED The strikes suggest Trump may have reset America8217s red line for military intervention in Syria over the use of chemical weapons In Washington a senior administration official said that 8220while the available information is much greater on the chlorine use we do have significant information that also points to sarin use8221 in the attack Sarin had previously appeared to be the threshold for intervention Chlorine in contrast has been used more widely in Syria8217s conflict without past US reprisals and the chemical is far easier to find and weaponize experts say Washington described the strike targets as a center near Damascus for the research development production and testing of chemical and biological weapons a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the attack a crime and the Western leaders criminals while UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to use restraint but said charges of chemical weapons use demand investigation Meanwhile Pope Francis called on world leaders to renew efforts to bring peace to Syria saying he was deeply troubled by their failure to agree on a joint plan to end the bloodshed GRAPHIC Details of air strikes on Syria tmsnrtrs2EKgAMN Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Tom Perry Additional reporting by Phil Stewart Jeff Mason Steve Holland Idrees Ali Yara Bayoumy Matt Spetalnick and Joel Schectman in Washington Michelle Nichols in New York Samia Nakhoul Tom Perry Laila Bassam Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut Kinda Makieh in Barzeh Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London and JeanBaptiste Vey Geert de Clercq and Matthias Blamont in Paris Andrey Ostroukh and Jack Stubbs in Moscow Alison Bevege in Sydney Writing by William Maclean Editing by Adrian Croft and Alexander Smith Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters Syrian President Bashar alAssad told a group of Russian lawmakers on Sunday that Western missile strikes on his country were an act of aggression FILE PHOTO Russian President Vladimir Putin R and Syrian President Bashar alAssad visit the Hmeymim air base in Latakia Province Syria December 11 2017 SputnikMikhail Klimentyev via REUTERSFile Photo The meeting followed missile strikes by the United States France and Britain against Syrian government targets over a suspected poison gas attack a week ago Russia which is helping Assad fight militants and rebels opposed to his rule immediately condemned the strikes and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council 8220From the point of view of the president this was aggression and we share this position8221 Russia8217s TASS news agency quoted lawmaker Sergei Zheleznyak as saying after the meeting with Assad in the Syrian capital Damascus The president was in a 8220good mood8221 and continuing his work in Damascus agencies cited the lawmakers as saying and praised the Sovietera air defense systems Syria used to help to repel the Western attacks 8220The tripartite aggression against Syria accompanied a campaign of disinformation8221 Assad8217s office quoted him as saying on Sunday Moscow and Damascus are 8220waging one battle not only against terrorism8221 but also to protect the sovereignty of states he told the Russian officials Both countries have dismissed the reports of the alleged gas attack as bogus accusing Washington of using it as a pretext for the strikes A senior Russian military official said on Saturday that Syria8217s air defenses which mostly consist of systems made in the former Soviet Union had intercepted 71 of the 105 American British and French missiles The Pentagon has said the strikes successfully hit the three chemical weapons facilities which were targeted 8220Yesterday we saw American aggression And we were able to repel it with Soviet missiles from the 70s8221 Russian lawmaker Dmitry Sablin quoted Assad as saying TASS reported Sablin also said Assad accepted an invitation to visit the Siberian region of KhantyMansi in Russia It was not clear when the visit would take place Russia said on Saturday it would consider supplying S300 surface toair missile systems to Syria following the Western strikes but this was not discussed at the meeting with Assad agencies reported Assad also declined to comment on calls by the US State Department to declare alleged Syrian stockpiles of chemical weapons Zheleznyak said Reporting by Jack Stubbs Additional reporting by Ellen Francis Editing by Jane Merriman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Martin Sorrell who built WPP into the world8217s biggest advertising agency through 33 years of dealmaking quit on Saturday after an allegation of personal misconduct FILE PHOTO Sir Martin Sorrell Chief Executive Officer of WPP attends the World Economic Forum WEF annual meeting in Davos Switzerland January 23 2018 REUTERSDenis BalibouseFile Photo The departure of the CEO who built a twoman outfit into one of Britain8217s biggest companies with 200000 staff in 112 countries leaves WPP without a boss at a pivotal time for the industry and when the group is under great strain WPP stunned the market last week when it said it had appointed lawyers to investigate alleged misconduct by Sorrell He denied the allegations but in a letter to WPP staff published late on Saturday he said the 8220current disruption8221 was 8220putting too much unnecessary pressure on the business8221 He said he had decided that 8220in your interest in the interest of our clients in the interest of all shareowners both big and small and in the interest of all our other stakeholders it is best for me to step aside8221 Chairman Roberto Quarta will become executive chairman until a new chief executive is found while Mark Read a WPP digital executive and Andrew Scott chief operating officer Europe have been appointed as joint chief operating officers Read who previously sat on WPP8217s main board is well regarded in the industry while Scott was involved in its acquisition strategy and was not involved with clients The company will consider internal and external candidates for the top job in a process that could take several months 8220Obviously I am sad to leave WPP after 33 years8221 Sorrell said in a statement 8220It has been a passion focus and source of energy for so long However I believe it is in the best interests of the business if I step down now8221 WPP said the investigation which regarded financial impropriety had concluded It made no further comment but repeated a previous statement that the allegation did not involve amounts that were material to the company A source close to Sorrell said he had been unhappy with how the investigation was handled leaving him uncertain whether he could work with the board again Analysts have speculated that the sprawling group which was being restructured after a year of lower spending from some clients could now sell off some assets if led by different management PASSION AND FOCUS The longestserving CEO on the FTSE 100 blue chip index Sorrell built WPP into one of Britain8217s biggest companies by three decades of relentless dealmaking He is one of the most high profile and best paid executives in the country In his time the group expanded to own top creative agencies including J Walter Thompson and Young ampamp Rubicam as well as media planners and buyers marketresearch firms and public relations groups such as Finsbury Present in 112 countries WPP serves clients including Ford Unilever PampampG and a string of major corporations around the world It largely outperformed its peers Omnicom Publicis and IPG in the years that followed the financial crisis as the group pitched aggressively for new work But it has been hit in the last 18 months by a downturn in spending from consumer goods groups Unilever and PampampG and the loss of some big accounts The migration of advertising online and the encroachment into market research of consultancies such as Accenture have compounded the pressures Its shares are down around 30 percent this year The company said Sorrell would be available to assist with the transition and the man synonymous with the British marketing group told the staff they would come through this difficult time 8220As a founder I can say that WPP is not just a matter of life or death it was is and will be more important than that8221 Sorrell said 8220Good fortune and Godspeed to all of you Now back to the future8221 Reporting by Kate Holton Editing by Kevin Liffey Alistair Bell and Daniel Wallis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters A highstakes showdown at the US Supreme Court on Tuesday will determine whether states can force outofstate online retailers to collect sales taxes in a fight between South Dakota and ecommerce businesses FILE PHOTO The South Dakota state capitol building is seen in Pierre South Dakota US February 7 2018 REUTERSLawrence HurleyFile Photo South Dakota is asking the nine justices to overturn a 1992 Supreme Court precedent that states cannot require retailers to collect state sales taxes on purchases unless the businesses have a 8220physical presence8221 in the state The state appealing a lower court decision that favored Wayfair Inc WN Overstockcom Inc OSTKO and Newegg Inc is being supported by President Donald Trump8217s administration A ruling favoring South Dakota could help small brickandmortar retailers compete with online rivals while funneling up to 18 billion into the coffers of the affected states according to a 2017 federal report The justices will hear arguments in the case on Tuesday against a backdrop of Trump8217s harsh criticism of Amazoncom Inc AMZNO the dominant player in online retail on the issue of taxes and other matters Trump has assailed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who owns the Washington Post a newspaper that the Republican president also has disparaged Amazon which is not involved in the Supreme Court case collects sales taxes on direct purchases on its site but does not collect taxes for items sold on its platform by thirdparty venders constituting around half of total sales South Dakota depends more than most states on sales taxes because it is one of nine that do not have a state income tax South Dakota projects its revenue losses because of online sales that do not collect state taxes at around 50 million annually while its opponents in the case estimate it as less than half that figure FILE PHOTO A view of the US Supreme Court building is seen in Washington DC US October 13 2015 REUTERSJonathan ErnstFile Photo Major retailers that have brickandmortar stores and therefore already collect taxes are represented by industry groups that back South Dakota The National Retail Federation which supports the state has a membership list that includes Walmart Inc WMTN and Target Corp TGTN as well as Amazon Stephanie Martz the federation8217s general counsel said in an interview the case gives the Supreme Court a chance to adapt the law to new circumstances prompted by the rise of internet shopping 8220Things have changed a lot since 1992 The entire nature of interstate commerce has changed8221 Martz said Wayfair Inc 6681 WN New York Stock Exchange 091 134 WN OSTKO AMZNO WMTN TGTN Ecommerce companies supporting Wayfair Overstock and Newegg include two that provide online platforms for individuals to sell online eBay Inc EBAYO and Etsy Inc ETSYO 8220Win or lose at the Supreme Court we will continue to advocate for a legislative solution and a level playing field where all retailers collect and remit sales tax on the same basis8221 Wayfair spokeswoman Jane Carpenter said in a statement Brian Bieron eBay8217s senior director of government relations said in an interview the 1992 precedent 8220provides the many small businesses that use the internet with a very clear and simple and stable legal environment in which to grow their business8221 Overturning the ruling while not replacing it with a new national framework 8220is really going to be a negative move in terms of ecommerce8221 Bieron added A 2016 South Dakota law requires outofstate online retailers to collect sales tax if they clear 100000 in sales or 200 separate transactions State legislators knew the measure was unlawful under the 1992 precedent The state sued a group of online retailers after the law was enacted to force them to collect the state sale taxes with the aim of overturning the precedent Reporting by Lawrence Hurley Editing by Will Dunham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>RICHMOND, Va. (AP) &#8212; The 2014 "polar vortex" and the wave of cold weather it unleashed over much of the U.S. has surfaced again and again as proponents have made the case for one of Virginia's most controversial infrastructure projects, the Dominion Energy-led Atlantic Coast Pipeline.</p> <p>The same argument, that existing pipeline capacity is stretched to the max during periods of severe weather, reared its head again a few weeks ago after a similar spate of plunging temperatures ushered in 2018.</p> <p>"The extreme cold and spikes in natural gas usage across the mid-Atlantic over the last two weeks demonstrated in dramatic fashion the real and urgent need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline," Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email Tuesday. In a separate statement, the company said its customers used more energy during the first week of January than any on record.</p> <p>"It means that many customers will see bills that are higher, possibly much higher, than expected as their heating systems strained to keep pace with demand," said the company, which now produces about 30 percent of its electricity from natural gas-fired plants.</p> <p>Pipeline opponents say Dominion is recycling an old argument that ignores other factors that lead to service curtailments and contend that building a $5.5 billion new pipeline is the most expensive way to deal with demand spikes caused by cold weather.</p> <p>"Dominion is peddling the same unsupported story about accessing cheaper gas via the ACP," said Will Cleveland, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which claims that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cost utility customers as much as $2.3 billion more than existing sources of gas. "Simply put, the ACP cannot and will not lower energy costs for Virginia power plants."</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Ruby said "severely limited capacity" on existing pipelines serving Virginia and North Carolina forced some utilities to curtail some gas service to major industrial customers and raised consumer prices to "historic highs," from $3 per dekatherm in late December to an all-time record high of $175 at the end of the first week of January. Power plants that burn natural gas pass those higher fuel costs on to their electric customers.</p> <p>"The reason is simple," Ruby said. "Our region's pipelines are too constrained, and we don't have enough access to lower-cost supplies from the Appalachian region."</p> <p>That's a problem that Ruby and Jim Kibler, president of Virginia Natural Gas, which has nearly 300,000 residential and commercial customers in southeastern Virginia, say the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina, with a spur to Hampton Roads, is intended to fix.</p> <p>"What it does is provide a reserve margin for these cold winter days," Kibler said. VNG is a subsidiary of Southern Company, which is a partner in the pipeline, and has contracted to use roughly 5 percent of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline's capacity of 1.5 million dekatherms of natural gas. It will also provide additional capacity for industrial expansion.</p> <p>"There's essentially no capacity available east of Richmond for any economic development projects," Kibler said. "ACP will really harden our ability to serve south-side Hampton Roads."</p> <p>During the 2014 polar vortex, Kibler said, Virginia Natural Gas curtailed service to about 100 "interruptible" industrial customers to prioritize delivery for power generation and home heating for such facilities as schools, hospitals, retirement homes, day cares and prisons, among others.</p> <p>This month, Virginia Natural Gas curtailed only 10, though he said that in no way undermines the need for the pipeline. The reduction in curtailments was partly the result of some of the coldest weather falling on a weekend and the fact that it was interrupted by warmer days, Kibler said. Also, the company's system saw no major compression or other mechanical failures.</p> <p>"We used every asset that we have last week and everything worked," he said.</p> <p>PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that runs the electric grid for all or parts of 13 states, including Virginia, and the District of Columbia, said the run of cold weather from Dec. 27 through Jan. 7 delivered three of the system's top 10 highest winter peak demands for electricity. Despite that, lessons learned during the 2014 polar vortex helped ensure that most power generators stayed online as demand surged.</p> <p>Chris Pilong, PJM's director of dispatch, said the recent cold weather was not quite as severe as the polar vortex of 2014, which caused forced outages because of a range of factors, including inadequate fuel supplies, lack of insulation of crucial components, freezing coal piles and mechanical problems. About 40,000 megawatts of generation, more than a quarter of the system's power generation, went offline during the polar vortex. This month, only about 16,000 megawatts of outages were reported, he said.</p> <p>"We're not seeing those types of generation performance issues this winter," he said. PJM has also created a penalty system for generation sources that fail to perform during emergency demand situations.</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Dominion says it relied on the Transco pipeline system, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City and has a daily capacity of 14.7 million dekatherms, for about 75 percent of its natural gas supply during the cold spell. Public utilities in North Carolina, Ruby said, relied on the Transco system for 100 percent of the state's supply.</p> <p>Chris Stockton, a spokesman for Williams Partners, which operates the Transco system, said the pipelines "performed remarkably" during the cold weather.</p> <p>"We were able to meet all of our firm capacity contracts. The system delivered a record amount of gas," said Stockton, noting that the system delivered about 10 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country on that day, Jan. 5. "It's an incredible accomplishment. It's a testament to the system that we have."</p> <p>Though he said it is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's job to determine the need for new pipeline infrastructure, such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and another project moving toward construction through Virginia, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Stockton said the existing system "performed as it was designed to perform."</p> <p>"That, to me, says the infrastructure is in place right now to meet the current demand," he said. "Those kinds of projects are really designed to meet future growth, and FERC is the body determining whether or not that project is really justified."</p> <p>The FERC has issued certificates for both projects &#8212; though, in a rare dissent, one commissioner said she could not conclude that either pipeline was in the public interest.</p> <p>While Dominion has argued that the pipelines will provide "supply diversity" that will hedge against price shocks by allowing utilities to purchase gas from different geographical sources &#8212; such as the Dominion South Point trading hub in Pennsylvania, which can experience price fluctuations at different times of year &#8212; opponents contend the project is more about the 14 percent rate of return guaranteed by the FERC, with utility ratepayers bearing all the risk.</p> <p>"There's no reason to think it'll be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 once the pipeline is built, which makes sense considering that the producers at Dominion South Point would sell their gas 'at market' once they have a pipeline able to bring the gas to market," said Cleveland, the SELC attorney. "Dominion's own internal price forecasts confirm that Dominion South Point won't be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 in the future."</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Dominion has cast the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as urgently needed to meet utility demands in Virginia and North Carolina. But the company's planned merger with SCANA Corp., a South Carolina electric and gas utility holding company, that was announced this month has added fuel to arguments that its real intent is to bring gas farther south.</p> <p>"We like the deal on the margin as the strategic rationale makes sense to us (this creates an expansion opportunity for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in SC, which remains a clear strategic desire in 2018 for D)," said a Bank of America-Merrill Lynch report on the merger announcement.</p> <p>Tom Hadwin, a former New York utility executive who lives in Waynesboro and is opposed to the ACP, also said the South Carolina acquisition makes sense for Dominion and its partners, which also include Duke Energy.</p> <p>"Dominion and Duke have considerably reduced the number of gas-fired power plants they say they need. PJM believes Virginia's electricity demand will be relatively stable over the next 15 years," Hadwin said. "They bought SCANA at a discount and will receive a long-term stream of tax-protected profits. It gives them a chance to extend the ACP in hopes of finding someone who needs the gas."</p> <p>Cleveland said the ACP is designed not to bring gas to Virginia, but to "move gas through Virginia."</p> <p>"Once it's built, all but two gas power plants in the entire state will still rely almost exclusively on pre-existing pipelines to operate," he said. "There won't be any incentive for those plants to pay higher ACP-related transportation costs for gas that's the same price as everywhere else in the market."</p> <p>Ruby, the Dominion spokesman, has said the company has made no decisions about potentially expanding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.</p> <p>RICHMOND, Va. (AP) &#8212; The 2014 "polar vortex" and the wave of cold weather it unleashed over much of the U.S. has surfaced again and again as proponents have made the case for one of Virginia's most controversial infrastructure projects, the Dominion Energy-led Atlantic Coast Pipeline.</p> <p>The same argument, that existing pipeline capacity is stretched to the max during periods of severe weather, reared its head again a few weeks ago after a similar spate of plunging temperatures ushered in 2018.</p> <p>"The extreme cold and spikes in natural gas usage across the mid-Atlantic over the last two weeks demonstrated in dramatic fashion the real and urgent need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline," Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email Tuesday. In a separate statement, the company said its customers used more energy during the first week of January than any on record.</p> <p>"It means that many customers will see bills that are higher, possibly much higher, than expected as their heating systems strained to keep pace with demand," said the company, which now produces about 30 percent of its electricity from natural gas-fired plants.</p> <p>Pipeline opponents say Dominion is recycling an old argument that ignores other factors that lead to service curtailments and contend that building a $5.5 billion new pipeline is the most expensive way to deal with demand spikes caused by cold weather.</p> <p>"Dominion is peddling the same unsupported story about accessing cheaper gas via the ACP," said Will Cleveland, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which claims that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cost utility customers as much as $2.3 billion more than existing sources of gas. "Simply put, the ACP cannot and will not lower energy costs for Virginia power plants."</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Ruby said "severely limited capacity" on existing pipelines serving Virginia and North Carolina forced some utilities to curtail some gas service to major industrial customers and raised consumer prices to "historic highs," from $3 per dekatherm in late December to an all-time record high of $175 at the end of the first week of January. Power plants that burn natural gas pass those higher fuel costs on to their electric customers.</p> <p>"The reason is simple," Ruby said. "Our region's pipelines are too constrained, and we don't have enough access to lower-cost supplies from the Appalachian region."</p> <p>That's a problem that Ruby and Jim Kibler, president of Virginia Natural Gas, which has nearly 300,000 residential and commercial customers in southeastern Virginia, say the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina, with a spur to Hampton Roads, is intended to fix.</p> <p>"What it does is provide a reserve margin for these cold winter days," Kibler said. VNG is a subsidiary of Southern Company, which is a partner in the pipeline, and has contracted to use roughly 5 percent of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline's capacity of 1.5 million dekatherms of natural gas. It will also provide additional capacity for industrial expansion.</p> <p>"There's essentially no capacity available east of Richmond for any economic development projects," Kibler said. "ACP will really harden our ability to serve south-side Hampton Roads."</p> <p>During the 2014 polar vortex, Kibler said, Virginia Natural Gas curtailed service to about 100 "interruptible" industrial customers to prioritize delivery for power generation and home heating for such facilities as schools, hospitals, retirement homes, day cares and prisons, among others.</p> <p>This month, Virginia Natural Gas curtailed only 10, though he said that in no way undermines the need for the pipeline. The reduction in curtailments was partly the result of some of the coldest weather falling on a weekend and the fact that it was interrupted by warmer days, Kibler said. Also, the company's system saw no major compression or other mechanical failures.</p> <p>"We used every asset that we have last week and everything worked," he said.</p> <p>PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that runs the electric grid for all or parts of 13 states, including Virginia, and the District of Columbia, said the run of cold weather from Dec. 27 through Jan. 7 delivered three of the system's top 10 highest winter peak demands for electricity. Despite that, lessons learned during the 2014 polar vortex helped ensure that most power generators stayed online as demand surged.</p> <p>Chris Pilong, PJM's director of dispatch, said the recent cold weather was not quite as severe as the polar vortex of 2014, which caused forced outages because of a range of factors, including inadequate fuel supplies, lack of insulation of crucial components, freezing coal piles and mechanical problems. About 40,000 megawatts of generation, more than a quarter of the system's power generation, went offline during the polar vortex. This month, only about 16,000 megawatts of outages were reported, he said.</p> <p>"We're not seeing those types of generation performance issues this winter," he said. PJM has also created a penalty system for generation sources that fail to perform during emergency demand situations.</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Dominion says it relied on the Transco pipeline system, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City and has a daily capacity of 14.7 million dekatherms, for about 75 percent of its natural gas supply during the cold spell. Public utilities in North Carolina, Ruby said, relied on the Transco system for 100 percent of the state's supply.</p> <p>Chris Stockton, a spokesman for Williams Partners, which operates the Transco system, said the pipelines "performed remarkably" during the cold weather.</p> <p>"We were able to meet all of our firm capacity contracts. The system delivered a record amount of gas," said Stockton, noting that the system delivered about 10 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country on that day, Jan. 5. "It's an incredible accomplishment. It's a testament to the system that we have."</p> <p>Though he said it is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's job to determine the need for new pipeline infrastructure, such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and another project moving toward construction through Virginia, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Stockton said the existing system "performed as it was designed to perform."</p> <p>"That, to me, says the infrastructure is in place right now to meet the current demand," he said. "Those kinds of projects are really designed to meet future growth, and FERC is the body determining whether or not that project is really justified."</p> <p>The FERC has issued certificates for both projects &#8212; though, in a rare dissent, one commissioner said she could not conclude that either pipeline was in the public interest.</p> <p>While Dominion has argued that the pipelines will provide "supply diversity" that will hedge against price shocks by allowing utilities to purchase gas from different geographical sources &#8212; such as the Dominion South Point trading hub in Pennsylvania, which can experience price fluctuations at different times of year &#8212; opponents contend the project is more about the 14 percent rate of return guaranteed by the FERC, with utility ratepayers bearing all the risk.</p> <p>"There's no reason to think it'll be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 once the pipeline is built, which makes sense considering that the producers at Dominion South Point would sell their gas 'at market' once they have a pipeline able to bring the gas to market," said Cleveland, the SELC attorney. "Dominion's own internal price forecasts confirm that Dominion South Point won't be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 in the future."</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Dominion has cast the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as urgently needed to meet utility demands in Virginia and North Carolina. But the company's planned merger with SCANA Corp., a South Carolina electric and gas utility holding company, that was announced this month has added fuel to arguments that its real intent is to bring gas farther south.</p> <p>"We like the deal on the margin as the strategic rationale makes sense to us (this creates an expansion opportunity for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in SC, which remains a clear strategic desire in 2018 for D)," said a Bank of America-Merrill Lynch report on the merger announcement.</p> <p>Tom Hadwin, a former New York utility executive who lives in Waynesboro and is opposed to the ACP, also said the South Carolina acquisition makes sense for Dominion and its partners, which also include Duke Energy.</p> <p>"Dominion and Duke have considerably reduced the number of gas-fired power plants they say they need. PJM believes Virginia's electricity demand will be relatively stable over the next 15 years," Hadwin said. "They bought SCANA at a discount and will receive a long-term stream of tax-protected profits. It gives them a chance to extend the ACP in hopes of finding someone who needs the gas."</p> <p>Cleveland said the ACP is designed not to bring gas to Virginia, but to "move gas through Virginia."</p> <p>"Once it's built, all but two gas power plants in the entire state will still rely almost exclusively on pre-existing pipelines to operate," he said. "There won't be any incentive for those plants to pay higher ACP-related transportation costs for gas that's the same price as everywhere else in the market."</p> <p>Ruby, the Dominion spokesman, has said the company has made no decisions about potentially expanding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.</p>

What does cold snap say about Atlantic Coast Pipeline?

https://apnews.com/amp/dfaaf172a89449b9a2b9c3be402f493f

2018-01-21

2least

RICHMOND Va AP 8212 The 2014 polar vortex and the wave of cold weather it unleashed over much of the US has surfaced again and again as proponents have made the case for one of Virginias most controversial infrastructure projects the Dominion Energyled Atlantic Coast Pipeline The same argument that existing pipeline capacity is stretched to the max during periods of severe weather reared its head again a few weeks ago after a similar spate of plunging temperatures ushered in 2018 The extreme cold and spikes in natural gas usage across the midAtlantic over the last two weeks demonstrated in dramatic fashion the real and urgent need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email Tuesday In a separate statement the company said its customers used more energy during the first week of January than any on record It means that many customers will see bills that are higher possibly much higher than expected as their heating systems strained to keep pace with demand said the company which now produces about 30 percent of its electricity from natural gasfired plants Pipeline opponents say Dominion is recycling an old argument that ignores other factors that lead to service curtailments and contend that building a 55 billion new pipeline is the most expensive way to deal with demand spikes caused by cold weather Dominion is peddling the same unsupported story about accessing cheaper gas via the ACP said Will Cleveland an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center which claims that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cost utility customers as much as 23 billion more than existing sources of gas Simply put the ACP cannot and will not lower energy costs for Virginia power plants asteriskasteriskasterisk Ruby said severely limited capacity on existing pipelines serving Virginia and North Carolina forced some utilities to curtail some gas service to major industrial customers and raised consumer prices to historic highs from 3 per dekatherm in late December to an alltime record high of 175 at the end of the first week of January Power plants that burn natural gas pass those higher fuel costs on to their electric customers The reason is simple Ruby said Our regions pipelines are too constrained and we dont have enough access to lowercost supplies from the Appalachian region Thats a problem that Ruby and Jim Kibler president of Virginia Natural Gas which has nearly 300000 residential and commercial customers in southeastern Virginia say the 600mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline which would run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina with a spur to Hampton Roads is intended to fix What it does is provide a reserve margin for these cold winter days Kibler said VNG is a subsidiary of Southern Company which is a partner in the pipeline and has contracted to use roughly 5 percent of the Atlantic Coast Pipelines capacity of 15 million dekatherms of natural gas It will also provide additional capacity for industrial expansion Theres essentially no capacity available east of Richmond for any economic development projects Kibler said ACP will really harden our ability to serve southside Hampton Roads During the 2014 polar vortex Kibler said Virginia Natural Gas curtailed service to about 100 interruptible industrial customers to prioritize delivery for power generation and home heating for such facilities as schools hospitals retirement homes day cares and prisons among others This month Virginia Natural Gas curtailed only 10 though he said that in no way undermines the need for the pipeline The reduction in curtailments was partly the result of some of the coldest weather falling on a weekend and the fact that it was interrupted by warmer days Kibler said Also the companys system saw no major compression or other mechanical failures We used every asset that we have last week and everything worked he said PJM Interconnection the regional transmission organization that runs the electric grid for all or parts of 13 states including Virginia and the District of Columbia said the run of cold weather from Dec 27 through Jan 7 delivered three of the systems top 10 highest winter peak demands for electricity Despite that lessons learned during the 2014 polar vortex helped ensure that most power generators stayed online as demand surged Chris Pilong PJMs director of dispatch said the recent cold weather was not quite as severe as the polar vortex of 2014 which caused forced outages because of a range of factors including inadequate fuel supplies lack of insulation of crucial components freezing coal piles and mechanical problems About 40000 megawatts of generation more than a quarter of the systems power generation went offline during the polar vortex This month only about 16000 megawatts of outages were reported he said Were not seeing those types of generation performance issues this winter he said PJM has also created a penalty system for generation sources that fail to perform during emergency demand situations asteriskasteriskasterisk Dominion says it relied on the Transco pipeline system which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City and has a daily capacity of 147 million dekatherms for about 75 percent of its natural gas supply during the cold spell Public utilities in North Carolina Ruby said relied on the Transco system for 100 percent of the states supply Chris Stockton a spokesman for Williams Partners which operates the Transco system said the pipelines performed remarkably during the cold weather We were able to meet all of our firm capacity contracts The system delivered a record amount of gas said Stockton noting that the system delivered about 10 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country on that day Jan 5 Its an incredible accomplishment Its a testament to the system that we have Though he said it is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissions job to determine the need for new pipeline infrastructure such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and another project moving toward construction through Virginia the Mountain Valley Pipeline Stockton said the existing system performed as it was designed to perform That to me says the infrastructure is in place right now to meet the current demand he said Those kinds of projects are really designed to meet future growth and FERC is the body determining whether or not that project is really justified The FERC has issued certificates for both projects 8212 though in a rare dissent one commissioner said she could not conclude that either pipeline was in the public interest While Dominion has argued that the pipelines will provide supply diversity that will hedge against price shocks by allowing utilities to purchase gas from different geographical sources 8212 such as the Dominion South Point trading hub in Pennsylvania which can experience price fluctuations at different times of year 8212 opponents contend the project is more about the 14 percent rate of return guaranteed by the FERC with utility ratepayers bearing all the risk Theres no reason to think itll be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 once the pipeline is built which makes sense considering that the producers at Dominion South Point would sell their gas at market once they have a pipeline able to bring the gas to market said Cleveland the SELC attorney Dominions own internal price forecasts confirm that Dominion South Point wont be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 in the future asteriskasteriskasterisk Dominion has cast the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as urgently needed to meet utility demands in Virginia and North Carolina But the companys planned merger with SCANA Corp a South Carolina electric and gas utility holding company that was announced this month has added fuel to arguments that its real intent is to bring gas farther south We like the deal on the margin as the strategic rationale makes sense to us this creates an expansion opportunity for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in SC which remains a clear strategic desire in 2018 for D said a Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch report on the merger announcement Tom Hadwin a former New York utility executive who lives in Waynesboro and is opposed to the ACP also said the South Carolina acquisition makes sense for Dominion and its partners which also include Duke Energy Dominion and Duke have considerably reduced the number of gasfired power plants they say they need PJM believes Virginias electricity demand will be relatively stable over the next 15 years Hadwin said They bought SCANA at a discount and will receive a longterm stream of taxprotected profits It gives them a chance to extend the ACP in hopes of finding someone who needs the gas Cleveland said the ACP is designed not to bring gas to Virginia but to move gas through Virginia Once its built all but two gas power plants in the entire state will still rely almost exclusively on preexisting pipelines to operate he said There wont be any incentive for those plants to pay higher ACPrelated transportation costs for gas thats the same price as everywhere else in the market Ruby the Dominion spokesman has said the company has made no decisions about potentially expanding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline RICHMOND Va AP 8212 The 2014 polar vortex and the wave of cold weather it unleashed over much of the US has surfaced again and again as proponents have made the case for one of Virginias most controversial infrastructure projects the Dominion Energyled Atlantic Coast Pipeline The same argument that existing pipeline capacity is stretched to the max during periods of severe weather reared its head again a few weeks ago after a similar spate of plunging temperatures ushered in 2018 The extreme cold and spikes in natural gas usage across the midAtlantic over the last two weeks demonstrated in dramatic fashion the real and urgent need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email Tuesday In a separate statement the company said its customers used more energy during the first week of January than any on record It means that many customers will see bills that are higher possibly much higher than expected as their heating systems strained to keep pace with demand said the company which now produces about 30 percent of its electricity from natural gasfired plants Pipeline opponents say Dominion is recycling an old argument that ignores other factors that lead to service curtailments and contend that building a 55 billion new pipeline is the most expensive way to deal with demand spikes caused by cold weather Dominion is peddling the same unsupported story about accessing cheaper gas via the ACP said Will Cleveland an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center which claims that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cost utility customers as much as 23 billion more than existing sources of gas Simply put the ACP cannot and will not lower energy costs for Virginia power plants asteriskasteriskasterisk Ruby said severely limited capacity on existing pipelines serving Virginia and North Carolina forced some utilities to curtail some gas service to major industrial customers and raised consumer prices to historic highs from 3 per dekatherm in late December to an alltime record high of 175 at the end of the first week of January Power plants that burn natural gas pass those higher fuel costs on to their electric customers The reason is simple Ruby said Our regions pipelines are too constrained and we dont have enough access to lowercost supplies from the Appalachian region Thats a problem that Ruby and Jim Kibler president of Virginia Natural Gas which has nearly 300000 residential and commercial customers in southeastern Virginia say the 600mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline which would run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina with a spur to Hampton Roads is intended to fix What it does is provide a reserve margin for these cold winter days Kibler said VNG is a subsidiary of Southern Company which is a partner in the pipeline and has contracted to use roughly 5 percent of the Atlantic Coast Pipelines capacity of 15 million dekatherms of natural gas It will also provide additional capacity for industrial expansion Theres essentially no capacity available east of Richmond for any economic development projects Kibler said ACP will really harden our ability to serve southside Hampton Roads During the 2014 polar vortex Kibler said Virginia Natural Gas curtailed service to about 100 interruptible industrial customers to prioritize delivery for power generation and home heating for such facilities as schools hospitals retirement homes day cares and prisons among others This month Virginia Natural Gas curtailed only 10 though he said that in no way undermines the need for the pipeline The reduction in curtailments was partly the result of some of the coldest weather falling on a weekend and the fact that it was interrupted by warmer days Kibler said Also the companys system saw no major compression or other mechanical failures We used every asset that we have last week and everything worked he said PJM Interconnection the regional transmission organization that runs the electric grid for all or parts of 13 states including Virginia and the District of Columbia said the run of cold weather from Dec 27 through Jan 7 delivered three of the systems top 10 highest winter peak demands for electricity Despite that lessons learned during the 2014 polar vortex helped ensure that most power generators stayed online as demand surged Chris Pilong PJMs director of dispatch said the recent cold weather was not quite as severe as the polar vortex of 2014 which caused forced outages because of a range of factors including inadequate fuel supplies lack of insulation of crucial components freezing coal piles and mechanical problems About 40000 megawatts of generation more than a quarter of the systems power generation went offline during the polar vortex This month only about 16000 megawatts of outages were reported he said Were not seeing those types of generation performance issues this winter he said PJM has also created a penalty system for generation sources that fail to perform during emergency demand situations asteriskasteriskasterisk Dominion says it relied on the Transco pipeline system which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City and has a daily capacity of 147 million dekatherms for about 75 percent of its natural gas supply during the cold spell Public utilities in North Carolina Ruby said relied on the Transco system for 100 percent of the states supply Chris Stockton a spokesman for Williams Partners which operates the Transco system said the pipelines performed remarkably during the cold weather We were able to meet all of our firm capacity contracts The system delivered a record amount of gas said Stockton noting that the system delivered about 10 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country on that day Jan 5 Its an incredible accomplishment Its a testament to the system that we have Though he said it is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissions job to determine the need for new pipeline infrastructure such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and another project moving toward construction through Virginia the Mountain Valley Pipeline Stockton said the existing system performed as it was designed to perform That to me says the infrastructure is in place right now to meet the current demand he said Those kinds of projects are really designed to meet future growth and FERC is the body determining whether or not that project is really justified The FERC has issued certificates for both projects 8212 though in a rare dissent one commissioner said she could not conclude that either pipeline was in the public interest While Dominion has argued that the pipelines will provide supply diversity that will hedge against price shocks by allowing utilities to purchase gas from different geographical sources 8212 such as the Dominion South Point trading hub in Pennsylvania which can experience price fluctuations at different times of year 8212 opponents contend the project is more about the 14 percent rate of return guaranteed by the FERC with utility ratepayers bearing all the risk Theres no reason to think itll be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 once the pipeline is built which makes sense considering that the producers at Dominion South Point would sell their gas at market once they have a pipeline able to bring the gas to market said Cleveland the SELC attorney Dominions own internal price forecasts confirm that Dominion South Point wont be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 in the future asteriskasteriskasterisk Dominion has cast the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as urgently needed to meet utility demands in Virginia and North Carolina But the companys planned merger with SCANA Corp a South Carolina electric and gas utility holding company that was announced this month has added fuel to arguments that its real intent is to bring gas farther south We like the deal on the margin as the strategic rationale makes sense to us this creates an expansion opportunity for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in SC which remains a clear strategic desire in 2018 for D said a Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch report on the merger announcement Tom Hadwin a former New York utility executive who lives in Waynesboro and is opposed to the ACP also said the South Carolina acquisition makes sense for Dominion and its partners which also include Duke Energy Dominion and Duke have considerably reduced the number of gasfired power plants they say they need PJM believes Virginias electricity demand will be relatively stable over the next 15 years Hadwin said They bought SCANA at a discount and will receive a longterm stream of taxprotected profits It gives them a chance to extend the ACP in hopes of finding someone who needs the gas Cleveland said the ACP is designed not to bring gas to Virginia but to move gas through Virginia Once its built all but two gas power plants in the entire state will still rely almost exclusively on preexisting pipelines to operate he said There wont be any incentive for those plants to pay higher ACPrelated transportation costs for gas thats the same price as everywhere else in the market Ruby the Dominion spokesman has said the company has made no decisions about potentially expanding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline

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<p>RICHMOND, Va. (AP) &#8212; The 2014 &#8220;polar vortex&#8221; and the wave of cold weather it unleashed over much of the U.S. has surfaced again and again as proponents have made the case for one of Virginia&#8217;s most controversial infrastructure projects, the Dominion Energy-led Atlantic Coast Pipeline.</p> <p>The same argument, that existing pipeline capacity is stretched to the max during periods of severe weather, reared its head again a few weeks ago after a similar spate of plunging temperatures ushered in 2018.</p> <p>&#8220;The extreme cold and spikes in natural gas usage across the mid-Atlantic over the last two weeks demonstrated in dramatic fashion the real and urgent need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline,&#8221; Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email Tuesday. In a separate statement, the company said its customers used more energy during the first week of January than any on record.</p> <p>&#8220;It means that many customers will see bills that are higher, possibly much higher, than expected as their heating systems strained to keep pace with demand,&#8221; said the company, which now produces about 30 percent of its electricity from natural gas-fired plants.</p> <p>Pipeline opponents say Dominion is recycling an old argument that ignores other factors that lead to service curtailments and contend that building a $5.5 billion new pipeline is the most expensive way to deal with demand spikes caused by cold weather.</p> <p>&#8220;Dominion is peddling the same unsupported story about accessing cheaper gas via the ACP,&#8221; said Will Cleveland, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which claims that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cost utility customers as much as $2.3 billion more than existing sources of gas. &#8220;Simply put, the ACP cannot and will not lower energy costs for Virginia power plants.&#8221;</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Ruby said &#8220;severely limited capacity&#8221; on existing pipelines serving Virginia and North Carolina forced some utilities to curtail some gas service to major industrial customers and raised consumer prices to &#8220;historic highs,&#8221; from $3 per dekatherm in late December to an all-time record high of $175 at the end of the first week of January. Power plants that burn natural gas pass those higher fuel costs on to their electric customers.</p> <p>&#8220;The reason is simple,&#8221; Ruby said. &#8220;Our region&#8217;s pipelines are too constrained, and we don&#8217;t have enough access to lower-cost supplies from the Appalachian region.&#8221;</p> <p>That&#8217;s a problem that Ruby and Jim Kibler, president of Virginia Natural Gas, which has nearly 300,000 residential and commercial customers in southeastern Virginia, say the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina, with a spur to Hampton Roads, is intended to fix.</p> <p>&#8220;What it does is provide a reserve margin for these cold winter days,&#8221; Kibler said. VNG is a subsidiary of Southern Company, which is a partner in the pipeline, and has contracted to use roughly 5 percent of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline&#8217;s capacity of 1.5 million dekatherms of natural gas. It will also provide additional capacity for industrial expansion.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s essentially no capacity available east of Richmond for any economic development projects,&#8221; Kibler said. &#8220;ACP will really harden our ability to serve south-side Hampton Roads.&#8221;</p> <p>During the 2014 polar vortex, Kibler said, Virginia Natural Gas curtailed service to about 100 &#8220;interruptible&#8221; industrial customers to prioritize delivery for power generation and home heating for such facilities as schools, hospitals, retirement homes, day cares and prisons, among others.</p> <p>This month, Virginia Natural Gas curtailed only 10, though he said that in no way undermines the need for the pipeline. The reduction in curtailments was partly the result of some of the coldest weather falling on a weekend and the fact that it was interrupted by warmer days, Kibler said. Also, the company&#8217;s system saw no major compression or other mechanical failures.</p> <p>&#8220;We used every asset that we have last week and everything worked,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that runs the electric grid for all or parts of 13 states, including Virginia, and the District of Columbia, said the run of cold weather from Dec. 27 through Jan. 7 delivered three of the system&#8217;s top 10 highest winter peak demands for electricity. Despite that, lessons learned during the 2014 polar vortex helped ensure that most power generators stayed online as demand surged.</p> <p>Chris Pilong, PJM&#8217;s director of dispatch, said the recent cold weather was not quite as severe as the polar vortex of 2014, which caused forced outages because of a range of factors, including inadequate fuel supplies, lack of insulation of crucial components, freezing coal piles and mechanical problems. About 40,000 megawatts of generation, more than a quarter of the system&#8217;s power generation, went offline during the polar vortex. This month, only about 16,000 megawatts of outages were reported, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not seeing those types of generation performance issues this winter,&#8221; he said. PJM has also created a penalty system for generation sources that fail to perform during emergency demand situations.</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Dominion says it relied on the Transco pipeline system, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City and has a daily capacity of 14.7 million dekatherms, for about 75 percent of its natural gas supply during the cold spell. Public utilities in North Carolina, Ruby said, relied on the Transco system for 100 percent of the state&#8217;s supply.</p> <p>Chris Stockton, a spokesman for Williams Partners, which operates the Transco system, said the pipelines &#8220;performed remarkably&#8221; during the cold weather.</p> <p>&#8220;We were able to meet all of our firm capacity contracts. The system delivered a record amount of gas,&#8221; said Stockton, noting that the system delivered about 10 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country on that day, Jan. 5. &#8220;It&#8217;s an incredible accomplishment. It&#8217;s a testament to the system that we have.&#8221;</p> <p>Though he said it is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission&#8217;s job to determine the need for new pipeline infrastructure, such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and another project moving toward construction through Virginia, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Stockton said the existing system &#8220;performed as it was designed to perform.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;That, to me, says the infrastructure is in place right now to meet the current demand,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Those kinds of projects are really designed to meet future growth, and FERC is the body determining whether or not that project is really justified.&#8221;</p> <p>The FERC has issued certificates for both projects &#8212; though, in a rare dissent, one commissioner said she could not conclude that either pipeline was in the public interest.</p> <p>While Dominion has argued that the pipelines will provide &#8220;supply diversity&#8221; that will hedge against price shocks by allowing utilities to purchase gas from different geographical sources &#8212; such as the Dominion South Point trading hub in Pennsylvania, which can experience price fluctuations at different times of year &#8212; opponents contend the project is more about the 14 percent rate of return guaranteed by the FERC, with utility ratepayers bearing all the risk.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no reason to think it&#8217;ll be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 once the pipeline is built, which makes sense considering that the producers at Dominion South Point would sell their gas &#8216;at market&#8217; once they have a pipeline able to bring the gas to market,&#8221; said Cleveland, the SELC attorney. &#8220;Dominion&#8217;s own internal price forecasts confirm that Dominion South Point won&#8217;t be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 in the future.&#8221;</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Dominion has cast the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as urgently needed to meet utility demands in Virginia and North Carolina. But the company&#8217;s planned merger with SCANA Corp., a South Carolina electric and gas utility holding company, that was announced this month has added fuel to arguments that its real intent is to bring gas farther south.</p> <p>&#8220;We like the deal on the margin as the strategic rationale makes sense to us (this creates an expansion opportunity for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in SC, which remains a clear strategic desire in 2018 for D),&#8221; said a Bank of America-Merrill Lynch report on the merger announcement.</p> <p>Tom Hadwin, a former New York utility executive who lives in Waynesboro and is opposed to the ACP, also said the South Carolina acquisition makes sense for Dominion and its partners, which also include Duke Energy.</p> <p>&#8220;Dominion and Duke have considerably reduced the number of gas-fired power plants they say they need. PJM believes Virginia&#8217;s electricity demand will be relatively stable over the next 15 years,&#8221; Hadwin said. &#8220;They bought SCANA at a discount and will receive a long-term stream of tax-protected profits. It gives them a chance to extend the ACP in hopes of finding someone who needs the gas.&#8221;</p> <p>Cleveland said the ACP is designed not to bring gas to Virginia, but to &#8220;move gas through Virginia.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Once it&#8217;s built, all but two gas power plants in the entire state will still rely almost exclusively on pre-existing pipelines to operate,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There won&#8217;t be any incentive for those plants to pay higher ACP-related transportation costs for gas that&#8217;s the same price as everywhere else in the market.&#8221;</p> <p>Ruby, the Dominion spokesman, has said the company has made no decisions about potentially expanding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.</p> <p>RICHMOND, Va. (AP) &#8212; The 2014 &#8220;polar vortex&#8221; and the wave of cold weather it unleashed over much of the U.S. has surfaced again and again as proponents have made the case for one of Virginia&#8217;s most controversial infrastructure projects, the Dominion Energy-led Atlantic Coast Pipeline.</p> <p>The same argument, that existing pipeline capacity is stretched to the max during periods of severe weather, reared its head again a few weeks ago after a similar spate of plunging temperatures ushered in 2018.</p> <p>&#8220;The extreme cold and spikes in natural gas usage across the mid-Atlantic over the last two weeks demonstrated in dramatic fashion the real and urgent need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline,&#8221; Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email Tuesday. In a separate statement, the company said its customers used more energy during the first week of January than any on record.</p> <p>&#8220;It means that many customers will see bills that are higher, possibly much higher, than expected as their heating systems strained to keep pace with demand,&#8221; said the company, which now produces about 30 percent of its electricity from natural gas-fired plants.</p> <p>Pipeline opponents say Dominion is recycling an old argument that ignores other factors that lead to service curtailments and contend that building a $5.5 billion new pipeline is the most expensive way to deal with demand spikes caused by cold weather.</p> <p>&#8220;Dominion is peddling the same unsupported story about accessing cheaper gas via the ACP,&#8221; said Will Cleveland, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which claims that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cost utility customers as much as $2.3 billion more than existing sources of gas. &#8220;Simply put, the ACP cannot and will not lower energy costs for Virginia power plants.&#8221;</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Ruby said &#8220;severely limited capacity&#8221; on existing pipelines serving Virginia and North Carolina forced some utilities to curtail some gas service to major industrial customers and raised consumer prices to &#8220;historic highs,&#8221; from $3 per dekatherm in late December to an all-time record high of $175 at the end of the first week of January. Power plants that burn natural gas pass those higher fuel costs on to their electric customers.</p> <p>&#8220;The reason is simple,&#8221; Ruby said. &#8220;Our region&#8217;s pipelines are too constrained, and we don&#8217;t have enough access to lower-cost supplies from the Appalachian region.&#8221;</p> <p>That&#8217;s a problem that Ruby and Jim Kibler, president of Virginia Natural Gas, which has nearly 300,000 residential and commercial customers in southeastern Virginia, say the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina, with a spur to Hampton Roads, is intended to fix.</p> <p>&#8220;What it does is provide a reserve margin for these cold winter days,&#8221; Kibler said. VNG is a subsidiary of Southern Company, which is a partner in the pipeline, and has contracted to use roughly 5 percent of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline&#8217;s capacity of 1.5 million dekatherms of natural gas. It will also provide additional capacity for industrial expansion.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s essentially no capacity available east of Richmond for any economic development projects,&#8221; Kibler said. &#8220;ACP will really harden our ability to serve south-side Hampton Roads.&#8221;</p> <p>During the 2014 polar vortex, Kibler said, Virginia Natural Gas curtailed service to about 100 &#8220;interruptible&#8221; industrial customers to prioritize delivery for power generation and home heating for such facilities as schools, hospitals, retirement homes, day cares and prisons, among others.</p> <p>This month, Virginia Natural Gas curtailed only 10, though he said that in no way undermines the need for the pipeline. The reduction in curtailments was partly the result of some of the coldest weather falling on a weekend and the fact that it was interrupted by warmer days, Kibler said. Also, the company&#8217;s system saw no major compression or other mechanical failures.</p> <p>&#8220;We used every asset that we have last week and everything worked,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that runs the electric grid for all or parts of 13 states, including Virginia, and the District of Columbia, said the run of cold weather from Dec. 27 through Jan. 7 delivered three of the system&#8217;s top 10 highest winter peak demands for electricity. Despite that, lessons learned during the 2014 polar vortex helped ensure that most power generators stayed online as demand surged.</p> <p>Chris Pilong, PJM&#8217;s director of dispatch, said the recent cold weather was not quite as severe as the polar vortex of 2014, which caused forced outages because of a range of factors, including inadequate fuel supplies, lack of insulation of crucial components, freezing coal piles and mechanical problems. About 40,000 megawatts of generation, more than a quarter of the system&#8217;s power generation, went offline during the polar vortex. This month, only about 16,000 megawatts of outages were reported, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not seeing those types of generation performance issues this winter,&#8221; he said. PJM has also created a penalty system for generation sources that fail to perform during emergency demand situations.</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Dominion says it relied on the Transco pipeline system, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City and has a daily capacity of 14.7 million dekatherms, for about 75 percent of its natural gas supply during the cold spell. Public utilities in North Carolina, Ruby said, relied on the Transco system for 100 percent of the state&#8217;s supply.</p> <p>Chris Stockton, a spokesman for Williams Partners, which operates the Transco system, said the pipelines &#8220;performed remarkably&#8221; during the cold weather.</p> <p>&#8220;We were able to meet all of our firm capacity contracts. The system delivered a record amount of gas,&#8221; said Stockton, noting that the system delivered about 10 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country on that day, Jan. 5. &#8220;It&#8217;s an incredible accomplishment. It&#8217;s a testament to the system that we have.&#8221;</p> <p>Though he said it is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission&#8217;s job to determine the need for new pipeline infrastructure, such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and another project moving toward construction through Virginia, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Stockton said the existing system &#8220;performed as it was designed to perform.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;That, to me, says the infrastructure is in place right now to meet the current demand,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Those kinds of projects are really designed to meet future growth, and FERC is the body determining whether or not that project is really justified.&#8221;</p> <p>The FERC has issued certificates for both projects &#8212; though, in a rare dissent, one commissioner said she could not conclude that either pipeline was in the public interest.</p> <p>While Dominion has argued that the pipelines will provide &#8220;supply diversity&#8221; that will hedge against price shocks by allowing utilities to purchase gas from different geographical sources &#8212; such as the Dominion South Point trading hub in Pennsylvania, which can experience price fluctuations at different times of year &#8212; opponents contend the project is more about the 14 percent rate of return guaranteed by the FERC, with utility ratepayers bearing all the risk.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no reason to think it&#8217;ll be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 once the pipeline is built, which makes sense considering that the producers at Dominion South Point would sell their gas &#8216;at market&#8217; once they have a pipeline able to bring the gas to market,&#8221; said Cleveland, the SELC attorney. &#8220;Dominion&#8217;s own internal price forecasts confirm that Dominion South Point won&#8217;t be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 in the future.&#8221;</p> <p>(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)</p> <p>Dominion has cast the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as urgently needed to meet utility demands in Virginia and North Carolina. But the company&#8217;s planned merger with SCANA Corp., a South Carolina electric and gas utility holding company, that was announced this month has added fuel to arguments that its real intent is to bring gas farther south.</p> <p>&#8220;We like the deal on the margin as the strategic rationale makes sense to us (this creates an expansion opportunity for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in SC, which remains a clear strategic desire in 2018 for D),&#8221; said a Bank of America-Merrill Lynch report on the merger announcement.</p> <p>Tom Hadwin, a former New York utility executive who lives in Waynesboro and is opposed to the ACP, also said the South Carolina acquisition makes sense for Dominion and its partners, which also include Duke Energy.</p> <p>&#8220;Dominion and Duke have considerably reduced the number of gas-fired power plants they say they need. PJM believes Virginia&#8217;s electricity demand will be relatively stable over the next 15 years,&#8221; Hadwin said. &#8220;They bought SCANA at a discount and will receive a long-term stream of tax-protected profits. It gives them a chance to extend the ACP in hopes of finding someone who needs the gas.&#8221;</p> <p>Cleveland said the ACP is designed not to bring gas to Virginia, but to &#8220;move gas through Virginia.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Once it&#8217;s built, all but two gas power plants in the entire state will still rely almost exclusively on pre-existing pipelines to operate,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There won&#8217;t be any incentive for those plants to pay higher ACP-related transportation costs for gas that&#8217;s the same price as everywhere else in the market.&#8221;</p> <p>Ruby, the Dominion spokesman, has said the company has made no decisions about potentially expanding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.</p>

What does cold snap say about Atlantic Coast Pipeline?

https://apnews.com/dfaaf172a89449b9a2b9c3be402f493f

2018-01-21

2least

RICHMOND Va AP 8212 The 2014 8220polar vortex8221 and the wave of cold weather it unleashed over much of the US has surfaced again and again as proponents have made the case for one of Virginia8217s most controversial infrastructure projects the Dominion Energyled Atlantic Coast Pipeline The same argument that existing pipeline capacity is stretched to the max during periods of severe weather reared its head again a few weeks ago after a similar spate of plunging temperatures ushered in 2018 8220The extreme cold and spikes in natural gas usage across the midAtlantic over the last two weeks demonstrated in dramatic fashion the real and urgent need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline8221 Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email Tuesday In a separate statement the company said its customers used more energy during the first week of January than any on record 8220It means that many customers will see bills that are higher possibly much higher than expected as their heating systems strained to keep pace with demand8221 said the company which now produces about 30 percent of its electricity from natural gasfired plants Pipeline opponents say Dominion is recycling an old argument that ignores other factors that lead to service curtailments and contend that building a 55 billion new pipeline is the most expensive way to deal with demand spikes caused by cold weather 8220Dominion is peddling the same unsupported story about accessing cheaper gas via the ACP8221 said Will Cleveland an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center which claims that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cost utility customers as much as 23 billion more than existing sources of gas 8220Simply put the ACP cannot and will not lower energy costs for Virginia power plants8221 asteriskasteriskasterisk Ruby said 8220severely limited capacity8221 on existing pipelines serving Virginia and North Carolina forced some utilities to curtail some gas service to major industrial customers and raised consumer prices to 8220historic highs8221 from 3 per dekatherm in late December to an alltime record high of 175 at the end of the first week of January Power plants that burn natural gas pass those higher fuel costs on to their electric customers 8220The reason is simple8221 Ruby said 8220Our region8217s pipelines are too constrained and we don8217t have enough access to lowercost supplies from the Appalachian region8221 That8217s a problem that Ruby and Jim Kibler president of Virginia Natural Gas which has nearly 300000 residential and commercial customers in southeastern Virginia say the 600mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline which would run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina with a spur to Hampton Roads is intended to fix 8220What it does is provide a reserve margin for these cold winter days8221 Kibler said VNG is a subsidiary of Southern Company which is a partner in the pipeline and has contracted to use roughly 5 percent of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline8217s capacity of 15 million dekatherms of natural gas It will also provide additional capacity for industrial expansion 8220There8217s essentially no capacity available east of Richmond for any economic development projects8221 Kibler said 8220ACP will really harden our ability to serve southside Hampton Roads8221 During the 2014 polar vortex Kibler said Virginia Natural Gas curtailed service to about 100 8220interruptible8221 industrial customers to prioritize delivery for power generation and home heating for such facilities as schools hospitals retirement homes day cares and prisons among others This month Virginia Natural Gas curtailed only 10 though he said that in no way undermines the need for the pipeline The reduction in curtailments was partly the result of some of the coldest weather falling on a weekend and the fact that it was interrupted by warmer days Kibler said Also the company8217s system saw no major compression or other mechanical failures 8220We used every asset that we have last week and everything worked8221 he said PJM Interconnection the regional transmission organization that runs the electric grid for all or parts of 13 states including Virginia and the District of Columbia said the run of cold weather from Dec 27 through Jan 7 delivered three of the system8217s top 10 highest winter peak demands for electricity Despite that lessons learned during the 2014 polar vortex helped ensure that most power generators stayed online as demand surged Chris Pilong PJM8217s director of dispatch said the recent cold weather was not quite as severe as the polar vortex of 2014 which caused forced outages because of a range of factors including inadequate fuel supplies lack of insulation of crucial components freezing coal piles and mechanical problems About 40000 megawatts of generation more than a quarter of the system8217s power generation went offline during the polar vortex This month only about 16000 megawatts of outages were reported he said 8220We8217re not seeing those types of generation performance issues this winter8221 he said PJM has also created a penalty system for generation sources that fail to perform during emergency demand situations asteriskasteriskasterisk Dominion says it relied on the Transco pipeline system which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City and has a daily capacity of 147 million dekatherms for about 75 percent of its natural gas supply during the cold spell Public utilities in North Carolina Ruby said relied on the Transco system for 100 percent of the state8217s supply Chris Stockton a spokesman for Williams Partners which operates the Transco system said the pipelines 8220performed remarkably8221 during the cold weather 8220We were able to meet all of our firm capacity contracts The system delivered a record amount of gas8221 said Stockton noting that the system delivered about 10 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country on that day Jan 5 8220It8217s an incredible accomplishment It8217s a testament to the system that we have8221 Though he said it is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission8217s job to determine the need for new pipeline infrastructure such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and another project moving toward construction through Virginia the Mountain Valley Pipeline Stockton said the existing system 8220performed as it was designed to perform8221 8220That to me says the infrastructure is in place right now to meet the current demand8221 he said 8220Those kinds of projects are really designed to meet future growth and FERC is the body determining whether or not that project is really justified8221 The FERC has issued certificates for both projects 8212 though in a rare dissent one commissioner said she could not conclude that either pipeline was in the public interest While Dominion has argued that the pipelines will provide 8220supply diversity8221 that will hedge against price shocks by allowing utilities to purchase gas from different geographical sources 8212 such as the Dominion South Point trading hub in Pennsylvania which can experience price fluctuations at different times of year 8212 opponents contend the project is more about the 14 percent rate of return guaranteed by the FERC with utility ratepayers bearing all the risk 8220There8217s no reason to think it8217ll be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 once the pipeline is built which makes sense considering that the producers at Dominion South Point would sell their gas 8216at market8217 once they have a pipeline able to bring the gas to market8221 said Cleveland the SELC attorney 8220Dominion8217s own internal price forecasts confirm that Dominion South Point won8217t be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 in the future8221 asteriskasteriskasterisk Dominion has cast the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as urgently needed to meet utility demands in Virginia and North Carolina But the company8217s planned merger with SCANA Corp a South Carolina electric and gas utility holding company that was announced this month has added fuel to arguments that its real intent is to bring gas farther south 8220We like the deal on the margin as the strategic rationale makes sense to us this creates an expansion opportunity for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in SC which remains a clear strategic desire in 2018 for D8221 said a Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch report on the merger announcement Tom Hadwin a former New York utility executive who lives in Waynesboro and is opposed to the ACP also said the South Carolina acquisition makes sense for Dominion and its partners which also include Duke Energy 8220Dominion and Duke have considerably reduced the number of gasfired power plants they say they need PJM believes Virginia8217s electricity demand will be relatively stable over the next 15 years8221 Hadwin said 8220They bought SCANA at a discount and will receive a longterm stream of taxprotected profits It gives them a chance to extend the ACP in hopes of finding someone who needs the gas8221 Cleveland said the ACP is designed not to bring gas to Virginia but to 8220move gas through Virginia8221 8220Once it8217s built all but two gas power plants in the entire state will still rely almost exclusively on preexisting pipelines to operate8221 he said 8220There won8217t be any incentive for those plants to pay higher ACPrelated transportation costs for gas that8217s the same price as everywhere else in the market8221 Ruby the Dominion spokesman has said the company has made no decisions about potentially expanding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline RICHMOND Va AP 8212 The 2014 8220polar vortex8221 and the wave of cold weather it unleashed over much of the US has surfaced again and again as proponents have made the case for one of Virginia8217s most controversial infrastructure projects the Dominion Energyled Atlantic Coast Pipeline The same argument that existing pipeline capacity is stretched to the max during periods of severe weather reared its head again a few weeks ago after a similar spate of plunging temperatures ushered in 2018 8220The extreme cold and spikes in natural gas usage across the midAtlantic over the last two weeks demonstrated in dramatic fashion the real and urgent need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline8221 Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email Tuesday In a separate statement the company said its customers used more energy during the first week of January than any on record 8220It means that many customers will see bills that are higher possibly much higher than expected as their heating systems strained to keep pace with demand8221 said the company which now produces about 30 percent of its electricity from natural gasfired plants Pipeline opponents say Dominion is recycling an old argument that ignores other factors that lead to service curtailments and contend that building a 55 billion new pipeline is the most expensive way to deal with demand spikes caused by cold weather 8220Dominion is peddling the same unsupported story about accessing cheaper gas via the ACP8221 said Will Cleveland an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center which claims that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cost utility customers as much as 23 billion more than existing sources of gas 8220Simply put the ACP cannot and will not lower energy costs for Virginia power plants8221 asteriskasteriskasterisk Ruby said 8220severely limited capacity8221 on existing pipelines serving Virginia and North Carolina forced some utilities to curtail some gas service to major industrial customers and raised consumer prices to 8220historic highs8221 from 3 per dekatherm in late December to an alltime record high of 175 at the end of the first week of January Power plants that burn natural gas pass those higher fuel costs on to their electric customers 8220The reason is simple8221 Ruby said 8220Our region8217s pipelines are too constrained and we don8217t have enough access to lowercost supplies from the Appalachian region8221 That8217s a problem that Ruby and Jim Kibler president of Virginia Natural Gas which has nearly 300000 residential and commercial customers in southeastern Virginia say the 600mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline which would run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina with a spur to Hampton Roads is intended to fix 8220What it does is provide a reserve margin for these cold winter days8221 Kibler said VNG is a subsidiary of Southern Company which is a partner in the pipeline and has contracted to use roughly 5 percent of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline8217s capacity of 15 million dekatherms of natural gas It will also provide additional capacity for industrial expansion 8220There8217s essentially no capacity available east of Richmond for any economic development projects8221 Kibler said 8220ACP will really harden our ability to serve southside Hampton Roads8221 During the 2014 polar vortex Kibler said Virginia Natural Gas curtailed service to about 100 8220interruptible8221 industrial customers to prioritize delivery for power generation and home heating for such facilities as schools hospitals retirement homes day cares and prisons among others This month Virginia Natural Gas curtailed only 10 though he said that in no way undermines the need for the pipeline The reduction in curtailments was partly the result of some of the coldest weather falling on a weekend and the fact that it was interrupted by warmer days Kibler said Also the company8217s system saw no major compression or other mechanical failures 8220We used every asset that we have last week and everything worked8221 he said PJM Interconnection the regional transmission organization that runs the electric grid for all or parts of 13 states including Virginia and the District of Columbia said the run of cold weather from Dec 27 through Jan 7 delivered three of the system8217s top 10 highest winter peak demands for electricity Despite that lessons learned during the 2014 polar vortex helped ensure that most power generators stayed online as demand surged Chris Pilong PJM8217s director of dispatch said the recent cold weather was not quite as severe as the polar vortex of 2014 which caused forced outages because of a range of factors including inadequate fuel supplies lack of insulation of crucial components freezing coal piles and mechanical problems About 40000 megawatts of generation more than a quarter of the system8217s power generation went offline during the polar vortex This month only about 16000 megawatts of outages were reported he said 8220We8217re not seeing those types of generation performance issues this winter8221 he said PJM has also created a penalty system for generation sources that fail to perform during emergency demand situations asteriskasteriskasterisk Dominion says it relied on the Transco pipeline system which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City and has a daily capacity of 147 million dekatherms for about 75 percent of its natural gas supply during the cold spell Public utilities in North Carolina Ruby said relied on the Transco system for 100 percent of the state8217s supply Chris Stockton a spokesman for Williams Partners which operates the Transco system said the pipelines 8220performed remarkably8221 during the cold weather 8220We were able to meet all of our firm capacity contracts The system delivered a record amount of gas8221 said Stockton noting that the system delivered about 10 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country on that day Jan 5 8220It8217s an incredible accomplishment It8217s a testament to the system that we have8221 Though he said it is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission8217s job to determine the need for new pipeline infrastructure such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and another project moving toward construction through Virginia the Mountain Valley Pipeline Stockton said the existing system 8220performed as it was designed to perform8221 8220That to me says the infrastructure is in place right now to meet the current demand8221 he said 8220Those kinds of projects are really designed to meet future growth and FERC is the body determining whether or not that project is really justified8221 The FERC has issued certificates for both projects 8212 though in a rare dissent one commissioner said she could not conclude that either pipeline was in the public interest While Dominion has argued that the pipelines will provide 8220supply diversity8221 that will hedge against price shocks by allowing utilities to purchase gas from different geographical sources 8212 such as the Dominion South Point trading hub in Pennsylvania which can experience price fluctuations at different times of year 8212 opponents contend the project is more about the 14 percent rate of return guaranteed by the FERC with utility ratepayers bearing all the risk 8220There8217s no reason to think it8217ll be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 once the pipeline is built which makes sense considering that the producers at Dominion South Point would sell their gas 8216at market8217 once they have a pipeline able to bring the gas to market8221 said Cleveland the SELC attorney 8220Dominion8217s own internal price forecasts confirm that Dominion South Point won8217t be cheaper than Transco Zone 5 in the future8221 asteriskasteriskasterisk Dominion has cast the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as urgently needed to meet utility demands in Virginia and North Carolina But the company8217s planned merger with SCANA Corp a South Carolina electric and gas utility holding company that was announced this month has added fuel to arguments that its real intent is to bring gas farther south 8220We like the deal on the margin as the strategic rationale makes sense to us this creates an expansion opportunity for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in SC which remains a clear strategic desire in 2018 for D8221 said a Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch report on the merger announcement Tom Hadwin a former New York utility executive who lives in Waynesboro and is opposed to the ACP also said the South Carolina acquisition makes sense for Dominion and its partners which also include Duke Energy 8220Dominion and Duke have considerably reduced the number of gasfired power plants they say they need PJM believes Virginia8217s electricity demand will be relatively stable over the next 15 years8221 Hadwin said 8220They bought SCANA at a discount and will receive a longterm stream of taxprotected profits It gives them a chance to extend the ACP in hopes of finding someone who needs the gas8221 Cleveland said the ACP is designed not to bring gas to Virginia but to 8220move gas through Virginia8221 8220Once it8217s built all but two gas power plants in the entire state will still rely almost exclusively on preexisting pipelines to operate8221 he said 8220There won8217t be any incentive for those plants to pay higher ACPrelated transportation costs for gas that8217s the same price as everywhere else in the market8221 Ruby the Dominion spokesman has said the company has made no decisions about potentially expanding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline

RICHMOND/PROPN Va/PROPN AP/PROPN 8212/NUM The/DET 2014/NUM 8220polar/ADJ vortex8221/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET wave/NOUN of/ADP cold/ADJ weather/NOUN it/PRON unleashed/VERB over/ADP much/ADJ of/ADP the/DET US/PROPN has/AUX surfaced/VERB again/ADV and/CCONJ again/ADV as/SCONJ proponents/NOUN have/AUX made/VERB the/DET case/NOUN for/ADP one/NUM of/ADP Virginia8217s/PROPN most/ADV controversial/ADJ infrastructure/NOUN projects/NOUN the/DET Dominion/PROPN Energyled/PROPN Atlantic/PROPN Coast/PROPN Pipeline/PROPN The/DET same/ADJ argument/NOUN that/SCONJ existing/VERB pipeline/NOUN capacity/NOUN is/AUX stretched/VERB to/ADP the/DET max/PROPN during/ADP periods/NOUN of/ADP severe/ADJ weather/NOUN reared/VERB its/PRON head/NOUN again/ADV a/DET few/ADJ weeks/NOUN ago/ADV after/SCONJ a/DET similar/ADJ spate/NOUN of/ADP plunging/VERB temperatures/NOUN ushered/VERB in/ADP 2018/NUM 8220The/NUM extreme/ADJ cold/NOUN and/CCONJ spikes/NOUN in/ADP natural/ADJ gas/NOUN usage/NOUN across/ADP the/DET 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<p>Healthcare workers have taken another giant step forward. At the same time, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) stands exposed as never before. Corporate unionism &#8211; Andy Stern&#8217;s contribution to the long decline of organized labor in the US &#8211; is up against the wall in California.</p> <p>This contest is a fight with big implications. The prize is &#8220;a free choice&#8221; for workers, a right rarely enjoyed in late-imperial America, but with a California twist &#8211; it is &#8220;a free choice&#8221; in choosing a union &#8211; California healthcare workers are fighting for the right to have a union of their own, a union that they control and that works in their interests, not, in this case, the SEIU.</p> <p>On Thursday afternoon ( February 26) the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) made an historic advance &#8211; it filed petitions asking that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) conduct decertification (rescind legal recognition)elections at Kaiser Permanente, the nation&#8217;s largest non-profit health care provider. These petitions were signed by more than 50 per cent, (that is, an absolute majority) of all California&#8217;s 50,000 of Kaiser&#8217;s SEIU represented healthcare workers. The petitions represent, starkly, the desire of these California healthcare workers to leave SEIU.</p> <p>This petition campaign is the culmination of one phase in what has become the war to form the NUHW &#8211; yet it is an astonishing achievement. It is all the more impressive as it represents just the core of an ongoing drive in which, so far, workers at 380 California facilities (employing 80,000 workers &#8211; the majority of members of SEIU&#8217;s once flagship local, United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) &#8211; have rejected SEIU and petitioned for recognition of NUHW as their union.&amp;#160; And this in less than one month! 10,000 home care workers will file Monday in Fresno.</p> <p>Why? &#8220;We need stability, democracy, and a union we can trust,&#8221; said Bebs Nonato, a registered nurse at Kaiser&#8217;s Los Angeles Medical Center&#8230;&amp;#160; they /SEIU/ pushed us around like furniture, and ignored our voices and votes. We&#8217;re building a stronger union in NUHW, with healthcare workers in control.&#8221; Now, today, the very idea of &#8220;control&#8221; &#8211; control in one&#8217;s union, control at work, &#8220;workers&#8217; control&#8221; in society, is considered archaic, certainly in the organized labor movement ( honorable exceptions aside). At best, it is replaced by the term &#8220;democracy&#8221;, very loosely defined.&amp;#160; In SEIU circles, however, even &#8220;democracy&#8221; has been shelved as of historic interest only; it has become, apparently, an obstacle in the desperate quest for central command, density and dues.</p> <p>Not so with California healthcare workers. These are workers who say they will fight to control their union; more, says Mell Garcia, medical assistant at Kaiser-Hayward, membership power is the way to power at work: &#8220;We&#8217;re joining NUHW because it&#8217;s the only way to protect the gains that Kaiser workers have won over the past 65 years&#8230;&#8221;</p> <p>John Borsos, the fired elected administrative Vice President of SEIU-UHW, believes that this is the largest decertifcation drive ever.&amp;#160; It is all the more striking given that this campaign has been conducted entirely by healthcare workers themselves and the fired former elected staff of UHW.&amp;#160; This surely bears repeating. The signatures were collected in less than one month by working health care workers seeking recognition &#8211; aided by a handful of fired (some resigned in protest, out of loyalty, and for values, we might add), in an entirely volunteer project!</p> <p>The crisis in California SEIU came to a head on January 27, 2009, when Andy Stern the International President of SEIU placed UHW in trusteeship. He replaced&amp;#160; the entire elected leadership of UHW&amp;#160; &#8211; at that time the 150,000 California local was known as a militant, democratic and progressive union, in fact SEIU&#8217;s fastest growing local. He hijacked 65,000 UHW long-term care members &#8211; workers who, as far as I can work out, may be headed for some new organizational home but remain lost in SEIU space, yet required, of course, to pay their dues. SEIU seized UHW assets and replaced its 100 member elected executive board (the great majority of whom were working members) with two appointed trustees , Eliseo Medina and Dave Regan, both ($200,000+ a year) SEIU Executive Vice Presidents. They have been joined by scores of SEIU staff members, &#8220;warriors&#8221; organized by Stern lieutenant and SEIU Vice President ($200,000+) Mary Kay Henry, a collection of carpetbaggers collected from SEIU&#8217;s bureaucratic&amp;#160; baronies across the country. (The popular new website Perezstern.blogspot.com&amp;#160; highlights the trials and tribulations of these hapless individuals.</p> <p>NUHW was formed when UHW&#8217;s deposed 100 member Executive Board proposed to form a new union, backing the demands of 5,000 stewards who met the weekend before. NUHW set out to rebuild a healthcare workers union &#8211; with&amp;#160; no budget, no office, no paid staff. SEIU insisted everything belonged to it. Organizers were ordered to return phones, blackberries, everything and anything.</p> <p>The Kaiser decertification campaign is the heart of this drive: Kaiser has 32 medical centers and 200 clinics in California. Kaiser has its origins, like UHW, in the 1930s. Today it is today the largest non-profit health plan in the US. It is the largest healthcare employer in California. It is by far the largest single bargaining unit represented by UHW, nearly 50,000 healthcare workers &#8211; dwarfing the next biggest California bargaining unit, Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) that employs 14,000. Fortune magazine reports that Kaiser&#8217;s revenues last year at $37.8 billion; it is the fifth largest private company in the US, serving 8.7 million members.</p> <p>The Kaiser contract &#8211; the product of years of struggle &#8211; is considered the &#8220;gold standard&#8221; for hospital workers. UHW&#8217;s Kaiser members enjoyed the best wages and benefits in the country. Moreover, the Kaiser contract was used to leverage up other contracts, not just in hospitals but also in nursing home and for home care workers. Kaiser was the rock on which UHW, until it was wrecked (and its predecessors SEIU locals 250 and 399), was built.</p> <p>The decertification petitions drive are, however, just a start, it is one thing to petition the NLRB, it is another to force the agency to act responsibly&amp;#160; and offer rank-and-file workers a fair hearing and fair elections &#8211; &#8220;a free choice.&#8221;</p> <p>The NLRB is the agency within the United States government charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating charges of unfair labor practices. It has a five-person board and a general counsel, all appointed by the President; they oversee regional offices and staff. The agency&#8217;s origins, in the 1930s, lie in the National Labor Relations Act (the New Deal Wagner Act, 1935) that made trade unionism legal, though it has rarely lived up to its pro-labor reputation, particularly since passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1948. It does, however, offer procedures for representation, fair bargaining and appeals for workers and their unions. At best it has offered a cumbersome and time-consuming process for defending workers&#8217; rights; at worst it has reflected the politics of the party in power and certainly this has been the case in the Reagan-Bush era.</p> <p>The NLRB is contested terrain. Unions can petition for elections. Employers can oppose them. They wheel in the lawyers, the specialists and consultants, the delays, the appeals &#8211; then the war at home, on the job. While workers await the opportunity to vote, often delayed, the employers are free to intimidate, harass, often terminate the workers who sought protection in the first place. Union organizers are all too familiar with the law firms and the private agencies that specialize in this, as well as with the countless &#8220;dirty tricks&#8221; within the employers arsenals.</p> <p>Today EFCA, &#8220;the Employee Free Choice Act&#8221;, now before Congress, is organized labor&#8217;s attempt to remedy these failings by amending&amp;#160; the NLRA &#8211; in the hope of making it easier for workers to form, join or assist labor organizations and to provide for penalties for unfair labor practices, particularly in organizing efforts. EFCA would require, for example, the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards, the card check process. EFCA is of course vehemently opposed by&amp;#160; business because it would simplify efforts by workers to unionize and negotiate first contracts.</p> <p>Andy Stern, SEIU International President, explained to USA Today that this is all abc. &#8220;Union members can opt out of unions by checking a card so they should be able to opt in that way as well.&#8221; There we have it! Let the workers decide.&amp;#160; Why not a free election for Kaiser workers? No one doubts the outcome. Shayne Silva, a psychiatric technician at Alta Bates Summit in Oakland, says, &#8220;We hope Andy Stern and SEIU will walk away and leave us alone.&#8221;</p> <p>No such luck. Dave Regan told the LA Times he will fight NUHW &#8220;every step of the way.&#8221;&amp;#160; The challenges commence. Michelle Ringuette, national spokesperson for SEIU, charges the petitions are not valid. She says members don&#8217;t understand the issues. She says workers are being coerced. NUMW, she says, is guilty of &#8220;raiding&#8221; (she would know). The lawyers get to work, the NLRB announces it must investigate. At the same time Dave Regan is said to be proposing concessionary&amp;#160; bargaining with Kaiser, and Andy Stern has announced a new SEIU- wide committee that will bargain with Kaiser &#8211; a stacked committee where California&#8217;s members can be outvoted by representatives from Colorado and Oregon &#8211; state organizations that together represent only 4000 members.</p> <p>This, of course, is just what the employers do &#8211; don&#8217;t let the workers choose!. It is the reason that unions are pressing for passage of EFCA. I was warned that this is exactly what would happen &#8211; also that SEIU would be good at it. As predicted the stall has begun &#8211; the clock runs and back home on the job, intimidation, harassment, threats.</p> <p>Here are four examples, I&#8217;ve seen dozens:</p> <p>*On February 1, Inez Moreno, a shop steward at 269-bed Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield, received a phone call from an SEIU organizer. Moreno was told not to circulate petitions. If she refused, the organizer would call the hospital&#8217;s Human Resources Department on Monday and have her terminated. &#8220;She said I had been stripped of my stewardship&#8230; She thinks she can call me and treat me like nothing&#8230;&#8221;</p> <p>*On February 9th, Maria Garcia, a Certified Nursing Assistant and elected shop steward at 99-bed Bay Point Healthcare Center in Hayward, was fired for circulating a petition to join NUHW. Her boss phoned SEIU Trustee Eliseo Medina and told her that if Medina didn&#8217;t approve of the petition, she would be fired. Days later, he terminated Garcia, who is an immigrant from Mexico and a single mother of three children.</p> <p>*On February 11th, Angelica Valerio, a Certified Nursing Assistant and member of the elected Windsor Healthcare bargaining committee, was suspended from her job and nine others received written warnings for refusing to let an SEIU staffer bargain their contract. A majority of Windsor workers had already petitioned to disaffiliate from SEIU. With 29 nursing homes, for-profit Windsor Healthcare is one of the largest nursing home chains in California.</p> <p>*On February 23rd, three SEIU organizers arrived at 1,049-bed California Pacific Medical Center, Sutter Health&#8217;s flagship hospital located in San Francisco. Two of the facility&#8217;s elected rank-and-file leaders, Helen York-Jones and Porfirio Quintano, asked the SEIU organizers to leave their hospital. York-Jones is a Cashier and 40-year employee who is the facility&#8217;s Rep Chair and a former elected member of SEIU-UHW&#8217;s Executive Board. Quintano, a Housekeeper with 10 years on the job, is a steward and an elected member of the union&#8217;s bargaining committee. The two leaders told the SEIU staffers that a majority of the hospital&#8217;s workers had already submitted petitions to disaffiliate from SEIU, and they did not want SEIU organizers in their facility. The SEIU organizers reported them to the hospital&#8217;s Human Resources Department. Two days later, York-Jones and Quintano received calls from Sutter management announcing that they had been placed on unpaid&amp;#160;investigatory leave.</p> <p>So much for protected activity! But no one said it would be easy.</p> <p>I must confess here that this is exactly what I was told would happen &#8211; many times over. SEIU would go, full speed ahead, into corporate mode. Never mind the cost. Never mind the damage to the union, to its elected representatives, to the movement, to the workers and their families.</p> <p>I must also confess that I am not at all surprised to learn of the incidents summarized above. This is the union, after all, that last April organized a physical assault on the Labor Notes conference in Dearborn. This is the union that, last June, held its national convention in Puerto Rica behind by jack-booted San Juan riot police. This is the union of Tyronne Freeman and Rickman Jackson and Annelle Grajeda, all now removed and facing charges of corruption, all California SEIU (appointed by Stern) leaders. And this is the union that, even amidst the wreckage of UHW, continues its war on the California Nurses&amp;#160; Association.</p> <p>It is SEIU, the union of the deal! Stern continues to work the politicians. Stern, remember, was a supporter of the illustrious former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and despite the fact that SEIU will be involved with a federal corruption investigation, Stern said he has &#8220;no reason to believe anyone did anything wrong.&#8221; He also said that while he is sorry about the way Blagojevich&#8217;s career ended, he is not sorry about past SEIU support for him.</p> <p>As for the role of unions in the deepening recession &#8211; California&#8217;s official unemployment rate now tops 10 per cent &#8211; Stern stubbornly repeats that workers should be &#8220;partners&#8221; with their employers in both good times and bad. As an example of the latter, he cites California&#8217;s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a man he can work with &#8211; forget, please, the draconian state budget, short work weeks, fierce cuts in health , welfare and education.</p> <p>The issue then is stark and simple &#8211; have workers a right to a union of their own choice? SEIU says &#8220;No!&#8221; Alas, SEIU has supporters, even in the universities and amongst the so-called experts of the country&#8217;s academic labor centers. There, a ten year debate, often with SEIU at the center, has undermined fundamental beliefs, even in the very value of democracy within the workers&#8217; movement. Steve Fraser, a cynical apologist if ever there was one, argued from the start that democracy was a non-issue &#8211; a fetish of an insignificant left, when not a weapon of the right. Approvingly, he told us &#8220;many labor leaders secretly believe and practice what one of them openly confessed back in the 1920s: &#8216;As a democracy no union would last six months.&#8217;&#8221;</p> <p>More than any other union, SEIU has flaunted its denigration of internal union democracy. It has belittled membership rights and election of representatives at all levels and denied workers&#8217; participation, let alone control in bargaining. An example of SEIU member rights, perhaps extreme, is this: the SEIU Constitution says that any seven&amp;#160; members can block a disaffiliation vote &#8211; for example in the 150,000 member UHW! That is, as Steve Early has shown, there&#8217;s no checking out. Others unions&amp;#160; share this distaste for democracy, but few with the effrontery of SEIU. And few with a chorus of academics cheering them on. All this has taken its toll on the movement &#8211; as has the SEIU checkbook. But this will change. Stanley Aronowitz replied to Fraser in the 90s debate and his answer still stands: &#8220;When unions deprive the rank and file of choice, when leaders favor mobilization but not participation, they succeed only in driving a deeper nail in labor&#8217;s coffin.&#8221; Sal Rosselli, the fired elected President of UHW, now a NUHW volunteer, offers this contrast, and, we hope, a forecast for the future of the new union: &#8220;We believe there can be no limit to the empowerment of workers.&#8221;</p> <p>I think SEIU&#8217;s time has run out, but the fight has just begun. Change to Win (CTW &#8211; the Stern federation that split from the AFL-CIO) is on the rocks. Stern&#8217;s arch-enemies, the California Nurses, are now part of a national nurses&#8217; movement, the National United American Nurses. And in this conflict with NUHW, SEIU is driving off a California cliff.</p> <p>Thus far, UHW, now NUHW, while highly regarded in California, has fought alone. Observers have most often restricted themselves to lamenting the SEIU-NUHW conflict as a regrettable diversion &#8211; in particular from the fight for EFCA. Or they have worried about a divided labor movement in a time of extreme economic peril. Certainly there are dangers. However, is there any evidence that today&#8217;s organized labor movement can take us forward? Does anyone really believe that the AFL-CIO can produce, for example, a new Congress of Industrial Organizations&amp;#160; (CIO)? With or without its flaws? CTW, pathetically in retreat, reapplying for ALC-CIO credentials? &#8220;We didn&#8217;t pick this fight,&#8221; says Paul Kumar, fired elected Vice President of UHW, &#8220;but it&#8217;s a privilege to wage it.&#8221;&amp;#160; Of course it&#8217;s a clich&#233; to say that the times demand change, fundamental change, but they do. There will be no change, however, without struggle &#8211;remember Frederick Douglas &#8220;no progress without struggle, no crops without plowing. No rain without thunder and lightning.&#8221; Perhaps this week&#8217;s wild Pacific storms are setting the stage. Within the month the NUHW will meet in San Francisco for its founding convention.</p> <p>United Healthcare Workers-West was the kind of union we need in California &#8211; more, it was in historian Nelson Lichtenstein&#8217;s words a &#8220;model.&#8221; The SEIU assault on UHW has indeed &#8211; as so many warned &#8211; been a tragedy. Nevertheless, someone had to stand up to Andy Stern&#8217;s SEIU. Now is the time for us to stand up with NUHW &#8211; we need a new beginning.</p> <p>CAL WINSLOW is co-editor, with Aaron Brenner and Robert Brenner, of Rebel Rank and File, Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long Seventies (forthcoming, Verso.) He is author of the CounterPunch piece, &#8220;Stern&#8217;s Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall.&#8221; He is a Fellow in Environmental Politics at UC Berkeley and Director of the Mendocino Institute. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:cwinslow@berkeley.edu" type="external">cwinslow@berkeley.edu</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Slugging It Out in California

https://counterpunch.org/2009/03/04/slugging-it-out-in-california/

2009-03-04

4left

Healthcare workers have taken another giant step forward At the same time the Service Employees International Union SEIU stands exposed as never before Corporate unionism 8211 Andy Stern8217s contribution to the long decline of organized labor in the US 8211 is up against the wall in California This contest is a fight with big implications The prize is 8220a free choice8221 for workers a right rarely enjoyed in lateimperial America but with a California twist 8211 it is 8220a free choice8221 in choosing a union 8211 California healthcare workers are fighting for the right to have a union of their own a union that they control and that works in their interests not in this case the SEIU On Thursday afternoon February 26 the new National Union of Healthcare Workers NUHW made an historic advance 8211 it filed petitions asking that the National Labor Relations Board NLRB conduct decertification rescind legal recognitionelections at Kaiser Permanente the nation8217s largest nonprofit health care provider These petitions were signed by more than 50 per cent that is an absolute majority of all California8217s 50000 of Kaiser8217s SEIU represented healthcare workers The petitions represent starkly the desire of these California healthcare workers to leave SEIU This petition campaign is the culmination of one phase in what has become the war to form the NUHW 8211 yet it is an astonishing achievement It is all the more impressive as it represents just the core of an ongoing drive in which so far workers at 380 California facilities employing 80000 workers 8211 the majority of members of SEIU8217s once flagship local United Healthcare WorkersWest UHW 8211 have rejected SEIU and petitioned for recognition of NUHW as their unionamp160 And this in less than one month 10000 home care workers will file Monday in Fresno Why 8220We need stability democracy and a union we can trust8221 said Bebs Nonato a registered nurse at Kaiser8217s Los Angeles Medical Center8230amp160 they SEIU pushed us around like furniture and ignored our voices and votes We8217re building a stronger union in NUHW with healthcare workers in control8221 Now today the very idea of 8220control8221 8211 control in one8217s union control at work 8220workers8217 control8221 in society is considered archaic certainly in the organized labor movement honorable exceptions aside At best it is replaced by the term 8220democracy8221 very loosely definedamp160 In SEIU circles however even 8220democracy8221 has been shelved as of historic interest only it has become apparently an obstacle in the desperate quest for central command density and dues Not so with California healthcare workers These are workers who say they will fight to control their union more says Mell Garcia medical assistant at KaiserHayward membership power is the way to power at work 8220We8217re joining NUHW because it8217s the only way to protect the gains that Kaiser workers have won over the past 65 years82308221 John Borsos the fired elected administrative Vice President of SEIUUHW believes that this is the largest decertifcation drive everamp160 It is all the more striking given that this campaign has been conducted entirely by healthcare workers themselves and the fired former elected staff of UHWamp160 This surely bears repeating The signatures were collected in less than one month by working health care workers seeking recognition 8211 aided by a handful of fired some resigned in protest out of loyalty and for values we might add in an entirely volunteer project The crisis in California SEIU came to a head on January 27 2009 when Andy Stern the International President of SEIU placed UHW in trusteeship He replacedamp160 the entire elected leadership of UHWamp160 8211 at that time the 150000 California local was known as a militant democratic and progressive union in fact SEIU8217s fastest growing local He hijacked 65000 UHW longterm care members 8211 workers who as far as I can work out may be headed for some new organizational home but remain lost in SEIU space yet required of course to pay their dues SEIU seized UHW assets and replaced its 100 member elected executive board the great majority of whom were working members with two appointed trustees Eliseo Medina and Dave Regan both 200000 a year SEIU Executive Vice Presidents They have been joined by scores of SEIU staff members 8220warriors8221 organized by Stern lieutenant and SEIU Vice President 200000 Mary Kay Henry a collection of carpetbaggers collected from SEIU8217s bureaucraticamp160 baronies across the country The popular new website Perezsternblogspotcomamp160 highlights the trials and tribulations of these hapless individuals NUHW was formed when UHW8217s deposed 100 member Executive Board proposed to form a new union backing the demands of 5000 stewards who met the weekend before NUHW set out to rebuild a healthcare workers union 8211 withamp160 no budget no office no paid staff SEIU insisted everything belonged to it Organizers were ordered to return phones blackberries everything and anything The Kaiser decertification campaign is the heart of this drive Kaiser has 32 medical centers and 200 clinics in California Kaiser has its origins like UHW in the 1930s Today it is today the largest nonprofit health plan in the US It is the largest healthcare employer in California It is by far the largest single bargaining unit represented by UHW nearly 50000 healthcare workers 8211 dwarfing the next biggest California bargaining unit Catholic Healthcare West CHW that employs 14000 Fortune magazine reports that Kaiser8217s revenues last year at 378 billion it is the fifth largest private company in the US serving 87 million members The Kaiser contract 8211 the product of years of struggle 8211 is considered the 8220gold standard8221 for hospital workers UHW8217s Kaiser members enjoyed the best wages and benefits in the country Moreover the Kaiser contract was used to leverage up other contracts not just in hospitals but also in nursing home and for home care workers Kaiser was the rock on which UHW until it was wrecked and its predecessors SEIU locals 250 and 399 was built The decertification petitions drive are however just a start it is one thing to petition the NLRB it is another to force the agency to act responsiblyamp160 and offer rankandfile workers a fair hearing and fair elections 8211 8220a free choice8221 The NLRB is the agency within the United States government charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating charges of unfair labor practices It has a fiveperson board and a general counsel all appointed by the President they oversee regional offices and staff The agency8217s origins in the 1930s lie in the National Labor Relations Act the New Deal Wagner Act 1935 that made trade unionism legal though it has rarely lived up to its prolabor reputation particularly since passage of the TaftHartley Act in 1948 It does however offer procedures for representation fair bargaining and appeals for workers and their unions At best it has offered a cumbersome and timeconsuming process for defending workers8217 rights at worst it has reflected the politics of the party in power and certainly this has been the case in the ReaganBush era The NLRB is contested terrain Unions can petition for elections Employers can oppose them They wheel in the lawyers the specialists and consultants the delays the appeals 8211 then the war at home on the job While workers await the opportunity to vote often delayed the employers are free to intimidate harass often terminate the workers who sought protection in the first place Union organizers are all too familiar with the law firms and the private agencies that specialize in this as well as with the countless 8220dirty tricks8221 within the employers arsenals Today EFCA 8220the Employee Free Choice Act8221 now before Congress is organized labor8217s attempt to remedy these failings by amendingamp160 the NLRA 8211 in the hope of making it easier for workers to form join or assist labor organizations and to provide for penalties for unfair labor practices particularly in organizing efforts EFCA would require for example the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards the card check process EFCA is of course vehemently opposed byamp160 business because it would simplify efforts by workers to unionize and negotiate first contracts Andy Stern SEIU International President explained to USA Today that this is all abc 8220Union members can opt out of unions by checking a card so they should be able to opt in that way as well8221 There we have it Let the workers decideamp160 Why not a free election for Kaiser workers No one doubts the outcome Shayne Silva a psychiatric technician at Alta Bates Summit in Oakland says 8220We hope Andy Stern and SEIU will walk away and leave us alone8221 No such luck Dave Regan told the LA Times he will fight NUHW 8220every step of the way8221amp160 The challenges commence Michelle Ringuette national spokesperson for SEIU charges the petitions are not valid She says members don8217t understand the issues She says workers are being coerced NUMW she says is guilty of 8220raiding8221 she would know The lawyers get to work the NLRB announces it must investigate At the same time Dave Regan is said to be proposing concessionaryamp160 bargaining with Kaiser and Andy Stern has announced a new SEIU wide committee that will bargain with Kaiser 8211 a stacked committee where California8217s members can be outvoted by representatives from Colorado and Oregon 8211 state organizations that together represent only 4000 members This of course is just what the employers do 8211 don8217t let the workers choose It is the reason that unions are pressing for passage of EFCA I was warned that this is exactly what would happen 8211 also that SEIU would be good at it As predicted the stall has begun 8211 the clock runs and back home on the job intimidation harassment threats Here are four examples I8217ve seen dozens On February 1 Inez Moreno a shop steward at 269bed Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield received a phone call from an SEIU organizer Moreno was told not to circulate petitions If she refused the organizer would call the hospital8217s Human Resources Department on Monday and have her terminated 8220She said I had been stripped of my stewardship8230 She thinks she can call me and treat me like nothing82308221 On February 9th Maria Garcia a Certified Nursing Assistant and elected shop steward at 99bed Bay Point Healthcare Center in Hayward was fired for circulating a petition to join NUHW Her boss phoned SEIU Trustee Eliseo Medina and told her that if Medina didn8217t approve of the petition she would be fired Days later he terminated Garcia who is an immigrant from Mexico and a single mother of three children On February 11th Angelica Valerio a Certified Nursing Assistant and member of the elected Windsor Healthcare bargaining committee was suspended from her job and nine others received written warnings for refusing to let an SEIU staffer bargain their contract A majority of Windsor workers had already petitioned to disaffiliate from SEIU With 29 nursing homes forprofit Windsor Healthcare is one of the largest nursing home chains in California On February 23rd three SEIU organizers arrived at 1049bed California Pacific Medical Center Sutter Health8217s flagship hospital located in San Francisco Two of the facility8217s elected rankandfile leaders Helen YorkJones and Porfirio Quintano asked the SEIU organizers to leave their hospital YorkJones is a Cashier and 40year employee who is the facility8217s Rep Chair and a former elected member of SEIUUHW8217s Executive Board Quintano a Housekeeper with 10 years on the job is a steward and an elected member of the union8217s bargaining committee The two leaders told the SEIU staffers that a majority of the hospital8217s workers had already submitted petitions to disaffiliate from SEIU and they did not want SEIU organizers in their facility The SEIU organizers reported them to the hospital8217s Human Resources Department Two days later YorkJones and Quintano received calls from Sutter management announcing that they had been placed on unpaidamp160investigatory leave So much for protected activity But no one said it would be easy I must confess here that this is exactly what I was told would happen 8211 many times over SEIU would go full speed ahead into corporate mode Never mind the cost Never mind the damage to the union to its elected representatives to the movement to the workers and their families I must also confess that I am not at all surprised to learn of the incidents summarized above This is the union after all that last April organized a physical assault on the Labor Notes conference in Dearborn This is the union that last June held its national convention in Puerto Rica behind by jackbooted San Juan riot police This is the union of Tyronne Freeman and Rickman Jackson and Annelle Grajeda all now removed and facing charges of corruption all California SEIU appointed by Stern leaders And this is the union that even amidst the wreckage of UHW continues its war on the California Nursesamp160 Association It is SEIU the union of the deal Stern continues to work the politicians Stern remember was a supporter of the illustrious former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and despite the fact that SEIU will be involved with a federal corruption investigation Stern said he has 8220no reason to believe anyone did anything wrong8221 He also said that while he is sorry about the way Blagojevich8217s career ended he is not sorry about past SEIU support for him As for the role of unions in the deepening recession 8211 California8217s official unemployment rate now tops 10 per cent 8211 Stern stubbornly repeats that workers should be 8220partners8221 with their employers in both good times and bad As an example of the latter he cites California8217s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a man he can work with 8211 forget please the draconian state budget short work weeks fierce cuts in health welfare and education The issue then is stark and simple 8211 have workers a right to a union of their own choice SEIU says 8220No8221 Alas SEIU has supporters even in the universities and amongst the socalled experts of the country8217s academic labor centers There a ten year debate often with SEIU at the center has undermined fundamental beliefs even in the very value of democracy within the workers8217 movement Steve Fraser a cynical apologist if ever there was one argued from the start that democracy was a nonissue 8211 a fetish of an insignificant left when not a weapon of the right Approvingly he told us 8220many labor leaders secretly believe and practice what one of them openly confessed back in the 1920s 8216As a democracy no union would last six months82178221 More than any other union SEIU has flaunted its denigration of internal union democracy It has belittled membership rights and election of representatives at all levels and denied workers8217 participation let alone control in bargaining An example of SEIU member rights perhaps extreme is this the SEIU Constitution says that any sevenamp160 members can block a disaffiliation vote 8211 for example in the 150000 member UHW That is as Steve Early has shown there8217s no checking out Others unionsamp160 share this distaste for democracy but few with the effrontery of SEIU And few with a chorus of academics cheering them on All this has taken its toll on the movement 8211 as has the SEIU checkbook But this will change Stanley Aronowitz replied to Fraser in the 90s debate and his answer still stands 8220When unions deprive the rank and file of choice when leaders favor mobilization but not participation they succeed only in driving a deeper nail in labor8217s coffin8221 Sal Rosselli the fired elected President of UHW now a NUHW volunteer offers this contrast and we hope a forecast for the future of the new union 8220We believe there can be no limit to the empowerment of workers8221 I think SEIU8217s time has run out but the fight has just begun Change to Win CTW 8211 the Stern federation that split from the AFLCIO is on the rocks Stern8217s archenemies the California Nurses are now part of a national nurses8217 movement the National United American Nurses And in this conflict with NUHW SEIU is driving off a California cliff Thus far UHW now NUHW while highly regarded in California has fought alone Observers have most often restricted themselves to lamenting the SEIUNUHW conflict as a regrettable diversion 8211 in particular from the fight for EFCA Or they have worried about a divided labor movement in a time of extreme economic peril Certainly there are dangers However is there any evidence that today8217s organized labor movement can take us forward Does anyone really believe that the AFLCIO can produce for example a new Congress of Industrial Organizationsamp160 CIO With or without its flaws CTW pathetically in retreat reapplying for ALCCIO credentials 8220We didn8217t pick this fight8221 says Paul Kumar fired elected Vice President of UHW 8220but it8217s a privilege to wage it8221amp160 Of course it8217s a clich233 to say that the times demand change fundamental change but they do There will be no change however without struggle 8211remember Frederick Douglas 8220no progress without struggle no crops without plowing No rain without thunder and lightning8221 Perhaps this week8217s wild Pacific storms are setting the stage Within the month the NUHW will meet in San Francisco for its founding convention United Healthcare WorkersWest was the kind of union we need in California 8211 more it was in historian Nelson Lichtenstein8217s words a 8220model8221 The SEIU assault on UHW has indeed 8211 as so many warned 8211 been a tragedy Nevertheless someone had to stand up to Andy Stern8217s SEIU Now is the time for us to stand up with NUHW 8211 we need a new beginning CAL WINSLOW is coeditor with Aaron Brenner and Robert Brenner of Rebel Rank and File Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long Seventies forthcoming Verso He is author of the CounterPunch piece 8220Stern8217s Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall8221 He is a Fellow in Environmental Politics at UC Berkeley and Director of the Mendocino Institute He can be reached at cwinslowberkeleyedu amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>NOTE: Additional team files will updated here as they become available from writers around the league.</p> <p>Maybe it&#8217;s the extra time spent together on planes, buses and in hotel rooms.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Or the fact that they only have seven scholarship players.</p> <p>But something is different about Colorado State&#8217;s basketball team when it plays Mountain West road games this season. The Rams (15-9 overall, 7-4 MW) won their third straight and improved to 4-2 in conference road games last Saturday with their first win at UNLV since 2011. A week earlier, they ended a 14-year drought with a victory at San Diego State.</p> <p>No Colorado State team has ever won more than five MW road games in a season.</p> <p>The Rams, senior forward Emmanuel Omogbo said, are playing better on the road right now than they are at home, where they&#8217;re just 3-2 in league play.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re more focused and more locked in,&#8221; Omogbo said. &#8220;We don&#8217;t whine about calls. We just go out there, try to out-determine the team, share the ball and try to get out to a quick lead and keep our momentum up.&#8221;</p> <p>At home, coach Larry Eustachy said Monday, the Rams are still worried about scoring to impress their friends. So they play at a faster tempo than they do on the road, and get themselves in trouble in the process. They shot less than 30 percent from the floor in the first 14 minutes of a home game last Tuesday night against Boise State while falling behind by 19 points in a game they lost 79-76.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>When they&#8217;re playing at home, the Rams are still going to classes and study hall sessions during the day. They&#8217;ve got 15 players at practice &#8212; the seven who actually play, a walk-on from the track team who suits up just in case they need an eighth player on game day, four transfers from other Division I schools who must sit out this season under NCAA transfer rules and the three players who were ruled academically ineligible for the second semester.</p> <p>All 15 are in the locker room with the team before home games and alongside them on the bench during games.</p> <p>On the road, they&#8217;ve just got eight players. They travel together, eat their meals together, study alongside each other and hang out with each other in the team hotel. When they get to the arena, there&#8217;s just the eight of them out there to see the signs and pictures and listen to the taunts of opposing fans.</p> <p>Instead of getting rattled, the Rams have adopted an us-against-the-world mentality.</p> <p>&#8220;We get on the road, we know that it&#8217;s a must-win,&#8221; sophomore guard J.D, Paige said. &#8220;We go out there, play really hard, play as a team. We don&#8217;t shy away from the game plan.</p> <p>&#8220;I think we execute a lot more on the road because the crowd&#8217;s not going for us, people like that; that feeling of the crowd being against them.&#8221;</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>They used that energy to win in an empty arena Jan. 4 at San Jose State, with a full student section of more than 5,000 fans jeering their every move Jan. 21 at Utah State and to pick up their first wins in a while the past two weekends at San Diego State and UNLV.</p> <p>The Rams still have some difficult road games remaining &#8211; at Wyoming on Feb. 14, at New Mexico on Feb. 21 and at Nevada on March 4. But if they approach them with the same mentality as their past three road games, they like their chances.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got more confidence on the road than in past years,&#8221; senior guard Gian Clavell said. &#8220;We feel like we can get any game on the road.&#8221;</p> <p>This week&#8217;s games: vs. Utah State, 7 p.m. MT Tuesday (ROOT); vs. Fresno State, 2 p.m. MT Saturday (ESPN3 &#8212; online).</p> <p>&#8212; Kelly Lyell, Fort Collins Coloradoan</p> <p>Coach Rodney Terry suspended forward Cullen Russo for an unspecified violation of team rules prior to a win over Air Force and a loss to San Diego State last week, the latest in a series of troubles for the 6-foot-9 senior.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Since the Bulldogs opened Mountain West play, Russo has been benched for the first half of a Dec. 31 game against Nevada after an unexcused absence from a team workout, was taken out of the starting lineup and sat out games against Boise State and Colorado State to rectify an on-going academic issue, and now after coming back to play 12 minutes in a loss at Utah State has been suspended indefinitely.</p> <p>Terry declined to comment on Russo, focusing instead on the players in practice.</p> <p>&#8220;We have our team right here,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This is who we&#8217;ve been playing with. This is who we&#8217;ve been winning with. We&#8217;re worried about the guys we&#8217;ve got and the guys that we&#8217;re coaching right now. It&#8217;s really not a big deal.&#8221;</p> <p>For the Bulldogs, it really hasn&#8217;t been a big deal. They are 4-1 in the games Russo has not appeared.</p> <p>Russo was the first conference player of the week this season after scoring 23 points with 10 rebounds in a victory over Texas-San Antonio, but indifferent play at both ends of the floor had led to fewer minutes on the floor.</p> <p>Since the victory over UTSA, Russo had played an average of 27.1 minutes per game, scoring 8.8 points with 5.7 rebounds. In conference play, he had played 22.5 minutes in six games, scoring 9.3 points with 4.8 rebounds.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Sophomore Sam Bittner has started the past six games at the four, and Terry has liked the energy and urgency that he has brought at the start of games.</p> <p>&#8220;Sam, his preparation is always there,&#8221; Terry said. &#8220;He&#8217;s a young player still. He&#8217;s a sophomore. But he&#8217;s a young player that you know is going to know the scouting report. He&#8217;s going to do everything you ask him to do in terms of trying to block out and all those things. He helps you set the tone for how you want to start. He really does, because he plays with urgency on both ends of the floor all the time.&#8221;</p> <p>This week&#8217;s games: at Wyoming, 7 p.m. MT Wednesday (MW Network &#8212; online); at Colorado State, 2 p.m. MT Saturday (ESPN3 &#8212; online).</p> <p>&#8212; Robert Kuwada, Fresno Bee</p> <p>The week the Nevada basketball team debuted its new pink jerseys to raise awareness for cancer, Cameron Oliver was asked which of the Wolf Pack&#8217;s many uniforms were his favorite.</p> <p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t say,&#8221; said Oliver, hinting at some secret uniforms Nevada hadn&#8217;t worn yet.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Those secret uniforms were unveiled Monday when the Wolf Pack released for the public its &#8220;Battle Born&#8221; jerseys, which Nevada will wear Wednesday when it hosts UNLV. Those are one of seven uniforms the team will wear this season.</p> <p>&#8220;We talked with our players to see if they liked the idea of doing something a little outside the box,&#8221; coach Eric Musselman said. &#8220;We wanted to do something that was different and unique. We even talked to Governor (Brian) Sandoval about it.&#8221;</p> <p>The jersey features yellow trim on the lettering and numbering, along with a silhouetted Nevada state flag symbol on the back. The shorts have light blue streaks through navy blue and features the Battle Born symbol found on the Nevada state flag. A small outline of the state of Nevada filled with yellow is featured on the left shoulder with a blue star where Reno is located. A white Wolf Pack logo is on the opposite leg from the Battle Born symbol.</p> <p>&#8220;Growing up and watching Nevada and UNLV play, it means a lot actually being here and getting to be a part of it,&#8221; senior D.J. Fenner said. &#8220;One of my personal favorite memories was last year when I got a steal and had a fast break dunk. I just remember running down the court and the crowd was so loud I couldn&#8217;t even focus on the rim.</p> <p>The Battle Born jerseys are added to six other colors Nevada has to pink from, including the traditional home white; road blues; turquoise, which is part of Nike&#8217;s N7 campaign; silver; black unity jersey; as well as the pinks.</p> <p>&#8220;The jersey&#8217;s sweet with the yellow trim and the dark blue,&#8221; sophomore Lindsey Drew said. &#8220;I&#8217;m just ready to put it on and go out and play.&#8221;</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>This week&#8217;s games: vs. UNLV, 9 p.m. MT Wednesday (CBS Sports Network); at San Diego State, 2 p.m. MT Sunday (CBS Sports Network).</p> <p>&#8212; Chris Murray, Reno Gazette-Journal</p> <p>If you want the MW season summed up in one game, how&#8217;s this? The San Jose State Spartans, they of last-place finishes all three seasons they&#8217;ve played in the league, beat New Mexico on Saturday in the once intimidating Pit.</p> <p>Not only are home courts not what they once were in the league (with a month left to play, every team has lost at home at least once), but there are no gimmie games on the schedule for anyone. The Lobos, who look some nights like the best team in the league, should have already received that message last month thanks to a home loss to last place UNLV.</p> <p>Nevertheless, the injury-riddled Lobos came out relatively flat against an inspired Spartans team and lost at home fr the third time in a month.</p> <p>And wherever you want to file it &#8212; under the excuse column or explanation column &#8212; the reality is the Lobos have been hit as hard as anyone with injuries. They split two games last week playing without two starters, including all-conference candidate Tim Williams, who is out indefinitely with a stress reaction in his left foot. The other starter missing is sophomore guard Dane Kuiper (concussion), a versatile player who has, at times, been the team&#8217;s best defender and often the only other consistent threat on the perimeter other than junior guard Elijah Brown.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>In Kuiper, who will miss a mandatory minimum of 10 days with the concussion, the Lobos will have missed more than 30 days due to team-mandated concussion protocol procedures (Williams had one in December, backup forward Connor MacDougall in January). That goes along with missing sixth man Xavier Adams for the season (ACL tear); Brown missed 26 practices to start the season with a hamstring injury; former starting point guard Jordan Hunter missed two weeks with an ankle sprain; and now Williams is looking at probably about three weeks out with the foot injury.</p> <p>The injuries have forced the Lobos, who have long used an inside-out offensive attack with a strong history of potent post scorers over the past decade, to shift to a four-guard lineup that has upped the turnovers and limited the offensive efficiency.</p> <p>&#8220;You&#8217;re on the right page, but I&#8217;m not going to make excuses,&#8221; coach Craig Neal said when asked how much the new philosophy shift played into Saturday&#8217;s loss to the Spartans. &#8220;We&#8217;ve got enough guys to play. We&#8217;ve got enough talent to win so there&#8217;s no excuses from me.&#8221;</p> <p>The guard-oriented, spread out offense worked for 80 points in a road win at UNLV, a game in which freshman guard Damien Jefferson had a career high 13 points and senior center Obij Aget had 15 points and 11 rebounds. But that pair combined for more turnovers (six) than points (four) three days later against San Jose State, highlighting the growing pains and inconsistency of changing their offensive approach so late in the season.</p> <p>Junior wing Sam Logwood, who scored 19 in the San Jose State loss, said it&#8217;s a learning curve that the team will have to adjust to.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re just trying to figure out our new roles, trying to adjust to our new four-guard lineup &#8212; figuring out ways to score in that,&#8221; Logwood said. &#8220;With that will come turnovers. It&#8217;s something we&#8217;ve got to get better at.&#8221;</p> <p>This week&#8217;s game: at Air Force, 7 p.m. MT Wednesday (ROOT)</p> <p>&#8212; Geoff Grammer, Albuquerque Journal</p> <p>This has been a season of low moments for UNLV, and though Saturday&#8217;s 69-49 loss to Colorado State wasn&#8217;t the lowest, it&#8217;s in the conversation.</p> <p>No shame in losing to Colorado State, even one as short-handed as the Rams, but to get blown out at home was inexcusable. The Rebels were outscored by 13 points in the second half and made just 28.1 percent of their shots over those final 20 minutes while allowing Colorado State to shoot 53.8 percent.</p> <p>UNLV coach Marvin Menzies called the performance a &#8220;collective catastrophe&#8221; on his postgame radio show.</p> <p>&#8220;In the second half, the dam broke,&#8221; Menzies said later in his postgame news conference. &#8220;Sometimes when you don&#8217;t make shots at your end, you don&#8217;t defend with the same intensity. That&#8217;s a maturity thing. That&#8217;s an experience thing. I expect more from these guys to fight for a full 40 minutes, and we played hard for 20 defensively.&#8221;</p> <p>After three consecutive losses by a total of eight points, at least the Rebels could walk away knowing they had every chance to win those games. Not this time.</p> <p>UNLV next plays at Nevada on Wednesday, always an emotional trip, and even more so this season with former Rebels coach Dave Rice now a Wolf Pack assistant &#8212; at least for the three Rebels who played for Rice.</p> <p>But the Rebels take no momentum into that game, and after losing four games in a row, their mental state can&#8217;t be in a good place.</p> <p>&#8220;Losing is just not good, and you&#8217;ve got to see how your guys respond to it,&#8221; Menzies said. &#8220;We lost three in a row, but they kept fighting every game. This was a different kind of loss, so now you&#8217;re going to be tested. What you&#8217;re made of now will come through a little bit. So we&#8217;ll see.&#8221;</p> <p>This week&#8217;s games: at Nevada, 9 p.m. MT Wednesday (CBS Sports Network); vs. San Jose State, 4 p.m. MT Saturday (MW Network &#8212; online).</p> <p>&#8212; Mark Anderson, Las Vegas Review-Journal</p> <p>Heading into last week, the Aggies faced the two teams atop the league standings.</p> <p>They were greedy and wanted to pull off two upsets. However, Utah State had to settle for a split, knocking off Nevada at home by 17 points and falling at Boise State by two.</p> <p>In the win against the Wolf Pack, Tim Duryea praised his team for his best defensive effort since he took over as coach a year-and-a-half ago. Against the Broncos, it was a different story as easy layups were given up and second-chance points. Utah State also dealt with its top two scorers being in foul trouble early.</p> <p>&#8220;Obviously, a frustrating loss,&#8221; said guard Sam Merrill, who led the team with 14 points. &#8220;They are a pretty solid defensive team, and obviously they forced Koby (McEwen) and Jalen (Moore) into tough nights with foul trouble. That&#8217;s something we need to learn to play through, because that&#8217;s going to happen every once in a while. Tonight we were close, but that&#8217;s not enough, and we&#8217;ve got to figure out how to play better.&#8221;</p> <p>With McEwen and Moore sitting most of the first half at Boise, the bench, along with Merrill, actually rallied the Aggies to a tie at halftime after trailing by 12. Utah State led for part of the second half, but couldn&#8217;t close the deal when McEwen fouled out with almost six minutes left to play.</p> <p>&#8220;It felt like he (McEwen) was climbing uphill all night because of the foul trouble,&#8221; Duryea said. &#8220;We need to have him out there more than 20 minutes.&#8221;</p> <p>Moore, who leads the team in scoring (16.1) and rebounding (5.6), was held to a season-low four points ending a streak of 34 straight games of reaching double figures in scoring. McEwen had 11 points, a bit below his 15.3 points per game average.</p> <p>The Aggies are still looking for their first road win and get another shot at breaking through at Colorado State. The Rams jumped on Utah State early in the first meeting and led from start to finish in a 64-56 victory.</p> <p>This week&#8217;s games: at Colorado State, 7 p.m. MT Tuesday (ROOT); vs. Wyoming, 7 p.m. MT Saturday (MW Network &#8212; online).</p> <p>&#8212; Shawn Harrison, The Herald Journal, Logan, Utah</p> <p>The Cowboys (15-9, 5-6) got back to how first-year coach Allen Edwards thinks his team can play &#8212; and has played at times this season &#8212; in their 83-74 victory at Air Force last Saturday.</p> <p>Wyoming shot 50 percent from the field (29 of 58) and made 13 of 27 3-pointers. It let a 22-point lead shrink to six with 9:38 to play, but made key plays down the stretch to win its second MW road game of the season.</p> <p>&#8220;I felt that was our brand of basketball, unlike what we&#8217;ve done probably in the last four or five games,&#8221; Edwards said.</p> <p>&#8220;If you tag on the ability to shoot the way we shot, and the ability to defend, then we can be pretty good team. But we have to be consistent with it. It can&#8217;t be a one game or one half deal.&#8221;</p> <p>The Cowboys haven&#8217;t done that against five of the six teams ahead of them in the league standings. They are 0-5 against those squads, with two of those losses (Nevada and Boise State) coming at home by double-digits. Wyoming has yet to play Colorado State (15-9, 7-4).</p> <p>Wyoming gets another shot Wednesday when it hosts Fresno State (14-9, 6-5), a team it lost to 85-70 on the road back on Jan. 4.</p> <p>Junior guard Justin James averaged 23 points over two games last week, including 26 points (the most he&#8217;s scored in a MW game this season) and a career-high seven assists at Air Force. Over the last three games, junior forward Alan Herndon has averaged 13.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.3 blocked shots per game. His 52 blocked shots are third in the MW and moved him into the top 10 for a single season in school history.</p> <p>This week&#8217;s games: vs. Fresno State, 7 p.m. MT Wednesday (MW Network &#8212;online); at Utah State, 7 p.m. MT Saturday (MW Network &#8212; online).</p> <p>&#8212; Robert Gagliardi, Laramie Boomerang/WyoSports</p>

Around the Mountain: Team-by-team updates for MWC hoops (Feb. 6)

https://abqjournal.com/944051/around-the-mountain-team-by-team-updates-for-mwc-hoops-feb-6.html

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NOTE Additional team files will updated here as they become available from writers around the league Maybe it8217s the extra time spent together on planes buses and in hotel rooms ADVERTISEMENT Or the fact that they only have seven scholarship players But something is different about Colorado State8217s basketball team when it plays Mountain West road games this season The Rams 159 overall 74 MW won their third straight and improved to 42 in conference road games last Saturday with their first win at UNLV since 2011 A week earlier they ended a 14year drought with a victory at San Diego State No Colorado State team has ever won more than five MW road games in a season The Rams senior forward Emmanuel Omogbo said are playing better on the road right now than they are at home where they8217re just 32 in league play 8220We8217re more focused and more locked in8221 Omogbo said 8220We don8217t whine about calls We just go out there try to outdetermine the team share the ball and try to get out to a quick lead and keep our momentum up8221 At home coach Larry Eustachy said Monday the Rams are still worried about scoring to impress their friends So they play at a faster tempo than they do on the road and get themselves in trouble in the process They shot less than 30 percent from the floor in the first 14 minutes of a home game last Tuesday night against Boise State while falling behind by 19 points in a game they lost 7976 ADVERTISEMENT When they8217re playing at home the Rams are still going to classes and study hall sessions during the day They8217ve got 15 players at practice 8212 the seven who actually play a walkon from the track team who suits up just in case they need an eighth player on game day four transfers from other Division I schools who must sit out this season under NCAA transfer rules and the three players who were ruled academically ineligible for the second semester All 15 are in the locker room with the team before home games and alongside them on the bench during games On the road they8217ve just got eight players They travel together eat their meals together study alongside each other and hang out with each other in the team hotel When they get to the arena there8217s just the eight of them out there to see the signs and pictures and listen to the taunts of opposing fans Instead of getting rattled the Rams have adopted an usagainsttheworld mentality 8220We get on the road we know that it8217s a mustwin8221 sophomore guard JD Paige said 8220We go out there play really hard play as a team We don8217t shy away from the game plan 8220I think we execute a lot more on the road because the crowd8217s not going for us people like that that feeling of the crowd being against them8221 ADVERTISEMENT They used that energy to win in an empty arena Jan 4 at San Jose State with a full student section of more than 5000 fans jeering their every move Jan 21 at Utah State and to pick up their first wins in a while the past two weekends at San Diego State and UNLV The Rams still have some difficult road games remaining 8211 at Wyoming on Feb 14 at New Mexico on Feb 21 and at Nevada on March 4 But if they approach them with the same mentality as their past three road games they like their chances 8220We8217ve got more confidence on the road than in past years8221 senior guard Gian Clavell said 8220We feel like we can get any game on the road8221 This week8217s games vs Utah State 7 pm MT Tuesday ROOT vs Fresno State 2 pm MT Saturday ESPN3 8212 online 8212 Kelly Lyell Fort Collins Coloradoan Coach Rodney Terry suspended forward Cullen Russo for an unspecified violation of team rules prior to a win over Air Force and a loss to San Diego State last week the latest in a series of troubles for the 6foot9 senior ADVERTISEMENT Since the Bulldogs opened Mountain West play Russo has been benched for the first half of a Dec 31 game against Nevada after an unexcused absence from a team workout was taken out of the starting lineup and sat out games against Boise State and Colorado State to rectify an ongoing academic issue and now after coming back to play 12 minutes in a loss at Utah State has been suspended indefinitely Terry declined to comment on Russo focusing instead on the players in practice 8220We have our team right here8221 he said 8220This is who we8217ve been playing with This is who we8217ve been winning with We8217re worried about the guys we8217ve got and the guys that we8217re coaching right now It8217s really not a big deal8221 For the Bulldogs it really hasn8217t been a big deal They are 41 in the games Russo has not appeared Russo was the first conference player of the week this season after scoring 23 points with 10 rebounds in a victory over TexasSan Antonio but indifferent play at both ends of the floor had led to fewer minutes on the floor Since the victory over UTSA Russo had played an average of 271 minutes per game scoring 88 points with 57 rebounds In conference play he had played 225 minutes in six games scoring 93 points with 48 rebounds ADVERTISEMENT Sophomore Sam Bittner has started the past six games at the four and Terry has liked the energy and urgency that he has brought at the start of games 8220Sam his preparation is always there8221 Terry said 8220He8217s a young player still He8217s a sophomore But he8217s a young player that you know is going to know the scouting report He8217s going to do everything you ask him to do in terms of trying to block out and all those things He helps you set the tone for how you want to start He really does because he plays with urgency on both ends of the floor all the time8221 This week8217s games at Wyoming 7 pm MT Wednesday MW Network 8212 online at Colorado State 2 pm MT Saturday ESPN3 8212 online 8212 Robert Kuwada Fresno Bee The week the Nevada basketball team debuted its new pink jerseys to raise awareness for cancer Cameron Oliver was asked which of the Wolf Pack8217s many uniforms were his favorite 8220I can8217t say8221 said Oliver hinting at some secret uniforms Nevada hadn8217t worn yet ADVERTISEMENT Those secret uniforms were unveiled Monday when the Wolf Pack released for the public its 8220Battle Born8221 jerseys which Nevada will wear Wednesday when it hosts UNLV Those are one of seven uniforms the team will wear this season 8220We talked with our players to see if they liked the idea of doing something a little outside the box8221 coach Eric Musselman said 8220We wanted to do something that was different and unique We even talked to Governor Brian Sandoval about it8221 The jersey features yellow trim on the lettering and numbering along with a silhouetted Nevada state flag symbol on the back The shorts have light blue streaks through navy blue and features the Battle Born symbol found on the Nevada state flag A small outline of the state of Nevada filled with yellow is featured on the left shoulder with a blue star where Reno is located A white Wolf Pack logo is on the opposite leg from the Battle Born symbol 8220Growing up and watching Nevada and UNLV play it means a lot actually being here and getting to be a part of it8221 senior DJ Fenner said 8220One of my personal favorite memories was last year when I got a steal and had a fast break dunk I just remember running down the court and the crowd was so loud I couldn8217t even focus on the rim The Battle Born jerseys are added to six other colors Nevada has to pink from including the traditional home white road blues turquoise which is part of Nike8217s N7 campaign silver black unity jersey as well as the pinks 8220The jersey8217s sweet with the yellow trim and the dark blue8221 sophomore Lindsey Drew said 8220I8217m just ready to put it on and go out and play8221 ADVERTISEMENT This week8217s games vs UNLV 9 pm MT Wednesday CBS Sports Network at San Diego State 2 pm MT Sunday CBS Sports Network 8212 Chris Murray Reno GazetteJournal If you want the MW season summed up in one game how8217s this The San Jose State Spartans they of lastplace finishes all three seasons they8217ve played in the league beat New Mexico on Saturday in the once intimidating Pit Not only are home courts not what they once were in the league with a month left to play every team has lost at home at least once but there are no gimmie games on the schedule for anyone The Lobos who look some nights like the best team in the league should have already received that message last month thanks to a home loss to last place UNLV Nevertheless the injuryriddled Lobos came out relatively flat against an inspired Spartans team and lost at home fr the third time in a month And wherever you want to file it 8212 under the excuse column or explanation column 8212 the reality is the Lobos have been hit as hard as anyone with injuries They split two games last week playing without two starters including allconference candidate Tim Williams who is out indefinitely with a stress reaction in his left foot The other starter missing is sophomore guard Dane Kuiper concussion a versatile player who has at times been the team8217s best defender and often the only other consistent threat on the perimeter other than junior guard Elijah Brown ADVERTISEMENT In Kuiper who will miss a mandatory minimum of 10 days with the concussion the Lobos will have missed more than 30 days due to teammandated concussion protocol procedures Williams had one in December backup forward Connor MacDougall in January That goes along with missing sixth man Xavier Adams for the season ACL tear Brown missed 26 practices to start the season with a hamstring injury former starting point guard Jordan Hunter missed two weeks with an ankle sprain and now Williams is looking at probably about three weeks out with the foot injury The injuries have forced the Lobos who have long used an insideout offensive attack with a strong history of potent post scorers over the past decade to shift to a fourguard lineup that has upped the turnovers and limited the offensive efficiency 8220You8217re on the right page but I8217m not going to make excuses8221 coach Craig Neal said when asked how much the new philosophy shift played into Saturday8217s loss to the Spartans 8220We8217ve got enough guys to play We8217ve got enough talent to win so there8217s no excuses from me8221 The guardoriented spread out offense worked for 80 points in a road win at UNLV a game in which freshman guard Damien Jefferson had a career high 13 points and senior center Obij Aget had 15 points and 11 rebounds But that pair combined for more turnovers six than points four three days later against San Jose State highlighting the growing pains and inconsistency of changing their offensive approach so late in the season Junior wing Sam Logwood who scored 19 in the San Jose State loss said it8217s a learning curve that the team will have to adjust to 8220We8217re just trying to figure out our new roles trying to adjust to our new fourguard lineup 8212 figuring out ways to score in that8221 Logwood said 8220With that will come turnovers It8217s something we8217ve got to get better at8221 This week8217s game at Air Force 7 pm MT Wednesday ROOT 8212 Geoff Grammer Albuquerque Journal This has been a season of low moments for UNLV and though Saturday8217s 6949 loss to Colorado State wasn8217t the lowest it8217s in the conversation No shame in losing to Colorado State even one as shorthanded as the Rams but to get blown out at home was inexcusable The Rebels were outscored by 13 points in the second half and made just 281 percent of their shots over those final 20 minutes while allowing Colorado State to shoot 538 percent UNLV coach Marvin Menzies called the performance a 8220collective catastrophe8221 on his postgame radio show 8220In the second half the dam broke8221 Menzies said later in his postgame news conference 8220Sometimes when you don8217t make shots at your end you don8217t defend with the same intensity That8217s a maturity thing That8217s an experience thing I expect more from these guys to fight for a full 40 minutes and we played hard for 20 defensively8221 After three consecutive losses by a total of eight points at least the Rebels could walk away knowing they had every chance to win those games Not this time UNLV next plays at Nevada on Wednesday always an emotional trip and even more so this season with former Rebels coach Dave Rice now a Wolf Pack assistant 8212 at least for the three Rebels who played for Rice But the Rebels take no momentum into that game and after losing four games in a row their mental state can8217t be in a good place 8220Losing is just not good and you8217ve got to see how your guys respond to it8221 Menzies said 8220We lost three in a row but they kept fighting every game This was a different kind of loss so now you8217re going to be tested What you8217re made of now will come through a little bit So we8217ll see8221 This week8217s games at Nevada 9 pm MT Wednesday CBS Sports Network vs San Jose State 4 pm MT Saturday MW Network 8212 online 8212 Mark Anderson Las Vegas ReviewJournal Heading into last week the Aggies faced the two teams atop the league standings They were greedy and wanted to pull off two upsets However Utah State had to settle for a split knocking off Nevada at home by 17 points and falling at Boise State by two In the win against the Wolf Pack Tim Duryea praised his team for his best defensive effort since he took over as coach a yearandahalf ago Against the Broncos it was a different story as easy layups were given up and secondchance points Utah State also dealt with its top two scorers being in foul trouble early 8220Obviously a frustrating loss8221 said guard Sam Merrill who led the team with 14 points 8220They are a pretty solid defensive team and obviously they forced Koby McEwen and Jalen Moore into tough nights with foul trouble That8217s something we need to learn to play through because that8217s going to happen every once in a while Tonight we were close but that8217s not enough and we8217ve got to figure out how to play better8221 With McEwen and Moore sitting most of the first half at Boise the bench along with Merrill actually rallied the Aggies to a tie at halftime after trailing by 12 Utah State led for part of the second half but couldn8217t close the deal when McEwen fouled out with almost six minutes left to play 8220It felt like he McEwen was climbing uphill all night because of the foul trouble8221 Duryea said 8220We need to have him out there more than 20 minutes8221 Moore who leads the team in scoring 161 and rebounding 56 was held to a seasonlow four points ending a streak of 34 straight games of reaching double figures in scoring McEwen had 11 points a bit below his 153 points per game average The Aggies are still looking for their first road win and get another shot at breaking through at Colorado State The Rams jumped on Utah State early in the first meeting and led from start to finish in a 6456 victory This week8217s games at Colorado State 7 pm MT Tuesday ROOT vs Wyoming 7 pm MT Saturday MW Network 8212 online 8212 Shawn Harrison The Herald Journal Logan Utah The Cowboys 159 56 got back to how firstyear coach Allen Edwards thinks his team can play 8212 and has played at times this season 8212 in their 8374 victory at Air Force last Saturday Wyoming shot 50 percent from the field 29 of 58 and made 13 of 27 3pointers It let a 22point lead shrink to six with 938 to play but made key plays down the stretch to win its second MW road game of the season 8220I felt that was our brand of basketball unlike what we8217ve done probably in the last four or five games8221 Edwards said 8220If you tag on the ability to shoot the way we shot and the ability to defend then we can be pretty good team But we have to be consistent with it It can8217t be a one game or one half deal8221 The Cowboys haven8217t done that against five of the six teams ahead of them in the league standings They are 05 against those squads with two of those losses Nevada and Boise State coming at home by doubledigits Wyoming has yet to play Colorado State 159 74 Wyoming gets another shot Wednesday when it hosts Fresno State 149 65 a team it lost to 8570 on the road back on Jan 4 Junior guard Justin James averaged 23 points over two games last week including 26 points the most he8217s scored in a MW game this season and a careerhigh seven assists at Air Force Over the last three games junior forward Alan Herndon has averaged 133 points 73 rebounds and 33 blocked shots per game His 52 blocked shots are third in the MW and moved him into the top 10 for a single season in school history This week8217s games vs Fresno State 7 pm MT Wednesday MW Network 8212online at Utah State 7 pm MT Saturday MW Network 8212 online 8212 Robert Gagliardi Laramie BoomerangWyoSports

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out/ADV there/ADV more/ADJ than/ADP 20/NUM minutes8221/PROPN Moore/PROPN who/PRON leads/VERB the/DET team/NOUN in/ADP scoring/NOUN 161/NUM and/CCONJ rebounding/VERB 56/NUM was/AUX held/VERB to/ADP a/DET seasonlow/ADJ four/NUM points/NOUN ending/VERB a/DET streak/NOUN of/ADP 34/NUM straight/ADJ games/NOUN of/ADP reaching/VERB double/ADJ figures/NOUN in/ADP scoring/VERB McEwen/PROPN had/VERB 11/NUM points/NOUN a/DET bit/NOUN below/ADP his/PRON 153/NUM points/NOUN per/ADP game/NOUN average/NOUN The/DET Aggies/PROPN are/AUX still/ADV looking/VERB for/ADP their/PRON first/ADJ road/NOUN win/NOUN and/CCONJ get/VERB another/DET shot/NOUN at/ADP breaking/VERB through/ADP at/ADP Colorado/PROPN State/PROPN The/DET Rams/PROPN jumped/VERB on/ADP Utah/PROPN State/PROPN early/ADV in/ADP the/DET first/ADJ meeting/NOUN and/CCONJ led/VERB from/ADP start/NOUN to/ADP finish/VERB in/ADP a/DET 6456/NUM victory/NOUN This/DET week8217s/PROPN games/NOUN at/ADP Colorado/PROPN State/PROPN 7/NUM pm/NOUN MT/PROPN Tuesday/PROPN ROOT/PROPN vs/ADP Wyoming/PROPN 7/NUM pm/NOUN MT/PROPN Saturday/PROPN MW/PROPN Network/PROPN 8212/NUM online/NOUN 8212/NUM Shawn/PROPN Harrison/PROPN The/DET Herald/PROPN Journal/PROPN Logan/PROPN Utah/PROPN The/DET Cowboys/PROPN 159/NUM 56/NUM got/VERB back/ADV to/ADP how/SCONJ firstyear/ADJ coach/NOUN Allen/PROPN Edwards/PROPN thinks/VERB his/PRON team/NOUN can/AUX play/VERB 8212/NUM and/CCONJ has/AUX played/VERB at/ADP times/NOUN this/DET season/NOUN 8212/NUM in/ADP their/PRON 8374/NUM victory/NOUN at/ADP Air/PROPN Force/PROPN last/ADJ Saturday/PROPN Wyoming/PROPN shot/VERB 50/NUM percent/NOUN from/ADP the/DET field/NOUN 29/NUM of/ADP 58/NUM and/CCONJ made/VERB 13/NUM of/ADP 27/NUM 3pointers/NOUN It/PRON let/VERB a/DET 22point/NUM lead/NOUN shrink/NOUN to/ADP six/NUM with/ADP 938/NUM to/PART play/VERB but/CCONJ made/VERB key/ADJ plays/NOUN down/ADP the/DET stretch/NOUN to/PART win/VERB its/PRON second/ADJ MW/PROPN road/NOUN game/NOUN of/ADP the/DET season/NOUN 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<p>EDITOR&#8217;S NOTE:&amp;#160;The following&amp;#160;article is part of YG Network&#8217;s new essay collection,&amp;#160; <a href="http://ygnetwork.org/roomtogrow/" type="external">Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class</a>.&#8203;</p> <p>As Americans attempt to adjust to the challenges of 21st-century life, our government has too often been getting in our way rather than helping us along. Many families now face stagnating wages, excessive tax burdens, rising health and higher-education costs, barriers to mobility and work, disincentives to marriage and childbearing, and an economy increasingly held back by over-regulation, cronyism, institutional sclerosis, and mounting public debt. All of these burdens have left Americans uncharacteristically pessimistic about the country&#8217;s prospects. And in each case an overreaching, hyperactive, unwieldy, and immensely expensive federal government lies near the root of the problem.</p> <p>This has often led conservatives to appeal to the public by calling first and foremost for restraining that government &#8212; restricting its reach, reducing its scope, cutting its cost. These are surely essential goals, but a failure to put them in the context of a larger vision of the proper role of government risks leaving the public with the impression that what conservatives want is less of the same: the liberal welfare state at a lower cost. This is in fact how&amp;#160; <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/the-closing-of-the-conservative-mind/?_php=true&amp;amp;_type=blogs&amp;amp;_r=0" type="external">many</a>&amp;#160;on the left would like Americans to understand our public debates.</p> <p>But the size and cost of the liberal welfare state are a function of its basic character, and it is that character that is really at issue in most policy debates between liberals and conservatives. The fundamentally prescriptive, technocratic approach to American society inherent in the logic of the Left&#8217;s policy thinking is a poor fit for American life at any scale. The liberal welfare state ultimately cannot be had at an affordable price. It is not the architecture of one or another particular program that makes it unsustainable. It is unsustainable because the system as a whole must feed off of the innovative, decentralized vitality of American life, yet it undermines both the moral and the economic foundations of that vitality.</p> <p>This is in part because the Left tends not to see the decentralized, boisterous character of American society &#8212; with its uneasy but constructive tension between moral traditionalism and economic dynamism &#8212; as a great good to be protected and nurtured, but rather as at best an unruly source of material wealth and at worst a barrier to the achievement of important social objectives. The means of the liberal welfare state are centralizing and consolidating mechanisms intended to bring order to this chaos. And liberals rarely offer a defense of that managerial outlook. They take both its means and its ends for granted and defend the welfare state as though it were identical to the broad social objectives it purports to advance.</p> <p>They therefore treat attempts to alter or eliminate liberal programs as attempts to abandon the most general objectives of those programs &#8212; to provide a safety net for the poor, say, or a foundation of economic security for the elderly and the vulnerable. Even alternatives that would achieve those goals in less heavy-handed ways and at a lower cost are assumed to be less committed to the goals, and so are taken to be steps in the wrong direction. It hardly seems to matter how well the Left&#8217;s favorite programs actually work: What matters is that they exist, and must not be undone.</p> <p>Criticisms aimed purely at the size or cost of those programs only contribute to this baleful dynamic. Conservatives must instead help the public see that the agenda they offer is rooted not just in fiscal concerns but in a political, moral, and social vision much better aligned with the realities of American life and the character of Americans&#8217; aspirations.</p> <p>At the core of this difference of visions are quite different ideas of just how human beings prosper and thrive and therefore of the proper relationship between American society and its government.</p> <p>To begin with, the Left&#8217;s social vision tends to consist of individuals and the state, so that all common action is state action, and its purpose is to liberate individuals from material want and moral sway. The premise of conservatism has always been, on the contrary, that what matters most about society happens in the space between the individual and the state &#8212; the space occupied by families, communities, civic and religious institutions, and the private economy &#8212; and that creating, sustaining, and protecting that space and helping all Americans take part in what happens there are among the foremost purposes of government.</p> <p>Progressives in America have always viewed those mediating institutions that stand between the individual and the government with suspicion, seeing them as instruments of division, prejudice, and selfishness or as power centers lacking in democratic legitimacy. They have sought to empower the government to rationalize the life of our society by clearing away those vestiges of backwardness and putting in their place public programs and policies motivated by a single, cohesive understanding of the public interest. This clearing away has in some cases consisted of crowding out the mediating institutions by taking over some of their key functions through direct government action. In other cases, it has involved turning elements of civil society and the private economy into arms of government policy &#8212; by requiring compliance with policy goals that are foreign to many civil-society institutions or consolidating key sectors of the economy and offering protection to large corporations willing to act as public utilities or to advance policymakers&#8217; priorities.</p> <p>In each case, the idea is to level the complex social topography of the space between the individual and the government, breaking up tightly knit clusters of citizens into individuals but then uniting all of those individuals under the national banner &#8212; allowing them to be free of the oppressive authority of family or community norms while building solidarity through the common experience of living as equal citizens of a great nation.</p> <p>Dependence on people you know is oppressive, this vision implies, especially because it always comes with moral and social strings. But dependence on larger and more generic and distant systems of benefits and rules is liberating, because it frees people from the undue moral influence of traditional social institutions even as it frees them from material want. A healthy dose of moral individualism combined with a healthy dose of economic collectivism makes for a powerful mix of freedom and equality. And this mix is to be achieved through public programs and institutions that address material problems by applying technical knowledge &#8212; that organize and rationalize the economy in accordance with social-scientific expertise.</p> <p>Conservatives have always resisted such gross rationalization of society, however, and insisted that local knowledge channeled by evolved social institutions &#8212; from families and civic and fraternal groups to traditional religious establishments, charitable enterprises, private companies, and complex markets &#8212; will make for better material outcomes and a better common life. The life of a society consists of more than moving resources around, and what happens in that vital space between the individual and the government is at least as much a matter of character formation as of material provision and wealth creation.</p> <p>Moral individualism mixed with economic collectivism feels like freedom only because it liberates people from responsibility in both arenas. But real freedom is possible only with real responsibility. And real responsibility is possible only when you depend upon, and are depended upon by, people you know. It is, in other words, possible only in precisely that space between the individual and the state that the Left has long sought to collapse.</p> <p>What happens in that space generally happens face to face &#8212; between parents and children, neighbors and friends, buyers and sellers. It therefore answers to immediately felt needs, and is tailored to the characters, sentiments, priorities, and preferences of the people involved. That kind of bottom-up common life, rather than massive, distant systems of material provision, is what makes society tick and what holds it together. While it can certainly be reinforced by public policy, it could never be replaced with centralized administration, however capable or rational it might be.</p> <p>And what is more, centralized administration really cannot be all that capable or rational. Just as conservatives tend to differ with liberals about the sorts of circumstances in which people thrive, we also differ about the sort of knowledge that can help address social problems. The Left tends to champion public programs that consolidate the application of technical expertise: that try to take on social problems by managing large portions of society as if they were systems in need of better organization and direction. Again, it views government as organizing the interactions of individuals.</p> <p>The Right tends, instead, to champion public policies that draw upon decentralized, dispersed social knowledge by empowering and incentivizing people nearest to the problems to find and apply solutions that work for them. This still involves a crucial and active role for government, but it is a much less intrusive and managerial role. It involves enabling and sustaining markets and other arenas of common action, ensuring competition, aiding the development of physical infrastructure and human capital, protecting consumers and citizens, and allowing the poor and vulnerable to participate along with everyone else. It is about creating the circumstances in which society can thrive and improve, not prescribing everyone&#8217;s place and function. And it proceeds not through the concentration of power but through its dispersal.</p> <p>In practice, the conservative approach to public policy therefore points toward putting in place programs that enable a kind of bottom-up, incremental, continuous learning process, rather than imposing wholesale solutions from above. Generally speaking, this is an approach to problem-solving that involves three steps: experimentation (allowing service providers to try different ways of solving a problem), evaluation (enabling recipients or consumers of those services to decide which approaches work for them and which do not), and evolution (keeping those that work and dumping those that fail).</p> <p>Markets are ideally suited to following these steps. They offer a huge incentive to try new ways of doing things, the people directly affected decide which ways they like best, and those ways that are rejected are left behind. Government programs on the model of the liberal welfare state, however, generally do not allow for any of these elements. Administrative centralization and regulation proscribe experimentation, beneficiaries of services are not the ones who decide what is working and failing, and interests grow around existing programs making it very hard to eliminate failures.</p> <p>That is why conservatives often reach for the model of markets in public policy &#8212; not necessarily always for actual markets, but for a process that follows these three steps to the extent possible in various policy arenas and so achieves incremental improvements by learning from experience. Conservatives tend to think society is much too complicated to be amenable to consolidated technical solutions that assume we already have all the answers and just seek to impose them. We therefore believe that long-evolved, decentralized social institutions are more likely to be able to help and that public policy should reinforce such institutions, should help all citizens take part in them, and should sustain the space in which they can function.</p> <p>This involves not a return to some fabled past but a modernization of our antiquated, lumbering, bureaucratic, mid-20th-century governing institutions that enables a leaner and more responsive 21st-century government to help a complex and diverse 21st-century society solve its problems. By recovering the animating principles of American government, we can overcome the flabby lethargy of the progressive welfare state.</p> <p>Many of the social and economic problems for which we seek public-policy solutions require us to balance competing needs in very complex circumstances. In health care, for instance, we must find a way to simultaneously pursue broad access to coverage, high-quality care, and affordable cost. In primary and secondary education, we need quality instruction that meets the needs of enormously diverse groups of students in a vast array of circumstances. In welfare policy, we need to help low-income people meet their basic needs and rise out of poverty without creating perverse incentives for poor choices.</p> <p>In each of these cases, and many others like them, the Left&#8217;s ideal approach is to put enormous faith in the knowledge of experts in the center and empower them to address the problem &#8212; to enable a single public payer to command the appropriate arrangement of resources to yield the desired outcome. The Right&#8217;s ideal approach, meanwhile, is to put some modest faith in the knowledge of the people on the ground and empower them to try ways of addressing the problem incrementally. Thus conservative policy ideas often seek to enable countless individual consumers to follow their individual preferences, allowing the resources they bring to the table (with the help of public subsidies for those who lack market power) to create incentives for producers and providers to try different ways of meeting their needs and so of addressing the underlying problem.</p> <p>The first approach takes power out of the space between the individual and the state and has the state use it on behalf of individuals. The second puts power into that space and has the state build platforms and arenas to help society address its problems through localized trial and error.</p> <p>What has come lately to be called the conservative-reform agenda, some elements of which may be found in the chapters that follow, consists in many instances of efforts to transform the first sort of public policy or program into the second, and so to move from the model of consolidated technocracy toward the three-part process of dispersed, incremental learning in one policy arena after another. And it consists in every instance of efforts to strengthen and reinforce the space between the individual and the state and to enable people to thrive and flourish in that space. That is what conservatives generally take the proper role of government to be.</p> <p>It is also what America&#8217;s government was originally designed to do. Our constitutional system builds a frame around the space between the individual and the state &#8212; empowering the govern&#173;ment to sustain that space while restraining the government from invading or collapsing that space. That is why the system often feels liberating to conservatives (who tend to think liberty is what happens in that protected space) and constricting to liberals (who tend to think the system binds government&#8217;s hands far too much and keeps it from acting in ways essential to enabling social progress).</p> <p>The liberal welfare state envisions a role for government that goes far beyond these bounds, and that in practice has involved both invading and collapsing that space to various degrees. And while the conservative response has focused on pulling back that overly expansive state, the vision motivating conservatives should compel us also to reinvigorate the original American political vision: a government that treats us fairly and seeks to sustain the circumstances in which we might thrive &#8212; rather than one that insists on strictly defining and managing the outcomes of our national life. This means that conservatives must advance a concrete public-policy vision and agenda, and not just a set of restraints on the Left&#8217;s vision and agenda. Friends of the idea of free and limited government have long found it difficult to do this in America. &#8220;A good government implies two things,&#8221; James Madison wrote in Federalist 62. &#8220;First, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. Some governments are deficient in both these qualities; most governments are deficient in the first. I scruple not to assert, that in American governments too little attention has been paid to the last.&#8221;</p> <p>Conservatives today need to pay more attention to the means by which our vision of government should be advanced &#8212; more attention, that is, to the details of public policy. It is not hard to understand why some conservatives have been reluctant to do that: The federal government has grown so large and complicated that any attempts to transform it into a far more bounded, decentralized, nimble set of institutions must begin from an understanding of its particulars, and this feels to some conservatives like a concession to technocracy.</p> <p>But conservatives today must develop some technical policy expertise precisely to combat the technocratic impulse and to advance an anti-technocratic, genuinely constitutionalist vision of American government. As Friedrich Hayek put it, &#8220;Liberty in practice depends on very prosaic matters, and those anxious to preserve it must prove their devotion by their attention to the mundane concerns of public life and by the efforts they are prepared to give to the understanding of issues that the idealist is often inclined to treat as common, if not sordid.&#8221;</p> <p>The chapters that follow enter into just such prosaic matters and mundane concerns of public life. They are about concrete policy questions &#8212; about how we can help the poor to rise, lift burdens off the shoulders of working families, end cronyism and special privileges for those well connected at the top, and prepare America to flourish again. But they are also about advancing a vision of American life in which government does not use society as an instrument to advance progressive aims but rather sustains and strengthens the space in which society can thrive and enables all Americans to take part in what happens in that space.</p> <p>Such a government would no doubt be much smaller, more restrained, and less expensive than the one we have today. It would be fiscally sustainable, averting the catastrophe we face if our entitlement programs are not reformed and reinforcing the private economy rather than draining it of resources. That is certainly part of what should appeal to us about it. But more important still, it would be far better suited to our society, our Constitution, our needs, and our nature &#8212; far better suited to serving and sustaining our republic in the 21st century.</p> <p>&#8212; Yuval Levin is the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the editor of&amp;#160;National Affairs. He is also a contributing editor of&amp;#160;National Review.</p>

A Conservative Governing Vision

https://eppc.org/publications/a-conservative-governing-vision/

1right-center

EDITOR8217S NOTEamp160The followingamp160article is part of YG Network8217s new essay collectionamp160 Room to Grow Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class8203 As Americans attempt to adjust to the challenges of 21stcentury life our government has too often been getting in our way rather than helping us along Many families now face stagnating wages excessive tax burdens rising health and highereducation costs barriers to mobility and work disincentives to marriage and childbearing and an economy increasingly held back by overregulation cronyism institutional sclerosis and mounting public debt All of these burdens have left Americans uncharacteristically pessimistic about the country8217s prospects And in each case an overreaching hyperactive unwieldy and immensely expensive federal government lies near the root of the problem This has often led conservatives to appeal to the public by calling first and foremost for restraining that government 8212 restricting its reach reducing its scope cutting its cost These are surely essential goals but a failure to put them in the context of a larger vision of the proper role of government risks leaving the public with the impression that what conservatives want is less of the same the liberal welfare state at a lower cost This is in fact howamp160 manyamp160on the left would like Americans to understand our public debates But the size and cost of the liberal welfare state are a function of its basic character and it is that character that is really at issue in most policy debates between liberals and conservatives The fundamentally prescriptive technocratic approach to American society inherent in the logic of the Left8217s policy thinking is a poor fit for American life at any scale The liberal welfare state ultimately cannot be had at an affordable price It is not the architecture of one or another particular program that makes it unsustainable It is unsustainable because the system as a whole must feed off of the innovative decentralized vitality of American life yet it undermines both the moral and the economic foundations of that vitality This is in part because the Left tends not to see the decentralized boisterous character of American society 8212 with its uneasy but constructive tension between moral traditionalism and economic dynamism 8212 as a great good to be protected and nurtured but rather as at best an unruly source of material wealth and at worst a barrier to the achievement of important social objectives The means of the liberal welfare state are centralizing and consolidating mechanisms intended to bring order to this chaos And liberals rarely offer a defense of that managerial outlook They take both its means and its ends for granted and defend the welfare state as though it were identical to the broad social objectives it purports to advance They therefore treat attempts to alter or eliminate liberal programs as attempts to abandon the most general objectives of those programs 8212 to provide a safety net for the poor say or a foundation of economic security for the elderly and the vulnerable Even alternatives that would achieve those goals in less heavyhanded ways and at a lower cost are assumed to be less committed to the goals and so are taken to be steps in the wrong direction It hardly seems to matter how well the Left8217s favorite programs actually work What matters is that they exist and must not be undone Criticisms aimed purely at the size or cost of those programs only contribute to this baleful dynamic Conservatives must instead help the public see that the agenda they offer is rooted not just in fiscal concerns but in a political moral and social vision much better aligned with the realities of American life and the character of Americans8217 aspirations At the core of this difference of visions are quite different ideas of just how human beings prosper and thrive and therefore of the proper relationship between American society and its government To begin with the Left8217s social vision tends to consist of individuals and the state so that all common action is state action and its purpose is to liberate individuals from material want and moral sway The premise of conservatism has always been on the contrary that what matters most about society happens in the space between the individual and the state 8212 the space occupied by families communities civic and religious institutions and the private economy 8212 and that creating sustaining and protecting that space and helping all Americans take part in what happens there are among the foremost purposes of government Progressives in America have always viewed those mediating institutions that stand between the individual and the government with suspicion seeing them as instruments of division prejudice and selfishness or as power centers lacking in democratic legitimacy They have sought to empower the government to rationalize the life of our society by clearing away those vestiges of backwardness and putting in their place public programs and policies motivated by a single cohesive understanding of the public interest This clearing away has in some cases consisted of crowding out the mediating institutions by taking over some of their key functions through direct government action In other cases it has involved turning elements of civil society and the private economy into arms of government policy 8212 by requiring compliance with policy goals that are foreign to many civilsociety institutions or consolidating key sectors of the economy and offering protection to large corporations willing to act as public utilities or to advance policymakers8217 priorities In each case the idea is to level the complex social topography of the space between the individual and the government breaking up tightly knit clusters of citizens into individuals but then uniting all of those individuals under the national banner 8212 allowing them to be free of the oppressive authority of family or community norms while building solidarity through the common experience of living as equal citizens of a great nation Dependence on people you know is oppressive this vision implies especially because it always comes with moral and social strings But dependence on larger and more generic and distant systems of benefits and rules is liberating because it frees people from the undue moral influence of traditional social institutions even as it frees them from material want A healthy dose of moral individualism combined with a healthy dose of economic collectivism makes for a powerful mix of freedom and equality And this mix is to be achieved through public programs and institutions that address material problems by applying technical knowledge 8212 that organize and rationalize the economy in accordance with socialscientific expertise Conservatives have always resisted such gross rationalization of society however and insisted that local knowledge channeled by evolved social institutions 8212 from families and civic and fraternal groups to traditional religious establishments charitable enterprises private companies and complex markets 8212 will make for better material outcomes and a better common life The life of a society consists of more than moving resources around and what happens in that vital space between the individual and the government is at least as much a matter of character formation as of material provision and wealth creation Moral individualism mixed with economic collectivism feels like freedom only because it liberates people from responsibility in both arenas But real freedom is possible only with real responsibility And real responsibility is possible only when you depend upon and are depended upon by people you know It is in other words possible only in precisely that space between the individual and the state that the Left has long sought to collapse What happens in that space generally happens face to face 8212 between parents and children neighbors and friends buyers and sellers It therefore answers to immediately felt needs and is tailored to the characters sentiments priorities and preferences of the people involved That kind of bottomup common life rather than massive distant systems of material provision is what makes society tick and what holds it together While it can certainly be reinforced by public policy it could never be replaced with centralized administration however capable or rational it might be And what is more centralized administration really cannot be all that capable or rational Just as conservatives tend to differ with liberals about the sorts of circumstances in which people thrive we also differ about the sort of knowledge that can help address social problems The Left tends to champion public programs that consolidate the application of technical expertise that try to take on social problems by managing large portions of society as if they were systems in need of better organization and direction Again it views government as organizing the interactions of individuals The Right tends instead to champion public policies that draw upon decentralized dispersed social knowledge by empowering and incentivizing people nearest to the problems to find and apply solutions that work for them This still involves a crucial and active role for government but it is a much less intrusive and managerial role It involves enabling and sustaining markets and other arenas of common action ensuring competition aiding the development of physical infrastructure and human capital protecting consumers and citizens and allowing the poor and vulnerable to participate along with everyone else It is about creating the circumstances in which society can thrive and improve not prescribing everyone8217s place and function And it proceeds not through the concentration of power but through its dispersal In practice the conservative approach to public policy therefore points toward putting in place programs that enable a kind of bottomup incremental continuous learning process rather than imposing wholesale solutions from above Generally speaking this is an approach to problemsolving that involves three steps experimentation allowing service providers to try different ways of solving a problem evaluation enabling recipients or consumers of those services to decide which approaches work for them and which do not and evolution keeping those that work and dumping those that fail Markets are ideally suited to following these steps They offer a huge incentive to try new ways of doing things the people directly affected decide which ways they like best and those ways that are rejected are left behind Government programs on the model of the liberal welfare state however generally do not allow for any of these elements Administrative centralization and regulation proscribe experimentation beneficiaries of services are not the ones who decide what is working and failing and interests grow around existing programs making it very hard to eliminate failures That is why conservatives often reach for the model of markets in public policy 8212 not necessarily always for actual markets but for a process that follows these three steps to the extent possible in various policy arenas and so achieves incremental improvements by learning from experience Conservatives tend to think society is much too complicated to be amenable to consolidated technical solutions that assume we already have all the answers and just seek to impose them We therefore believe that longevolved decentralized social institutions are more likely to be able to help and that public policy should reinforce such institutions should help all citizens take part in them and should sustain the space in which they can function This involves not a return to some fabled past but a modernization of our antiquated lumbering bureaucratic mid20thcentury governing institutions that enables a leaner and more responsive 21stcentury government to help a complex and diverse 21stcentury society solve its problems By recovering the animating principles of American government we can overcome the flabby lethargy of the progressive welfare state Many of the social and economic problems for which we seek publicpolicy solutions require us to balance competing needs in very complex circumstances In health care for instance we must find a way to simultaneously pursue broad access to coverage highquality care and affordable cost In primary and secondary education we need quality instruction that meets the needs of enormously diverse groups of students in a vast array of circumstances In welfare policy we need to help lowincome people meet their basic needs and rise out of poverty without creating perverse incentives for poor choices In each of these cases and many others like them the Left8217s ideal approach is to put enormous faith in the knowledge of experts in the center and empower them to address the problem 8212 to enable a single public payer to command the appropriate arrangement of resources to yield the desired outcome The Right8217s ideal approach meanwhile is to put some modest faith in the knowledge of the people on the ground and empower them to try ways of addressing the problem incrementally Thus conservative policy ideas often seek to enable countless individual consumers to follow their individual preferences allowing the resources they bring to the table with the help of public subsidies for those who lack market power to create incentives for producers and providers to try different ways of meeting their needs and so of addressing the underlying problem The first approach takes power out of the space between the individual and the state and has the state use it on behalf of individuals The second puts power into that space and has the state build platforms and arenas to help society address its problems through localized trial and error What has come lately to be called the conservativereform agenda some elements of which may be found in the chapters that follow consists in many instances of efforts to transform the first sort of public policy or program into the second and so to move from the model of consolidated technocracy toward the threepart process of dispersed incremental learning in one policy arena after another And it consists in every instance of efforts to strengthen and reinforce the space between the individual and the state and to enable people to thrive and flourish in that space That is what conservatives generally take the proper role of government to be It is also what America8217s government was originally designed to do Our constitutional system builds a frame around the space between the individual and the state 8212 empowering the govern173ment to sustain that space while restraining the government from invading or collapsing that space That is why the system often feels liberating to conservatives who tend to think liberty is what happens in that protected space and constricting to liberals who tend to think the system binds government8217s hands far too much and keeps it from acting in ways essential to enabling social progress The liberal welfare state envisions a role for government that goes far beyond these bounds and that in practice has involved both invading and collapsing that space to various degrees And while the conservative response has focused on pulling back that overly expansive state the vision motivating conservatives should compel us also to reinvigorate the original American political vision a government that treats us fairly and seeks to sustain the circumstances in which we might thrive 8212 rather than one that insists on strictly defining and managing the outcomes of our national life This means that conservatives must advance a concrete publicpolicy vision and agenda and not just a set of restraints on the Left8217s vision and agenda Friends of the idea of free and limited government have long found it difficult to do this in America 8220A good government implies two things8221 James Madison wrote in Federalist 62 8220First fidelity to the object of government which is the happiness of the people secondly a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained Some governments are deficient in both these qualities most governments are deficient in the first I scruple not to assert that in American governments too little attention has been paid to the last8221 Conservatives today need to pay more attention to the means by which our vision of government should be advanced 8212 more attention that is to the details of public policy It is not hard to understand why some conservatives have been reluctant to do that The federal government has grown so large and complicated that any attempts to transform it into a far more bounded decentralized nimble set of institutions must begin from an understanding of its particulars and this feels to some conservatives like a concession to technocracy But conservatives today must develop some technical policy expertise precisely to combat the technocratic impulse and to advance an antitechnocratic genuinely constitutionalist vision of American government As Friedrich Hayek put it 8220Liberty in practice depends on very prosaic matters and those anxious to preserve it must prove their devotion by their attention to the mundane concerns of public life and by the efforts they are prepared to give to the understanding of issues that the idealist is often inclined to treat as common if not sordid8221 The chapters that follow enter into just such prosaic matters and mundane concerns of public life They are about concrete policy questions 8212 about how we can help the poor to rise lift burdens off the shoulders of working families end cronyism and special privileges for those well connected at the top and prepare America to flourish again But they are also about advancing a vision of American life in which government does not use society as an instrument to advance progressive aims but rather sustains and strengthens the space in which society can thrive and enables all Americans to take part in what happens in that space Such a government would no doubt be much smaller more restrained and less expensive than the one we have today It would be fiscally sustainable averting the catastrophe we face if our entitlement programs are not reformed and reinforcing the private economy rather than draining it of resources That is certainly part of what should appeal to us about it But more important still it would be far better suited to our society our Constitution our needs and our nature 8212 far better suited to serving and sustaining our republic in the 21st century 8212 Yuval Levin is the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the editor ofamp160National Affairs He is also a contributing editor ofamp160National Review

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<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - Futong Technology Development Holdings Ltd:</p> <p>* IS EXPECTED TO RECORD A LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO OWNERS OF COMPANY FOR YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2017</p> <p>* EXPECTED RESULT DUE TO &#8205;INCREASE IN ADMINISTRATIVE AND FINANCIAL EXPENSES OF APPROXIMATELY 20-25%&#8203; Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (bangalore.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is to kick out 23 Russian diplomats, the biggest such expulsion since the Cold War, over a chemical attack on a former Russian double agent in England that Prime Minister Theresa May blamed on Moscow.</p> <p>May pointed the finger firmly at Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday as she outlined retaliatory measures in parliament.</p> <p>Russia denies any involvement in the attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who have been critical in hospital since they were found unconscious on March 4 on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury.</p> <p>May announced the potential freezing of Russian state assets that pose a security threat, new laws to counter hostile state activity and a downgrading of Britain&#8217;s attendance at the soccer World Cup in Russia this summer.</p> <p>She had given Moscow until midnight on Tuesday to explain how the Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent came to be deployed on the streets of Salisbury, saying either the Russian state was responsible or had lost control of a stock of the substance.</p> <p>&#8220;Their response demonstrated complete disdain for the gravity of these events,&#8221; May said in her statement to parliament. &#8220;They have treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance.&#8221;</p> <p>The only possible conclusion was that the Russian state was behind the attempted murder of the Skripals and the harm that befell Nick Bailey, a police officer who is in a serious condition after being exposed to the nerve agent, May said.</p> <p>&#8220;This represents an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow would swiftly retaliate against the British measures which had been undertaken for &#8220;short-sighted political ends&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;The British government has made a choice in favour of confrontation with Russia,&#8221; it said.</p> MAY DENOUNCES PUTIN <p>The two governments blamed each other for the crisis.</p> <p>&#8220;Many of us looked at a post-Soviet Russia with hope. We wanted a better relationship and it is tragic that President Putin has chosen to act in this way,&#8221; said May.</p> <p>Britain, which has received statements of support from the United States, the European Union and NATO, has said it would seek to coordinate an international response to the attack.</p> <p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she took the British findings seriously and there would be a common European stance, although &#8220;we must still talk responsibly&#8221; with Russia despite differences of opinion.</p> <p>A French government spokesman said Paris was awaiting proof before deciding if it would act in solidarity with London.</p> Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the House of Commons on her government's reaction to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, in London, March 14, 2018. Parliament TV handout via REUTERS <p>Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britain before being arrested in Moscow and later jailed in 2006. He was freed under a spy swap deal in 2010 and took refuge in Britain.</p> <p>The attack on him was likened in Britain to the killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of Putin, who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium 210. Russia refused to extradite the two Russians identified by Britain as the killers.</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s response to the Litvinenko affair, which included the expulsion of four Russian diplomats, was criticised domestically as too weak, and many in British politics and media have called for a much tougher response to the Skripal attack.</p> <p>Some Russia experts cast doubt over whether May&#8217;s actions met that test.</p> <p>&#8220;This is certainly not a strong response from Britain - it is a mild response,&#8221; said Mathieu Boul&#232;gue, a Russia expert at Chatham House think-tank in London. &#8220;It will not deter Russia because Britain is showing too little steel.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (15 Images) <p>May said the 23 diplomats, identified as undeclared intelligence officers, had one week to leave and Russian intelligence capabilities in Britain would be damaged for years.</p> <p>May also said Britain would revoke an invitation to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to visit and suspend planned high level bilateral contacts between London and Moscow. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said Lavrov had not accepted the invitation to visit Britain anyway.</p> <p>On the soccer World Cup, which Russia is hosting in June and July, May said no ministers or members of the British royal family would attend.</p> &#8220;CORRUPT ELITES&#8221; <p>But unlike when the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea, May did not name Russian individuals or companies that would be specifically targeted by sanctions.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-usa-haley/u-s-ambassador-haley-tells-u-n-russia-responsible-for-chemical-attack-idUSKCN1GQ2YR" type="external">U.S. Ambassador Haley tells U.N. Russia responsible for chemical attack</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-response-factbox/factbox-britain-to-freeze-russian-state-assets-and-expel-23-diplomats-after-nerve-attack-idUSKCN1GQ1TN" type="external">Factbox: Britain to freeze Russian state assets and expel 23 diplomats after nerve attack</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-stockpiles/secret-trial-shows-risks-of-nerve-agent-theft-in-post-soviet-chaos-experts-idUSKCN1GQ2RH" type="external">Secret trial shows risks of nerve agent theft in post-Soviet chaos: experts</a> <p>&#8220;We will freeze Russian state assets wherever we have the evidence that they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>She said checks on private flights, customs and freight would be stepped up to better track those travelling to Britain who could represent a security threat.</p> <p>She also threatened action against those she described as &#8220;serious criminals and corrupt elites,&#8221; adding: &#8220;There is no place for these people, or their money, in our country.&#8221;</p> <p>London has been a venue of choice for many rich Russian to buy property and the in-flow of Russian money has led to the capital being nicknamed &#8220;Londongrad&#8221;.</p> <p>Russian gas giant Gazprom will cut hundreds of jobs at its overseas trading and export offices, including Britain where it has its largest such office by far, and move them to St Petersburg, as part of a drive by Putin to repatriate capital to reduce exposure to sanctions, according to two sources familiar with the plan who spoke exclusively to Reuters in Moscow</p> <p>In a separate development, British media regulator Ofcom said it could strip Russia Today, a Kremlin-funded TV channel, of its UK licence. Russia has said British media would be expelled in retaliation should that happen.</p> <p>Reporting by Costas Pitas, Estelle Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge, Michael Holden, Alistair Smout, Elizabeth Piper and William James in London, Christian Lowe in Moscow, writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Stephen Addison and Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. students spilled out of classrooms by the thousands on Wednesday, chanting slogans like &#8220;No more silence&#8221; and &#8220;We want change&#8221; as part of a coast-to-coast protest over gun violence prompted by last month&#8217;s massacre at a Florida high school.</p> <p>The #ENOUGH National School Walkout was intended to pressure federal and state lawmakers to tighten laws on gun ownership despite opposition by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the powerful gun rights advocacy group.</p> <p>With some students dressed in orange, the color adopted by the gun control movement, the walkouts began at 10 a.m. local time in each time zone and were scheduled to last 17 minutes, though many rallies went longer.</p> <p>The duration was a tribute to the number of students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14. It was the latest in a series of shootings that have plagued U.S. schools and colleges over the past two decades.</p> <p>While many school districts gave their blessings to the walkouts, others said anyone who participated would face discipline. Many students defied the warnings and left school anyway.</p> <p>In Parkland, thousands of students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field to the applause of families and supporters beyond the fences as law enforcement officers looked on. News helicopters hovered overhead.</p> <p>Ty Thompson, the principal, called for the &#8220;biggest group hug,&#8221; and the students obliged around the 50-yard line.</p> <p>&#8220;We want change!&#8221; students chanted on the sidewalks outside the school. &#8220;Can you hear the children screaming?&#8221; read one of the signs.</p> <p>But not all students in Florida were in favor of more gun control. Around 80 miles (129 kms) north of Parkland at Vero Beach High School, chants of &#8220;No More Silence, end gun violence,&#8221; were countered by shouts of &#8220;Trump!&#8221; and &#8220;We want guns&#8221; from other students, according to video posted by local newspaper TCPalm.</p> <p>At New York City&#8217;s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan, many dressed in orange, symbolic of the bright color worn by hunters to avoid being shot by accident.</p> <p>&#8220;Thoughts and prayers are not enough,&#8221; read one sign at LaGuardia, a jab at a response often uttered by lawmakers after mass shootings.</p> <p>Hundreds of students wearing orange t-shirts with black targets on the front walked out of Firestone High School in Akron, Ohio. One student used a bullhorn and recited an anti-violence poem as parents stood on the sidewalks in solidarity.</p> <p>At Granada Hills Charter High School in Los Angeles, students laid prone on the field of a football stadium to form a giant #ENOUGH, symbolizing the thousands of youth who die of gun violence every year in the United States.</p> Students from Washington, DC-area schools carry signs during a protest for stricter gun control during a walkout by students at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts LOBBYING LAWMAKERS <p>The walkouts were part of a burgeoning, grassroots movement prompted by the Parkland attack. Survivors have lobbied lawmakers, and even talked with President Donald Trump, in a push for new restrictions on gun ownership, a right protected by the U.S. Constitution&#8217;s Second Amendment.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t feel safe in schools anymore,&#8221; said Sarah Chatfield, a high school student from Maryland, standing with hundreds of other protesters outside the White House.</p> <p>Chanting &#8220;Hey hey, ho ho, the NRA has got to go!&#8221; some of the students marched to the U.S. Capitol, where Democratic lawmakers emerged from the white-domed landmark to praise them.</p> <p>The student-led initiative helped bring about a tightening of Florida&#8217;s gun laws last week, when the minimum age of 21 for buying any handguns was extended to all firearms. But lawmakers rejected a ban on the sort of semiautomatic rifle used in the Parkland attack.</p> Slideshow (34 Images) <p>In Washington, however, proposals to strengthen the background-check system for gun sales, among other measures, appear to be languishing.</p> SCHOOLS VARY IN RESPONSE <p>Students from more than 2,800 schools and groups joined the walkouts, many with the backing of their school districts, according to the event&#8217;s organizers, who also coordinated the Women&#8217;s March protests staged nationwide over the past two years.</p> <p>In districts where school authorities warned against joining the demonstrations, some students protested anyway.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-guns-legislation-passage/house-passes-bill-to-prevent-gun-violence-in-schools-in-rare-bipartisan-vote-idUSKCN1GQ2W7" type="external">House passes bill to prevent gun violence in schools in rare bipartisan vote</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-guns-florida/suspected-florida-school-shooter-silent-in-court-judge-enters-not-guilty-plea-idUSKCN1GQ2OB" type="external">Suspected Florida school shooter silent in court, judge enters not-guilty plea</a> <p>More than 100 students walked out of the Council Rock High School North building in Newtown, Pennsylvania, despite warnings from school administration that doing so would bring discipline.</p> <p>&#8220;Students deserve the right to go to school feeling safe and comfortable, not feeling scared that their school will be the next target,&#8221; a student said into a megaphone to the group outside.</p> <p>At Norton High School in the rural-suburban district in northeastern Ohio, a small group of students, including a teenage boy with an American flag draped over his shoulder, stood apart from a larger gathering of nearly 300 students who walked out of class. One of the students also flew a large Trump flag at the end of his truck.</p> <p>Ryan Shanor, the school&#8217;s principal, said the small group wanted to honor the victims but disagreed with sentiment they considered to be against the Second Amendment.</p> <p>&#8220;They did not agree with everything they thought the protest was about,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Jonathan Allen and Alice Popovici in New York; Suzanne Barlyn in Newtown, Pennsylvania; Joe Skipper in Parkland, Florida; Scott Malone in Boston; Kim Palmer in Cleveland; and Susan Heavey, Richard Cowan, Sarah N. Lynch and Ian Simpson in Washington; Lindsey Wasson in Seattle; Writing by Jonathan Allen and Andrew Hay, Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday after President Donald Trump sought to impose fresh tariffs on China, intensifying fears of a trade war that could raise costs and hurt overseas sales for U.S. companies.</p> A trader works on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly <p>The Trump administration is pressing China to cut its trade surplus with the United States by $100 billion, the White House said Wednesday.</p> <p>Trump is looking to levy tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports, targeting the technology, telecom and apparel sectors, sources told Reuters on Tuesday.</p> <p>As earnings season has ended, the latest developments in Washington are even more prominent for investors, said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham, Massachusetts.</p> <p>&#8220;Certainly, from an economic standpoint, the potential effect of tariffs continues to rattle through the markets,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re in a wallowing period where there&#8217;s not as much good news coming out.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump has already imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as well as on solar panels and washing machines, sparking threats of retaliation from some trade partners.</p> <p>Boeing Co, which investors say may be particularly vulnerable to retaliation, tumbled 2.5 percent, leading the losers on the Dow.</p> <p>Stocks briefly pared losses after economic analyst and commentator Larry Kudlow, who has supported free trade measures in the past, said on Wednesday he had accepted an offer to replace Gary Cohn as the White House&#8217;s top economic adviser.</p> Traders work on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly <p>In an interview with CNBC just before the market close, Kudlow said he believed tougher trade measures against China were warranted.</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 248.91 points, or 1 percent, to end at 24,758.12, the S&amp;amp;P 500 lost 15.83 points, or 0.57 percent, to 2,749.48 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 14.20 points, or 0.19 percent, to 7,496.81.</p> <p>Also weighing on investor sentiment was data that showed U.S. retail sales fell for a third straight month in February, pointing to a slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>Financial stocks fell 1.2 percent, tracking a decline in U.S. bond yields.</p> <p>Signet Jewelers fell 20.2 percent after the company gave a disappointing full-year earnings forecast.</p> <p>Ford rose 2.2 percent after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to &#8220;overweight&#8221; from &#8220;underweight&#8221; and raised its earnings estimate on the automaker.</p> Related Video <p>Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.35-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.53-to-1 ratio favored decliners.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 posted 12 new 52-week highs and five new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 96 new highs and 41 new lows.</p> <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.53 billion shares, compared to the 7.14 billion average over the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. television commentator and conservative economic analyst Larry Kudlow said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump had picked him to replace Gary Cohn as the top White House economic adviser.</p> <p>&#8220;The president offered me the position last evening and I accepted,&#8221; Kudlow told Reuters, adding that he expected a formal announcement on his appointment as director of the National Economic Council could come on Thursday.</p> <p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that Trump spoke to Kudlow on Tuesday, but she would not confirm that the president had offered the 70-year-old CNBC contributor the position. &#8220;No personnel announcements,&#8221; she told reporters.</p> <p>The appointment of Kudlow, a supporter of supply-side economics and familiar face in both Washington and on Wall Street, comes as Trump increasingly seeks to surround himself with like-minded advisers.</p> <p>The president, who has described Kudlow as a long-time friend, hinted on Tuesday morning that he was likely to give him the job.</p> <p>Trump told reporters at the White House that Kudlow, a Republican who served as an economic adviser to former President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and also worked on Wall Street, had &#8220;a very good chance&#8221; of being selected to replace Cohn.</p> FILE PHOTO - Economic analyst Lawrence "Larry" Kudlow appears on CNBC at the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 7, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo <p>Cohn, a Democrat and &#8220;globalist&#8221; who was seen as a moderating influence on the president&#8217;s economic policies, resigned after a disagreement with Trump&#8217;s decision to impose steep tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.</p> <p>Kudlow, an informal advisor to Trump&#8217;s 2016 presidential campaign, had also criticized the president&#8217;s decision, saying tariffs would harm steel-consuming producers.</p> FILE PHOTO: Economic analyst Lawrence "Larry" Kudlow appears on CNBC at the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 7, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>But Trump said on Wednesday that Kudlow had &#8220;come around&#8221; to view tariffs as a useful tool for renegotiating trade deals.</p> <p>Kudlow has championed what he describes as &#8220;pro-growth&#8221; economic policies that include cutting taxes and regulation and boosting free trade.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trump-kudlow-dollar/incoming-trump-adviser-kudlow-says-strong-dollar-important-for-growth-cnbc-idUSKCN1GQ30J" type="external">Incoming Trump adviser Kudlow says strong dollar important for growth: CNBC</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trump-kudlow-cnbc/incoming-trump-economic-adviser-kudlow-says-china-earned-tough-trade-response-idUSKCN1GQ30R" type="external">Incoming Trump economic adviser Kudlow says China 'earned' tough trade response</a> <p>The White House economic adviser can have wide influence over the president on a wide variety of issues from steering economic policy to offering guidance on whom to choose for open positions at the U.S. Federal Reserve.</p> <p>Cohn helped lead Trump&#8217;s overhaul of the tax code last year and was slated to spearhead efforts to pass an infrastructure spending bill this year.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Paul Simao</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Futong Technology Development Holdings Expects Loss Attributable For Year Ended 31 Dec 2017 Britain expels 23 Russian diplomats over nerve attack on ex-spy 'ENOUGH': Student walkout sends message on gun violence Wall Street falls amid fears of trade war with China Kudlow says Trump to name him top White House economic adviser

https://reuters.com/article/brief-futong-technology-development-hold/brief-futong-technology-development-holdings-expects-loss-attributable-for-year-ended-31-dec-2017-idUSFWN1PK0VR

2018-01-25

2least

Jan 25 Reuters Futong Technology Development Holdings Ltd IS EXPECTED TO RECORD A LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO OWNERS OF COMPANY FOR YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2017 EXPECTED RESULT DUE TO 8205INCREASE IN ADMINISTRATIVE AND FINANCIAL EXPENSES OF APPROXIMATELY 20258203 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage bangalorenewsroomthomsonreuterscom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain is to kick out 23 Russian diplomats the biggest such expulsion since the Cold War over a chemical attack on a former Russian double agent in England that Prime Minister Theresa May blamed on Moscow May pointed the finger firmly at Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday as she outlined retaliatory measures in parliament Russia denies any involvement in the attack on exspy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia who have been critical in hospital since they were found unconscious on March 4 on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury May announced the potential freezing of Russian state assets that pose a security threat new laws to counter hostile state activity and a downgrading of Britain8217s attendance at the soccer World Cup in Russia this summer She had given Moscow until midnight on Tuesday to explain how the Sovietmade Novichok nerve agent came to be deployed on the streets of Salisbury saying either the Russian state was responsible or had lost control of a stock of the substance 8220Their response demonstrated complete disdain for the gravity of these events8221 May said in her statement to parliament 8220They have treated the use of a militarygrade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm contempt and defiance8221 The only possible conclusion was that the Russian state was behind the attempted murder of the Skripals and the harm that befell Nick Bailey a police officer who is in a serious condition after being exposed to the nerve agent May said 8220This represents an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom8221 she said The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow would swiftly retaliate against the British measures which had been undertaken for 8220shortsighted political ends8221 8220The British government has made a choice in favour of confrontation with Russia8221 it said MAY DENOUNCES PUTIN The two governments blamed each other for the crisis 8220Many of us looked at a postSoviet Russia with hope We wanted a better relationship and it is tragic that President Putin has chosen to act in this way8221 said May Britain which has received statements of support from the United States the European Union and NATO has said it would seek to coordinate an international response to the attack German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she took the British findings seriously and there would be a common European stance although 8220we must still talk responsibly8221 with Russia despite differences of opinion A French government spokesman said Paris was awaiting proof before deciding if it would act in solidarity with London Britains Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the House of Commons on her governments reaction to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in London March 14 2018 Parliament TV handout via REUTERS Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britain before being arrested in Moscow and later jailed in 2006 He was freed under a spy swap deal in 2010 and took refuge in Britain The attack on him was likened in Britain to the killing of exKGB agent Alexander Litvinenko a critic of Putin who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium 210 Russia refused to extradite the two Russians identified by Britain as the killers Britain8217s response to the Litvinenko affair which included the expulsion of four Russian diplomats was criticised domestically as too weak and many in British politics and media have called for a much tougher response to the Skripal attack Some Russia experts cast doubt over whether May8217s actions met that test 8220This is certainly not a strong response from Britain it is a mild response8221 said Mathieu Boul232gue a Russia expert at Chatham House thinktank in London 8220It will not deter Russia because Britain is showing too little steel8221 Slideshow 15 Images May said the 23 diplomats identified as undeclared intelligence officers had one week to leave and Russian intelligence capabilities in Britain would be damaged for years May also said Britain would revoke an invitation to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to visit and suspend planned high level bilateral contacts between London and Moscow The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said Lavrov had not accepted the invitation to visit Britain anyway On the soccer World Cup which Russia is hosting in June and July May said no ministers or members of the British royal family would attend 8220CORRUPT ELITES8221 But unlike when the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea May did not name Russian individuals or companies that would be specifically targeted by sanctions Related Coverage US Ambassador Haley tells UN Russia responsible for chemical attack Factbox Britain to freeze Russian state assets and expel 23 diplomats after nerve attack Secret trial shows risks of nerve agent theft in postSoviet chaos experts 8220We will freeze Russian state assets wherever we have the evidence that they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents8221 she said She said checks on private flights customs and freight would be stepped up to better track those travelling to Britain who could represent a security threat She also threatened action against those she described as 8220serious criminals and corrupt elites8221 adding 8220There is no place for these people or their money in our country8221 London has been a venue of choice for many rich Russian to buy property and the inflow of Russian money has led to the capital being nicknamed 8220Londongrad8221 Russian gas giant Gazprom will cut hundreds of jobs at its overseas trading and export offices including Britain where it has its largest such office by far and move them to St Petersburg as part of a drive by Putin to repatriate capital to reduce exposure to sanctions according to two sources familiar with the plan who spoke exclusively to Reuters in Moscow In a separate development British media regulator Ofcom said it could strip Russia Today a Kremlinfunded TV channel of its UK licence Russia has said British media would be expelled in retaliation should that happen Reporting by Costas Pitas Estelle Shirbon Guy Faulconbridge Michael Holden Alistair Smout Elizabeth Piper and William James in London Christian Lowe in Moscow writing by Estelle Shirbon Editing by Stephen Addison and Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARKLAND Fla Reuters US students spilled out of classrooms by the thousands on Wednesday chanting slogans like 8220No more silence8221 and 8220We want change8221 as part of a coasttocoast protest over gun violence prompted by last month8217s massacre at a Florida high school The ENOUGH National School Walkout was intended to pressure federal and state lawmakers to tighten laws on gun ownership despite opposition by the National Rifle Association NRA the powerful gun rights advocacy group With some students dressed in orange the color adopted by the gun control movement the walkouts began at 10 am local time in each time zone and were scheduled to last 17 minutes though many rallies went longer The duration was a tribute to the number of students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida on Feb 14 It was the latest in a series of shootings that have plagued US schools and colleges over the past two decades While many school districts gave their blessings to the walkouts others said anyone who participated would face discipline Many students defied the warnings and left school anyway In Parkland thousands of students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field to the applause of families and supporters beyond the fences as law enforcement officers looked on News helicopters hovered overhead Ty Thompson the principal called for the 8220biggest group hug8221 and the students obliged around the 50yard line 8220We want change8221 students chanted on the sidewalks outside the school 8220Can you hear the children screaming8221 read one of the signs But not all students in Florida were in favor of more gun control Around 80 miles 129 kms north of Parkland at Vero Beach High School chants of 8220No More Silence end gun violence8221 were countered by shouts of 8220Trump8221 and 8220We want guns8221 from other students according to video posted by local newspaper TCPalm At New York City8217s Fiorello H LaGuardia High School crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan many dressed in orange symbolic of the bright color worn by hunters to avoid being shot by accident 8220Thoughts and prayers are not enough8221 read one sign at LaGuardia a jab at a response often uttered by lawmakers after mass shootings Hundreds of students wearing orange tshirts with black targets on the front walked out of Firestone High School in Akron Ohio One student used a bullhorn and recited an antiviolence poem as parents stood on the sidewalks in solidarity At Granada Hills Charter High School in Los Angeles students laid prone on the field of a football stadium to form a giant ENOUGH symbolizing the thousands of youth who die of gun violence every year in the United States Students from Washington DCarea schools carry signs during a protest for stricter gun control during a walkout by students at the US Capitol in Washington US March 14 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts LOBBYING LAWMAKERS The walkouts were part of a burgeoning grassroots movement prompted by the Parkland attack Survivors have lobbied lawmakers and even talked with President Donald Trump in a push for new restrictions on gun ownership a right protected by the US Constitution8217s Second Amendment 8220We don8217t feel safe in schools anymore8221 said Sarah Chatfield a high school student from Maryland standing with hundreds of other protesters outside the White House Chanting 8220Hey hey ho ho the NRA has got to go8221 some of the students marched to the US Capitol where Democratic lawmakers emerged from the whitedomed landmark to praise them The studentled initiative helped bring about a tightening of Florida8217s gun laws last week when the minimum age of 21 for buying any handguns was extended to all firearms But lawmakers rejected a ban on the sort of semiautomatic rifle used in the Parkland attack Slideshow 34 Images In Washington however proposals to strengthen the backgroundcheck system for gun sales among other measures appear to be languishing SCHOOLS VARY IN RESPONSE Students from more than 2800 schools and groups joined the walkouts many with the backing of their school districts according to the event8217s organizers who also coordinated the Women8217s March protests staged nationwide over the past two years In districts where school authorities warned against joining the demonstrations some students protested anyway Related Coverage House passes bill to prevent gun violence in schools in rare bipartisan vote Suspected Florida school shooter silent in court judge enters notguilty plea More than 100 students walked out of the Council Rock High School North building in Newtown Pennsylvania despite warnings from school administration that doing so would bring discipline 8220Students deserve the right to go to school feeling safe and comfortable not feeling scared that their school will be the next target8221 a student said into a megaphone to the group outside At Norton High School in the ruralsuburban district in northeastern Ohio a small group of students including a teenage boy with an American flag draped over his shoulder stood apart from a larger gathering of nearly 300 students who walked out of class One of the students also flew a large Trump flag at the end of his truck Ryan Shanor the school8217s principal said the small group wanted to honor the victims but disagreed with sentiment they considered to be against the Second Amendment 8220They did not agree with everything they thought the protest was about8221 he said Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York Jonathan Allen and Alice Popovici in New York Suzanne Barlyn in Newtown Pennsylvania Joe Skipper in Parkland Florida Scott Malone in Boston Kim Palmer in Cleveland and Susan Heavey Richard Cowan Sarah N Lynch and Ian Simpson in Washington Lindsey Wasson in Seattle Writing by Jonathan Allen and Andrew Hay Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters US stocks fell on Wednesday after President Donald Trump sought to impose fresh tariffs on China intensifying fears of a trade war that could raise costs and hurt overseas sales for US companies A trader works on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in Manhattan New York City US March 14 2018 REUTERSAndrew Kelly The Trump administration is pressing China to cut its trade surplus with the United States by 100 billion the White House said Wednesday Trump is looking to levy tariffs on up to 60 billion of Chinese imports targeting the technology telecom and apparel sectors sources told Reuters on Tuesday As earnings season has ended the latest developments in Washington are even more prominent for investors said Brad McMillan chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham Massachusetts 8220Certainly from an economic standpoint the potential effect of tariffs continues to rattle through the markets8221 he said 8220We8217re in a wallowing period where there8217s not as much good news coming out8221 Trump has already imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as well as on solar panels and washing machines sparking threats of retaliation from some trade partners Boeing Co which investors say may be particularly vulnerable to retaliation tumbled 25 percent leading the losers on the Dow Stocks briefly pared losses after economic analyst and commentator Larry Kudlow who has supported free trade measures in the past said on Wednesday he had accepted an offer to replace Gary Cohn as the White House8217s top economic adviser Traders work on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in Manhattan New York City US March 14 2018 REUTERSAndrew Kelly In an interview with CNBC just before the market close Kudlow said he believed tougher trade measures against China were warranted The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 24891 points or 1 percent to end at 2475812 the SampampP 500 lost 1583 points or 057 percent to 274948 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1420 points or 019 percent to 749681 Also weighing on investor sentiment was data that showed US retail sales fell for a third straight month in February pointing to a slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter Slideshow 2 Images Financial stocks fell 12 percent tracking a decline in US bond yields Signet Jewelers fell 202 percent after the company gave a disappointing fullyear earnings forecast Ford rose 22 percent after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to 8220overweight8221 from 8220underweight8221 and raised its earnings estimate on the automaker Related Video Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 135to1 ratio on Nasdaq a 153to1 ratio favored decliners The SampampP 500 posted 12 new 52week highs and five new lows the Nasdaq Composite recorded 96 new highs and 41 new lows Volume on US exchanges was 653 billion shares compared to the 714 billion average over the last 20 trading days Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru Editing by Arun Koyyur and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters US television commentator and conservative economic analyst Larry Kudlow said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump had picked him to replace Gary Cohn as the top White House economic adviser 8220The president offered me the position last evening and I accepted8221 Kudlow told Reuters adding that he expected a formal announcement on his appointment as director of the National Economic Council could come on Thursday White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that Trump spoke to Kudlow on Tuesday but she would not confirm that the president had offered the 70yearold CNBC contributor the position 8220No personnel announcements8221 she told reporters The appointment of Kudlow a supporter of supplyside economics and familiar face in both Washington and on Wall Street comes as Trump increasingly seeks to surround himself with likeminded advisers The president who has described Kudlow as a longtime friend hinted on Tuesday morning that he was likely to give him the job Trump told reporters at the White House that Kudlow a Republican who served as an economic adviser to former President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and also worked on Wall Street had 8220a very good chance8221 of being selected to replace Cohn FILE PHOTO Economic analyst Lawrence Larry Kudlow appears on CNBC at the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US March 7 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermidFile Photo Cohn a Democrat and 8220globalist8221 who was seen as a moderating influence on the president8217s economic policies resigned after a disagreement with Trump8217s decision to impose steep tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum Kudlow an informal advisor to Trump8217s 2016 presidential campaign had also criticized the president8217s decision saying tariffs would harm steelconsuming producers FILE PHOTO Economic analyst Lawrence Larry Kudlow appears on CNBC at the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US March 7 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid But Trump said on Wednesday that Kudlow had 8220come around8221 to view tariffs as a useful tool for renegotiating trade deals Kudlow has championed what he describes as 8220progrowth8221 economic policies that include cutting taxes and regulation and boosting free trade Related Coverage Incoming Trump adviser Kudlow says strong dollar important for growth CNBC Incoming Trump economic adviser Kudlow says China earned tough trade response The White House economic adviser can have wide influence over the president on a wide variety of issues from steering economic policy to offering guidance on whom to choose for open positions at the US Federal Reserve Cohn helped lead Trump8217s overhaul of the tax code last year and was slated to spearhead efforts to pass an infrastructure spending bill this year Additional reporting by Makini Brice Editing by Paul Simao Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>If there were a Mount Rushmore of Motley Fool stories, this one would be on it.</p> <p>In this episode of <a href="https://www.fool.com/podcasts/rule-breaker-investing?&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Rule Breaker Investing Opens a New Window.</a>, David Gardner recalls his experience in the late 1990s meeting Hollywood director and producer Sam Raimi, who flew the Gardner brothers out to the West Coast to see if they could make the leap from internet investing gurus to TV stars. Though their Hollywood stint proved to be short-lived, David's reflections on their Foolish thinking at the time was key to how things would play out for the Fool, and there are lessons for you, too.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>A full transcript follows the video.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better thanWal-MartWhen investing geniuses David and TomGardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter theyhave run for over a decade, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p> <p>David and Tomjust revealed what they believe are the <a href="https://www.fool.com/mms/mark/e-sa-bbn-eg?aid=8867&amp;amp;source=isaeditxt0000476&amp;amp;ftm_cam=sa-bbn-evergreen&amp;amp;ftm_pit=6627&amp;amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">ten best stocks Opens a New Window.</a>for investors to buy right now... and Wal-Mart wasn't one of them! That's right -- theythink these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="https://www.fool.com/mms/mark/e-sa-bbn-eg?aid=8867&amp;amp;source=isaeditxt0000476&amp;amp;ftm_cam=sa-bbn-evergreen&amp;amp;ftm_pit=6627&amp;amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a>to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>*StockAdvisor returns as of April 3, 2017The author(s) may have a position in any stocks mentioned.</p> <p>This podcast was recorded on April 12, 2017</p> <p>David Gardner: Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Great to have you with me this week. Last week it was "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." I hope you listened. Maybe remembered one or two of those. I think I can at least remember one of my points from last week.</p> <p>This week's going to be simpler, because I'm just going to tell pretty much one story, and I'm going to make a few points about it at the end. It is, if there were a Mount Rushmore, (which there isn't), of Motley Fool stories, this would be on my Mount Rushmore, anyway. This is probably one of my top five favorite Fool stories of all time; therefore, it is a pleasure to bring it to you this week.</p> <p>In fact, I'll be reading. It will be a dramatic reading. A presentation. Something I do a little bit on this podcast.</p> <p>Most of the things I say from week to week I haven't taken the time to write out, but whenever I have, it means that I'm going for something extra special. I'm actually choosing my words, so let's see how it works this week.</p> <p>And it starts like this:</p> <p>"Guys, I want you to come to California. We should meet. I think there's a TV show here."</p> <p>So it was the late 1990s. The Motley Fool was maturing into a media company. Tom and I had about a quarter of the audience we have today, but we were doing lots of media back then. Back when we thought media exposure equaled business success and a Motley Fool TV show; well, that would follow naturally from our radio show, our syndicated newspaper column, and the best-selling books that we were already doing.</p> <p>"But, Dave, this guy's shows are like Xena: Warrior Princess. Stuff like that," Tom said. "Does this make sense?"</p> <p>I'm not sure whether it did or not. We decided -- what the heck? -- to accept the invitation to visit Universal Studios in Los Angeles, meet with our host to plan the show, and then meet with a Universal producer the day after that to pitch the concept.</p> <p>When we met our host -- our champion -- his name was Sam. We liked him instinctively. We had driven straight from the airport to meet him at his rigged-out trailer on some generic-looking Hollywood film lot. Here he was. A five o'clock shadow. Very casually dressed. Shades tipped down over his nose surrounded by a small and likable team of young, creative types.</p> <p>He may not have been the biggest name in the business, but they thought a lot of him. "Sam's a genius. Good to meet you guys," said his assistant.</p> <p>"The Motley Fool's perfect for TV," Sam began. "I'm a big fan of you guys. You guys are like superheroes. The villain is Wall Street. You guys are going to vanquish them. The show can be great. Let me play you some theme music we're working up."</p> <p>He played it. It sounded, well, heroic; particularly to a couple of internet entrepreneurs who, in their early 30s, had started all this as a newsletter for their parents' friends. Now we were going to be superheroes! With theme music!</p> <p>"So what's the show going to be like?" we asked.</p> <p>"Oh, it depends what the markets are looking for. I have my ideas," he said. And laid out a few more of them. "Universal will have its own, too."</p> <p>He then showed us some clips of Xena. Or maybe it was his new Hercules show, also then airing on UPN.</p> <p>On the one hand, these didn't seem to be hit shows. They didn't exactly instill confidence in us. On the other hand, Sam had two shows running on a TV network. He was a player.</p> <p>"The thing is," Sam said, "if we go for this, you guys know you only have one shot. If you try and fail on network TV, they'll never give you another chance."</p> <p>At lunch the next day, the Universal exec threw us a curveball after the appetizer plates hit. The exec -- call him Ken, svelte and debonair, occasionally waving to other tables at the chic spot where we were dining -- pushed his California-blonde hair behind his ear and gave us the lowdown.</p> <p>"The only way Universal would do a show like this is for 10% of what you guys do." By "you guys" he meant Tom and me. He wanted 10% of all future Motley Fool everything.</p> <p>So Sam had just laid out how for 30 minutes, in Friday prime time every week, our show would educate, amuse, and enrich millions of viewers with its cheeky market rap and cartoon humor sketches. Ken, a grizzled realist, was willing to take this seriously if only because Sam did.</p> <p>And 10% was what Ken came back with.</p> <p>We were young and impressionable. This was TV. I mean, Hercules! Xena! And The Motley Fool!</p> <p>But even back then, 10% was too round a number.</p> <p>Well, Sam talked gamely through the lunch, but along with us looked increasingly crestfallen. By the time our host called the check, we walked out leaving things open-ended. "Good luck, you guys." I expect that's the way all such lunches end, really, whatever happens afterward.</p> <p>Well, back at Sam's trailer we all realized that our two days together would come to naught. We had enjoyed meeting Sam and his crew, but it would be more Xena and Hercules for him, and back to the internet for us.</p> <p>That was 1998. The next few years for the Fool were tremendous. Then came 2001, when the market crashed and almost brought down our company with it. After a super rebound today we couldn't be happier, looking backward, that we didn't give Universal its 10%.</p> <p>But the best story, of all, is Sam's. Sam went on to make a real superhero show a few years later. A movie, actually. It was called Spider-Man. And director Sam Raimi's love of superheroes and villains culminated in an amazing film trilogy, the combined cost $600 million to make and grossed $2.5 billion worldwide.</p> <p>And that's where our story ends. I have three lessons that I want to highlight for investors and entrepreneurs. All right, three reflections. Maybe they're lessons. Maybe they're just reflections. Here's the first one, thinking back on that story about 20 years later.</p> <p>One thing that I like that happened there -- and I hope I made it clear -- I'm really glad that Tom and I didn't give away 10% of everything that The Motley Fool is doing in order to try a television show pilot on probably UPN.</p> <p>I'm really glad we didn't do that, and I think the reason we didn't do it, ultimately, is that we were playing the long game, and that is reflection number one. Playing the long game is going to serve you so well, not just in life or, in this context in business; but, of course as an investor.</p> <p>In fact, as I look over our Motley Fool Stock Advisor scorecard (the service launched in March of 2002), I have nine 25-plus baggers since that service opened in March of 2002. And here's the key to them: every single one of them remains an open position. Every one of those 25-plus baggers remains an active recommendation. A company that we like probably even more today than when we first bought it.</p> <p>Of course, that's partly because we've gotten to know it over time and they've done so well for us. But companies like Pricelineand Netflixand Amazon. Companies I've talked a lot about and will always talk a lot about in Rule Breaker Investing are those kinds of companies and we were playing the long game. Most of those picks were made more than 10 years ago.</p> <p>After all, if you're going to roll up and make a 60-bagger, it usually takes a while. But the good news is if the stock doubles again, all of a sudden a stock that was up 60x goes up to 120x. And that's what I've seen over the course of my life, and it's not just something that Stock Advisor members have seen. At least in my own case, I've seen it from my parents and how they invested. And this is the story of playing the long game.</p> <p>Reflection number one -- play the long game as an investor, as a professional, and in life.</p> <p>And before I cruise on to reflection number two, I think I have to briefly remember another moment where we were playing the long game as young entrepreneurs. Scott Cook -- the founder of Intuit, a very brilliant businessman, a very good guy -- was once in Fool HQ back in the day trying to purchase The Motley Fool. He wanted to take a stake in our company.</p> <p>And in a classically bad line from yours truly (one that my brother Tom will, from time to time mock me for, and I'm happy to be mocked for it again and again over the years), I said to Scott, "You know, Scott? First of all, we admire you greatly and Intuit is an amazing company. I've used the tool," I said to him, "myself, tracking my finances and investing for years. I love what you do. And yet, Scott," I said, "I actually think maybe it should be us buying you."</p> <p>And at the time I was not trying to be arrogant. I know I was cocksure. But it was a time where the possibilities of the internet early on -- it looked as if our company, The Motley Fool, having gotten such an early start and great head-start advantage over the rest of the industry -- most of which financial companies weren't even looking at the online medium. They didn't even believe in it. We started to think, "You know, we can probably almost reorganize the world of finance if we do this right," which I guess we didn't, "through The Motley Fool as a vehicle."</p> <p>So Intuit, I was explaining to him, having a great software program like that, would be a tool that would be one of the things that we would sell. Offer our members over the course of time. But that would just be part of what we do. And as history will now show, Intuit has gotten quite a bit bigger in the 20 or so years that Scott pitched us. And we've gotten a little bit bigger, but I'm pretty sure I deserve to be mocked roundly for that line and I'm happy to have that so.</p> <p>OK, reflection number two. This is a pretty simple one. That was a lot of fun. That story, telling that story, sharing that with you this week is a lot of fun for me. Being there, that day, was a lot of fun. In fact, we got there a day early and they'd given us free tickets around the Universal theme park that was around Universal Studios in Los Angeles, so we just kind of hung out on a roller coaster. And even though it didn't all play out, we had a lot of fun.</p> <p>And part of it is that we did it as brothers. And I think that's something ... if you're an entrepreneur, or you've ever started something with a sibling, you know what I mean. It can be hard, sometimes, but for the most part it's a wonderful experience. And when I think of the people that are having fun out there, I think, for example, of the brand Life is Good, if you know those t-shirts, those hats. Accoutrements. That comes from two other brothers. That's Bert and John Jacobs whom we've gotten to know a little bit over the years. They are having fun and they're creating fun every day for their customers.</p> <p>Fun is probably always underrated. And I mean this, again, as a businessperson. I think you should be trying to have fun with the culture in your workplace. You should be trying to create fun for your customers. And I think as an investor you're going to be well-rewarded for finding companies that do just that. Life is good. Have fun.</p> <p>And my final one, reflection number three. I was thinking about some of the people that I've gotten to know and know over the course of my life, now, at the age of 50, and I was thinking about Sam Raimi as an example who I've never seen since. Sam, I hope you're listening. I hope you enjoyed our story, again.</p> <p>But a great addendum to our Sam Raimi story is what happened on the Motley Fool Stock Advisor scorecard because, if you're a member of our service, you can go in and see, if you look at my June 2002 pick, you'll see it is Disney. Picked on my side of the scorecard in the month of June 2002. But if you actually double-click down, you'll see that it was actually Marvel Entertainment that I picked. It was not Disney. Disney bought out Marvel subsequently, and we've just kept that investment and rerec'd it multiple times in place ever since.</p> <p>So now you actually know the full story of my thinking at the time; because Marvel, at the time, was an underperforming old media play perceived to be a comic book company and that wasn't a great business. And it was pinning its hopes, at the time, on converting its content to film. And our friend, Sam Raimi, was at the helm and that investment, today, is a 59-bagger.</p> <p>But I think about visionaries. I think about the dreamers out there. Sam Raimi is obviously one of them. He led me to Disney. I did get to meet, a few times, Reed Hastings, and that was a reason that I ended up recommending Netflix in 2004. And then Elon Musk, as I mentioned last week, came to our Motley Fool offices to speak to our employees in 2011, and shortly after that I recommended that stock.</p> <p>And if you think reflection number three is about you need to know the right people in business, please understand I don't know, personally, any of the people that I've just mentioned to you. But, what I think is true of these encounters and these interactions is that I was attracted to each of these people. Connected with them in some cases. And it's because they were visionaries, and this is reflection number three. Look for visionaries. Love your visionaries. The dreamers out there.</p> <p>You know, probably my favorite college basketball player, for obvious reasons if you follow the sport, is the point guard of the North Carolina Tar Heels National Championship winning team, thanks to last week's victory, Joel Berry. Joel's not a big tattoo guy. He is playing the sport where some people have a lot of tattoos all over them. But they said, "Joel, you got a tattoo." He's like, "I'm not a tattoo guy. This is the only one I have."</p> <p>I believe it's his right bicep, and it's just the word "believe." And he said he looks down at that and he's reminded, every day, to believe. And I think that's what we do when we succeed as investors and businesspeople. We believe. In some cases we need to believe in ourselves, but in other cases we need to find the visionaries and believe the vision that they have, whether it's "you know, we can make a good superhero movie out of a comic book," or "people will ultimately be streaming content over the internet instead of their cable TV," or "darn it, electric cars will succeed."</p> <p>So look for visionaries. If you are a visionary, congratulations. Look for the dreamers and believe. It puts me in mind of a lyric of the movie that I was hoping would win best picture this year -- I think a lot of people expected it to -- La La Land. But my favorite song in La La Land, which is entitled "Audition," and the parenthetical subtitle is "The Fools Who Dream." Maybe you saw this movie. Maybe you remember Emma Stone singing these lines: "Here's to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here's to the hearts that break."</p> <p>See you next week. Fool on!</p> <p>As always, people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Learn more about Rule Breaker Investing at RBI.Fool.com.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSpiffyPop/info.aspx" type="external">David Gardner Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Amazon, Netflix, Priceline Group, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon, Intuit, Netflix, Priceline Group, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>

Pitching a Motley Fool TV Show to Hollywood

http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/25/pitching-motley-fool-tv-show-to-hollywood.html

2017-04-25

0right

If there were a Mount Rushmore of Motley Fool stories this one would be on it In this episode of Rule Breaker Investing Opens a New Window David Gardner recalls his experience in the late 1990s meeting Hollywood director and producer Sam Raimi who flew the Gardner brothers out to the West Coast to see if they could make the leap from internet investing gurus to TV stars Though their Hollywood stint proved to be shortlived Davids reflections on their Foolish thinking at the time was key to how things would play out for the Fool and there are lessons for you too Continue Reading Below A full transcript follows the video 10 stocks we like better thanWalMartWhen investing geniuses David and TomGardner have a stock tip it can pay to listen After all the newsletter theyhave run for over a decade the Motley Fool Stock Advisor has tripled the market David and Tomjust revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks Opens a New Windowfor investors to buy right now and WalMart wasnt one of them Thats right theythink these 10 stocks are even better buys Click here Opens a New Windowto learn about these picks Advertisement StockAdvisor returns as of April 3 2017The authors may have a position in any stocks mentioned This podcast was recorded on April 12 2017 David Gardner Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing Great to have you with me this week Last week it was Something old something new something borrowed something blue I hope you listened Maybe remembered one or two of those I think I can at least remember one of my points from last week This weeks going to be simpler because Im just going to tell pretty much one story and Im going to make a few points about it at the end It is if there were a Mount Rushmore which there isnt of Motley Fool stories this would be on my Mount Rushmore anyway This is probably one of my top five favorite Fool stories of all time therefore it is a pleasure to bring it to you this week In fact Ill be reading It will be a dramatic reading A presentation Something I do a little bit on this podcast Most of the things I say from week to week I havent taken the time to write out but whenever I have it means that Im going for something extra special Im actually choosing my words so lets see how it works this week And it starts like this Guys I want you to come to California We should meet I think theres a TV show here So it was the late 1990s The Motley Fool was maturing into a media company Tom and I had about a quarter of the audience we have today but we were doing lots of media back then Back when we thought media exposure equaled business success and a Motley Fool TV show well that would follow naturally from our radio show our syndicated newspaper column and the bestselling books that we were already doing But Dave this guys shows are like Xena Warrior Princess Stuff like that Tom said Does this make sense Im not sure whether it did or not We decided what the heck to accept the invitation to visit Universal Studios in Los Angeles meet with our host to plan the show and then meet with a Universal producer the day after that to pitch the concept When we met our host our champion his name was Sam We liked him instinctively We had driven straight from the airport to meet him at his riggedout trailer on some genericlooking Hollywood film lot Here he was A five oclock shadow Very casually dressed Shades tipped down over his nose surrounded by a small and likable team of young creative types He may not have been the biggest name in the business but they thought a lot of him Sams a genius Good to meet you guys said his assistant The Motley Fools perfect for TV Sam began Im a big fan of you guys You guys are like superheroes The villain is Wall Street You guys are going to vanquish them The show can be great Let me play you some theme music were working up He played it It sounded well heroic particularly to a couple of internet entrepreneurs who in their early 30s had started all this as a newsletter for their parents friends Now we were going to be superheroes With theme music So whats the show going to be like we asked Oh it depends what the markets are looking for I have my ideas he said And laid out a few more of them Universal will have its own too He then showed us some clips of Xena Or maybe it was his new Hercules show also then airing on UPN On the one hand these didnt seem to be hit shows They didnt exactly instill confidence in us On the other hand Sam had two shows running on a TV network He was a player The thing is Sam said if we go for this you guys know you only have one shot If you try and fail on network TV theyll never give you another chance At lunch the next day the Universal exec threw us a curveball after the appetizer plates hit The exec call him Ken svelte and debonair occasionally waving to other tables at the chic spot where we were dining pushed his Californiablonde hair behind his ear and gave us the lowdown The only way Universal would do a show like this is for 10 of what you guys do By you guys he meant Tom and me He wanted 10 of all future Motley Fool everything So Sam had just laid out how for 30 minutes in Friday prime time every week our show would educate amuse and enrich millions of viewers with its cheeky market rap and cartoon humor sketches Ken a grizzled realist was willing to take this seriously if only because Sam did And 10 was what Ken came back with We were young and impressionable This was TV I mean Hercules Xena And The Motley Fool But even back then 10 was too round a number Well Sam talked gamely through the lunch but along with us looked increasingly crestfallen By the time our host called the check we walked out leaving things openended Good luck you guys I expect thats the way all such lunches end really whatever happens afterward Well back at Sams trailer we all realized that our two days together would come to naught We had enjoyed meeting Sam and his crew but it would be more Xena and Hercules for him and back to the internet for us That was 1998 The next few years for the Fool were tremendous Then came 2001 when the market crashed and almost brought down our company with it After a super rebound today we couldnt be happier looking backward that we didnt give Universal its 10 But the best story of all is Sams Sam went on to make a real superhero show a few years later A movie actually It was called SpiderMan And director Sam Raimis love of superheroes and villains culminated in an amazing film trilogy the combined cost 600 million to make and grossed 25 billion worldwide And thats where our story ends I have three lessons that I want to highlight for investors and entrepreneurs All right three reflections Maybe theyre lessons Maybe theyre just reflections Heres the first one thinking back on that story about 20 years later One thing that I like that happened there and I hope I made it clear Im really glad that Tom and I didnt give away 10 of everything that The Motley Fool is doing in order to try a television show pilot on probably UPN Im really glad we didnt do that and I think the reason we didnt do it ultimately is that we were playing the long game and that is reflection number one Playing the long game is going to serve you so well not just in life or in this context in business but of course as an investor In fact as I look over our Motley Fool Stock Advisor scorecard the service launched in March of 2002 I have nine 25plus baggers since that service opened in March of 2002 And heres the key to them every single one of them remains an open position Every one of those 25plus baggers remains an active recommendation A company that we like probably even more today than when we first bought it Of course thats partly because weve gotten to know it over time and theyve done so well for us But companies like Pricelineand Netflixand Amazon Companies Ive talked a lot about and will always talk a lot about in Rule Breaker Investing are those kinds of companies and we were playing the long game Most of those picks were made more than 10 years ago After all if youre going to roll up and make a 60bagger it usually takes a while But the good news is if the stock doubles again all of a sudden a stock that was up 60x goes up to 120x And thats what Ive seen over the course of my life and its not just something that Stock Advisor members have seen At least in my own case Ive seen it from my parents and how they invested And this is the story of playing the long game Reflection number one play the long game as an investor as a professional and in life And before I cruise on to reflection number two I think I have to briefly remember another moment where we were playing the long game as young entrepreneurs Scott Cook the founder of Intuit a very brilliant businessman a very good guy was once in Fool HQ back in the day trying to purchase The Motley Fool He wanted to take a stake in our company And in a classically bad line from yours truly one that my brother Tom will from time to time mock me for and Im happy to be mocked for it again and again over the years I said to Scott You know Scott First of all we admire you greatly and Intuit is an amazing company Ive used the tool I said to him myself tracking my finances and investing for years I love what you do And yet Scott I said I actually think maybe it should be us buying you And at the time I was not trying to be arrogant I know I was cocksure But it was a time where the possibilities of the internet early on it looked as if our company The Motley Fool having gotten such an early start and great headstart advantage over the rest of the industry most of which financial companies werent even looking at the online medium They didnt even believe in it We started to think You know we can probably almost reorganize the world of finance if we do this right which I guess we didnt through The Motley Fool as a vehicle So Intuit I was explaining to him having a great software program like that would be a tool that would be one of the things that we would sell Offer our members over the course of time But that would just be part of what we do And as history will now show Intuit has gotten quite a bit bigger in the 20 or so years that Scott pitched us And weve gotten a little bit bigger but Im pretty sure I deserve to be mocked roundly for that line and Im happy to have that so OK reflection number two This is a pretty simple one That was a lot of fun That story telling that story sharing that with you this week is a lot of fun for me Being there that day was a lot of fun In fact we got there a day early and theyd given us free tickets around the Universal theme park that was around Universal Studios in Los Angeles so we just kind of hung out on a roller coaster And even though it didnt all play out we had a lot of fun And part of it is that we did it as brothers And I think thats something if youre an entrepreneur or youve ever started something with a sibling you know what I mean It can be hard sometimes but for the most part its a wonderful experience And when I think of the people that are having fun out there I think for example of the brand Life is Good if you know those tshirts those hats Accoutrements That comes from two other brothers Thats Bert and John Jacobs whom weve gotten to know a little bit over the years They are having fun and theyre creating fun every day for their customers Fun is probably always underrated And I mean this again as a businessperson I think you should be trying to have fun with the culture in your workplace You should be trying to create fun for your customers And I think as an investor youre going to be wellrewarded for finding companies that do just that Life is good Have fun And my final one reflection number three I was thinking about some of the people that Ive gotten to know and know over the course of my life now at the age of 50 and I was thinking about Sam Raimi as an example who Ive never seen since Sam I hope youre listening I hope you enjoyed our story again But a great addendum to our Sam Raimi story is what happened on the Motley Fool Stock Advisor scorecard because if youre a member of our service you can go in and see if you look at my June 2002 pick youll see it is Disney Picked on my side of the scorecard in the month of June 2002 But if you actually doubleclick down youll see that it was actually Marvel Entertainment that I picked It was not Disney Disney bought out Marvel subsequently and weve just kept that investment and rerecd it multiple times in place ever since So now you actually know the full story of my thinking at the time because Marvel at the time was an underperforming old media play perceived to be a comic book company and that wasnt a great business And it was pinning its hopes at the time on converting its content to film And our friend Sam Raimi was at the helm and that investment today is a 59bagger But I think about visionaries I think about the dreamers out there Sam Raimi is obviously one of them He led me to Disney I did get to meet a few times Reed Hastings and that was a reason that I ended up recommending Netflix in 2004 And then Elon Musk as I mentioned last week came to our Motley Fool offices to speak to our employees in 2011 and shortly after that I recommended that stock And if you think reflection number three is about you need to know the right people in business please understand I dont know personally any of the people that Ive just mentioned to you But what I think is true of these encounters and these interactions is that I was attracted to each of these people Connected with them in some cases And its because they were visionaries and this is reflection number three Look for visionaries Love your visionaries The dreamers out there You know probably my favorite college basketball player for obvious reasons if you follow the sport is the point guard of the North Carolina Tar Heels National Championship winning team thanks to last weeks victory Joel Berry Joels not a big tattoo guy He is playing the sport where some people have a lot of tattoos all over them But they said Joel you got a tattoo Hes like Im not a tattoo guy This is the only one I have I believe its his right bicep and its just the word believe And he said he looks down at that and hes reminded every day to believe And I think thats what we do when we succeed as investors and businesspeople We believe In some cases we need to believe in ourselves but in other cases we need to find the visionaries and believe the vision that they have whether its you know we can make a good superhero movie out of a comic book or people will ultimately be streaming content over the internet instead of their cable TV or darn it electric cars will succeed So look for visionaries If you are a visionary congratulations Look for the dreamers and believe It puts me in mind of a lyric of the movie that I was hoping would win best picture this year I think a lot of people expected it to La La Land But my favorite song in La La Land which is entitled Audition and the parenthetical subtitle is The Fools Who Dream Maybe you saw this movie Maybe you remember Emma Stone singing these lines Heres to the ones who dream foolish as they may seem Heres to the hearts that break See you next week Fool on As always people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against so dont buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear Learn more about Rule Breaker Investing at RBIFoolcom David Gardner Opens a New Window owns shares of Amazon Netflix Priceline Group and Walt Disney The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon Intuit Netflix Priceline Group and Walt Disney The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy Opens a New Window

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<p>What is the working class? A relatively simple question, but not one with a simple answer. These days most Marxists would emphasize &#8220;relationship to the means of production,&#8221; defining class in terms of extraction of surplus value and the wage relation. This isn&#8217;t wrong &#8212;&amp;#160;surplus value and the wage relation are central to class and class struggle &#8212;&amp;#160;but this approach tends to telescope the entirety of the meaning and making of class and class struggle into the workplace. A closer reading of Marx suggests that a wider, and more relevant, vision can be recovered.</p> <p>For Marx, capitalism and class began as dispossession. In his debate with orthodox political economy, Marx <a href="https://archive.org/details/MarxCapitalVolume1ACritiqueOfPoliticalEconomy" type="external">insisted</a> that the secret of the origins of capitalism, as a class system, lay in an initial accumulation of capital that rested upon &#8220;the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realise their labour.&#8221;&amp;#160;The robbery of masses of humanity &#8212;&amp;#160;be they serfs or sailors, artisans or Aboriginal peoples &#8212; of their productive capacities and guarantees of existence was central to class formation. Expropriation was written &#8220;in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.&#8221;</p> <p>The proletariat is not, therefore, defined by the <a href="http://newleftreview.org/II/66/michael-denning-wageless-life" type="external">wage relation</a> itself. It is defined by dispossession &#8212; the brutal process by which producers are forced to depend on the wage for survival.</p> <p>Emphasizing this point is important, considering all the <a href="" type="internal">current talk</a> about the specificity of modern precarious labor, its unique class position, and the programmatic requirements of rebuilding the Left. The blunt reality is that, give or take historical specificities, for producers and workers, precariousness has always been their lot. Correspondingly, class struggle only proceeds, and succeeds, when it transcends differentiation, and unites all of the dispossessed, regardless of how they are oppressed or how intensely they are exploited.</p> <p>Seeing the wage relation as only one chapter in the long narrative of dispossession expands our understandings of both class and class struggle. Marx, after all, did not invent the term &#8220;proletarian,&#8221; but adapted it from its common usage in antiquity, the class struggles of which have been ably outlined in G.&amp;#160;E.&amp;#160;M. de Ste. Croix&#8217;s <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Class_Struggle_in_the_Ancient_Greek.html?id=MSPttWbUPZsC" type="external">monumental study</a> of the ancient Greek world.</p> <p>Within the Roman Empire, the word &#8220;proletarian&#8221; designated the uncertain social stratum, divorced from property and without regular access to wages. J.&amp;#160;C.&amp;#160;L. Simonde de Sismondi drew on this background in an 1819 work of political economy chronicling &#8220;the threat to public order&#8221; posed by a &#8220;miserable and suffering population&#8221; dependant as it was on public charity. &#8220;Those who had no property,&#8221; Sismondi wrote, &#8220;were called to have children: ad prolem generandum.&#8221;&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/research/forumForEuropeanPhilosophy/pdf/Weber1920(1).pdf" type="external">Max Weber</a> commented similarly: &#8220;As early as the sixteenth century the proletarianising of the rural population created such an army of unemployed that England had to deal with the problem of poor relief.&#8221;</p> <p>This was also the context in which <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_World_Turned_Upside_Down.html?id=J1BtQgAACAAJ" type="external">Christopher Hill</a> described the masterless masses of the seventeenth century, driven from the land by a variety of socio-economic pressures:</p> <p>Beneath the surface stability of rural England, then, the vast placid open fields which catch the eye, was the seething mobility of forest squatters, itinerant craftsmen and building labourers, unemployed men and women seeking work, strolling players and jugglers, pedlars and quack doctors, vagabonds, tramps: congregated especially in the big cities, but also with footholds wherever newly-squatted areas escaped from the machinery of the parish or in old-squatted areas where labour was in demand. It was from this underworld that armies and ships&#8217; crews were recruited, that a proportion at least of the settlers of Ireland and the New World were found, men prepared to run desperate risks in the hope of obtaining the secure freehold land (and with it status) to which they could never aspire in overcrowded England.</p> <p>None of this was lost on Marx, whose understandings of expropriation framed his conceptualization of class formation, colonization, and conflict.</p> <p>This is evident in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wage-Labour-Capital-Value-Price-Profit/dp/0717804704" type="external">writings of the 1840s</a>, where dispossession as the foundation of class formation and grievance figured forcefully, and where Marx displayed his broadest class struggle sensibilities. With a clarity that entirely eluded contemporary bourgeois thought, Marx grasped how capitalism &#8212; as a socio-economic war for supremacy among class antagonists &#8212; was &#8220;won less by recruiting than discharging the army of workers.&#8221;</p> <p>In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts Marx insisted, &#8220;Political economy .&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;. does not recognize the unemployed worker, the workingman, insofar as he happens to be outside this labour relationship.&#8221; &#8220;The rascal, swindler, beggar, the unemployed, the starving, wretched and criminal workingmen &#8212;&amp;#160;these are figures who do not exist for political economy but only for other eyes, those of the doctor, the judge, the grave-digger, and bum-bailiff, etc; such figures are spectres outside its domain.&#8221;</p> <p>Marx also had considerable empathy for what was done to the dispossessed, evident in his condemnation of the &#8220;barbarity in the treatment of paupers&#8221; and his recognition of the &#8220;growing horror in which the working people hold the slavery of the workhouse,&#8221; which he dubbed &#8220;a place of punishment for misery.&#8221;&amp;#160;It was <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/books/pb0270/" type="external">the marginalization</a> of significant sectors of the population designated as &#8220;surplus&#8221; that animated much of historical materialism&#8217;s analytic orientation and fueled the righteous indignation that demanded nothing less than a transformation of the entire capitalistic social order.</p> <p>Today, Marx has experienced a revival of sorts, as the mainstream acceptance of Thomas Piketty&#8217;s <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006" type="external">Capital in the Twenty First Century</a> makes discussion of inequality respectable. But this domestication of Marxism can occur only if its revolutionary refusal of the right of capital to produce &#8220;redundant populations&#8221; is sidestepped.</p> <p>Piketty bypasses this foundational dispossession, proposes a tax on capital, and promises a redistribution of wealth at the margins of society, taking from the exorbitantly rich in order to sustain credit for the welfare of the have-nots. But this will not end capitalism&#8217;s relentless production of the wageless, especially in the Global South. Nor will it ease, for capitalism&#8217;s developed core countries, the necessity of the ongoing erosion of the hard-won securities and entitlements (battled for over centuries of class struggle), however limited, of both the waged and the wageless.</p> <p>By itself, redistribution of this kind does nothing to displace dispossession. Dispossession, the basis of all proletarianization, sustains accumulation, which further intensifies the process of expropriation and all of this, in turn, produces relentless class struggle.</p> <p>This class struggle, embedded in the process of dispossession, thus animates history in ways that piecemeal solutions cannot sideline. Marx argued in Capital&amp;#160;that &#8220;the reproduction of a mass of labour-power, which must incessantly re-incorporate itself with capital for that capital&#8217;s self-expansion; which cannot get free from capital, and whose enslavement to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it sells itself, this reproduction of labour-power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of capital itself. Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat.&#8221;</p> <p>Marx was not the only mid-nineteenth century commentator to chronicle the lot of the dispossessed. Henry Mayhew, whose writings on London labor and the poor emerged at roughly the same time as the commentaries of Marx and Engels, emphasized how the capitalist labor market was characterized by dispossession.</p> <p>For Mayhew the employment marketplace depended on seasonal work and jobs that relied on fashion or accident, and was ordered by over-work and scamp-work in the cheap trades, constantly reconfigured by the dilution of skills that saw women and children introduced into specific handicrafts in order to depress wages, and restructured by machinery and managerial innovations.</p> <p>Recruited to the metropolis by the dissolution of landed relations and the destruction of village handicrafts, waged workers struggled with the impersonal disciplines of a labor market always cramped by acute limitations. Mayhew concluded that regular employment was available to roughly 1.5 million laborers, while half-time work might accrue to a further 1.5 million, with 1.5 million more either wholly unemployed or working occasionally only by displacing those who considered specific jobs to be their terrain.</p> <p>This might seem to be anything but a coherent grouping, the &#8220;working classes&#8221; that it designated a &#8220;bundle of discrete phenomena.&#8221; E.&amp;#160;P. Thompson&#8217;s The Making of the English Working Class nevertheless <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/79310219/E-P-Thompson-Making-of-the-English-Working-Class#scribd" type="external">argued</a> that it was indeed a working class, formed in the cauldron of the Industrial Revolution and the 1790&#8211;1832 counter-revolution of property.</p> <p>Both historical processes were either ridden forcefully or were actually instigated by the bourgeoisie, and both depended upon, or were directed against, those who were increasingly dispossessed of property and power over their lives. Class constituted an &#8220;identity of interests .&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;. of the most diverse occupations and levels of attainment,&#8221; and it was forged in antagonism to the attempts to make of all of these components &#8220;a sort of machine.&#8221;</p> <p>Class, then, has always embodied differentiation, insecurity, and precariousness. Dispossession differs, but defines a common plight. No individual can be dispossessed in precisely the same way as another, or live that process of material alienation exactly as another would. Yet dispossession, in general, nonetheless initiates, defines, deepens, and widens proletarianization. It is the metaphorical mark of Cain stamped on all workers, regardless of their level of employment, rate of pay, status, waged placement, or degree of wagelessness.</p> <p>In this way slave rebellions, plebeian uprisings, peasant revolts, bread riots, and the public disorder associated with the moral economy of the crowd can all be placed alongside the revolutions of the nineteenth-century, such as the upheavals of 1848 and 1871, as well as those of the twentieth century, starting with the Russian Revolution in 1917. While these class struggle developments are distinct, and vary in terms of significance and historical impact, they are nonetheless joined in their points of origin, the beginnings of which all relate to dispossession and its ultimately destabilizing social antagonisms and conflicts.</p> <p>In the words of the <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61" type="external">Communist Manifesto</a>: &#8220;Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed .&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;. in constant opposition to one another, [carrying] on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.&#8221;</p> <p>Dispossession thus structures the ongoing realities of class formation over the longue dur&#233;e. &amp;#160;It did so in the 1300s and the 1700s just as it does so now. As capitalism gained momentum in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the reorganization of work intensified the discontents of dispossession.</p> <p>In the 1960s, an American collaborator of C.&amp;#160;L.&amp;#160;R. James, <a href="http://experimental.worldcat.org/kindredworks/Kindred?sn=80882864" type="external">Marty Glaberman</a>, noted that, in industry after industry, class relations were dominated by automation that displaced workers, moving them into and out of workplaces subject to constant reconfiguration, the outcome of which was often a discharging of waged employees.&amp;#160;This degradation of work formed the subject of Harry Braverman&#8217;s influential labor-process oriented 1974 commentary, <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/books/pb9401/" type="external">Labor and Monopoly Capital</a>.</p> <p>Marx&#8217;s later work emphasized the relationship between dispossession and capitalist crises. In Capital, Volume I, he argued that capitalist enrichment was premised on &#8220;the condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the over-work of the other part,&#8221; accelerating &#8220;the production of the reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumulation.&#8221; Every proletarian can thus be categorized, not so much according to their waged work, but to the possible forms of surplus population, which Marx labelled &#8220;the floating, the latent, and the stagnant.&#8221;</p> <p>This is why the accumulation of capital is also the accumulation of labor, but the Malthusian multiplication of the proletariat does not necessarily mean the working class will, in its entirety, be waged. As Marx wrote in Capital:</p> <p>The lowest sediment of the relative surplus-population finally dwells in the sphere of pauperism .&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;. the quantity of paupers increases with every crisis .&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;. Pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army. Its production is included in that of the relative surplus population, its necessity in theirs; along the surplus population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth.&#8221;</p> <p>Seeing class struggle in this way sheds new light on the class struggles of the Global South. As John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, and R. Jamil Jonna have pointed out in the pages of <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2011/11/01/the-global-reserve-army-of-labor-and-the-new-imperialism/" type="external">Monthly Review</a>, Marx&#8217;s way of seeing class formation was much ahead of his time, anticipating how modern imperialism and the relentless march of capital accumulation on a world scale would result in the quantitative expansion and qualitative transformation of the global reserve army of labor.</p> <p>This massive reserve, from which capital draws such sustenance for its accumulative appetite, now numbers in the billions, and as it has grown so too have the dimensions of misery of the dispossessed <a href="https://archive.org/details/MarxCapitalVolume1ACritiqueOfPoliticalEconomy" type="external">expanded</a>:</p> <p>The fact that the means of production, and the productiveness of labour, increases more rapidly than the productive population, expresses itself, therefore, capitalistically in the inverse form that the labouring population always increases more rapidly than the conditions under which capital can employ this increase for its own self-expansion. It follows therefore than in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. Accumulation of wealth at one pole, is therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, rituality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.</p> <p>The International Labour Organization has recently estimated that what might be called the global reserve army of labor is now larger than the approximately 1.4 billion workers who are totally dependent on wage labor. This reserve includes both the roughly 218 million unemployed and an astronomical 1.7 billion workers designated as &#8220; <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2011/11/01/the-global-reserve-army-of-labor-and-the-new-imperialism/" type="external">vulnerably employed</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>A significant portion of this reserve is wageless, composed of members of marginal domestic economies who eke out an existence in the favelas, barrios, and shantytowns of the developing world. Characterized by the fundamental precariousness of its everyday life, this sector knows little of the securities of the wage, which is usually unavailable or is attained only intermittently, in sporadic, but always finite, clusterings of paid employment and coupled with unpaid labor, scavenging, and other endeavors in the struggle for subsistence.</p> <p>Consider, for instance, the three million rickshaw-pullers working the streets of Asia. In Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, and the tenth-largest city in the world, there are two hundred thousand&amp;#160;rickshawallahs. They constitute the second largest employment category in the ironically-dubbed &#8220;God&#8217;s Own City,&#8221; trailing only the one million strong sweated garment sector.</p> <p>Peddling over thirty miles a day, battling police (whose coercive corruption constantly threatens them with further dispossession in the form of destruction of their cabs), suffocating pollution, and death-defying traffic, these seemingly self-employed penny capitalists are representative of the growing armies of the destitute wageless that struggle to survive on earnings of barely a dollar a day.</p> <p><a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/258-planet-of-slums" type="external">Mike Davis</a> insists that what he calls the &#8220;global informal working class,&#8221; a socioeconomic stratum that he sees &#8220;overlapping with but non-identical to the slum population,&#8221; now surpasses one billion in number, &#8220;making it the fastest growing, and most unprecedented, social class on earth.&#8221; Davis concludes his discussion of the world&#8217;s urban poor with a poignant summary of what he calls &#8220;a sinister and unceasing duet,&#8221; what we might also declare a disturbing, defiant dance of dispossession:</p> <p>Night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeting cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side.</p> <p>Capitalism is currently attacking the world&#8217;s working class with more and more vigorous assaults. Its periodic crises constitute a weaponry determined to destroy labor rather than produce it. Whatever their place in the hierarchy of expropriation, the global masses who have been divorced from ownership of the productive forces, and often even of their lives, are forced to extend class struggle beyond battles over wages and workplace exploitation into realms of necessity that center more directly on dispossession and the reproductive sphere.</p> <p>To be sure, labor can and must fight capital by refusing to be where it is supposed to be, at workplaces where employed working people produce surplus value for capital. Withdrawal from this geography of exploitation is the traditional weapon of the strike. Dispossessed labor can also fight capital and its collaborationist state, however, by being where it is not supposed to be. This is the weapon of <a href="http://occupywallst.org/article/fec-cant-curb-election-abuse" type="external">occupation</a>, of taking up space, place, and time in ways antithetical to the interests of capital and the apparatus of governance.</p> <p>Bringing together the waged and the wageless, resisting on the fronts of both production and reproduction &#8212;&amp;#160;this is the widening class struggle agenda of the future. It will not stop at the wage and the workplace, but up the ante to include mobilizations around public transit, housing, child care and health care, education, and much more. As the dispossessed demand more, understandings of a differentiated but collective experience of dispossession will break down long-entrenched commitments to the crumbs of capitalism&#8217;s table, used to such good effect to divide and conquer.</p> <p>The persistence of capitalist crises mean that those crumbs are now fewer and less ideologically effective. A new, accelerating recognition that capitalism is systematic disorder, premised as much on destruction as on production, is forcing the hand of the dispossessed. Their numbers, visibility, and suffering on a global scale increase exponentially with each passing week of austerity&#8217;s insatiable demands. Material reality is pressing the exploited and oppressed to resist.</p> <p>The crisis, however, is never restricted solely to the objective conditions of decay. Rather, the crisis is also subjective, a failure of consciousness and working-class leadership.</p> <p>This raises the stakes of solidarity and collectivity, as indeed they must be raised. The class struggle of the dispossessed in our times demands not the inclusion of this or that fragment of the working classes, fighting on specific and isolated fronts. Instead, the working class as a whole must confront capitalism and the specter of increasingly destructive dispossession that haunts the world&#8217;s people, be their wages high or low, their work relatively secure or precarious and unstable.</p>

Uniting the Dispossessed

https://jacobinmag.com/2015/07/palmer-marx-precarity-class-struggle/

2018-10-02

4left

What is the working class A relatively simple question but not one with a simple answer These days most Marxists would emphasize 8220relationship to the means of production8221 defining class in terms of extraction of surplus value and the wage relation This isn8217t wrong 8212amp160surplus value and the wage relation are central to class and class struggle 8212amp160but this approach tends to telescope the entirety of the meaning and making of class and class struggle into the workplace A closer reading of Marx suggests that a wider and more relevant vision can be recovered For Marx capitalism and class began as dispossession In his debate with orthodox political economy Marx insisted that the secret of the origins of capitalism as a class system lay in an initial accumulation of capital that rested upon 8220the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realise their labour8221amp160The robbery of masses of humanity 8212amp160be they serfs or sailors artisans or Aboriginal peoples 8212 of their productive capacities and guarantees of existence was central to class formation Expropriation was written 8220in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire8221 The proletariat is not therefore defined by the wage relation itself It is defined by dispossession 8212 the brutal process by which producers are forced to depend on the wage for survival Emphasizing this point is important considering all the current talk about the specificity of modern precarious labor its unique class position and the programmatic requirements of rebuilding the Left The blunt reality is that give or take historical specificities for producers and workers precariousness has always been their lot Correspondingly class struggle only proceeds and succeeds when it transcends differentiation and unites all of the dispossessed regardless of how they are oppressed or how intensely they are exploited Seeing the wage relation as only one chapter in the long narrative of dispossession expands our understandings of both class and class struggle Marx after all did not invent the term 8220proletarian8221 but adapted it from its common usage in antiquity the class struggles of which have been ably outlined in Gamp160Eamp160M de Ste Croix8217s monumental study of the ancient Greek world Within the Roman Empire the word 8220proletarian8221 designated the uncertain social stratum divorced from property and without regular access to wages Jamp160Camp160L Simonde de Sismondi drew on this background in an 1819 work of political economy chronicling 8220the threat to public order8221 posed by a 8220miserable and suffering population8221 dependant as it was on public charity 8220Those who had no property8221 Sismondi wrote 8220were called to have children ad prolem generandum8221amp160 Max Weber commented similarly 8220As early as the sixteenth century the proletarianising of the rural population created such an army of unemployed that England had to deal with the problem of poor relief8221 This was also the context in which Christopher Hill described the masterless masses of the seventeenth century driven from the land by a variety of socioeconomic pressures Beneath the surface stability of rural England then the vast placid open fields which catch the eye was the seething mobility of forest squatters itinerant craftsmen and building labourers unemployed men and women seeking work strolling players and jugglers pedlars and quack doctors vagabonds tramps congregated especially in the big cities but also with footholds wherever newlysquatted areas escaped from the machinery of the parish or in oldsquatted areas where labour was in demand It was from this underworld that armies and ships8217 crews were recruited that a proportion at least of the settlers of Ireland and the New World were found men prepared to run desperate risks in the hope of obtaining the secure freehold land and with it status to which they could never aspire in overcrowded England None of this was lost on Marx whose understandings of expropriation framed his conceptualization of class formation colonization and conflict This is evident in writings of the 1840s where dispossession as the foundation of class formation and grievance figured forcefully and where Marx displayed his broadest class struggle sensibilities With a clarity that entirely eluded contemporary bourgeois thought Marx grasped how capitalism 8212 as a socioeconomic war for supremacy among class antagonists 8212 was 8220won less by recruiting than discharging the army of workers8221 In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts Marx insisted 8220Political economy amp160amp160 does not recognize the unemployed worker the workingman insofar as he happens to be outside this labour relationship8221 8220The rascal swindler beggar the unemployed the starving wretched and criminal workingmen 8212amp160these are figures who do not exist for political economy but only for other eyes those of the doctor the judge the gravedigger and bumbailiff etc such figures are spectres outside its domain8221 Marx also had considerable empathy for what was done to the dispossessed evident in his condemnation of the 8220barbarity in the treatment of paupers8221 and his recognition of the 8220growing horror in which the working people hold the slavery of the workhouse8221 which he dubbed 8220a place of punishment for misery8221amp160It was the marginalization of significant sectors of the population designated as 8220surplus8221 that animated much of historical materialism8217s analytic orientation and fueled the righteous indignation that demanded nothing less than a transformation of the entire capitalistic social order Today Marx has experienced a revival of sorts as the mainstream acceptance of Thomas Piketty8217s Capital in the Twenty First Century makes discussion of inequality respectable But this domestication of Marxism can occur only if its revolutionary refusal of the right of capital to produce 8220redundant populations8221 is sidestepped Piketty bypasses this foundational dispossession proposes a tax on capital and promises a redistribution of wealth at the margins of society taking from the exorbitantly rich in order to sustain credit for the welfare of the havenots But this will not end capitalism8217s relentless production of the wageless especially in the Global South Nor will it ease for capitalism8217s developed core countries the necessity of the ongoing erosion of the hardwon securities and entitlements battled for over centuries of class struggle however limited of both the waged and the wageless By itself redistribution of this kind does nothing to displace dispossession Dispossession the basis of all proletarianization sustains accumulation which further intensifies the process of expropriation and all of this in turn produces relentless class struggle This class struggle embedded in the process of dispossession thus animates history in ways that piecemeal solutions cannot sideline Marx argued in Capitalamp160that 8220the reproduction of a mass of labourpower which must incessantly reincorporate itself with capital for that capital8217s selfexpansion which cannot get free from capital and whose enslavement to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it sells itself this reproduction of labourpower forms in fact an essential of the reproduction of capital itself Accumulation of capital is therefore increase of the proletariat8221 Marx was not the only midnineteenth century commentator to chronicle the lot of the dispossessed Henry Mayhew whose writings on London labor and the poor emerged at roughly the same time as the commentaries of Marx and Engels emphasized how the capitalist labor market was characterized by dispossession For Mayhew the employment marketplace depended on seasonal work and jobs that relied on fashion or accident and was ordered by overwork and scampwork in the cheap trades constantly reconfigured by the dilution of skills that saw women and children introduced into specific handicrafts in order to depress wages and restructured by machinery and managerial innovations Recruited to the metropolis by the dissolution of landed relations and the destruction of village handicrafts waged workers struggled with the impersonal disciplines of a labor market always cramped by acute limitations Mayhew concluded that regular employment was available to roughly 15 million laborers while halftime work might accrue to a further 15 million with 15 million more either wholly unemployed or working occasionally only by displacing those who considered specific jobs to be their terrain This might seem to be anything but a coherent grouping the 8220working classes8221 that it designated a 8220bundle of discrete phenomena8221 Eamp160P Thompson8217s The Making of the English Working Class nevertheless argued that it was indeed a working class formed in the cauldron of the Industrial Revolution and the 179082111832 counterrevolution of property Both historical processes were either ridden forcefully or were actually instigated by the bourgeoisie and both depended upon or were directed against those who were increasingly dispossessed of property and power over their lives Class constituted an 8220identity of interests amp160amp160 of the most diverse occupations and levels of attainment8221 and it was forged in antagonism to the attempts to make of all of these components 8220a sort of machine8221 Class then has always embodied differentiation insecurity and precariousness Dispossession differs but defines a common plight No individual can be dispossessed in precisely the same way as another or live that process of material alienation exactly as another would Yet dispossession in general nonetheless initiates defines deepens and widens proletarianization It is the metaphorical mark of Cain stamped on all workers regardless of their level of employment rate of pay status waged placement or degree of wagelessness In this way slave rebellions plebeian uprisings peasant revolts bread riots and the public disorder associated with the moral economy of the crowd can all be placed alongside the revolutions of the nineteenthcentury such as the upheavals of 1848 and 1871 as well as those of the twentieth century starting with the Russian Revolution in 1917 While these class struggle developments are distinct and vary in terms of significance and historical impact they are nonetheless joined in their points of origin the beginnings of which all relate to dispossession and its ultimately destabilizing social antagonisms and conflicts In the words of the Communist Manifesto 8220Freeman and slave patrician and plebeian lord and serf guildmaster and journeyman in a word oppressor and oppressed amp160amp160 in constant opposition to one another carrying on an uninterrupted now hidden now open fight a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes8221 Dispossession thus structures the ongoing realities of class formation over the longue dur233e amp160It did so in the 1300s and the 1700s just as it does so now As capitalism gained momentum in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the reorganization of work intensified the discontents of dispossession In the 1960s an American collaborator of Camp160Lamp160R James Marty Glaberman noted that in industry after industry class relations were dominated by automation that displaced workers moving them into and out of workplaces subject to constant reconfiguration the outcome of which was often a discharging of waged employeesamp160This degradation of work formed the subject of Harry Braverman8217s influential laborprocess oriented 1974 commentary Labor and Monopoly Capital Marx8217s later work emphasized the relationship between dispossession and capitalist crises In Capital Volume I he argued that capitalist enrichment was premised on 8220the condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part8221 accelerating 8220the production of the reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumulation8221 Every proletarian can thus be categorized not so much according to their waged work but to the possible forms of surplus population which Marx labelled 8220the floating the latent and the stagnant8221 This is why the accumulation of capital is also the accumulation of labor but the Malthusian multiplication of the proletariat does not necessarily mean the working class will in its entirety be waged As Marx wrote in Capital The lowest sediment of the relative surpluspopulation finally dwells in the sphere of pauperism amp160amp160 the quantity of paupers increases with every crisis amp160amp160 Pauperism is the hospital of the active labourarmy and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army Its production is included in that of the relative surplus population its necessity in theirs along the surplus population pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production and of the capitalist development of wealth8221 Seeing class struggle in this way sheds new light on the class struggles of the Global South As John Bellamy Foster Robert W McChesney and R Jamil Jonna have pointed out in the pages of Monthly Review Marx8217s way of seeing class formation was much ahead of his time anticipating how modern imperialism and the relentless march of capital accumulation on a world scale would result in the quantitative expansion and qualitative transformation of the global reserve army of labor This massive reserve from which capital draws such sustenance for its accumulative appetite now numbers in the billions and as it has grown so too have the dimensions of misery of the dispossessed expanded The fact that the means of production and the productiveness of labour increases more rapidly than the productive population expresses itself therefore capitalistically in the inverse form that the labouring population always increases more rapidly than the conditions under which capital can employ this increase for its own selfexpansion It follows therefore than in proportion as capital accumulates the lot of the labourer be his payment high or low must grow worse Accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at the same time accumulation of misery agony of toil slavery ignorance rituality mental degradation at the opposite pole ie on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital The International Labour Organization has recently estimated that what might be called the global reserve army of labor is now larger than the approximately 14 billion workers who are totally dependent on wage labor This reserve includes both the roughly 218 million unemployed and an astronomical 17 billion workers designated as 8220 vulnerably employed8221 A significant portion of this reserve is wageless composed of members of marginal domestic economies who eke out an existence in the favelas barrios and shantytowns of the developing world Characterized by the fundamental precariousness of its everyday life this sector knows little of the securities of the wage which is usually unavailable or is attained only intermittently in sporadic but always finite clusterings of paid employment and coupled with unpaid labor scavenging and other endeavors in the struggle for subsistence Consider for instance the three million rickshawpullers working the streets of Asia In Dhaka capital of Bangladesh and the tenthlargest city in the world there are two hundred thousandamp160rickshawallahs They constitute the second largest employment category in the ironicallydubbed 8220God8217s Own City8221 trailing only the one million strong sweated garment sector Peddling over thirty miles a day battling police whose coercive corruption constantly threatens them with further dispossession in the form of destruction of their cabs suffocating pollution and deathdefying traffic these seemingly selfemployed penny capitalists are representative of the growing armies of the destitute wageless that struggle to survive on earnings of barely a dollar a day Mike Davis insists that what he calls the 8220global informal working class8221 a socioeconomic stratum that he sees 8220overlapping with but nonidentical to the slum population8221 now surpasses one billion in number 8220making it the fastest growing and most unprecedented social class on earth8221 Davis concludes his discussion of the world8217s urban poor with a poignant summary of what he calls 8220a sinister and unceasing duet8221 what we might also declare a disturbing defiant dance of dispossession Night after night hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of slum districts pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeting cars Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side Capitalism is currently attacking the world8217s working class with more and more vigorous assaults Its periodic crises constitute a weaponry determined to destroy labor rather than produce it Whatever their place in the hierarchy of expropriation the global masses who have been divorced from ownership of the productive forces and often even of their lives are forced to extend class struggle beyond battles over wages and workplace exploitation into realms of necessity that center more directly on dispossession and the reproductive sphere To be sure labor can and must fight capital by refusing to be where it is supposed to be at workplaces where employed working people produce surplus value for capital Withdrawal from this geography of exploitation is the traditional weapon of the strike Dispossessed labor can also fight capital and its collaborationist state however by being where it is not supposed to be This is the weapon of occupation of taking up space place and time in ways antithetical to the interests of capital and the apparatus of governance Bringing together the waged and the wageless resisting on the fronts of both production and reproduction 8212amp160this is the widening class struggle agenda of the future It will not stop at the wage and the workplace but up the ante to include mobilizations around public transit housing child care and health care education and much more As the dispossessed demand more understandings of a differentiated but collective experience of dispossession will break down longentrenched commitments to the crumbs of capitalism8217s table used to such good effect to divide and conquer The persistence of capitalist crises mean that those crumbs are now fewer and less ideologically effective A new accelerating recognition that capitalism is systematic disorder premised as much on destruction as on production is forcing the hand of the dispossessed Their numbers visibility and suffering on a global scale increase exponentially with each passing week of austerity8217s insatiable demands Material reality is pressing the exploited and oppressed to resist The crisis however is never restricted solely to the objective conditions of decay Rather the crisis is also subjective a failure of consciousness and workingclass leadership This raises the stakes of solidarity and collectivity as indeed they must be raised The class struggle of the dispossessed in our times demands not the inclusion of this or that fragment of the working classes fighting on specific and isolated fronts Instead the working class as a whole must confront capitalism and the specter of increasingly destructive dispossession that haunts the world8217s people be their wages high or low their work relatively secure or precarious and unstable

What/PRON is/AUX the/DET working/VERB class/NOUN A/DET relatively/ADV simple/ADJ question/NOUN but/CCONJ not/PART one/NUM with/ADP a/DET simple/ADJ answer/NOUN These/DET days/NOUN most/ADJ Marxists/PROPN would/AUX emphasize/VERB 8220relationship/NOUN to/ADP the/DET means/NOUN of/ADP production8221/ADJ defining/VERB class/NOUN in/ADP terms/NOUN of/ADP extraction/NOUN of/ADP surplus/NOUN value/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET wage/NOUN relation/NOUN This/DET isn8217/NOUN t/NOUN wrong/ADJ 8212amp160surplus/PROPN value/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET wage/NOUN relation/NOUN are/AUX central/ADJ to/ADP class/NOUN and/CCONJ class/NOUN struggle/NOUN 8212amp160but/CCONJ this/DET approach/NOUN tends/VERB to/PART telescope/VERB the/DET entirety/NOUN of/ADP the/DET meaning/NOUN and/CCONJ making/NOUN of/ADP class/NOUN and/CCONJ class/NOUN struggle/NOUN into/ADP the/DET workplace/NOUN A/DET closer/ADJ reading/NOUN of/ADP Marx/PROPN suggests/VERB that/SCONJ a/DET wider/ADJ and/CCONJ more/ADV relevant/ADJ vision/NOUN can/AUX be/AUX recovered/VERB For/ADP Marx/PROPN capitalism/NOUN and/CCONJ class/NOUN began/VERB as/ADP dispossession/NOUN In/ADP his/PRON debate/NOUN with/ADP orthodox/ADJ political/ADJ economy/NOUN Marx/PROPN insisted/VERB that/SCONJ the/DET secret/NOUN of/ADP the/DET origins/NOUN of/ADP capitalism/NOUN as/ADP a/DET class/NOUN system/NOUN lay/VERB in/ADP an/DET initial/ADJ accumulation/NOUN of/ADP capital/NOUN that/PRON rested/VERB upon/SCONJ 8220the/DET complete/ADJ separation/NOUN of/ADP the/DET labourers/NOUN from/ADP all/DET property/NOUN in/ADP the/DET means/NOUN by/ADP which/PRON they/PRON can/AUX realise/VERB their/PRON labour8221amp160The/PROPN robbery/NOUN of/ADP masses/NOUN of/ADP humanity/NOUN 8212amp160be/PROPN they/PRON serfs/VERB or/CCONJ sailors/NOUN artisans/NOUN or/CCONJ Aboriginal/ADJ peoples/NOUN 8212/NUM of/ADP their/PRON productive/ADJ capacities/NOUN and/CCONJ guarantees/NOUN of/ADP existence/NOUN was/AUX central/ADJ to/ADP class/NOUN formation/NOUN Expropriation/PROPN was/AUX written/VERB 8220/NUM in/ADP the/DET annals/NOUN of/ADP mankind/NOUN in/ADP letters/NOUN of/ADP blood/NOUN and/CCONJ fire8221/NOUN The/DET proletariat/NOUN is/AUX not/PART therefore/ADV defined/VERB by/ADP the/DET wage/NOUN relation/NOUN itself/PRON It/PRON is/AUX defined/VERB by/ADP dispossession/NOUN 8212/NUM the/DET brutal/ADJ process/NOUN by/ADP which/PRON producers/NOUN are/AUX forced/VERB to/PART depend/VERB on/ADP the/DET wage/NOUN for/ADP survival/NOUN Emphasizing/VERB this/DET point/NOUN is/AUX important/ADJ considering/VERB all/DET the/DET current/ADJ talk/NOUN about/ADP the/DET specificity/NOUN of/ADP modern/ADJ precarious/ADJ labor/NOUN its/PRON unique/ADJ class/NOUN position/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET programmatic/ADJ requirements/NOUN of/ADP rebuilding/VERB the/DET Left/PROPN The/DET blunt/NOUN reality/NOUN is/AUX that/PRON give/VERB or/CCONJ take/VERB historical/ADJ specificities/NOUN for/ADP producers/NOUN and/CCONJ workers/NOUN precariousness/NOUN has/AUX always/ADV been/AUX their/PRON lot/NOUN Correspondingly/ADJ class/NOUN struggle/NOUN only/ADV proceeds/VERB and/CCONJ succeeds/VERB when/SCONJ it/PRON transcends/VERB differentiation/NOUN and/CCONJ unites/VERB all/PRON of/ADP the/DET dispossessed/VERB regardless/ADV of/ADP how/SCONJ they/PRON are/AUX oppressed/VERB or/CCONJ how/SCONJ intensely/ADV they/PRON are/AUX exploited/VERB Seeing/VERB the/DET wage/NOUN relation/NOUN as/SCONJ only/ADV one/NUM chapter/NOUN in/ADP the/DET long/ADJ narrative/NOUN of/ADP dispossession/NOUN expands/VERB our/PRON understandings/NOUN of/ADP both/PRON class/NOUN and/CCONJ class/NOUN struggle/NOUN Marx/PROPN after/ADV all/ADV did/AUX not/PART invent/VERB the/DET term/NOUN 8220proletarian8221/NOUN but/CCONJ adapted/VERB it/PRON from/ADP its/PRON common/ADJ usage/NOUN in/ADP antiquity/NOUN the/DET class/NOUN struggles/NOUN of/ADP which/PRON have/AUX been/AUX ably/ADV outlined/VERB in/ADP Gamp160Eamp160/NOUN M/PROPN de/PROPN 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<p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>Is it really fair to blame one man for destroying the US economy?</p> <p>Probably not. But Alan Greenspan is still tops on our list. After all, Greenspan &#8220;presided over the greatest expansion of speculative finance in history, including a trillion-dollar hedge fund industry, bloated Wall Street-firm balance sheets approaching $2 trillion, and a global derivatives market with notional values surpassing an unfathomable $220 trillion.&#8221; (Henry Liu, &#8220;Why the Subprime Bust will Spread&#8221; Asia Times) Greenspan is also responsible for slashing the real Fed Funds Rate so that it was negative for 31 months from 2002 to 2005. That decision flooded the housing market with trillions of dollars in low interest credit creating the largest equity bubble in history. Now that that bubble is crashing; Greenspan has hit the road. He now spends his time leap-frogging from city to city hawking his revisionist memoirs of how he steered the ship of state through troubled waters while fending off protectionist liberals. Look for it in the Fiction section of your local bookstore.</p> <p>Still, can we really blame &#8220;Maestro&#8221; for what appears to have been a spontaneous flurry of &#8220;free market&#8221; speculation in real estate?</p> <p>To a large extent, yes. Apart from Greenspan&#8217;s tacit endorsement of all the dubious loans (subprime, ARMs etc) which flourished during his reign; and despite his brusque rejection of the Fed&#8217;s role as regulator; the Federal Reserve&#8217;s own documents (&#8220;House Prices and Monetary Policy: A Cross-Country Study&#8221;) indicate that housing was &#8220;specifically targeted&#8221; acknowledging that it would serve as &#8220;a key channel of monetary policy transmission&#8221;. This is not even particularly controversial any more. In fact, we can see that this same scam has been used in England, Spain and Ireland&#8212;all now suffering the ill-effects of massive real estate inflation. Low interest rates continue to be the most efficient way of stealthily shifting wealth from one class to another while decimating the foundations of a healthy economy.</p> <p>Bankers fully understand the effects of cheap credit on the economy. It is branded on their DNA.</p> <p>CALIFORNIA HOUSING FALLS OFF A CLIFF</p> <p>We are now beginning to see the first signs that the listless housing bubble has sprung a leak and is careening towards earth. This week&#8217;s news from Southern California confirms that home sales have plummeted a whopping 48.5% from the previous year. This represents the biggest decline in home sales since the industry began keeping records more than 20 years ago. Sales are at a standstill and builders and homeowners have begun slashing prices in desperation. (See you tube &#8220; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVFBojFJTZM" type="external">Central California Housing Crash</a>)</p> <p>The news is only slightly better in the Bay Area where DataQuick reports that &#8220;Bay Area home sales plummet amid mortgage woes&#8221;:</p> <p>Bay Area home sales sank to their lowest level in more than two decades in September, the result of a continuing market slowdown and borrowers&#8217; increased difficulties in obtaining &#8220;jumbo&#8221; mortgages</p> <p>A total of 5,014 new and resale houses and condos were sold in the nine-county Bay Area in September. That was down 31.3 percent from 7,299 in August, and down 40.1 percent from 8,374 for September a year ago.</p> <p>40.1% year over year. That is the definition of a market collapse.</p> <p>&#8220;Foreclosure activity is at record levels.&#8221;</p> <p>September sales figures for the rest of the country are not yet available, but what is taking place in California, is what we anticipated after the stock market &#8220;froze over&#8221; on August 16th. Most people don&#8217;t understand that the market nearly crashed on that day and that the tremors from that cataclysm changed the way the banks do business. Many of the loans which were available just months ago (subprime, piggyback, ARMs, &#8220;no doc&#8221;, Alt-A, reverse amortization etc) are either much harder to get or have been discontinued altogether. Additionally, the banks are no longer able to bundle loans into securities and sell them to investors. In fact, the future of &#8220;securitization&#8221; of mortgage-debt is very much in doubt now. An article in the Financial Times shows how this process has slowed to a trickle:</p> <p>&#8220;Only $9.9 billion of home equity loan securitizations have come to market since July 1&#8212;A 95% DECLINE FROM THE $200.9 BILLION IN THE FIRST HALF OF THIS YEAR AND A ROUGHLY 92% DECREASE FROM THE SAME PERIOD LAST YEAR.&#8221;</p> <p>Also&#8212;and perhaps most importantly&#8212;many potential buyers are now finding that they no longer meet the stricter standards the banks are using to determine credit worthiness. This is especially true for jumbo loans, that is, any home loan that exceeds $417,000. The banks are getting increasing skeptical (some believe they are hoarding capital to cover bad bets on mortgage-backed derivatives) in determining who is a qualified mortgage applicant. Understandably, this has thrown a wrench in sales figures and slashed the number of September closings in half.</p> <p>In other words, the credit meltdown on Aug 16 changed the basic dynamics of home mortgage-lending. Decreasing demand and mushrooming inventory are only part of a much larger problem; the financing mechanism has completely changed. The banks don&#8217;t want to lend money. And, when banks don&#8217;t lend money&#8212;bad things happen. The economy goes into freefall. Despite the valiant efforts of the Plunge Protection Team in engineering a late-day turnaround to the August rout; the damage is done. Tighter lending will put additional downward pressure on a housing market that is already in distress speeding up an unavoidable recession. The economic storm clouds are already visible on the horizon.</p> <p>Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has finally admitted that the slumping housing market is now the &#8220;most significant risk to the economy&#8221;. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke agrees and adds that he believes that housing would be a &#8220;significant drag&#8221; on GDP. The troubles at the banks and the news from California have put the &#8220;fear of God&#8221; in both men. But there&#8217;s little they can do. Millions of people are &#8220;in over their heads&#8221; living in homes they clearly can&#8217;t afford. They&#8217;ll be forced to move in the next year or so. Foreclosures will soar. That can&#8217;t be avoided. Also, the industry has a 10 month backlog of existing homes that must be reduced before new sales have any chance of rebounding. That takes time. Construction and construction-related industries will suffer substantial losses.</p> <p>The problems facing the banks are much more serious than anyone cares to openly discuss. The banking system is over-extended and under-capitalized. The Fed has provided more than $400 billion in repos since the August meltdown, and yet, the troubles persist. The Treasury Dept has joined with Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase in an attempt to repackage bad debts and sell them to wary investors via &#8220;Super conduit&#8221; mega fund. The desperation is palpable and these latest shenanigans are only adding to rising stock market jitters.</p> <p>There&#8217;s a myth that the Fed chief can wave a magic wand and make things better. But that is not the case. Bernanke&#8217;s decision to cut to the Fed&#8217;s Fund Rate last month did not affect long term rates and, therefore, did not make it cheaper to buy (or refinance) a home. The rate-cut was really just a gift to the banks that are currently buried under $500 billion in mortgage-backed debt and CDO sludge. The increase in liquidity hasn&#8217;t made these toxic securities any more sellable or solvent. Nor has it increased the banks willingness to provide new home financing to mortgage applicants. That process has slowed to a crawl. All the Fed&#8217;s repos have done is buy more time for the banks while they try to wriggle out of reporting their true losses.</p> <p>The banks serve as a key conduit for the transferal of credit to consumers. That conduit has turned into a chokepoint due to defaults in the mortgage industry and the banks own humongous debt-load. The Fed cannot get money to the people who need it and who can keep the economy (which is 70% dependent on consumer spending) growing. This is a structural problem and it cannot be resolved by merely cutting rates.</p> <p>We&#8217;ve already begun to see signs of a slowdown in consumer spending at Target, Lowes and Walmart. If that deceleration continues, the economy will slip quickly into recession.</p> <p>American consumers have withdrawn over $9 trillion from their home equity in the last 7 years. That spending-spree has kept the economy whirring along at a healthy clip. Now that housing prices have stabilized&#8221;and in many cases, gone down&#8212;that easy money is no longer available setting the stage for shrinking economic growth, slower home sales, and declining demand. Deflation is the Fed&#8217;s worst nightmare and will be fought with every weapon in their arsenal.</p> <p>Regrettably, Bernanke does not have the tools to fix this problem and he is likely to destroy the currency if he keeps cutting rates. The recent cuts have already sent oil and gold to new highs while the dollar continues to nosedive. (The euro stands at $1.42 per dollar&#8221;up 63% since Bush took office) The weak dollar and the persistent credit problems in the markets, has sent foreign investors scampering for the exits. August was the biggest month on record for the withdrawal of foreign capital from US securities and Treasuries&#8212;$163 billion in capital flight. (Japan and China led the way) Confidence in US markets, leadership and integrity has never been lower. Investors are voting with their feet. They&#8217;ve had enough.</p> <p>With capital fleeing the country at the present pace, the US will not be able to maintain its $800 current account deficit, which means that prices will rise, the dollar will fall, and consumer spending will dry up. No amount of financial tinkering at the Federal Reserve will make a damn bit of difference. Barring a dramatic change in economic policy&#8221;which seems unlikely&#8212;we appear to be quick-stepping towards a system-wide market-busting break-down.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>THE MESS THAT GREENSPAN MADE</p> <p>The ruinous effects of Greenspan&#8217;s housing bubble can&#8217;t be fully appreciated unless one spends a bit of time studying some of the charts and graphs that are now available. These graphs are the best way to dispel any lingering suspicion that the housing bubble may be some a left-wing conspiracy theory. It&#8217;s not, and these links should provide ample evidence to the contrary.</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">http://www.bubbleinfo.com/statistics-2007/2007/3/15/arm-reset-schedule.html</a></p> <p><a href="" type="internal">http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2007/9/7/amortization_1.jpg</a></p> <p><a href="" type="internal">http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2007/9/7/amortization_2.jpg</a></p> <p>The first graph is the ARM (adjustable rate mortgages) reset schedule&#8212;totaling hundreds of billions of dollars in the next 2 years. The next 2 are the interest only and negative amortization share of total purchase mortgage originations 2000-2006. Keep in mind, when studying the ARM reset graph that &#8220;A study commissioned by the AFL-CIO shows that nearly half of homeowners with ARMs don&#8217;t know how their loans will adjust, and three-quarters don&#8217;t know how much their payments will increase if the loan does reset. 73% of homeowners with ARM&#8217;s don&#8217;t even know how much their monthly payment will increase the next time the rate goes up.&#8221; (Calculated Risk)</p> <p>The unwinding of the housing bubble is now beginning to show up in other areas of the economy. Credit card debt has skyrocketed to 17% annually now that homeowners are no longer able to tap into their vanishing home equity. Americans already owe over $500 billion on their credit cards. Now that debt is increasing faster than retail sales, which suggests that many people are so over-extended they are using their cards for basic necessities and medical expenses. Industry analysts now expect an unprecedented wave of credit card defaults in the next 6 to 12 months. Unfortunately, for the tapped-out consumer, the credit card represents his last access to an unsecured loan.</p> <p>We can also expect the downturn in housing to swell the unemployment lines. Oddly enough, while home sales have declined 40% from their peak in 2005, construction-related employment has only slipped 5%.That is really astonishing. It could be that the BLS is fabricating the numbers using its Birth-Death model. (which magically produces millions of fictitious jobs) But we know that construction has accounted for 2 out of every 5 new jobs in the US for the last 6 years, so we are sure to see a significant rise in unemployment as the bubble deflates. The financial and mortgage industries have already experienced significant layoffs.</p> <p>Similarly, we can expect to see substantial correction in home prices. Housing prices typically lag 6 months after sales peak and inventory rises. So far, prices have dropped a mere 3.5%, whereas inventory is at historic highs and sales have decreased 40%. It is impossible to know how low prices will go (some experts like Robert Schiller predict 50% cuts in the hotter markets) but the downward pressure on housing prices is bound to be enormous. Growing unemployment, o% personal savings, rising foreclosures, the weakening dollar, and the prevailing mood of gloominess (a recent poll showed that a majority of Americans believe we are ALREADY in a recession!) suggest that the impending fall in home prices will be precipitous. DEFLATIONARY DOWNWARD SPIRAL</p> <p>There is a debate raging on the econo-blogs about whether the country is headed towards hyperinflation or a deflationary cycle. The argument for hyperinflation is compelling since the Fed has already shown that it is prepared to savage the dollar in order to keep the economy running. As a result, we&#8217;ve seen inflation is heating up at a pace not seen in over a decade.(despite the government&#8217;s mendacious figures) In September gasoline costs rose 4%, heating oil soared 9%, food jumped 5%, and dairy products lurched ahead 7.5%. Everything is up except the greenback which appears to be in its death throes.</p> <p>Still, there are signs that America&#8217;s debt-fueled consumer economy is on its last legs as shoppers and homeowners are increasingly forced to accept that they have maxed-out nearly all of their available lines of credit. They will have to curtail their spending and live within their means. That means less growth, a continuing decline in housing, and a sharp fall in equities prices. These are all the harbingers of deflation.</p> <p>Treasury Secretary Paulson&#8217;s new &#8220;Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit&#8221;, M-LEC&#8212;which allows the investment banks to delay reporting their losses&#8212;is particularly ominous in this regard, since it was the Japanese banks unwillingness to write-off their bad debts which extended their deflationary recession for 15 years. Can the same thing happen here?</p> <p>Probably. An interesting exchange took place last month between the widely-respected economic blogger, Mike Shedlock (&#8220;Mish&#8217;s Global Economic Trend Analysis&#8221;) and economist Paul L. Kasriel. The interview provides details of the Japanese crisis which offer some striking similarities to our present predicament. I have transcribed an extended portion of that discussion:</p> <p>Paul L. Kasriel: &#8220;Japan experienced a deflation in recent years because the bursting of its asset-price bubble in the early 1990s created huge losses in its banking system. The Japanese banks had financed the asset-price bubble. When it burst, the debtors could not keep current on their loans to the banks and therefore were forced to turn back the collateral to the banks. The market value of the collateral, of course, was less than the amount of the loans outstanding, thereby inflicting huge losses of capital to the Japanese banks. With the decline in bank capital, the Japanese banks could not extend new credit to the private sector even though the Bank of Japan was offering credit to the banks at very low nominal rates of interest.</p> <p>Banks are an important transmission mechanism between the central bank and the private economy. If the banks are unable or unwilling to extend the cheap credit being offered to them by the central bank, then the economy grows very slowly, if at all. This happened in the U.S. during the early 1930s.</p> <p>U.S. banks currently hold record amounts of mortgage-related assets on their books. If the housing market were to go into a deep recession resulting in massive mortgage defaults, the U.S. banking system could sustain huge losses similar to what the Japanese banks experienced in the 1990s. If this were to occur, the Fed could cut interest rates to zero but it would have little positive effect on economic activity or inflation.</p> <p>Short of the Fed depositing newly-created money directly into private sector accounts, I suspect that a deflation would occur under these circumstances. Again, crippled banking systems tend to bring on deflations. And crippled banking systems seem to result from the bursting of asset bubbles because of the sharp decline in the value of the collateral backing bank loans.&#8221;</p> <p>Mish: What if Bernanke cuts interest rates to 1 percent?</p> <p>Kasriel: In a sustained housing bust that causes banks to take a big hit to their capital it simply will not matter. This is essentially what happened recently in Japan and also in the US during the great depression.</p> <p>Mish: Can you elaborate?</p> <p>Kasriel: Most people are not aware of actions the Fed took during the Great Depression. Bernanke claims that the Fed did not act strong enough during the Great Depression. This is simply not true. The Fed slashed interest rates and injected huge sums of base money but it did no good. More recently, Japan did the same thing. It also did no good. If default rates get high enough, banks will simply be unwilling to lend which will severely limit money and credit creation.</p> <p>Mish: How does inflation start and end?</p> <p>Kasriel: Inflation starts with expansion of money and credit. Inflation ends when the central bank is no longer able or willing to extend credit and/or when consumers and businesses are no longer willing to borrow because further expansion and /or speculation no longer makes any economic sense.</p> <p>Mish: So when does it all end?</p> <p>Kasriel: That is extremely difficult to project. If the current housing recession were to turn into a housing depression, leading to massive mortgage defaults, it could end. Alternatively, if there were a run on the dollar in the foreign exchange market, price inflation could spike up and the Fed would have no choice but to raise interest rates aggressively. Given the record leverage in the U.S. economy, the rise in interest rates would prompt large scale bankruptcies. These are the two &#8220;checkmate&#8221; scenarios that come to mind.&#8221; (&#8220;Mish&#8217;s Global Economic Trend Analysis&#8221;)</p> <p>Well put. Thank you, Mish.</p> <p>MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:fergiewhitney@msn.com" type="external">fergiewhitney@msn.com</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Housing Flameout

https://counterpunch.org/2007/10/20/housing-flameout/

2007-10-20

4left

amp160 Is it really fair to blame one man for destroying the US economy Probably not But Alan Greenspan is still tops on our list After all Greenspan 8220presided over the greatest expansion of speculative finance in history including a trilliondollar hedge fund industry bloated Wall Streetfirm balance sheets approaching 2 trillion and a global derivatives market with notional values surpassing an unfathomable 220 trillion8221 Henry Liu 8220Why the Subprime Bust will Spread8221 Asia Times Greenspan is also responsible for slashing the real Fed Funds Rate so that it was negative for 31 months from 2002 to 2005 That decision flooded the housing market with trillions of dollars in low interest credit creating the largest equity bubble in history Now that that bubble is crashing Greenspan has hit the road He now spends his time leapfrogging from city to city hawking his revisionist memoirs of how he steered the ship of state through troubled waters while fending off protectionist liberals Look for it in the Fiction section of your local bookstore Still can we really blame 8220Maestro8221 for what appears to have been a spontaneous flurry of 8220free market8221 speculation in real estate To a large extent yes Apart from Greenspan8217s tacit endorsement of all the dubious loans subprime ARMs etc which flourished during his reign and despite his brusque rejection of the Fed8217s role as regulator the Federal Reserve8217s own documents 8220House Prices and Monetary Policy A CrossCountry Study8221 indicate that housing was 8220specifically targeted8221 acknowledging that it would serve as 8220a key channel of monetary policy transmission8221 This is not even particularly controversial any more In fact we can see that this same scam has been used in England Spain and Ireland8212all now suffering the illeffects of massive real estate inflation Low interest rates continue to be the most efficient way of stealthily shifting wealth from one class to another while decimating the foundations of a healthy economy Bankers fully understand the effects of cheap credit on the economy It is branded on their DNA CALIFORNIA HOUSING FALLS OFF A CLIFF We are now beginning to see the first signs that the listless housing bubble has sprung a leak and is careening towards earth This week8217s news from Southern California confirms that home sales have plummeted a whopping 485 from the previous year This represents the biggest decline in home sales since the industry began keeping records more than 20 years ago Sales are at a standstill and builders and homeowners have begun slashing prices in desperation See you tube 8220 Central California Housing Crash The news is only slightly better in the Bay Area where DataQuick reports that 8220Bay Area home sales plummet amid mortgage woes8221 Bay Area home sales sank to their lowest level in more than two decades in September the result of a continuing market slowdown and borrowers8217 increased difficulties in obtaining 8220jumbo8221 mortgages A total of 5014 new and resale houses and condos were sold in the ninecounty Bay Area in September That was down 313 percent from 7299 in August and down 401 percent from 8374 for September a year ago 401 year over year That is the definition of a market collapse 8220Foreclosure activity is at record levels8221 September sales figures for the rest of the country are not yet available but what is taking place in California is what we anticipated after the stock market 8220froze over8221 on August 16th Most people don8217t understand that the market nearly crashed on that day and that the tremors from that cataclysm changed the way the banks do business Many of the loans which were available just months ago subprime piggyback ARMs 8220no doc8221 AltA reverse amortization etc are either much harder to get or have been discontinued altogether Additionally the banks are no longer able to bundle loans into securities and sell them to investors In fact the future of 8220securitization8221 of mortgagedebt is very much in doubt now An article in the Financial Times shows how this process has slowed to a trickle 8220Only 99 billion of home equity loan securitizations have come to market since July 18212A 95 DECLINE FROM THE 2009 BILLION IN THE FIRST HALF OF THIS YEAR AND A ROUGHLY 92 DECREASE FROM THE SAME PERIOD LAST YEAR8221 Also8212and perhaps most importantly8212many potential buyers are now finding that they no longer meet the stricter standards the banks are using to determine credit worthiness This is especially true for jumbo loans that is any home loan that exceeds 417000 The banks are getting increasing skeptical some believe they are hoarding capital to cover bad bets on mortgagebacked derivatives in determining who is a qualified mortgage applicant Understandably this has thrown a wrench in sales figures and slashed the number of September closings in half In other words the credit meltdown on Aug 16 changed the basic dynamics of home mortgagelending Decreasing demand and mushrooming inventory are only part of a much larger problem the financing mechanism has completely changed The banks don8217t want to lend money And when banks don8217t lend money8212bad things happen The economy goes into freefall Despite the valiant efforts of the Plunge Protection Team in engineering a lateday turnaround to the August rout the damage is done Tighter lending will put additional downward pressure on a housing market that is already in distress speeding up an unavoidable recession The economic storm clouds are already visible on the horizon Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has finally admitted that the slumping housing market is now the 8220most significant risk to the economy8221 Fed chairman Ben Bernanke agrees and adds that he believes that housing would be a 8220significant drag8221 on GDP The troubles at the banks and the news from California have put the 8220fear of God8221 in both men But there8217s little they can do Millions of people are 8220in over their heads8221 living in homes they clearly can8217t afford They8217ll be forced to move in the next year or so Foreclosures will soar That can8217t be avoided Also the industry has a 10 month backlog of existing homes that must be reduced before new sales have any chance of rebounding That takes time Construction and constructionrelated industries will suffer substantial losses The problems facing the banks are much more serious than anyone cares to openly discuss The banking system is overextended and undercapitalized The Fed has provided more than 400 billion in repos since the August meltdown and yet the troubles persist The Treasury Dept has joined with Citigroup Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase in an attempt to repackage bad debts and sell them to wary investors via 8220Super conduit8221 mega fund The desperation is palpable and these latest shenanigans are only adding to rising stock market jitters There8217s a myth that the Fed chief can wave a magic wand and make things better But that is not the case Bernanke8217s decision to cut to the Fed8217s Fund Rate last month did not affect long term rates and therefore did not make it cheaper to buy or refinance a home The ratecut was really just a gift to the banks that are currently buried under 500 billion in mortgagebacked debt and CDO sludge The increase in liquidity hasn8217t made these toxic securities any more sellable or solvent Nor has it increased the banks willingness to provide new home financing to mortgage applicants That process has slowed to a crawl All the Fed8217s repos have done is buy more time for the banks while they try to wriggle out of reporting their true losses The banks serve as a key conduit for the transferal of credit to consumers That conduit has turned into a chokepoint due to defaults in the mortgage industry and the banks own humongous debtload The Fed cannot get money to the people who need it and who can keep the economy which is 70 dependent on consumer spending growing This is a structural problem and it cannot be resolved by merely cutting rates We8217ve already begun to see signs of a slowdown in consumer spending at Target Lowes and Walmart If that deceleration continues the economy will slip quickly into recession American consumers have withdrawn over 9 trillion from their home equity in the last 7 years That spendingspree has kept the economy whirring along at a healthy clip Now that housing prices have stabilized8221and in many cases gone down8212that easy money is no longer available setting the stage for shrinking economic growth slower home sales and declining demand Deflation is the Fed8217s worst nightmare and will be fought with every weapon in their arsenal Regrettably Bernanke does not have the tools to fix this problem and he is likely to destroy the currency if he keeps cutting rates The recent cuts have already sent oil and gold to new highs while the dollar continues to nosedive The euro stands at 142 per dollar8221up 63 since Bush took office The weak dollar and the persistent credit problems in the markets has sent foreign investors scampering for the exits August was the biggest month on record for the withdrawal of foreign capital from US securities and Treasuries8212163 billion in capital flight Japan and China led the way Confidence in US markets leadership and integrity has never been lower Investors are voting with their feet They8217ve had enough With capital fleeing the country at the present pace the US will not be able to maintain its 800 current account deficit which means that prices will rise the dollar will fall and consumer spending will dry up No amount of financial tinkering at the Federal Reserve will make a damn bit of difference Barring a dramatic change in economic policy8221which seems unlikely8212we appear to be quickstepping towards a systemwide marketbusting breakdown amp160 THE MESS THAT GREENSPAN MADE The ruinous effects of Greenspan8217s housing bubble can8217t be fully appreciated unless one spends a bit of time studying some of the charts and graphs that are now available These graphs are the best way to dispel any lingering suspicion that the housing bubble may be some a leftwing conspiracy theory It8217s not and these links should provide ample evidence to the contrary httpwwwbubbleinfocomstatistics20072007315armresetschedulehtml httpstaticseekingalphacomuploads200797amortization_1jpg httpstaticseekingalphacomuploads200797amortization_2jpg The first graph is the ARM adjustable rate mortgages reset schedule8212totaling hundreds of billions of dollars in the next 2 years The next 2 are the interest only and negative amortization share of total purchase mortgage originations 20002006 Keep in mind when studying the ARM reset graph that 8220A study commissioned by the AFLCIO shows that nearly half of homeowners with ARMs don8217t know how their loans will adjust and threequarters don8217t know how much their payments will increase if the loan does reset 73 of homeowners with ARM8217s don8217t even know how much their monthly payment will increase the next time the rate goes up8221 Calculated Risk The unwinding of the housing bubble is now beginning to show up in other areas of the economy Credit card debt has skyrocketed to 17 annually now that homeowners are no longer able to tap into their vanishing home equity Americans already owe over 500 billion on their credit cards Now that debt is increasing faster than retail sales which suggests that many people are so overextended they are using their cards for basic necessities and medical expenses Industry analysts now expect an unprecedented wave of credit card defaults in the next 6 to 12 months Unfortunately for the tappedout consumer the credit card represents his last access to an unsecured loan We can also expect the downturn in housing to swell the unemployment lines Oddly enough while home sales have declined 40 from their peak in 2005 constructionrelated employment has only slipped 5That is really astonishing It could be that the BLS is fabricating the numbers using its BirthDeath model which magically produces millions of fictitious jobs But we know that construction has accounted for 2 out of every 5 new jobs in the US for the last 6 years so we are sure to see a significant rise in unemployment as the bubble deflates The financial and mortgage industries have already experienced significant layoffs Similarly we can expect to see substantial correction in home prices Housing prices typically lag 6 months after sales peak and inventory rises So far prices have dropped a mere 35 whereas inventory is at historic highs and sales have decreased 40 It is impossible to know how low prices will go some experts like Robert Schiller predict 50 cuts in the hotter markets but the downward pressure on housing prices is bound to be enormous Growing unemployment o personal savings rising foreclosures the weakening dollar and the prevailing mood of gloominess a recent poll showed that a majority of Americans believe we are ALREADY in a recession suggest that the impending fall in home prices will be precipitous DEFLATIONARY DOWNWARD SPIRAL There is a debate raging on the econoblogs about whether the country is headed towards hyperinflation or a deflationary cycle The argument for hyperinflation is compelling since the Fed has already shown that it is prepared to savage the dollar in order to keep the economy running As a result we8217ve seen inflation is heating up at a pace not seen in over a decadedespite the government8217s mendacious figures In September gasoline costs rose 4 heating oil soared 9 food jumped 5 and dairy products lurched ahead 75 Everything is up except the greenback which appears to be in its death throes Still there are signs that America8217s debtfueled consumer economy is on its last legs as shoppers and homeowners are increasingly forced to accept that they have maxedout nearly all of their available lines of credit They will have to curtail their spending and live within their means That means less growth a continuing decline in housing and a sharp fall in equities prices These are all the harbingers of deflation Treasury Secretary Paulson8217s new 8220Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit8221 MLEC8212which allows the investment banks to delay reporting their losses8212is particularly ominous in this regard since it was the Japanese banks unwillingness to writeoff their bad debts which extended their deflationary recession for 15 years Can the same thing happen here Probably An interesting exchange took place last month between the widelyrespected economic blogger Mike Shedlock 8220Mish8217s Global Economic Trend Analysis8221 and economist Paul L Kasriel The interview provides details of the Japanese crisis which offer some striking similarities to our present predicament I have transcribed an extended portion of that discussion Paul L Kasriel 8220Japan experienced a deflation in recent years because the bursting of its assetprice bubble in the early 1990s created huge losses in its banking system The Japanese banks had financed the assetprice bubble When it burst the debtors could not keep current on their loans to the banks and therefore were forced to turn back the collateral to the banks The market value of the collateral of course was less than the amount of the loans outstanding thereby inflicting huge losses of capital to the Japanese banks With the decline in bank capital the Japanese banks could not extend new credit to the private sector even though the Bank of Japan was offering credit to the banks at very low nominal rates of interest Banks are an important transmission mechanism between the central bank and the private economy If the banks are unable or unwilling to extend the cheap credit being offered to them by the central bank then the economy grows very slowly if at all This happened in the US during the early 1930s US banks currently hold record amounts of mortgagerelated assets on their books If the housing market were to go into a deep recession resulting in massive mortgage defaults the US banking system could sustain huge losses similar to what the Japanese banks experienced in the 1990s If this were to occur the Fed could cut interest rates to zero but it would have little positive effect on economic activity or inflation Short of the Fed depositing newlycreated money directly into private sector accounts I suspect that a deflation would occur under these circumstances Again crippled banking systems tend to bring on deflations And crippled banking systems seem to result from the bursting of asset bubbles because of the sharp decline in the value of the collateral backing bank loans8221 Mish What if Bernanke cuts interest rates to 1 percent Kasriel In a sustained housing bust that causes banks to take a big hit to their capital it simply will not matter This is essentially what happened recently in Japan and also in the US during the great depression Mish Can you elaborate Kasriel Most people are not aware of actions the Fed took during the Great Depression Bernanke claims that the Fed did not act strong enough during the Great Depression This is simply not true The Fed slashed interest rates and injected huge sums of base money but it did no good More recently Japan did the same thing It also did no good If default rates get high enough banks will simply be unwilling to lend which will severely limit money and credit creation Mish How does inflation start and end Kasriel Inflation starts with expansion of money and credit Inflation ends when the central bank is no longer able or willing to extend credit andor when consumers and businesses are no longer willing to borrow because further expansion and or speculation no longer makes any economic sense Mish So when does it all end Kasriel That is extremely difficult to project If the current housing recession were to turn into a housing depression leading to massive mortgage defaults it could end Alternatively if there were a run on the dollar in the foreign exchange market price inflation could spike up and the Fed would have no choice but to raise interest rates aggressively Given the record leverage in the US economy the rise in interest rates would prompt large scale bankruptcies These are the two 8220checkmate8221 scenarios that come to mind8221 8220Mish8217s Global Economic Trend Analysis8221 Well put Thank you Mish MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state He can be reached at fergiewhitneymsncom amp160 amp160

amp160/PROPN Is/AUX it/PRON really/ADV fair/ADJ to/PART blame/VERB one/NUM man/NOUN for/ADP destroying/VERB the/DET US/PROPN economy/NOUN Probably/ADV not/PART But/CCONJ Alan/PROPN Greenspan/PROPN is/AUX still/ADV tops/NOUN on/ADP our/PRON list/NOUN After/SCONJ all/DET Greenspan/PROPN 8220presided/VERB over/ADP the/DET greatest/ADJ expansion/NOUN of/ADP speculative/ADJ finance/NOUN in/ADP history/NOUN including/VERB a/DET trilliondollar/ADJ hedge/NOUN fund/NOUN industry/NOUN bloated/VERB Wall/PROPN Streetfirm/PROPN balance/NOUN sheets/NOUN approaching/VERB 2/NUM trillion/NUM and/CCONJ a/DET global/ADJ derivatives/NOUN market/NOUN with/ADP notional/ADJ values/NOUN surpassing/VERB an/DET unfathomable/ADJ 220/NUM trillion8221/PROPN Henry/PROPN Liu/PROPN 8220Why/NUM the/DET Subprime/PROPN Bust/PROPN will/AUX Spread8221/PROPN Asia/PROPN Times/PROPN Greenspan/PROPN is/AUX also/ADV responsible/ADJ for/ADP slashing/VERB the/DET real/ADJ Fed/PROPN Funds/PROPN Rate/NOUN so/SCONJ that/SCONJ 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<p>Michael Krawitz, founder and curator of the Cannabis Museum, has obtained via ebay a promotional booklet attesting to the widespread medical use of cannabis in the U.S. a century ago. The handsomely designed and printed 16-page booklet was published by Parke, Davis &amp;amp; Co. to market its &#8220;Cannabis Americana&#8221; to doctors and pharmacists. Just as drug companies nowadays do when they have a potential &#8220;blockbuster&#8221; emerging from the pipeline, Parke, Davis knocked the competition (&#8220;Cannabis Indica&#8221;) and invoked science to peddle its wares in 1910.</p> <p>Under a first-page headline defining Cannabis Americana as &#8220;Cannabis Sativa Grown in America,&#8221; the text gets right to the point:</p> <p>&#8220;Much has been written relative to the comparative activity of Cannabis Sativa grown in different climates (Cannabis Indica, Mexicana, and Americana). It has been generally assumed that the American-grown drug was practically worthless therapeutically, and that Cannabis Sativa grown in India must be used if one would obtain physiologically active preparations.</p> <p>&#8220;Furthermore, it has been claimed that the best Indian drug is that grown especially for medicinal purposes, the part used consisting of the flowering tops of the unfertilized female plants, care being taken during the growing of the drug to weed out the male plants. According to our experience, this is an erroneous notion, as we have repeatedly found that the Indian drug which contains large quantities of seed is fully as active as the drug which consists of the flowering tops only, provided the seed be removed before percolation.&#8221; This may reflect the crudeness of their testing system, which the booklet will describe as state-of-the art.</p> <p>&#8220;Several years ago we began a systematic investigation of American grown Cannabis Sativa. Samples from a number of localalities (sic) were obtained and carefully investigated. From these samples fluid and solid extracts were prepared according to the Pharma-copoeal method, and carefully tested upon animals for physiological activity, and eventually they were standardized by physiological methods. Repeated tests have convinced us that Cannabis Americana properly grown and cured is fully as active as the best Indian drug, while on the other hand we have frequently found Indian Cannabis to be practically inert.</p> <p>&#8220;Before marketing preparations of Cannabis Americana, however, we placed specimens of the fluid and solid extracts in the hands of experienced clinicians for practical test; and from these men, all of whom had used large quantities of Cannabis Indica in practice, we have received reports which affirm they have been unable to determine any therapeutic difference between Cannabis Americana and Cannabis Indica. We are, therefore of the opinion that Cannabis Americana will be found equally as efficient as, and perhaps more uniformly reliable than, Cannabis Indica obtained from abroad, since it is evident that with a source of supply at our very doors proper precautions can be taken to obtain crude drug of the best quality.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Nomenclature The proper botanical name of the drug under consideration is Cannabis Sativa. The Indian plant was formerly supposed to be a distinct species per se, but botanists now consider the two plants to be identical. The old name of Cannabis Indica, however, has been retained in medicine. Cannabis Indica simply means Cannabis Sativa grown in the Indies, and Cannabis Americana means Cannabis Sativa grown in America &#8230;</p> <p>&#8220;Physiological Action The physiological action of Cannabis Americana is precisely the same as that of Cannabis Indica. The effects of this drug are said to be due chiefly to its action upon the central nervous system &#8230;</p> <p>&#8220;Therapeutic Indications Cannabis Americana is employed for the same medicinal purposes as Cannabis Indica, which is frequently used as a hypnotic in cases of sleeplessness, in nervous exhaustion, and as a sedative in patients suffering from pain. Its greatest use has perhaps been in the treatment of various nervous and mental diseases, although it is found as an ingredient in many cough mixtures. In general, Cannabis Americana can be used when a mild hypnotic or sedative is indicated, as it is said not to disturb digestion, and it produces no subsequent nausea and depression. It is of use in cases of migraine, particularly when opium is contraindicated. It is recommended in paralysis agitans to quiet the tremors, in spasm of the bladder, and in sexual impotence not the result of organic disease, especially in combinations with nux vomica and ergot.</p> <p>&#8220;Dosage Extractum Cannabis Americae, 0.01 gramme (1-5 grain), Fluidextractum Cannabis Americanae, 0.05 Cc (1 minim). The dosage of Cannabis Americana is the same as that of Cannabis Indica, as from our experiments we find there is no therapeutic difference in the physiological action of the two drugs.</p> <p>&#8220;Advantages Cannabis Sativa, when grown in the United States (Cannabis Americana) under careful precautions, is found to be fully as active as the best imported Indian-grown Cannabis Sativa, as shown by laboratory and clinical tests. The advantages of using carefully prepared solid and fluid extracts of the home-grown drug are apparent when it is considered that every step of the process, from the planting of the drug to the final marketing of the finished product, is under the supervision of experts. The imported drug varies extremely in activity and much of it is practically inert or flagrantly adulterated.</p> <p>&#8220;Packages Extractum Cannabis Americanae is put up in jars containing one ounce; Fluidextractum Cannabis Americanae is put up in bottles of one-quarter pint and one pint, respectively.&#8221;</p> <p>There follows a centerfold -graceful drawings of the male and female plants, reproduced by a four-color process on one page, and a black and white photo of Parke, Davis&#8217;s laboratory of medical research, a four-story brick building on the bank of the Detroit River. Built in 1902, it was the first lab dedicated to drug-company research and reflects Parke, Davis&#8217;s stature as industry leader.</p> <p>The second half of the booklet reprints an article entitled &#8220;A Pharmacological Study of Cannabis Americana (Cannabis Sativa)&#8221; by Parke, Davis researchers E.M. Houghton and H.C. Hamilton, which ran in the American Journal of Pharmacy January, 1908. It is, shall we say, lacking in rigor. Houghton&#8217;s specialty was testing drugs on animals. His method:</p> <p>&#8220;consists essentially in the careful observation of the physiological effects produced upon dogs from the internal administration of the preparation of the drug under test. It is necessary in selecting the test animals to pick out those that are easily susceptible to the action of cannabis, since dogs as well as human beings vary considerably in their reaction to the drug&#8230;</p> <p>&#8220;In preparing the test, the standard dose (in the form of solid extract for convenience) is administered internally in a small capsule. The dog&#8217;s tongue is drawn forward between the teeth with the left hand, and the capsule placed on the back part of the tongue with the right hand. The tongue is then quickly released, and the capsule is swallowed with ease. In order that the drug may be rapidly absorbed, food should be withheld 24 hours before the test and an efficient cathartic given if needed.&#8221; In other words, the poor dog would be given a large dose of hash and then starved.</p> <p>&#8220;Within a comparatively short time the dog begins to show the characteristic action of the drug. There are three typical effects to be noticed from active extracts on susceptible animals: first a stage of excitability, then a stage of incoordination, followed by a period of drowsiness. The first of these is so dependent on the characteristics of the dog used that it is of little value for judging the activity of the drug, while with only a few exceptions the second, or the stage of incoordination, invariably follows in one to two hours: the dog loses control of its legs and of the muscles supporting its head, so that when nothing occurs to attract its attention its head will droop, its body sway, and when severely affected, the animal will stagger and fall, the intoxication being peculiarly suggestive and striking.</p> <p>&#8220;Experience is necessary on the part of the observer to determine just when the physiological effects of the drug begin to manifest themselves, since there is always, as in the case of many chemical tests, a personal factor to be guarded against. When an active extract is given to a susceptible animal, in the smallest dose that will produce any perceptible effect, one must watch closely for the slightest trace of incoordination, lack of attention, or drowsiness. It is particularly necessary for the animals to be confined in a room where nothing will excite them, since when their attention is drawn to anything of interest the typical effects of the drug may disappear.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The influence of the test dose of the unknown drug is carefully compared with that of the same dose of the standard preparation administered to another test dog at the same time and under the same conditions.</p> <p>&#8220;Finally, when the animals become drowsy, the observations are recorded and the animals are returned to their quarters.</p> <p>&#8220;The second day following, the observations upon the two dogs are reversed, i.e. the animal receiving the test dose of the unknown receives a test dose of the known, and vice versa, and a second observation is made. If one desires to make a very accurate quantitative determination, it is advisable to use, not two dogs, but four or five, and to study the effects of the test dose of the unknown specimen in comparison with the test dose of the known, making several observations on alternate days. If the unknown is below standard activity, the amount should be increased until the effect produced is the same as for the test dose of the standard. If the unknown is above strength, the test dose is diminished accordingly. From the dose of the unknown selected as producing the same action as the test dose of the standard, the amount of dilution or concentration necessary is determined. The degree of accuracy with which the test is carried out will depend largely upon the experience of the observer and the care he exercises.</p> <p>&#8220;Another point to be noted in the use of dogs for standardizing Cannabis is that, although they never appear to lose their susceptibility, the same dog cannot be used indefinitely for accurate testing. After a time they become so accustomed to the effects of the drug that they refuse to stand on their feet, and so do not show the typical incoordination which is its most characteristic and constant action.&#8221; Did the test animals learn the drill, get bored, or go on strike?</p> <p>&#8220;Previous to the adoption of the physiological test over 12 years ago, we were often annoyed by complaints of physicians that certain lots of drugs were inert; in fact some hospitals, before accepting their supplies of hemp preparations, asked for samples in order to make rough tests upon their patients before ordering.&#8221; Or did they just want some freebies?</p> <p>&#8220;Many tons of the various preparations of Cannabis Indica have been tested and supplied for medicinal purposes.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Since the adoption of the new test we have not had a well authenticated report of inactivity, although many tons of the various preparations of Cannabis Indica have been tested and supplied for medicinal purposes.</p> <p>&#8220;A dog weighing 25 pounds received an injection of two ounces of an active U.S.P. fluid extract in the jugular vein with the expectation that it would certainly be sufficient to produce death&#8230;</p> <p>&#8220;At the beginning of our observations careful search of the literature on the subject was made to determine the toxicity of the hemp. Not a single case of fatal poisoning have we been able to find reported, although often alarming symptoms may occur. A dog weighing 25 pounds received an injection of two ounces of an active U.S.P. fluid extract in the jugular vein with the expectation that it would certainly be sufficient to produce death. To our surprise, the animal, after being unconscious for about a day and a half, recovered completely. This dog received not alone the active constituents of the drug but also the amount of alcohol contained in the fluid extract. Another dog received about 7 grammes of Solid Extract Cannabis with the same result. We have never been able to give an animal a sufficient quantity of a U.S. P. or other preparation of the Cannabis (Indica or Americana) to produce death.&#8221;</p> <p>Solid Extract Cannabis is also known as hashish. Seven grammes = 1/4 oz.</p> <p>&#8220;There is some variation in the amount of extractive obtained, as would be expected from the varying amount of stems, seeds, etc., in the different samples. Likewise there is a certain amount of variation in the physiological action, but in every case the administration of 0.01 gramme of the extract per kilo body weight has elicited the characteristic symptoms in properly selected animals. &#8220;The repeated tests we have made convince us that Cannabis Americana properly grown and cured is fully as active as the best Indian drug. &#8220;Furthermore, we have placed out quantities of fluid extract and solid extract in the hands of experienced clinicians, and from eight of these men, who are all large users of the drug, we have received reports which state that they are unable to determine any therapeutic difference between the Cannabis Americana and the Cannabis Indica.</p> <p>&#8220;Conclusions 1. The method outlined in the paper for determining the physiological activity of Cannabis Sativa by internal administration to especially selected dogs, has been found reliable when the standard dose of extract, 0.01 gramme per kilo body weight is tested on animals, the effects being noted by an experienced observer in comparison with the effects of the same quantity of a standard preparation.</p> <p>&#8220;2. Cannabis Sativa, when grown in various localities of the United States and Mexico, is found to be fully as active as the best imported Indian-grown Cannabis Sativa, as shown by laboratory and clinical tests.&#8221;</p> <p>Evidently Parke, Davis owned land in Mexico or contracted with farmers there to produce Cannabis Americana.</p> <p>Michael Krawitz, who lives in Virginia, competes on ebay for cannabis-related artifacts with Paul Stanford (who runs clinics in several Western states for the Hemp and Cannabis Foundation), Ethan Russo, MD, the well-known neurologist, and ex-pat researcher David Watson (co-founder of Hortipharm, whose genetic library jump-started GW pharmaceuticals), among others. Krawitz is the son of an auctioneer, so he&#8217;s highly knowledgeable about antiques. A disability check from the Air Force (injured his back in a helicopter crash) helps sustain his activism, which in this case is truly collectivist. Krawitz has boldly declared his collection to be &#8220;The Cannabis Museum.&#8221; He hopes to have 100,000 artifacts online at www.cannabismuseum.org by 2008. He also brings artifacts to display at various venues -conferences, trade shows, etc. His explanations are informative and insightful. Krawitz gave a talk at the NORML conference in San Francisco last month at which he said, in reference to a photo of Louis Armstrong: &#8220;Louis Armstrong was very outspoken about smoking marijuana. Louis Armstrong was the first activist.&#8221;</p> <p>Krawitz asked Tod Mikuriya, MD, to autograph a copy of &#8220;Marijuana Medical Papers,&#8221; the anthology of pre-prohibition literature Mikuriya published in 1973. It includes the result of Mikuriya&#8217;s inquiry into Cannabis Americana -a letter from L.M. Wheeler, PhD, Director, Department of Product Development, dated June 19, 1968:</p> <p>&#8220;Dear Dr. Miuriya,</p> <p>Your letter of May 21 inquiring further into the role that Parke-Davis played in the early teens and twenties with respect to the stabilization of cannabis extracts is at hand. Fragmentary information has come to our attention by virture of a recent visit to Detroit from his home in Florida of one of the individuals active on our staff at that time.</p> <p>&#8220;This individual informs us that Parke, Davis &amp;amp; Company and Eli Lilly Company did cooperate in the development of a standard cannabis preparation in the form of a fluid extract, a tincture, a solid extract, and a powdered extract. We originally used Cannabis Indicate but later standardized on a strain of Cannabis Americana which we grew at our biological farm, Parkedale, near Rochester, Michigan.</p> <p>&#8220;Our retired employee gave us the following description, as best he could reconstruct it from memory, of the standardization procedure used in experimental animals at that time. The test method is as follows:</p> <p>1. Select medium-sized short-haired dogs weighing less than 15 kilos, of fair degree of intelligence, preferably fox terriers. Do not feed for 12 hours prior to the test.</p> <p>2. Determine susceptibility of the dogs by administration of minimum dose of standard preperation. The standard preparation is obtained from the food &amp;amp; Drug Control Laboratory at Washington.</p> <p>3. The dose of sample to be tested is determined by multiplication of the weight of the dog by the standard dose per unit weight.</p> <p>4. Dose is administered in capsule.</p> <p>5. The results of administration are apparent in about one hour. Muscular incoordination and drowsiness indicate activity.</p> <p>6. The activity of the sample is dependent upon the degree of reaction and susceptibility of the dog. Do not use the dog oftener than once every three days.</p> <p>7. The standard dose for various preparations is as follows:</p> <p>Fluid extract 0.1 cc. per kilogram Tincture 1.0 cc. per kilogram Solid extract 4.0 mg per kilogram Powdered extract 40 mg per kilgram</p> <p>8. Retest the sample following adjustment on the basis of the first assay.</p> <p>&#8220;Our interest in standardizing cannabis extracts was discontinued in 1938 when the &#8220;New&#8221; Drug Regulations called for the proof of safety of agents distributed for drug purposes. With this intermediate clarification of the description of drug, cannabis extracts fell into disuse by the medical profession since they provided no medical need [sic] that was not available in a more carefully standardized form from the more advanced work on natural alkaloids.</p> <p>&#8220;Since the current New Drug Regulations require both safety and efficacy to be clearly demonstrated in the hands of qualified investigators, it seems even more remote that cannabis might find a useful role in human medicine.&#8221;</p> <p>Mikuriya says, &#8220;Safety and efficacy have been clearly demonstrated. The plant hasn&#8217;t changed and neither has human physiology. Cannabis should be grandfathered into the national formulary, just as aspirin was after the new regulations were established in 1938.&#8221;</p> <p>FRED GARDNER is the editor of <a href="http://www.ccrmg.org/journal/" type="external">O&#8217;Shaughnessy&#8217;s</a> Journal of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:fred@plebesite.com" type="external">fred@plebesite.com</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

The Marketing of "Cannabis Americana"

https://counterpunch.org/2006/05/13/the-marketing-of-quot-cannabis-americana-quot/

2006-05-13

4left

Michael Krawitz founder and curator of the Cannabis Museum has obtained via ebay a promotional booklet attesting to the widespread medical use of cannabis in the US a century ago The handsomely designed and printed 16page booklet was published by Parke Davis ampamp Co to market its 8220Cannabis Americana8221 to doctors and pharmacists Just as drug companies nowadays do when they have a potential 8220blockbuster8221 emerging from the pipeline Parke Davis knocked the competition 8220Cannabis Indica8221 and invoked science to peddle its wares in 1910 Under a firstpage headline defining Cannabis Americana as 8220Cannabis Sativa Grown in America8221 the text gets right to the point 8220Much has been written relative to the comparative activity of Cannabis Sativa grown in different climates Cannabis Indica Mexicana and Americana It has been generally assumed that the Americangrown drug was practically worthless therapeutically and that Cannabis Sativa grown in India must be used if one would obtain physiologically active preparations 8220Furthermore it has been claimed that the best Indian drug is that grown especially for medicinal purposes the part used consisting of the flowering tops of the unfertilized female plants care being taken during the growing of the drug to weed out the male plants According to our experience this is an erroneous notion as we have repeatedly found that the Indian drug which contains large quantities of seed is fully as active as the drug which consists of the flowering tops only provided the seed be removed before percolation8221 This may reflect the crudeness of their testing system which the booklet will describe as stateofthe art 8220Several years ago we began a systematic investigation of American grown Cannabis Sativa Samples from a number of localalities sic were obtained and carefully investigated From these samples fluid and solid extracts were prepared according to the Pharmacopoeal method and carefully tested upon animals for physiological activity and eventually they were standardized by physiological methods Repeated tests have convinced us that Cannabis Americana properly grown and cured is fully as active as the best Indian drug while on the other hand we have frequently found Indian Cannabis to be practically inert 8220Before marketing preparations of Cannabis Americana however we placed specimens of the fluid and solid extracts in the hands of experienced clinicians for practical test and from these men all of whom had used large quantities of Cannabis Indica in practice we have received reports which affirm they have been unable to determine any therapeutic difference between Cannabis Americana and Cannabis Indica We are therefore of the opinion that Cannabis Americana will be found equally as efficient as and perhaps more uniformly reliable than Cannabis Indica obtained from abroad since it is evident that with a source of supply at our very doors proper precautions can be taken to obtain crude drug of the best quality8221 8220Nomenclature The proper botanical name of the drug under consideration is Cannabis Sativa The Indian plant was formerly supposed to be a distinct species per se but botanists now consider the two plants to be identical The old name of Cannabis Indica however has been retained in medicine Cannabis Indica simply means Cannabis Sativa grown in the Indies and Cannabis Americana means Cannabis Sativa grown in America 8230 8220Physiological Action The physiological action of Cannabis Americana is precisely the same as that of Cannabis Indica The effects of this drug are said to be due chiefly to its action upon the central nervous system 8230 8220Therapeutic Indications Cannabis Americana is employed for the same medicinal purposes as Cannabis Indica which is frequently used as a hypnotic in cases of sleeplessness in nervous exhaustion and as a sedative in patients suffering from pain Its greatest use has perhaps been in the treatment of various nervous and mental diseases although it is found as an ingredient in many cough mixtures In general Cannabis Americana can be used when a mild hypnotic or sedative is indicated as it is said not to disturb digestion and it produces no subsequent nausea and depression It is of use in cases of migraine particularly when opium is contraindicated It is recommended in paralysis agitans to quiet the tremors in spasm of the bladder and in sexual impotence not the result of organic disease especially in combinations with nux vomica and ergot 8220Dosage Extractum Cannabis Americae 001 gramme 15 grain Fluidextractum Cannabis Americanae 005 Cc 1 minim The dosage of Cannabis Americana is the same as that of Cannabis Indica as from our experiments we find there is no therapeutic difference in the physiological action of the two drugs 8220Advantages Cannabis Sativa when grown in the United States Cannabis Americana under careful precautions is found to be fully as active as the best imported Indiangrown Cannabis Sativa as shown by laboratory and clinical tests The advantages of using carefully prepared solid and fluid extracts of the homegrown drug are apparent when it is considered that every step of the process from the planting of the drug to the final marketing of the finished product is under the supervision of experts The imported drug varies extremely in activity and much of it is practically inert or flagrantly adulterated 8220Packages Extractum Cannabis Americanae is put up in jars containing one ounce Fluidextractum Cannabis Americanae is put up in bottles of onequarter pint and one pint respectively8221 There follows a centerfold graceful drawings of the male and female plants reproduced by a fourcolor process on one page and a black and white photo of Parke Davis8217s laboratory of medical research a fourstory brick building on the bank of the Detroit River Built in 1902 it was the first lab dedicated to drugcompany research and reflects Parke Davis8217s stature as industry leader The second half of the booklet reprints an article entitled 8220A Pharmacological Study of Cannabis Americana Cannabis Sativa8221 by Parke Davis researchers EM Houghton and HC Hamilton which ran in the American Journal of Pharmacy January 1908 It is shall we say lacking in rigor Houghton8217s specialty was testing drugs on animals His method 8220consists essentially in the careful observation of the physiological effects produced upon dogs from the internal administration of the preparation of the drug under test It is necessary in selecting the test animals to pick out those that are easily susceptible to the action of cannabis since dogs as well as human beings vary considerably in their reaction to the drug8230 8220In preparing the test the standard dose in the form of solid extract for convenience is administered internally in a small capsule The dog8217s tongue is drawn forward between the teeth with the left hand and the capsule placed on the back part of the tongue with the right hand The tongue is then quickly released and the capsule is swallowed with ease In order that the drug may be rapidly absorbed food should be withheld 24 hours before the test and an efficient cathartic given if needed8221 In other words the poor dog would be given a large dose of hash and then starved 8220Within a comparatively short time the dog begins to show the characteristic action of the drug There are three typical effects to be noticed from active extracts on susceptible animals first a stage of excitability then a stage of incoordination followed by a period of drowsiness The first of these is so dependent on the characteristics of the dog used that it is of little value for judging the activity of the drug while with only a few exceptions the second or the stage of incoordination invariably follows in one to two hours the dog loses control of its legs and of the muscles supporting its head so that when nothing occurs to attract its attention its head will droop its body sway and when severely affected the animal will stagger and fall the intoxication being peculiarly suggestive and striking 8220Experience is necessary on the part of the observer to determine just when the physiological effects of the drug begin to manifest themselves since there is always as in the case of many chemical tests a personal factor to be guarded against When an active extract is given to a susceptible animal in the smallest dose that will produce any perceptible effect one must watch closely for the slightest trace of incoordination lack of attention or drowsiness It is particularly necessary for the animals to be confined in a room where nothing will excite them since when their attention is drawn to anything of interest the typical effects of the drug may disappear8221 8220The influence of the test dose of the unknown drug is carefully compared with that of the same dose of the standard preparation administered to another test dog at the same time and under the same conditions 8220Finally when the animals become drowsy the observations are recorded and the animals are returned to their quarters 8220The second day following the observations upon the two dogs are reversed ie the animal receiving the test dose of the unknown receives a test dose of the known and vice versa and a second observation is made If one desires to make a very accurate quantitative determination it is advisable to use not two dogs but four or five and to study the effects of the test dose of the unknown specimen in comparison with the test dose of the known making several observations on alternate days If the unknown is below standard activity the amount should be increased until the effect produced is the same as for the test dose of the standard If the unknown is above strength the test dose is diminished accordingly From the dose of the unknown selected as producing the same action as the test dose of the standard the amount of dilution or concentration necessary is determined The degree of accuracy with which the test is carried out will depend largely upon the experience of the observer and the care he exercises 8220Another point to be noted in the use of dogs for standardizing Cannabis is that although they never appear to lose their susceptibility the same dog cannot be used indefinitely for accurate testing After a time they become so accustomed to the effects of the drug that they refuse to stand on their feet and so do not show the typical incoordination which is its most characteristic and constant action8221 Did the test animals learn the drill get bored or go on strike 8220Previous to the adoption of the physiological test over 12 years ago we were often annoyed by complaints of physicians that certain lots of drugs were inert in fact some hospitals before accepting their supplies of hemp preparations asked for samples in order to make rough tests upon their patients before ordering8221 Or did they just want some freebies 8220Many tons of the various preparations of Cannabis Indica have been tested and supplied for medicinal purposes8221 8220Since the adoption of the new test we have not had a well authenticated report of inactivity although many tons of the various preparations of Cannabis Indica have been tested and supplied for medicinal purposes 8220A dog weighing 25 pounds received an injection of two ounces of an active USP fluid extract in the jugular vein with the expectation that it would certainly be sufficient to produce death8230 8220At the beginning of our observations careful search of the literature on the subject was made to determine the toxicity of the hemp Not a single case of fatal poisoning have we been able to find reported although often alarming symptoms may occur A dog weighing 25 pounds received an injection of two ounces of an active USP fluid extract in the jugular vein with the expectation that it would certainly be sufficient to produce death To our surprise the animal after being unconscious for about a day and a half recovered completely This dog received not alone the active constituents of the drug but also the amount of alcohol contained in the fluid extract Another dog received about 7 grammes of Solid Extract Cannabis with the same result We have never been able to give an animal a sufficient quantity of a US P or other preparation of the Cannabis Indica or Americana to produce death8221 Solid Extract Cannabis is also known as hashish Seven grammes 14 oz 8220There is some variation in the amount of extractive obtained as would be expected from the varying amount of stems seeds etc in the different samples Likewise there is a certain amount of variation in the physiological action but in every case the administration of 001 gramme of the extract per kilo body weight has elicited the characteristic symptoms in properly selected animals 8220The repeated tests we have made convince us that Cannabis Americana properly grown and cured is fully as active as the best Indian drug 8220Furthermore we have placed out quantities of fluid extract and solid extract in the hands of experienced clinicians and from eight of these men who are all large users of the drug we have received reports which state that they are unable to determine any therapeutic difference between the Cannabis Americana and the Cannabis Indica 8220Conclusions 1 The method outlined in the paper for determining the physiological activity of Cannabis Sativa by internal administration to especially selected dogs has been found reliable when the standard dose of extract 001 gramme per kilo body weight is tested on animals the effects being noted by an experienced observer in comparison with the effects of the same quantity of a standard preparation 82202 Cannabis Sativa when grown in various localities of the United States and Mexico is found to be fully as active as the best imported Indiangrown Cannabis Sativa as shown by laboratory and clinical tests8221 Evidently Parke Davis owned land in Mexico or contracted with farmers there to produce Cannabis Americana Michael Krawitz who lives in Virginia competes on ebay for cannabisrelated artifacts with Paul Stanford who runs clinics in several Western states for the Hemp and Cannabis Foundation Ethan Russo MD the wellknown neurologist and expat researcher David Watson cofounder of Hortipharm whose genetic library jumpstarted GW pharmaceuticals among others Krawitz is the son of an auctioneer so he8217s highly knowledgeable about antiques A disability check from the Air Force injured his back in a helicopter crash helps sustain his activism which in this case is truly collectivist Krawitz has boldly declared his collection to be 8220The Cannabis Museum8221 He hopes to have 100000 artifacts online at wwwcannabismuseumorg by 2008 He also brings artifacts to display at various venues conferences trade shows etc His explanations are informative and insightful Krawitz gave a talk at the NORML conference in San Francisco last month at which he said in reference to a photo of Louis Armstrong 8220Louis Armstrong was very outspoken about smoking marijuana Louis Armstrong was the first activist8221 Krawitz asked Tod Mikuriya MD to autograph a copy of 8220Marijuana Medical Papers8221 the anthology of preprohibition literature Mikuriya published in 1973 It includes the result of Mikuriya8217s inquiry into Cannabis Americana a letter from LM Wheeler PhD Director Department of Product Development dated June 19 1968 8220Dear Dr Miuriya Your letter of May 21 inquiring further into the role that ParkeDavis played in the early teens and twenties with respect to the stabilization of cannabis extracts is at hand Fragmentary information has come to our attention by virture of a recent visit to Detroit from his home in Florida of one of the individuals active on our staff at that time 8220This individual informs us that Parke Davis ampamp Company and Eli Lilly Company did cooperate in the development of a standard cannabis preparation in the form of a fluid extract a tincture a solid extract and a powdered extract We originally used Cannabis Indicate but later standardized on a strain of Cannabis Americana which we grew at our biological farm Parkedale near Rochester Michigan 8220Our retired employee gave us the following description as best he could reconstruct it from memory of the standardization procedure used in experimental animals at that time The test method is as follows 1 Select mediumsized shorthaired dogs weighing less than 15 kilos of fair degree of intelligence preferably fox terriers Do not feed for 12 hours prior to the test 2 Determine susceptibility of the dogs by administration of minimum dose of standard preperation The standard preparation is obtained from the food ampamp Drug Control Laboratory at Washington 3 The dose of sample to be tested is determined by multiplication of the weight of the dog by the standard dose per unit weight 4 Dose is administered in capsule 5 The results of administration are apparent in about one hour Muscular incoordination and drowsiness indicate activity 6 The activity of the sample is dependent upon the degree of reaction and susceptibility of the dog Do not use the dog oftener than once every three days 7 The standard dose for various preparations is as follows Fluid extract 01 cc per kilogram Tincture 10 cc per kilogram Solid extract 40 mg per kilogram Powdered extract 40 mg per kilgram 8 Retest the sample following adjustment on the basis of the first assay 8220Our interest in standardizing cannabis extracts was discontinued in 1938 when the 8220New8221 Drug Regulations called for the proof of safety of agents distributed for drug purposes With this intermediate clarification of the description of drug cannabis extracts fell into disuse by the medical profession since they provided no medical need sic that was not available in a more carefully standardized form from the more advanced work on natural alkaloids 8220Since the current New Drug Regulations require both safety and efficacy to be clearly demonstrated in the hands of qualified investigators it seems even more remote that cannabis might find a useful role in human medicine8221 Mikuriya says 8220Safety and efficacy have been clearly demonstrated The plant hasn8217t changed and neither has human physiology Cannabis should be grandfathered into the national formulary just as aspirin was after the new regulations were established in 19388221 FRED GARDNER is the editor of O8217Shaughnessy8217s Journal of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group He can be reached at fredplebesitecom amp160 amp160

Michael/PROPN Krawitz/PROPN founder/NOUN and/CCONJ curator/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Cannabis/PROPN Museum/PROPN has/AUX obtained/VERB via/ADP ebay/PROPN a/DET promotional/ADJ booklet/NOUN attesting/VERB to/ADP the/DET widespread/ADJ medical/ADJ use/NOUN of/ADP cannabis/NOUN in/ADP the/DET US/PROPN a/DET century/NOUN ago/ADV The/DET handsomely/ADV designed/VERB and/CCONJ printed/VERB 16page/NUM booklet/NOUN was/AUX published/VERB by/ADP Parke/PROPN Davis/PROPN ampamp/ADP Co/PROPN to/PART market/VERB its/PRON 8220Cannabis/NUM Americana8221/PROPN to/ADP doctors/NOUN and/CCONJ pharmacists/NOUN Just/ADV as/SCONJ drug/NOUN companies/NOUN nowadays/ADV do/VERB when/SCONJ they/PRON have/VERB a/DET potential/ADJ 8220blockbuster8221/NOUN emerging/VERB from/ADP the/DET pipeline/NOUN Parke/PROPN Davis/PROPN knocked/VERB the/DET competition/NOUN 8220Cannabis/NUM Indica8221/PROPN and/CCONJ invoked/VERB science/NOUN to/PART peddle/VERB its/PRON wares/NOUN in/ADP 1910/NUM Under/ADP a/DET firstpage/NOUN 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<p>On Thursday, November 1, 2001, I left my farmhouse on the North Coast of Maine, where I&#8217;m an organic grower, and headed for the Bangor International Airport in Bangor, Maine. I was dressed conservatively in a long, brown skirt with a matching jacket and turtleneck sweater, no jewelry, no buttons or other political indications attached, looking very like other women my age in this part of the world. I am a relatively well known environmental, social, and political activist who has run for public office. It should be noted that, while I&#8217;ve been an activist for over thirty years, I&#8217;ve never been arrested, nor has there been anything in my life that would signal I meant harm to anyone.</p> <p>Also, this was the third time this year I had traveled out of (or attempted to, in this case) Bangor Airport on American Airlines using an e-ticket purchased from Priceline.com bought weeks before with my own credit card. They had no reason for profiling and singling me out. It had to have been because of my political views which, of course, is not a good reason (see U.S. Constitution&#8217;s first Ten Amendments, otherwise known as the Bill of Rights).</p> <p>I was headed for Chicago for a Green Party USA National Coordinating Committee meeting, where I was to speak the next night on biochemical warfare and pesticides as weapons of war. I was also scheduled to interview job applicants, present several proposals and financial reports, and so on. I am a lead person on the National Coordinating Committee of the Green Party USA (the original Green Party, although there is now another which took a very similar name).</p> <p>I arrived at the Bangor Airport the now-requisite two hours ahead of the flight and walked in to the airport to the sight of a couple of dozen National Guard troops carrying machine guns in their hands wandering around the lobby. I walked down to the American Airlines ticket counter, where there were no other passengers, and told the airlines ticket agent my name. I was holding out my picture ID and the printed itinerary they told us to bring, but he barely glanced at them. I remember thinking, &#8220;Does he have a picture of me under that counter? Why didn&#8217;t he look at my ID?&#8221;</p> <p>No one checked my ID at any time. They all knew what I looked like and, it became clear, my antiwar stance. I am not that well known that they would have known me on sight. Why were they briefed about me before I arrived at the airport? What were they told? Was it the FBI or some other agency? Which one?</p> <p>The ticket agent spent an inordinate amount of time on his computer, then finally produced a boarding pass with a large &#8220;S&#8221; written on it. I asked him what that meant, and he said I had been picked to have my bags searched. Well, one expects that now, so I said, &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s okay.&#8221; But I had a feeling there was more.</p> <p>Since there was no one else around, I turned back to him and looked him in the eye &#8211; he seemed a decent guy &#8211; and asked him, &#8220;My being picked wasn&#8217;t random, was it?&#8221; He hesitated a moment, but then said, &#8220;No, your name was already flagged in the computer and you would have been searched in any case.&#8221; Well, still possibly coincidence.</p> <p>Then to the x-ray for my bags and me. I said to the two women sitting by the machine that scans the bags. sort of apologetically, &#8220;I&#8217;ve been picked to have my bags searched. I know this might sound silly, but since you handle all these people&#8217;s bags and belongings&#8211;with the Anthrax scare and all&#8211;I&#8217;d like it if whoever searches through my clothes and things wash their hands first.&#8221; They looked at me with hate and loathing and one said, &#8220;We don&#8217;t want YOUR germs, either.&#8221; (Turns out they wear rubber gloves.)</p> <p>&#8220;Whoa,&#8221; I thought, &#8220;either I&#8217;m back in kindergarten or these normally quite civil women have some reason for being hostile.&#8221; I had the distinct feeling they had been told awful things about me &#8211; I want to know what they were told about this profiled individual coming to their airport.</p> <p>Neither my bags nor I set off any beeps in the machinery so we walked right through to the boarding area. Here I sat down with the other passengers. There was one National Guard soldier in the boarding area; he was a short man with a black eye wearing camo gear and carrying a machine gun.</p> <p>Soon after I sat down, the National Guardsman looked at the dozen or so passengers, his eyes stopping at me and he yelled, &#8220;Bring those bags over here!&#8221; Since he didn&#8217;t call my name, how did he know which person was me, since I did not look appreciably different from the others?</p> <p>When I didn&#8217;t move fast enough, he yelled again, &#8220;Hurry up! Move! Bring those bags up here!&#8221; This did not make me move faster. By now people were beginning to stare at me as if I might possibly be someone bent on doing something wrong.</p> <p>I set my two smallish bags on the table where two women were waiting to search my bags. As one of them had trouble with a zipper on my older bag, I said, &#8220;Oh, that zipper is not right, here, let me open it for you,&#8221; and I reached over the table to undo the zipper. Immediately, the soldier yelled out, &#8220;Get your hands away from there!&#8221; By now the other passengers were getting nervous, of course.</p> <p>He was standing at the end of the table with the women on one side looking in my bags and me standing on the other side of the table. I turned to face him, which put my back towards everyone else, and he grabbed my left arm and began loudly spouting pro-war nonsense into my face. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you understand we have to get them before they get us? Don&#8217;t you understand what happened September 11?&#8221; and so on.</p> <p>I immediately pulled my arm away from him and said, &#8220;Do not touch me. You cannot do that,&#8221; and stepped back a foot or so, saying that I didn&#8217;t want to hear his views on why he thought we should kill starving, helpless people in Afghanistan.</p> <p>He grabbed for me again. I stepped back further stating emphatically, &#8220;Do Not Touch Me,&#8221; and further emphasizing that I did not want to listen to his views on the war. He was about to leave his position and come after me again, but I saw the senior security man who is usually there shake his head &#8220;No&#8221; at the soldier, who then backed off, but he was angry that I would not submit to his holding me while he forced his views on me.</p> <p>I turned and there just a couple of inches away was the man with the metal-detecting wand. I stepped back a foot or two so he wasn&#8217;t right up against me, and he did the wand thing. I was the only one whose bags were searched. For a woman of a certain age such as myself to stand there with arms outstretched while a man skimmed my body with a device was very embarrassing and demeaning.</p> <p>I asked him not to touch me with the wand, as I didn&#8217;t know what it was, but, of course, he had to touch my shoulder with it. I ignored this, just wanting to get out of there. While he was doing the wand thing, I heard the soldier, who was behind me, say, &#8220;Don&#8217;t let her on the plane.&#8221; I thought he was talking to himself.</p> <p>Then they were done with the searching, and I walked the three feet to the boarding gate. The American Airlines agent said, &#8220;You can&#8217;t get on the plane.&#8221; I asked why. He replied, &#8220;Because he [indicating the soldier] says you didn&#8217;t cooperate with the search.&#8221; I said, &#8220;But you were standing here the whole time. Didn&#8217;t you see him grab my arm and talk loudly into my face?&#8221; He said he couldn&#8217;t see that because my back was to people, only saw me back off.</p> <p>I then told the American Airlines agent that I needed to get to Chicago and stated what I had to do there. The American Airlines agent then said, rather softly, probably so the guardsman soldier couldn&#8217;t hear, &#8220;We&#8217;ll put you on the four o&#8217;clock plane; that&#8217;s the last one out today that you can go through Boston and still get to Chicago tonight.&#8221; I replied, &#8220;Fine, let&#8217;s just do this. I don&#8217;t care if I&#8217;m late so long as I get there.&#8221;</p> <p>Unfortunately, the Guardsman overheard, and he wasn&#8217;t done with me. Clearly, this non-subservient female had to be punished for not being sufficiently obsequious. He saw me picking up my bags to go out into the lobby and wait for the 4 o&#8217;clock plane, and yelled (that seemed to be his only means of communication), &#8220;Come With Me!&#8221; I asked, &#8220;Why? Where are we going?&#8221; He replied, louder, &#8220;Come With Me!&#8221;</p> <p>A few people to whom I&#8217;ve told this insist the government/military is trying to &#8220;criminalize&#8221; me and other political activists who don&#8217;t have criminal records. This is what&#8217;s done to people of color. When they&#8217;re harassed and/or beaten by police, they eventually, of course, do something to protect themselves and then get arrested for hitting an officer or whatever. If they then get convicted of a felony, they&#8217;ve go to prison and probably a few years of parole when one&#8217;s rights are mostly non-existent, and draconian restrictions are put upon one&#8217;s activities. Convicted felons lose a lot of rights in this country: their travel is henceforth limited, in some states they can&#8217;t vote, own a gun, and various other limitations.</p> <p>Under the circumstances, and because I had a few hours until four o&#8217;clock anyway, it seemed best to go with the guardsman. The circumstances being that each individual soldier/national guardsman seems to be The Law unto themselves. Each of them makes it up as they go along, punishing people who don&#8217;t hop to. Military law is not democracy.</p> <p>He took me to the entrance area, apart from anyone else. Then he ordered, loudly, &#8220;Sit Down!&#8221; I gave him a look and then sat. The soldier found the airport policeman and told him to stay with me. Upon reflection, I probably wasn&#8217;t free to leave, but I thought I was waiting for the next plane so just stayed there.</p> <p>The Airport policeman was a pleasant local man and we talked about what had just happened as well as people we knew, etc. Within minutes I looked up to see 5-6 National Guardsmen in their camo gear all carrying machine guns marching in a sort of formation towards me. I was sitting down quietly talking with the policeman. The situation looked like a bad movie.</p> <p>It occurred to me that this is how people get &#8220;disappeared,&#8221; which has happened to over 1,200 Americans so far since September 11. We used to hear about this only in repressive military regimes in other places (usually bolstered by our tax dollars). I&#8217;m sure they were ready to arrest me for allegedly &#8220;not cooperating with a security search,&#8221; with which I had, indeed, cooperated.</p> <p>All of a sudden the ludicrousness of the situation struck me. There I am, sitting down with my bags, a woman clearly not a physical threat, and this phalanx of soldiers in formation descends upon me ready to arrest me for something I did not do. I gave a little laugh and said to the lead man, &#8220;What, all this, just for me?&#8221; Then, I asked, &#8220;What&#8217;s this really about? What&#8217;s going on here?&#8221;</p> <p>He replied, &#8220;We understand you didn&#8217;t cooperate with a security search.&#8221; I said, &#8220;That&#8217;s ridiculous. They searched my bags and they did the wand search. The only problem was your man here [I indicated the short guy with the black eye] grabbing my arm and spouting pro-war views loudly in my face.&#8221; The lead soldier (I don&#8217;t know his rank) said, astonishingly, &#8220;He told me only hit your arm.&#8221;</p> <p>I looked at the lead soldier wide-eyed with a few unbidden (certainly unwanted when I&#8217;m trying to look fierce) tears in my eyes, and asked, &#8220;Even if that&#8217;s all he had done, would that be okay?&#8221; I think he then realized the guardsman had been way out of line and said, &#8220;Wait here.&#8221; They left, and the policeman stayed with me. I don&#8217;t really think I was free to go, although I had not been arrested.</p> <p>I found out later they had gone upstairs and told the Bangor Airport manager to tell all airlines in the Airport not to allow me to fly out of Bangor that day, and possibly more than just that one day. Since the military are in charge of our airports and they can override civilians in charge, this was made to happen.</p> <p>I was to be punished for the crime of questioning their authority, especially for the guardsman to hold my arm and force me to listen to his brain-washed rantings.</p> <p>Every airline in the Bangor Airport was given my name and told that I did not cooperate with a security search. Not cooperating with a security search at an airport is a federal crime. If, indeed, I had not cooperated, they would have arrested me right then and there. But I had been searched so they couldn&#8217;t say that.</p> <p>However, now I have to wonder if every airline in the world doesn&#8217;t have me in their computer as a person who didn&#8217;t cooperate with the security search, which means they can deny me passage in their airplanes. We will find out as time goes on.</p> <p>They told the policeman this news and had him tell me that I wouldn&#8217;t be allowed to fly out of Bangor that day. So I said I had to go American Airlines and get my money back. The policeman came with me.</p> <p>The same AA clerk was at the counter. He stepped outside the counter to converse with the policeman and me. He confirmed that they had been told not to allow me to fly out of Bangor that day. I asked him about the next day and he said he didn&#8217;t know. This is not a small matter for me since the Bangor Airport is 100 miles from where I live.</p> <p>The AA clerk then suggested I drive to Boston (5-1/2 hour drive) and fly out of there. There were several problems with that, I told him. First, my old car barely made it the 100 miles to the Bangor Airport and might not make it to Boston or back again. Then there were the parking fees in Boston as well as the fact that I might not be allowed to fly out of there or might not be able to get a seat once I got there. Also, if they would not honor my now-expired ticket, I&#8217;d have to pay full fare, which I couldn&#8217;t afford. Not a serious option.</p> <p>I then asked the American Airlines clerk for my money back so I might consider some alternative means of transport. He said he couldn&#8217;t refund my money. I asked him why and he said, &#8220;It&#8217;s a non-refundable ticket.&#8221; This was so ridiculous that all three of us laughed a little. All the airlines issue tickets on other tickets all the time. So I asked him again and he said he couldn&#8217;t refund the ticket, indicating it wasn&#8217;t his decision, which I understood, and told him I&#8217;d take it up with the airline later.</p> <p>Then the policeman, half apologetically, told me I&#8217;d been banned from the Airport for that day, and that he had to escort me out. I told him I understood that he was under the military&#8217;s rule, and that I would call it his walking me to the door, rather than escorting me out of the Airport. We walked to the exit. I thanked him for being kind and considerate, which he had been, and left with the sinking feeling that something bad is happening to our country. And this is how it begins.</p> <p>Postscript:</p> <p>I have since gotten in touch with the Bangor Airport manager who assures me that it&#8217;s fine with them if they fly out of there, but that it ultimately isn&#8217;t their decision.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve also been told by American Airlines&#8217; head of security in Texas that I am welcome to fly on their airline any time, and that they will contact Priceline.com about both of them giving my money back. This is all good, excepting that the military can arbitrarily, at any time, revoke my right to travel for no good reason, as they did November 1 in Bangor, Maine. So long as the military are in charge of civilian affairs, we are not free; we do not have our Bill of Rights protecting us because they&#8217;ve abrogated it and declared themselves the Law.</p> <p>We are forming a national Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and invite all of you and/or groups you&#8217;re affiliated with to help us form such a coalition based on defense of our civil liberties. Please email back saying you&#8217;ll be part of this new coalition of groups and individuals, and include your name and phone number. Then we can call a meeting to decide what to do. We need a large, strong, united voice to tell the military government we now have (Bush, Sr., who used to be not only President but before that head of the CIA, Dick Cheney, Daddy Bush&#8217;s fellow oil man and defense contractor, and the Pentagon brass) that we will not accept killing democracy in order to save it.</p> <p>We do not want corporations, with their only interest in next quarter&#8217;s profits, running the world. We, the people, should be making the decisions that affect our lives. Real Democracy. Nothing less will do. CP</p> <p>Nancy Oden is an organic farmer and <a href="http://www.greenparty.org/" type="external">Green Party</a> organizer. She lives in Jonesboro, Maine. She can be contacted at: <a href="mailto:cleanearth@acadia.net" type="external">cleanearth@acadia.net</a></p>

My Day at the Airport

https://counterpunch.org/2001/11/12/my-day-at-the-airport/

2001-11-12

4left

On Thursday November 1 2001 I left my farmhouse on the North Coast of Maine where I8217m an organic grower and headed for the Bangor International Airport in Bangor Maine I was dressed conservatively in a long brown skirt with a matching jacket and turtleneck sweater no jewelry no buttons or other political indications attached looking very like other women my age in this part of the world I am a relatively well known environmental social and political activist who has run for public office It should be noted that while I8217ve been an activist for over thirty years I8217ve never been arrested nor has there been anything in my life that would signal I meant harm to anyone Also this was the third time this year I had traveled out of or attempted to in this case Bangor Airport on American Airlines using an eticket purchased from Pricelinecom bought weeks before with my own credit card They had no reason for profiling and singling me out It had to have been because of my political views which of course is not a good reason see US Constitution8217s first Ten Amendments otherwise known as the Bill of Rights I was headed for Chicago for a Green Party USA National Coordinating Committee meeting where I was to speak the next night on biochemical warfare and pesticides as weapons of war I was also scheduled to interview job applicants present several proposals and financial reports and so on I am a lead person on the National Coordinating Committee of the Green Party USA the original Green Party although there is now another which took a very similar name I arrived at the Bangor Airport the nowrequisite two hours ahead of the flight and walked in to the airport to the sight of a couple of dozen National Guard troops carrying machine guns in their hands wandering around the lobby I walked down to the American Airlines ticket counter where there were no other passengers and told the airlines ticket agent my name I was holding out my picture ID and the printed itinerary they told us to bring but he barely glanced at them I remember thinking 8220Does he have a picture of me under that counter Why didn8217t he look at my ID8221 No one checked my ID at any time They all knew what I looked like and it became clear my antiwar stance I am not that well known that they would have known me on sight Why were they briefed about me before I arrived at the airport What were they told Was it the FBI or some other agency Which one The ticket agent spent an inordinate amount of time on his computer then finally produced a boarding pass with a large 8220S8221 written on it I asked him what that meant and he said I had been picked to have my bags searched Well one expects that now so I said 8220Oh that8217s okay8221 But I had a feeling there was more Since there was no one else around I turned back to him and looked him in the eye 8211 he seemed a decent guy 8211 and asked him 8220My being picked wasn8217t random was it8221 He hesitated a moment but then said 8220No your name was already flagged in the computer and you would have been searched in any case8221 Well still possibly coincidence Then to the xray for my bags and me I said to the two women sitting by the machine that scans the bags sort of apologetically 8220I8217ve been picked to have my bags searched I know this might sound silly but since you handle all these people8217s bags and belongings8211with the Anthrax scare and all8211I8217d like it if whoever searches through my clothes and things wash their hands first8221 They looked at me with hate and loathing and one said 8220We don8217t want YOUR germs either8221 Turns out they wear rubber gloves 8220Whoa8221 I thought 8220either I8217m back in kindergarten or these normally quite civil women have some reason for being hostile8221 I had the distinct feeling they had been told awful things about me 8211 I want to know what they were told about this profiled individual coming to their airport Neither my bags nor I set off any beeps in the machinery so we walked right through to the boarding area Here I sat down with the other passengers There was one National Guard soldier in the boarding area he was a short man with a black eye wearing camo gear and carrying a machine gun Soon after I sat down the National Guardsman looked at the dozen or so passengers his eyes stopping at me and he yelled 8220Bring those bags over here8221 Since he didn8217t call my name how did he know which person was me since I did not look appreciably different from the others When I didn8217t move fast enough he yelled again 8220Hurry up Move Bring those bags up here8221 This did not make me move faster By now people were beginning to stare at me as if I might possibly be someone bent on doing something wrong I set my two smallish bags on the table where two women were waiting to search my bags As one of them had trouble with a zipper on my older bag I said 8220Oh that zipper is not right here let me open it for you8221 and I reached over the table to undo the zipper Immediately the soldier yelled out 8220Get your hands away from there8221 By now the other passengers were getting nervous of course He was standing at the end of the table with the women on one side looking in my bags and me standing on the other side of the table I turned to face him which put my back towards everyone else and he grabbed my left arm and began loudly spouting prowar nonsense into my face 8220Don8217t you understand we have to get them before they get us Don8217t you understand what happened September 118221 and so on I immediately pulled my arm away from him and said 8220Do not touch me You cannot do that8221 and stepped back a foot or so saying that I didn8217t want to hear his views on why he thought we should kill starving helpless people in Afghanistan He grabbed for me again I stepped back further stating emphatically 8220Do Not Touch Me8221 and further emphasizing that I did not want to listen to his views on the war He was about to leave his position and come after me again but I saw the senior security man who is usually there shake his head 8220No8221 at the soldier who then backed off but he was angry that I would not submit to his holding me while he forced his views on me I turned and there just a couple of inches away was the man with the metaldetecting wand I stepped back a foot or two so he wasn8217t right up against me and he did the wand thing I was the only one whose bags were searched For a woman of a certain age such as myself to stand there with arms outstretched while a man skimmed my body with a device was very embarrassing and demeaning I asked him not to touch me with the wand as I didn8217t know what it was but of course he had to touch my shoulder with it I ignored this just wanting to get out of there While he was doing the wand thing I heard the soldier who was behind me say 8220Don8217t let her on the plane8221 I thought he was talking to himself Then they were done with the searching and I walked the three feet to the boarding gate The American Airlines agent said 8220You can8217t get on the plane8221 I asked why He replied 8220Because he indicating the soldier says you didn8217t cooperate with the search8221 I said 8220But you were standing here the whole time Didn8217t you see him grab my arm and talk loudly into my face8221 He said he couldn8217t see that because my back was to people only saw me back off I then told the American Airlines agent that I needed to get to Chicago and stated what I had to do there The American Airlines agent then said rather softly probably so the guardsman soldier couldn8217t hear 8220We8217ll put you on the four o8217clock plane that8217s the last one out today that you can go through Boston and still get to Chicago tonight8221 I replied 8220Fine let8217s just do this I don8217t care if I8217m late so long as I get there8221 Unfortunately the Guardsman overheard and he wasn8217t done with me Clearly this nonsubservient female had to be punished for not being sufficiently obsequious He saw me picking up my bags to go out into the lobby and wait for the 4 o8217clock plane and yelled that seemed to be his only means of communication 8220Come With Me8221 I asked 8220Why Where are we going8221 He replied louder 8220Come With Me8221 A few people to whom I8217ve told this insist the governmentmilitary is trying to 8220criminalize8221 me and other political activists who don8217t have criminal records This is what8217s done to people of color When they8217re harassed andor beaten by police they eventually of course do something to protect themselves and then get arrested for hitting an officer or whatever If they then get convicted of a felony they8217ve go to prison and probably a few years of parole when one8217s rights are mostly nonexistent and draconian restrictions are put upon one8217s activities Convicted felons lose a lot of rights in this country their travel is henceforth limited in some states they can8217t vote own a gun and various other limitations Under the circumstances and because I had a few hours until four o8217clock anyway it seemed best to go with the guardsman The circumstances being that each individual soldiernational guardsman seems to be The Law unto themselves Each of them makes it up as they go along punishing people who don8217t hop to Military law is not democracy He took me to the entrance area apart from anyone else Then he ordered loudly 8220Sit Down8221 I gave him a look and then sat The soldier found the airport policeman and told him to stay with me Upon reflection I probably wasn8217t free to leave but I thought I was waiting for the next plane so just stayed there The Airport policeman was a pleasant local man and we talked about what had just happened as well as people we knew etc Within minutes I looked up to see 56 National Guardsmen in their camo gear all carrying machine guns marching in a sort of formation towards me I was sitting down quietly talking with the policeman The situation looked like a bad movie It occurred to me that this is how people get 8220disappeared8221 which has happened to over 1200 Americans so far since September 11 We used to hear about this only in repressive military regimes in other places usually bolstered by our tax dollars I8217m sure they were ready to arrest me for allegedly 8220not cooperating with a security search8221 with which I had indeed cooperated All of a sudden the ludicrousness of the situation struck me There I am sitting down with my bags a woman clearly not a physical threat and this phalanx of soldiers in formation descends upon me ready to arrest me for something I did not do I gave a little laugh and said to the lead man 8220What all this just for me8221 Then I asked 8220What8217s this really about What8217s going on here8221 He replied 8220We understand you didn8217t cooperate with a security search8221 I said 8220That8217s ridiculous They searched my bags and they did the wand search The only problem was your man here I indicated the short guy with the black eye grabbing my arm and spouting prowar views loudly in my face8221 The lead soldier I don8217t know his rank said astonishingly 8220He told me only hit your arm8221 I looked at the lead soldier wideeyed with a few unbidden certainly unwanted when I8217m trying to look fierce tears in my eyes and asked 8220Even if that8217s all he had done would that be okay8221 I think he then realized the guardsman had been way out of line and said 8220Wait here8221 They left and the policeman stayed with me I don8217t really think I was free to go although I had not been arrested I found out later they had gone upstairs and told the Bangor Airport manager to tell all airlines in the Airport not to allow me to fly out of Bangor that day and possibly more than just that one day Since the military are in charge of our airports and they can override civilians in charge this was made to happen I was to be punished for the crime of questioning their authority especially for the guardsman to hold my arm and force me to listen to his brainwashed rantings Every airline in the Bangor Airport was given my name and told that I did not cooperate with a security search Not cooperating with a security search at an airport is a federal crime If indeed I had not cooperated they would have arrested me right then and there But I had been searched so they couldn8217t say that However now I have to wonder if every airline in the world doesn8217t have me in their computer as a person who didn8217t cooperate with the security search which means they can deny me passage in their airplanes We will find out as time goes on They told the policeman this news and had him tell me that I wouldn8217t be allowed to fly out of Bangor that day So I said I had to go American Airlines and get my money back The policeman came with me The same AA clerk was at the counter He stepped outside the counter to converse with the policeman and me He confirmed that they had been told not to allow me to fly out of Bangor that day I asked him about the next day and he said he didn8217t know This is not a small matter for me since the Bangor Airport is 100 miles from where I live The AA clerk then suggested I drive to Boston 512 hour drive and fly out of there There were several problems with that I told him First my old car barely made it the 100 miles to the Bangor Airport and might not make it to Boston or back again Then there were the parking fees in Boston as well as the fact that I might not be allowed to fly out of there or might not be able to get a seat once I got there Also if they would not honor my nowexpired ticket I8217d have to pay full fare which I couldn8217t afford Not a serious option I then asked the American Airlines clerk for my money back so I might consider some alternative means of transport He said he couldn8217t refund my money I asked him why and he said 8220It8217s a nonrefundable ticket8221 This was so ridiculous that all three of us laughed a little All the airlines issue tickets on other tickets all the time So I asked him again and he said he couldn8217t refund the ticket indicating it wasn8217t his decision which I understood and told him I8217d take it up with the airline later Then the policeman half apologetically told me I8217d been banned from the Airport for that day and that he had to escort me out I told him I understood that he was under the military8217s rule and that I would call it his walking me to the door rather than escorting me out of the Airport We walked to the exit I thanked him for being kind and considerate which he had been and left with the sinking feeling that something bad is happening to our country And this is how it begins Postscript I have since gotten in touch with the Bangor Airport manager who assures me that it8217s fine with them if they fly out of there but that it ultimately isn8217t their decision I8217ve also been told by American Airlines8217 head of security in Texas that I am welcome to fly on their airline any time and that they will contact Pricelinecom about both of them giving my money back This is all good excepting that the military can arbitrarily at any time revoke my right to travel for no good reason as they did November 1 in Bangor Maine So long as the military are in charge of civilian affairs we are not free we do not have our Bill of Rights protecting us because they8217ve abrogated it and declared themselves the Law We are forming a national Bill of Rights Defense Committee and invite all of you andor groups you8217re affiliated with to help us form such a coalition based on defense of our civil liberties Please email back saying you8217ll be part of this new coalition of groups and individuals and include your name and phone number Then we can call a meeting to decide what to do We need a large strong united voice to tell the military government we now have Bush Sr who used to be not only President but before that head of the CIA Dick Cheney Daddy Bush8217s fellow oil man and defense contractor and the Pentagon brass that we will not accept killing democracy in order to save it We do not want corporations with their only interest in next quarter8217s profits running the world We the people should be making the decisions that affect our lives Real Democracy Nothing less will do CP Nancy Oden is an organic farmer and Green Party organizer She lives in Jonesboro Maine She can be contacted at cleanearthacadianet

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<p>This review originally appeared in The TLS, whose website is <a href="http://www.the-tls.co.uk" type="external">www.the-tls.co.uk</a>, and is reposted with permission.</p> <p>H. L. Mencken (1880&#8211;1956) is often smilingly referred to as the Sage of Baltimore (especially in Baltimore), but during the first third of the twentieth century he was the most outspoken, irrepressibly contrarian literary and political journalist in the United States. As the scourge of the &#8220;booboisie&#8221; &#8211; his coinage &#8211; Mencken produced exuberant, gorgeous prose of such gusto that carnival barkers and fundamentalist preachers might have learnt from him. He could be loud and snide or silkily ironic &#8211; but never dull. When Mencken attacked, he left no survivors; when he praised, it felt like Christmas morning.</p> <p>There can&#8217;t be many newspapermen whose work bears rereading after more than eighty years, let alone enshrinement in the Library of America, but Mencken is one. The six volumes of his collected Prejudices &#8211; essentially his best essays about American literature, culture and politics &#8211; are cocksure about everything, but whether they are right or boneheaded, one hardly cares. Mencken knew that writing had to be fun if you wanted it to be read. Today we turn to his best work as we turn to S. J. Perelman or P. G. Wodehouse &#8211; for the pleasure provided by one marvellous sentence after another.</p> <p>Henry Louis Mencken regarded the monkeyshines and idiocies of Americans with both wonder and gratitude:</p> <p /> <p>&#8220;Here, more than anywhere else that I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly &#8211; the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, or aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries, and extravagances &#8211; is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.&#8221;</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/H-L-Mencken-Prejudices-Complete-Library/dp/1598530763%3FSubscriptionId%3D1XWTFJ60BR6QZ1PW9FR2%26tag%3Dtruthdig20-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1598530763%20" type="external" /></p> <p>By H.L. Mencken</p> <p>Library of America, 1,408 pages</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/H-L-Mencken-Prejudices-Complete-Library/dp/1598530763%3FSubscriptionId%3D1XWTFJ60BR6QZ1PW9FR2%26tag%3Dtruthdig20-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1598530763%20" type="external" /></p> <p>Throughout his Prejudices Mencken mingles literary appreciation with political broadside and occasional persiflage, but, in general, the early volumes tend to emphasize the man of letters. As a critic, Mencken preferred down-and-dirty social realism in his fiction. He championed Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis and James T. Farrell, and he never failed to lambast the least sign of preachiness, &#8220;uplift&#8221; or didacticism. In the essay entitled &#8220;The Late Mr. Wells&#8221;, Mencken, an admirer of &#8220;the sheer radiance of &#8216;Tono-Bungay&#8217;&#8221;, lamented Wells&#8217;s decision to forgo art for civic-minded tendentiousness:</p> <p>&#8220;Call the roll of his books, and you will discern a progressive and unmistakable falling off. Into &#8220;The Passionate Friends&#8221; there crept the first downright dullness. By this time his readers had become familiar with his machinery and his materials &#8211; his elbowing suffragettes, his tea-swilling London uplifters, his smattering of quasi-science, his intellectualized adulteries, his Thackerayan asides, his text-book paragraphs, his journalist raciness &#8211; and all these things had begun to lose the blush of their first charm.&#8221;</p> <p>As that paragraph demonstrates, Mencken obviously relishes his own bel canto fireworks. Having warmed up, he immediately goes on to mock Wells&#8217;s latest novel, Joan and Peter:</p> <p>&#8220;I was at the job of reading it for days and days, endlessly daunted and halted by its laborious dullness, its flatulent fatuity, its almost fabulous inconsequentiality. &#8230; The book is a botch from end to end, and in that botch there is not even the palliation of an arduous enterprise gallantly attempted. No inherent difficulty is visible. The story is anything but complex, and surely anything but subtle. Its badness lies wholly in the fact that the author made a mess of the writing. &#8230;&#8221;</p> <p>Why has Wells failed so dramatically? Because, says Mencken, he has fallen victim to the &#8220;messianic delusion&#8221;: &#8220;What has slowly crippled him and perhaps disposed of him is his gradual acceptance of the theory, corrupting to the artist and scarcely less so to the man, that he is one of the Great Thinkers of his era, charged with a pregnant Message to the Younger Generation &#8211; that his ideas, rammed into enough skulls, will Save the Empire, not only from the satanic Nietzscheism of the Hindenburgs and post-Hindenburgs, but also from all those inner Weaknesses that taint and flabbergast its vitals, as the tapeworm with nineteen heads devoured Atharippus of Macedon&#8221;. (So far as I can determine, Mencken made up the unfortunate Atharippus.) While his formal education stopped after high school, Mencken was surprisingly cultivated and widely read. He played the piano every week as part of a local chamber orchestra. He taught himself German well enough to translate Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ). His home library contained 6,000 books, and he claimed to have read 4,000 novels during his tenure as co-editor of The Smart Set (the self-appointed &#8220;Magazine of Cleverness&#8221;). His own second book &#8211; after a volume of verses &#8211; was the first critical work about Bernard Shaw, whom Mencken somewhat resembles as a master of vigorous polemical prose.</p> <p>As a student of his native literature, Mencken favours writers with the authentic American yawp &#8211; Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, the humorists George Ade and Ring Lardner. Huckleberry Finn is the novel he loves most (followed, somewhat surprisingly, by Joseph Conrad&#8217;s Lord Jim). He judges Emerson to be overrated &#8211; &#8220;an importer of stale German elixirs, sometimes direct and sometimes through the Carlylean branch house&#8221;. He can&#8217;t bear the circumlocutions of Henry James and the gentility of William Dean Howells. Edgar Allan Poe he discerns &#8211; rare for the time &#8211; as &#8220;the bravest and most original, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced&#8221;. In his own time, this prolific reviewer welcomed Scott Fitzgerald and rightly maintained that &#8220;No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one-half so beautiful as [Willa Cather&#8217;s] &#8216;My Antonia&#8217;&#8221;. Again and again Mencken argued that nearly all &#8220;superior fiction&#8221; focused on &#8220;character in decay&#8221; and typically ended with the hero&#8217;s defeat or destruction. In light of this tragic sense of life, he believed that poetry&#8217;s purpose was to &#8220;soothe our agonies with emollient words&#8221;. As a result, he preferred those poets who were down to earth, a bit folksy: Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost. Still, he was drawn to Edna St Vincent Millay for her &#8220;voluptuousness&#8221; and late in life visited Ezra Pound when the poet was incarcerated at St Elizabeths Hospital for the insane. On the whole, though, Modernism was a closed book to Mencken: &#8220;Our poets get into print regularly with stuff so bizarre and unearthly that only Christian Scientists can understand it&#8221;.</p> <p>While he might sing the praises of the authors he admired, admonish those who had lost their way, and vigorously defend any censured by prudes and preachers, Mencken could really lay into those he judged to be second- and third-rate. He describes the sentimental novels of Henry Sydnor Harrison as &#8220;100,000 word Christmas cards&#8221;. Of one novel from the South he wrote, &#8220;Here, obviously, is the best that Mississippi can do, in theme and treatment &#8211; and it is such puerile, blowsy stuff that reviewing it realistically would be too cruel&#8221;. (Happily, the novel&#8217;s author was one Harris Dickson and not William Faulkner.) He&#8217;s even more damning about the Kansas litt&#233;rateur William Allen White, whose works still turn up in second-hand bookshops:</p> <p>&#8220;If William Allen White lives as long as Tennyson, and does not reform, our grandchildren will see the Victorian era gasping out its last breath in 1951. And eighty-three is no great age in Kansas, where sin is unknown. It may be, in fact, 1960, or even 1970, before the world hears the last of Honest Poverty, Chaste Affection and Manly Tears. For so long as White holds a pen these ancient sweets will be on sale at the department-store book-counters, and they will grow sweeter and sweeter. &#8230; If you yearn to uplift and like to sob, then the volume [In the Heart of a Fool] will probably affect you, in the incomparable phrase of Clayton Hamilton, like &#8220;the music of a million Easter-lilies leaping from the grave and laughing with a silver singing.&#8221; But if you are a carnal fellow, as I am, with a stomach ruined by alcohol, it will gag you.&#8221;</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/H-L-Mencken-Prejudices-Complete-Library/dp/1598530763%3FSubscriptionId%3D1XWTFJ60BR6QZ1PW9FR2%26tag%3Dtruthdig20-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1598530763%20" type="external" /></p> <p>By H.L. Mencken</p> <p>Library of America, 1,408 pages</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/H-L-Mencken-Prejudices-Complete-Library/dp/1598530763%3FSubscriptionId%3D1XWTFJ60BR6QZ1PW9FR2%26tag%3Dtruthdig20-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1598530763%20" type="external" /></p> <p>What Mencken particularly loathes is the American tendency to &#8220;a highly self-conscious and insipid correctness, a bloodless respectability, a submergence of matter in manner&#8221;. Little wonder that he assailed those who would ban Theodore Dreiser&#8217;s Sister Carrie and James Branch Cabell&#8217;s mildly lubricious comic fantasy Jurgen. Great American fiction, Mencken contended, in what might almost be the prescription for a mid-career Saul Bellow novel, should embrace &#8220;the whole, gross, glittering, excessively dynamic, infinitely grotesque, incredibly stupendous drama of American life&#8221;. Certainly young people in the 1920s found Mencken liberating. He repeatedly denounced and satirized Prohibition, religious mania, the duplicity of politicians, any appearance of the bogus and self-serving, and every sort of do-goodism. He argued for the rights of the people he called &#8220;Aframericans&#8221;. Yet he also detested jazz, couldn&#8217;t perceive any artistic merit in film &#8211; though he did once interview a weary-hearted Rudolph Valentino &#8211; and he greatly disliked seeing couples wriggling &#8220;to the tune of some villainous mazurka from the Mississippi levees&#8221;.</p> <p>More disturbingly, his essays occasionally disparage the immigrant masses, expound on the benefits of racial purity and the dangers of the mixing of blood, and repeatedly make vast generalizations about the Southerner and the New Englander, the Anglo-Saxon and the German. Though there&#8217;s no overt anti-Semitism in Prejudices, Mencken&#8217;s diaries and some private autobiographical volumes &#8211; not published until after his death &#8211; do contain offensive remarks about the Jews. It almost goes without saying that several of his closest friends were Jewish, including George Jean Nathan, his co-editor of The Smart Set and The American Mercury, and Alfred Knopf, his publisher. For some readers, however, the crude aspersions found in these posthumous volumes discredit Mencken&#8217;s entire work.</p> <p>While H. L. Mencken can be truculent and mouthy in a terribly American way, he always viewed himself as a cut above the common herd, indeed, as a kind of libertarian aristocrat. He felt that most of us really were boobs. &#8220;The average American is a prude and a Methodist under his skin.&#8221; In one of his most famous pieces, &#8220;The Sahara of the Bozart&#8221;, he depicts the post-Civil War South as a wasteland, empty of culture, education and literature, where &#8220;the arts, save in the lower reaches of the gospel hymn, the phonograph and the chautauqua harangue, are all held in suspicion&#8221;.</p> <p>Though Mencken might look to be nothing but a cigar-chomping pug, his values were those of a noble and proudly independent gentleman. &#8220;What ails the beautiful letters of the Republic, I repeat, is what ails the general culture of the Republic &#8211; the lack of a body of sophisticated and civilized public opinion, independent of plutocratic control and superior to the infantile philosophies of the mob &#8211; a body of opinion showing the eager curiosity, the educated skepticism and the hospitality to ideas of a true aristocracy.&#8221; Above all, like any self-sufficient aristocrat, he loathed big government. &#8220;All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him.&#8221; Mencken insists that &#8220;the ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle to Herbert Spencer, is one which lets the individual alone &#8211; one which barely escapes being no government at all&#8221;. (Here he sounds like a proto-Ayn Rand.) American history, he notes, is sadly little more than &#8220;a history of minorities put down with clubs&#8221;. A mere forty miles south of Baltimore, Washington, DC, inevitably earned Mencken&#8217;s finest scorn, and his remarks about its unsavoury denizens are worthy of his friend Ambrose Bierce (author of The Devil&#8217;s Dictionary, aka The Cynic&#8217;s Wordbook): &#8220;Since the days of the national Thors and Wotans, no politician who was not out for himself, and for himself alone, has ever drawn breath of life in the United States&#8221;; &#8220;All this took place in the United States, where the word honor, save when it is applied to the structural integrity of women, has only a comic significance&#8221;; &#8220;Ideas count for nothing in Washington, whether they be political, economic or moral. The question isn&#8217;t what a man thinks, but what he has to give away that is worth having&#8221;; &#8220;There are Congressmen, I have no doubt, who regret their lost honor, as women often do in the films. Tossing in their beds on hot, sticky Washington nights, their gizzards devoured by bad liquor, they may lament the ruin that the service of Demos has brought to their souls&#8221;.</p> <p>Education is another favourite bugaboo in Prejudices and many of the newspaperman&#8217;s other essays. Mencken fulminated that our &#8220;schools reek with &#8230; puerile nonsense. Their programmes of study sound like the fantastic inventions of comedians gone insane&#8221;. Long before Michel Foucault, he understood that the aim of the educational system was &#8220;To make good citizens. And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.&#8221;</p> <p>Mencken was also adept at writing marginally quieter profiles and more lyrical essays. Consider his opening description of the charmingly louche Frank Harris:</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/H-L-Mencken-Prejudices-Complete-Library/dp/1598530763%3FSubscriptionId%3D1XWTFJ60BR6QZ1PW9FR2%26tag%3Dtruthdig20-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1598530763%20" type="external" /></p> <p>By H.L. Mencken</p> <p>Library of America, 1,408 pages</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/H-L-Mencken-Prejudices-Complete-Library/dp/1598530763%3FSubscriptionId%3D1XWTFJ60BR6QZ1PW9FR2%26tag%3Dtruthdig20-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1598530763%20" type="external" /></p> <p>&#8220;The first time I ever enjoyed the honor of witnessing him, there bobbed up in my mind (instantly put away as unworthy and unseemly) a memory of the handsome dogs who used to chain shrieking virgins to railway tracks in the innocent pre-Ibsenish dramas of my youth. &#8230; There was the same elegance of turn-out, the same black mustachios, the same erect figure and lordly air, the same agate glitter in the eyes, the same aloof and superior smile. A sightly fellow, by all the gods, and one who obviously knew how to sneer.&#8221;</p> <p>In his brilliant &#8220;In Memoriam: W. J. B.&#8221;, Mencken evokes the humid, backwoods reverence granted to the fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan, who opposed Clarence Darrow during the celebrated Scopes Monkey trial of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, which Mencken attended. &#8220;But out where the grass grows high, and the horned cattle dream away the lazy afternoons, and men still fear the powers and principalities of the air &#8211; out there between the corn-rows he held his old puissance to the end.&#8221;</p> <p>As any longtime reader of Mencken soon comes to recognize, the man could be honeyed as well as abrasive &#8211; and he possessed an astonishing vocabulary. On two successive pages he casually uses the words &#8220;fantoddish&#8221; and &#8220;peruna&#8221;. He regularly sprinkles in a bit of German or Latin. At the same time, Mencken &#8211; like all writers &#8211; repeats certain pet words, phrases and names: &#8220;the horned cattle&#8221;, &#8220;heirs and assigns&#8221;, &#8220;the art and the mystery&#8221;, &#8220;the Chautauqua&#8221;, &#8220;puissance&#8221;, &#8220;Dr. Frank Crane&#8221;, &#8220;the great rolling mills&#8221;, &#8220;Comstockery&#8221;. One keen benefit of this Library of America edition of Prejudices lies in its detailed index, identifying many of the now forgotten fads and personages. Marion Rodgers also corrects the original Knopf edition&#8217;s myriad typos.</p> <p>Despite all his satirical bonhomie, Mencken can sound notes of sorrow, or even John Webster-like horror: &#8220;Women whom we place upon pedestals worthy of the holy saints come down at last with mastoid abscesses or die obscenely of hiccoughs&#8221;. (Mencken&#8217;s own beloved wife Sara died of meningitis in 1935 after only five years of marriage.) In the final volume of Prejudices the author confesses:</p> <p>&#8220;Once I ventured the guess that men worked in response to a vague inner urge for self-expression. &#8230; An hypothesis with rather more plausibility in it now suggests itself. It is that men work simply in order to escape the depressing agony of contemplating life &#8211; that their work, like their play, is a mumbo-jumbo that serves them by permitting them to escape from reality. &#8230; Man cannot sit still, contemplating his destiny in this world, without going frantic. So he invents ways to take his mind off the horror. He works. He plays. He accumulates the preposterous nothing called property. He strives for the coy eye-wink called fame. He founds a family and spreads his curse over others. All the while the thing that moves him is simply the yearning to lose himself, to forget himself, to escape the tragic-comedy that is himself. Life, fundamentally, is not worth living.&#8221;</p> <p>In 1948 Mencken suffered a debilitating stroke and thereafter never wrote again. By then, however, the old newspaperman&#8217;s reputation had long faded. Nonetheless, he had already published his high-spirited memoirs Happy Days and Newspaper Days &#8211; probably his best books &#8211; and brought out several editions of his scholarly The American Language. Since his death in 1956 Mencken&#8217;s reputation has been kept fitfully alive by a popular paperback, The Vintage Mencken, compiled by Alistair Cooke, and by the fat compendium &#8211; edited by the man himself &#8211; A Mencken Chrestomathy. This last includes numerous extracts from Prejudices, but hardly enough to give a sense of the range and sustained power of the original six volumes. Now, thanks to this splendid Library of America set, we can again enjoy H. L. Mencken at length and at full throttle.</p> <p>Michael Dirda / The Times Literary Supplement / nisyndication.com</p> <p>Michael Dirda, a book columnist for The Washington Post, received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the author of the memoir &#8220;An Open Book&#8221; and of four collections of essays: &#8220;Readings,&#8221; &#8220;Bound to Please,&#8221; &#8220;Book by Book&#8221; and, most recently, &#8220;Classics for Pleasure.&#8221; Besides writing regularly about books for various journals and newspapers, he is a frequent lecturer and an occasional college teacher.</p> <p />

Mencken, a Curmudgeon for the Ages

https://truthdig.com/articles/mencken-a-curmudgeon-for-the-ages/

2010-12-10

4left

This review originally appeared in The TLS whose website is wwwthetlscouk and is reposted with permission H L Mencken 188082111956 is often smilingly referred to as the Sage of Baltimore especially in Baltimore but during the first third of the twentieth century he was the most outspoken irrepressibly contrarian literary and political journalist in the United States As the scourge of the 8220booboisie8221 8211 his coinage 8211 Mencken produced exuberant gorgeous prose of such gusto that carnival barkers and fundamentalist preachers might have learnt from him He could be loud and snide or silkily ironic 8211 but never dull When Mencken attacked he left no survivors when he praised it felt like Christmas morning There can8217t be many newspapermen whose work bears rereading after more than eighty years let alone enshrinement in the Library of America but Mencken is one The six volumes of his collected Prejudices 8211 essentially his best essays about American literature culture and politics 8211 are cocksure about everything but whether they are right or boneheaded one hardly cares Mencken knew that writing had to be fun if you wanted it to be read Today we turn to his best work as we turn to S J Perelman or P G Wodehouse 8211 for the pleasure provided by one marvellous sentence after another Henry Louis Mencken regarded the monkeyshines and idiocies of Americans with both wonder and gratitude 8220Here more than anywhere else that I know of or have heard of the daily panorama of human existence of private and communal folly 8211 the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries of commercial brigandages and throatslittings of theological buffooneries or aesthetic ribaldries of legal swindles and harlotries of miscellaneous rogueries villainies imbecilities grotesqueries and extravagances 8211 is so inordinately gross and preposterous so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night and to awake every morning with all the eager unflagging expectation of a Sundayschool superintendent touring the Paris peepshows8221 By HL Mencken Library of America 1408 pages Throughout his Prejudices Mencken mingles literary appreciation with political broadside and occasional persiflage but in general the early volumes tend to emphasize the man of letters As a critic Mencken preferred downanddirty social realism in his fiction He championed Theodore Dreiser Sinclair Lewis and James T Farrell and he never failed to lambast the least sign of preachiness 8220uplift8221 or didacticism In the essay entitled 8220The Late Mr Wells8221 Mencken an admirer of 8220the sheer radiance of 8216TonoBungay82178221 lamented Wells8217s decision to forgo art for civicminded tendentiousness 8220Call the roll of his books and you will discern a progressive and unmistakable falling off Into 8220The Passionate Friends8221 there crept the first downright dullness By this time his readers had become familiar with his machinery and his materials 8211 his elbowing suffragettes his teaswilling London uplifters his smattering of quasiscience his intellectualized adulteries his Thackerayan asides his textbook paragraphs his journalist raciness 8211 and all these things had begun to lose the blush of their first charm8221 As that paragraph demonstrates Mencken obviously relishes his own bel canto fireworks Having warmed up he immediately goes on to mock Wells8217s latest novel Joan and Peter 8220I was at the job of reading it for days and days endlessly daunted and halted by its laborious dullness its flatulent fatuity its almost fabulous inconsequentiality 8230 The book is a botch from end to end and in that botch there is not even the palliation of an arduous enterprise gallantly attempted No inherent difficulty is visible The story is anything but complex and surely anything but subtle Its badness lies wholly in the fact that the author made a mess of the writing 82308221 Why has Wells failed so dramatically Because says Mencken he has fallen victim to the 8220messianic delusion8221 8220What has slowly crippled him and perhaps disposed of him is his gradual acceptance of the theory corrupting to the artist and scarcely less so to the man that he is one of the Great Thinkers of his era charged with a pregnant Message to the Younger Generation 8211 that his ideas rammed into enough skulls will Save the Empire not only from the satanic Nietzscheism of the Hindenburgs and postHindenburgs but also from all those inner Weaknesses that taint and flabbergast its vitals as the tapeworm with nineteen heads devoured Atharippus of Macedon8221 So far as I can determine Mencken made up the unfortunate Atharippus While his formal education stopped after high school Mencken was surprisingly cultivated and widely read He played the piano every week as part of a local chamber orchestra He taught himself German well enough to translate Nietzsche The AntiChrist His home library contained 6000 books and he claimed to have read 4000 novels during his tenure as coeditor of The Smart Set the selfappointed 8220Magazine of Cleverness8221 His own second book 8211 after a volume of verses 8211 was the first critical work about Bernard Shaw whom Mencken somewhat resembles as a master of vigorous polemical prose As a student of his native literature Mencken favours writers with the authentic American yawp 8211 Walt Whitman and Mark Twain the humorists George Ade and Ring Lardner Huckleberry Finn is the novel he loves most followed somewhat surprisingly by Joseph Conrad8217s Lord Jim He judges Emerson to be overrated 8211 8220an importer of stale German elixirs sometimes direct and sometimes through the Carlylean branch house8221 He can8217t bear the circumlocutions of Henry James and the gentility of William Dean Howells Edgar Allan Poe he discerns 8211 rare for the time 8211 as 8220the bravest and most original if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious of all the critics that we have produced8221 In his own time this prolific reviewer welcomed Scott Fitzgerald and rightly maintained that 8220No romantic novel ever written in America by man or woman is onehalf so beautiful as Willa Cather8217s 8216My Antonia82178221 Again and again Mencken argued that nearly all 8220superior fiction8221 focused on 8220character in decay8221 and typically ended with the hero8217s defeat or destruction In light of this tragic sense of life he believed that poetry8217s purpose was to 8220soothe our agonies with emollient words8221 As a result he preferred those poets who were down to earth a bit folksy Edgar Lee Masters Carl Sandburg Edwin Arlington Robinson Robert Frost Still he was drawn to Edna St Vincent Millay for her 8220voluptuousness8221 and late in life visited Ezra Pound when the poet was incarcerated at St Elizabeths Hospital for the insane On the whole though Modernism was a closed book to Mencken 8220Our poets get into print regularly with stuff so bizarre and unearthly that only Christian Scientists can understand it8221 While he might sing the praises of the authors he admired admonish those who had lost their way and vigorously defend any censured by prudes and preachers Mencken could really lay into those he judged to be second and thirdrate He describes the sentimental novels of Henry Sydnor Harrison as 8220100000 word Christmas cards8221 Of one novel from the South he wrote 8220Here obviously is the best that Mississippi can do in theme and treatment 8211 and it is such puerile blowsy stuff that reviewing it realistically would be too cruel8221 Happily the novel8217s author was one Harris Dickson and not William Faulkner He8217s even more damning about the Kansas litt233rateur William Allen White whose works still turn up in secondhand bookshops 8220If William Allen White lives as long as Tennyson and does not reform our grandchildren will see the Victorian era gasping out its last breath in 1951 And eightythree is no great age in Kansas where sin is unknown It may be in fact 1960 or even 1970 before the world hears the last of Honest Poverty Chaste Affection and Manly Tears For so long as White holds a pen these ancient sweets will be on sale at the departmentstore bookcounters and they will grow sweeter and sweeter 8230 If you yearn to uplift and like to sob then the volume In the Heart of a Fool will probably affect you in the incomparable phrase of Clayton Hamilton like 8220the music of a million Easterlilies leaping from the grave and laughing with a silver singing8221 But if you are a carnal fellow as I am with a stomach ruined by alcohol it will gag you8221 By HL Mencken Library of America 1408 pages What Mencken particularly loathes is the American tendency to 8220a highly selfconscious and insipid correctness a bloodless respectability a submergence of matter in manner8221 Little wonder that he assailed those who would ban Theodore Dreiser8217s Sister Carrie and James Branch Cabell8217s mildly lubricious comic fantasy Jurgen Great American fiction Mencken contended in what might almost be the prescription for a midcareer Saul Bellow novel should embrace 8220the whole gross glittering excessively dynamic infinitely grotesque incredibly stupendous drama of American life8221 Certainly young people in the 1920s found Mencken liberating He repeatedly denounced and satirized Prohibition religious mania the duplicity of politicians any appearance of the bogus and selfserving and every sort of dogoodism He argued for the rights of the people he called 8220Aframericans8221 Yet he also detested jazz couldn8217t perceive any artistic merit in film 8211 though he did once interview a wearyhearted Rudolph Valentino 8211 and he greatly disliked seeing couples wriggling 8220to the tune of some villainous mazurka from the Mississippi levees8221 More disturbingly his essays occasionally disparage the immigrant masses expound on the benefits of racial purity and the dangers of the mixing of blood and repeatedly make vast generalizations about the Southerner and the New Englander the AngloSaxon and the German Though there8217s no overt antiSemitism in Prejudices Mencken8217s diaries and some private autobiographical volumes 8211 not published until after his death 8211 do contain offensive remarks about the Jews It almost goes without saying that several of his closest friends were Jewish including George Jean Nathan his coeditor of The Smart Set and The American Mercury and Alfred Knopf his publisher For some readers however the crude aspersions found in these posthumous volumes discredit Mencken8217s entire work While H L Mencken can be truculent and mouthy in a terribly American way he always viewed himself as a cut above the common herd indeed as a kind of libertarian aristocrat He felt that most of us really were boobs 8220The average American is a prude and a Methodist under his skin8221 In one of his most famous pieces 8220The Sahara of the Bozart8221 he depicts the postCivil War South as a wasteland empty of culture education and literature where 8220the arts save in the lower reaches of the gospel hymn the phonograph and the chautauqua harangue are all held in suspicion8221 Though Mencken might look to be nothing but a cigarchomping pug his values were those of a noble and proudly independent gentleman 8220What ails the beautiful letters of the Republic I repeat is what ails the general culture of the Republic 8211 the lack of a body of sophisticated and civilized public opinion independent of plutocratic control and superior to the infantile philosophies of the mob 8211 a body of opinion showing the eager curiosity the educated skepticism and the hospitality to ideas of a true aristocracy8221 Above all like any selfsufficient aristocrat he loathed big government 8220All government in its essence is a conspiracy against the superior man its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him8221 Mencken insists that 8220the ideal government of all reflective men from Aristotle to Herbert Spencer is one which lets the individual alone 8211 one which barely escapes being no government at all8221 Here he sounds like a protoAyn Rand American history he notes is sadly little more than 8220a history of minorities put down with clubs8221 A mere forty miles south of Baltimore Washington DC inevitably earned Mencken8217s finest scorn and his remarks about its unsavoury denizens are worthy of his friend Ambrose Bierce author of The Devil8217s Dictionary aka The Cynic8217s Wordbook 8220Since the days of the national Thors and Wotans no politician who was not out for himself and for himself alone has ever drawn breath of life in the United States8221 8220All this took place in the United States where the word honor save when it is applied to the structural integrity of women has only a comic significance8221 8220Ideas count for nothing in Washington whether they be political economic or moral The question isn8217t what a man thinks but what he has to give away that is worth having8221 8220There are Congressmen I have no doubt who regret their lost honor as women often do in the films Tossing in their beds on hot sticky Washington nights their gizzards devoured by bad liquor they may lament the ruin that the service of Demos has brought to their souls8221 Education is another favourite bugaboo in Prejudices and many of the newspaperman8217s other essays Mencken fulminated that our 8220schools reek with 8230 puerile nonsense Their programmes of study sound like the fantastic inventions of comedians gone insane8221 Long before Michel Foucault he understood that the aim of the educational system was 8220To make good citizens And what is a good citizen Simply one who never says does or thinks anything that is unusual Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubberstamps8221 Mencken was also adept at writing marginally quieter profiles and more lyrical essays Consider his opening description of the charmingly louche Frank Harris By HL Mencken Library of America 1408 pages 8220The first time I ever enjoyed the honor of witnessing him there bobbed up in my mind instantly put away as unworthy and unseemly a memory of the handsome dogs who used to chain shrieking virgins to railway tracks in the innocent preIbsenish dramas of my youth 8230 There was the same elegance of turnout the same black mustachios the same erect figure and lordly air the same agate glitter in the eyes the same aloof and superior smile A sightly fellow by all the gods and one who obviously knew how to sneer8221 In his brilliant 8220In Memoriam W J B8221 Mencken evokes the humid backwoods reverence granted to the fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan who opposed Clarence Darrow during the celebrated Scopes Monkey trial of 1925 in Dayton Tennessee which Mencken attended 8220But out where the grass grows high and the horned cattle dream away the lazy afternoons and men still fear the powers and principalities of the air 8211 out there between the cornrows he held his old puissance to the end8221 As any longtime reader of Mencken soon comes to recognize the man could be honeyed as well as abrasive 8211 and he possessed an astonishing vocabulary On two successive pages he casually uses the words 8220fantoddish8221 and 8220peruna8221 He regularly sprinkles in a bit of German or Latin At the same time Mencken 8211 like all writers 8211 repeats certain pet words phrases and names 8220the horned cattle8221 8220heirs and assigns8221 8220the art and the mystery8221 8220the Chautauqua8221 8220puissance8221 8220Dr Frank Crane8221 8220the great rolling mills8221 8220Comstockery8221 One keen benefit of this Library of America edition of Prejudices lies in its detailed index identifying many of the now forgotten fads and personages Marion Rodgers also corrects the original Knopf edition8217s myriad typos Despite all his satirical bonhomie Mencken can sound notes of sorrow or even John Websterlike horror 8220Women whom we place upon pedestals worthy of the holy saints come down at last with mastoid abscesses or die obscenely of hiccoughs8221 Mencken8217s own beloved wife Sara died of meningitis in 1935 after only five years of marriage In the final volume of Prejudices the author confesses 8220Once I ventured the guess that men worked in response to a vague inner urge for selfexpression 8230 An hypothesis with rather more plausibility in it now suggests itself It is that men work simply in order to escape the depressing agony of contemplating life 8211 that their work like their play is a mumbojumbo that serves them by permitting them to escape from reality 8230 Man cannot sit still contemplating his destiny in this world without going frantic So he invents ways to take his mind off the horror He works He plays He accumulates the preposterous nothing called property He strives for the coy eyewink called fame He founds a family and spreads his curse over others All the while the thing that moves him is simply the yearning to lose himself to forget himself to escape the tragiccomedy that is himself Life fundamentally is not worth living8221 In 1948 Mencken suffered a debilitating stroke and thereafter never wrote again By then however the old newspaperman8217s reputation had long faded Nonetheless he had already published his highspirited memoirs Happy Days and Newspaper Days 8211 probably his best books 8211 and brought out several editions of his scholarly The American Language Since his death in 1956 Mencken8217s reputation has been kept fitfully alive by a popular paperback The Vintage Mencken compiled by Alistair Cooke and by the fat compendium 8211 edited by the man himself 8211 A Mencken Chrestomathy This last includes numerous extracts from Prejudices but hardly enough to give a sense of the range and sustained power of the original six volumes Now thanks to this splendid Library of America set we can again enjoy H L Mencken at length and at full throttle Michael Dirda The Times Literary Supplement nisyndicationcom Michael Dirda a book columnist for The Washington Post received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism He is the author of the memoir 8220An Open Book8221 and of four collections of essays 8220Readings8221 8220Bound to Please8221 8220Book by Book8221 and most recently 8220Classics for Pleasure8221 Besides writing regularly about books for various journals and newspapers he is a frequent lecturer and an occasional college teacher

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<p>A boyish, inquisitive face with an innocent look peered out from the Washington Post&#8217;s lead story yesterday on torture. It was well groomed, pink-shirted John Kiriakou, a CIA interrogator who could just as easily pass for the local youth minister</p> <p>The report by the Post&#8217;s Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, which describes Kiriakou&#8217;s experience in interrogating suspected terrorists, raises in an unusually direct way an abiding question: Should the United States of America be using forms of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition?</p> <p>Nowhere is the mood of that infamous period better portrayed than in the famous Grand Inquisitor chapter of Dostoyevsky&#8217;s Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky was unusually gifted at plumbing the human heart. While it has been 127 years since he wrote Brothers Karamazov, he nonetheless captures the trap into which so many Americans have fallen in forfeiting freedom through fear. His portrayal of Inquisition reality brings us to the brink of the moral precipice on which our country teeters today. It is as though he knew what would be in store for us as fear was artificially stoked after the attacks of 9/11.</p> <p>In the story, Dostoevsky&#8217;s Grand Inquisitor (the Cardinal of Seville) ridicules Christ for imposing on humans the heavy burden of freedom of conscience, and explains how it is far better, for all concerned, to dull that conscience and to rule by deceit, violence, and fear:</p> <p>&#8220;Didst thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil?&#8230;We teach them that it&#8217;s not the free judgment of their hearts, but mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their conscience&#8230;. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet [and] become obedient&#8230;We shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in Thy name&#8230;. we shall be forced to lie&#8230;. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated if it is done with our permission.&#8221;</p> <p>The Grand Inquisitor, in Brothers Karamazov</p> <p>Kiriakou was one of the first interrogators to interview suspected terrorist Abu Zubayda in a Pakistani military hospital, where Zubayda was recovering from wounds suffered during his capture in early 2002. When he refused to provide information about al-Qaeda&#8217;s infrastructure, he was flown to a secret CIA prison where, according to Kiriakou, the interrogation team strapped Abu Zubayda to a board, wrapped his nose and mouth in cellophane, and forced water into his throat. In just 35 seconds, viola! Abu Zubayda starting talking. That is called waterboarding.</p> <p>The 15 &amp;amp; 16 Century Spanish inquisitors were not squeamish, and had little need for circumlocutions or euphemisms like &#8220;alternative set of procedures&#8221; that are part of President George W. Bush&#8217;s lexicon. The Spanish called this procedure, quite plainly, &#8220;tortura del agua.&#8221; Lacking cellophane, they inserted a cloth into the victim&#8217;s mouth, forcing the victim to ingest water spilled from a jar starting the drowning process. Four centuries later, the Gestapo put out several technically improved releases of this operating system of torture, so to speak.</p> <p>Quick; someone please tell newly confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who told reporters yesterday he still cannot decide whether waterboarding is torture. Abu Zubayda: Poster Child</p> <p>The information from John Kiriakou confirms what has long been a no-brainer but not definitively established before; namely, that President George W. Bush&#8217;s &#8220;alternative set of procedures&#8221; for interrogation by C.I.A. includes waterboarding. Zubayda was given pride of place in George W. Bush&#8217;s remarkable speech of Sept. 6, 2006, in which he bragged about the effectiveness of such procedures and appealed successfully for passage of the Military Commissions Act. That law allows a president to define what set of interrogation procedures can be used by the C.I.A. This is Bush on Sept. 6, 2006:</p> <p>We believe that Zubayda was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden&#8230;[and that] he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained&#8230;We knew that Zubayda had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking&#8230;And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures&#8230;The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful&#8230;. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.</p> <p>Zubayda was questioned using these procedures, and soon he began to provide information on key al-Qaeda operatives, including information that helped us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th. For example, Zubayda identified one of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed&#8217;s accomplices in the 9/11 attacks &#8212; a terrorist named Ramzi bin al Shibh. The information Zubayda provided helped lead to the capture of bin al Shibh. And together these two terrorists provided information that helped in the planning and execution of the operation that captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.</p> <p>Bush claimed that his interrogation program had saved lives, and Kiriakou says the use of waterboarding &#8220;probably saved lives.&#8221; We cannot know for sure if this is true. Off-the-record interviews with intelligence officials strongly suggest that there is much prevarication and exaggeration in president&#8217;s claims about lives saved and operations disrupted, and that the his assertions merit no more credulity than other claims-for example, that Iran&#8217;s nuclear weapons program poses a threat to the U.S., even though it has been stopped for four years.</p> <p>Other U.S. intelligence officials take issue with the C.I.A.&#8217;s version of the questioning of Zubayda. Some say that initially he was cooperating with F.B.I. interrogators using a nonconfrontational approach, when C.I.A. assumed control and opted for more aggressive tactics. After that experience, the F.B.I. reportedly warned its agents to avoid interrogation sessions at which harsh methods were used.</p> <p>As for credibility, never has a U.S. president&#8217;s word been so cheapened as it is today. In late July 2007, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity joined with Justin Frank, MD, psychiatrist, professor at George Washington University Hospital, and author of &#8220;Bush on the Couch,&#8221; to search for insight on how President Bush thinks.</p> <p>His pathology is a patchwork of false beliefs and incomplete information woven into what he asserts is the whole truth&#8230;He lies-not just to us, but to himself as well&#8230;What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt-for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him&#8230;. So his words mean nothing. That is very important for people to understand.</p> <p>This Is Oversight?</p> <p>The past few weeks have witnessed an unseemly square dance in Congress, highlighting conflicting claims about what those who are supposed to be overseeing the intelligence community knew and when they knew it-about torture, about Iran, about many things. It is nothing short of an insult to the Founders that members of the House and Senate can find nothing more useful to do than wring their hands over their largely self-inflicted powerlessness.</p> <p>Lawmakers have been so thoroughly intimidated by the White House that I get physically ill watching the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Jane Harman, Bob Graham, and Jay Rockefeller moan about how secretive and nasty the Bush administration has been. Harman complained recently that when she was ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee some of the material (on interrogations) was so highly classified that she had to take a &#8220;second oath&#8221; to protect it.</p> <p>What about the solemn oath they all take to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic? Should not that oath transcend and govern others that an administration might require for access to secret materials?</p> <p>Senator Dick Durbin of the Senate Intelligence Committee has complained that he was aware that classified information did not justify the conclusion in 2002 that Iraq had unconventional weapons, but he could not say anything because it was classified! Durbin explained:</p> <p>&#8230; We&#8217;re duty-bound once we enter that room to respect classified information. Everything you hear is supposed to stay in the room&#8230;I certainly had enough to know that the statements that were made about mushroom clouds were not the conclusions of someone in the administration who was really being honest about the full debate. But you really know, walking in the room, what the rules of the game will be.</p> <p>House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has admitted knowing for several years about the Bush administration&#8217;s eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant. She was briefed on it when she was ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when Bush and Cheney took office. One key unanswered question is this: Was she told that within days of their taking office-that is, seven months before 9/11, the National Security Agency&#8217;s electronic vacuum cleaner had already begun to suck up information on Americans-the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, not to mention the Constitution, be damned?</p> <p>In a Washington Post op-ed of Jan. 15, 2006, Pelosi proudly advertised her uniquely long tenure on the Intelligence Committee and acknowledged that she was one of the privileged handful of lawmakers who were briefed. &#8220;This is how I came to be informed of President Bush&#8217;s authorization for the NSA to conduct certain types of surveillance.&#8221; She then proceeded to demonstrate the bowing and scraping characteristic of her subservient attitude toward the Executive Branch:</p> <p>&#8220;But when the administration notifies Congress in this manner, it is not seeking approval. There is a clear expectation that the information will be shared by no one, including other members of the intelligence committees. As a result, only a few members of Congress were aware of the president&#8217;s surveillance program, and they were constrained from discussing it more widely.&#8221;</p> <p>And so too, may we assume, with respect to torture? This is oversight? Neutered Watchdogs: Rockefeller and Reyes</p> <p>What can we expect from the current Senate and House oversight chairmen regarding the recently disclosed, deliberate destruction of two tapes of harsh interrogations of Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri? (Al-Nashiri is thought to have played a role in the attack on the USS Cole.) On the Senate side, expect nothing of Mr. Milquetoast Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who, it is said, is so afraid of his own shadow that he only ventures outdoors at night or in bad weather.</p> <p>House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes has a different kind of problem, and should recuse himself. He has been fawning all over Jos&#233; Rodriguez, the former CIA Deputy Director of Operations who ordered the tapes destroyed.</p> <p>On August 16, 2007 Congressman Reyes told a conference in El Paso he considered Rodriguez &#8220;an American hero,&#8221; proudly adding that, &#8220;with a few liberties that Hollywood takes, the exploits of Jos&#233; Rodriguez are documented in the FOX TV series &#8220;24.&#8221; I am told that almost every episode of &#8220;24&#8221; includes at least one scene glorifying torture, usually with lead man Jack Bauer playing a main role. Reyes made it clear he is a big fan of Bauer and &#8220;24.&#8221;</p> <p>Were that not enough, after Rodriguez&#8217; role in destroying the interrogation tapes became public, Reyes immediately cautioned against allowing investigations to find just one &#8220;scapegoat&#8221; (no secret to whom he was referring). And so, unless Reyes does recuse himself, look for a &#8220;complete and thorough&#8221; investigation of the kind favored by the Nixon White House. (Just when you may have thought it could not get any worse!) Torture as Technique: Stark Differences in View</p> <p>On Sept. 6, 2006, the very day Bush bragged about his &#8220;alternative set of procedures for interrogation&#8221; and appealed for legislation allowing the C.I.A. to continue using them, the head of Army intelligence, Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, took a very different tack. Conducting a Pentagon briefing shortly before the president gave his own speech, Kimmons underscored the fact that the revised Army manual for interrogation is in sync with the Geneva treaties. Then, conceding past &#8220;transgressions and mistakes,&#8221; Kimmons updated something I learned 45 years ago as a second lieutenant in Army intelligence:</p> <p>&#8220;No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.&#8221;</p> <p>Grabbing the headlines the following day, was Bush&#8217;s admission that the CIA has taken &#8220;high-value&#8221; captives to prisons abroad for interrogation using &#8220;tough&#8221; techniques prohibited by the revised Army field manual-and by Geneva, for that matter. Gen. Kimmons displayed uncommon courage in facing into that wind.</p> <p>How About- Stop Torture Because It&#8217;s Wrong?</p> <p>Have you noticed the shameful silence of our institutional churches, synagogues, and mosques? True, on occasion a professor of moral theology will speak out. Professor William Schweiker of the Chicago Divinity School, for example, has heaped scorn on the scenario of the lone knower of the facts whose torture is thought to be able to save millions of lives. He notes that such is &#8220;the stuff of bad spy movies and bad exam questions in ethics courses.&#8221; S <a href="" type="internal">chweiker warns Christians, in particular</a>:</p> <p>&#8220;Not to fall prey to fear and questionable reasoning and this continue to support an unjust and vile practice that demeans the nation&#8217;s highest political and moral ideals, even as it desecrates one of the most important practices and symbols (Baptism) of the Christian faith.&#8221;</p> <p>And, to its credit, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a coalition of 130 religious organizations from left to right on the political spectrum, yesterday issued a strong call for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the C.I.A.&#8217;s destruction of the videotapes of harsh interrogation techniques. NRCAT&#8217;s founder, Princeton Theological Seminary professor George Hunsinger told the press that &#8220;to acknowledge that waterboarding is torture is like conceding that the sun rises in the east,&#8221; adding:</p> <p>&#8220;All the dissembling in high places that makes these shocking abuses possible must be brought to an end. But they will undoubtedly continue unless those responsible for them are held accountable. Clearly a joint probe by the Justice Department and the CIA &#8212; agencies that are both seriously compromised &#8212; is not enough. A special counsel is an essential first step.&#8221;</p> <p>But where are the official voices of the institutional churches, synagogues, and mosques in this country. In effect, they are ordaining Jack Bauer with their silence.</p> <p>This Happened Before</p> <p>With very few exceptions, the institutional churches in Nazi Germany kept a shameful silence, denying believers the moral authority and leadership so needed to stand up to Gestapo torturers. Indeed, many of the bishops-like military leaders, and jurists-swore a personal oath to Hitler. For his part, the Nazi leader moved quite quickly to ensure that there was a pastor-whether Evangelical or Catholic-in every parish in Germany. He saw this as a source of support and stability for his regime. And, sadly, it was.</p> <p>While the Nazis were systematically torturing and even murdering defenseless victims, they kept repeating assurances that not a single hair of anyone&#8217;s head would be harmed. (Shades of the familiar refrain &#8220;we do not torture.&#8221;) And the propaganda machine under Joseph Goebbels made a fine art of what President Bush calls the need to &#8220;catapult the propaganda.&#8221;</p> <p>Sebastian Haffner, a young German lawyer in Berlin during the thirties kept a journal that his children subsequently published in book form as &#8220;Defying Hitler.&#8221; His fascinating account of Germany in the thirties provides many thoughtful insights into prevailing attitudes and the lack of moral leadership. Haffner&#8217;s journal depicted the kind of ambiance in which the approach of the Grand Inquisitor would, and did, flourish-&#8220;in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet [and] become obedient:&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The weather in March 1933 was glorious. Was it not wonderful to&#8230;merge with festive crowds and listen to speeches about freedom and homeland? (It was certainly better than having one&#8217;s belly pumped up with a water hose in some hidden secret police cellar.)&#8221;</p> <p>Breeding and Breakdown</p> <p>Haffner closes his chapter on 1933 with observations that, in my view, apply much too aptly to America today:</p> <p>&#8220;The sequence of events is, as you see, not so unnatural. It is wholly within the normal range of psychology, and it helps to explain the almost inexplicable. The only thing that is missing is what in animals is called &#8216;breeding.&#8217; This is a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle, and dignity to be drawn on in the hour of trial. It is missing in Germans. As a nation we are soft, unreliable, and without backbone. That was shown in March 1933. At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown.&#8221;</p> <p>C.I.A.&#8217;s John Kiriakou says he is now convinced that waterboarding is torture and he is against it. He adds, &#8220;Americans are better than that.&#8221; But Are We Better Than That?</p> <p>Sadly, that remains to be seen. With virtually all religious institutions, politicians, and educators all squandering what moral authority they have left, the Jack Bauer culture threatens to win out in the end. We cannot let that happen.</p> <p>The upcoming duel on the missing interrogation tapes will again bring the issue of torture front and center. And, strangely, waterboarding and other Jack Bauer tradecraft tools still enjoy a strong constituency.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s where we come in; for we are the ones we&#8217;ve been waiting for. As one of my intelligence alumni colleagues noted recently, this is about our country losing its soul. Let&#8217;s rise to the occasion and stop unconscionable policies like torture. True patriotism goes well beyond a flag-on-the-lapel. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, &#8220;Sometimes you have to put your body into it.&#8221; Besides, we need to keep the water hose from pumping up our bellies and those of our loved ones. I only wish that were as remote a possibility as it was before President Bush and his associates came up with their &#8220;alternative set of procedures.&#8221;</p> <p>RAY McGOVERN was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and Robert Gates&#8217; branch chief in the early 1970s. McGovern now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He is a contributor to <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">Imperial Crusades</a>, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:rrmcgovern@aol.com" type="external">rrmcgovern@aol.com</a></p> <p>An earlier, shorter version of this piece appeared on Consortiumnews.com</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Torture, Lies and Videotape

https://counterpunch.org/2007/12/12/torture-lies-and-videotape/

2007-12-12

4left

A boyish inquisitive face with an innocent look peered out from the Washington Post8217s lead story yesterday on torture It was well groomed pinkshirted John Kiriakou a CIA interrogator who could just as easily pass for the local youth minister The report by the Post8217s Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen which describes Kiriakou8217s experience in interrogating suspected terrorists raises in an unusually direct way an abiding question Should the United States of America be using forms of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition Nowhere is the mood of that infamous period better portrayed than in the famous Grand Inquisitor chapter of Dostoyevsky8217s Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky was unusually gifted at plumbing the human heart While it has been 127 years since he wrote Brothers Karamazov he nonetheless captures the trap into which so many Americans have fallen in forfeiting freedom through fear His portrayal of Inquisition reality brings us to the brink of the moral precipice on which our country teeters today It is as though he knew what would be in store for us as fear was artificially stoked after the attacks of 911 In the story Dostoevsky8217s Grand Inquisitor the Cardinal of Seville ridicules Christ for imposing on humans the heavy burden of freedom of conscience and explains how it is far better for all concerned to dull that conscience and to rule by deceit violence and fear 8220Didst thou forget that man prefers peace and even death to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil8230We teach them that it8217s not the free judgment of their hearts but mystery which they must follow blindly even against their conscience8230 In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and become obedient8230We shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in Thy name8230 we shall be forced to lie8230 We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated if it is done with our permission8221 The Grand Inquisitor in Brothers Karamazov Kiriakou was one of the first interrogators to interview suspected terrorist Abu Zubayda in a Pakistani military hospital where Zubayda was recovering from wounds suffered during his capture in early 2002 When he refused to provide information about alQaeda8217s infrastructure he was flown to a secret CIA prison where according to Kiriakou the interrogation team strapped Abu Zubayda to a board wrapped his nose and mouth in cellophane and forced water into his throat In just 35 seconds viola Abu Zubayda starting talking That is called waterboarding The 15 ampamp 16 Century Spanish inquisitors were not squeamish and had little need for circumlocutions or euphemisms like 8220alternative set of procedures8221 that are part of President George W Bush8217s lexicon The Spanish called this procedure quite plainly 8220tortura del agua8221 Lacking cellophane they inserted a cloth into the victim8217s mouth forcing the victim to ingest water spilled from a jar starting the drowning process Four centuries later the Gestapo put out several technically improved releases of this operating system of torture so to speak Quick someone please tell newly confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey who told reporters yesterday he still cannot decide whether waterboarding is torture Abu Zubayda Poster Child The information from John Kiriakou confirms what has long been a nobrainer but not definitively established before namely that President George W Bush8217s 8220alternative set of procedures8221 for interrogation by CIA includes waterboarding Zubayda was given pride of place in George W Bush8217s remarkable speech of Sept 6 2006 in which he bragged about the effectiveness of such procedures and appealed successfully for passage of the Military Commissions Act That law allows a president to define what set of interrogation procedures can be used by the CIA This is Bush on Sept 6 2006 We believe that Zubayda was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden8230and that he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 911 hijackers trained8230We knew that Zubayda had more information that could save innocent lives but he stopped talking8230And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures8230The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful8230 But I can say the procedures were tough and they were safe and lawful and necessary Zubayda was questioned using these procedures and soon he began to provide information on key alQaeda operatives including information that helped us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th For example Zubayda identified one of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed8217s accomplices in the 911 attacks 8212 a terrorist named Ramzi bin al Shibh The information Zubayda provided helped lead to the capture of bin al Shibh And together these two terrorists provided information that helped in the planning and execution of the operation that captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Bush claimed that his interrogation program had saved lives and Kiriakou says the use of waterboarding 8220probably saved lives8221 We cannot know for sure if this is true Offtherecord interviews with intelligence officials strongly suggest that there is much prevarication and exaggeration in president8217s claims about lives saved and operations disrupted and that the his assertions merit no more credulity than other claimsfor example that Iran8217s nuclear weapons program poses a threat to the US even though it has been stopped for four years Other US intelligence officials take issue with the CIA8217s version of the questioning of Zubayda Some say that initially he was cooperating with FBI interrogators using a nonconfrontational approach when CIA assumed control and opted for more aggressive tactics After that experience the FBI reportedly warned its agents to avoid interrogation sessions at which harsh methods were used As for credibility never has a US president8217s word been so cheapened as it is today In late July 2007 we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity joined with Justin Frank MD psychiatrist professor at George Washington University Hospital and author of 8220Bush on the Couch8221 to search for insight on how President Bush thinks His pathology is a patchwork of false beliefs and incomplete information woven into what he asserts is the whole truth8230He liesnot just to us but to himself as well8230What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contemptfor language for law and for anybody who dares question him8230 So his words mean nothing That is very important for people to understand This Is Oversight The past few weeks have witnessed an unseemly square dance in Congress highlighting conflicting claims about what those who are supposed to be overseeing the intelligence community knew and when they knew itabout torture about Iran about many things It is nothing short of an insult to the Founders that members of the House and Senate can find nothing more useful to do than wring their hands over their largely selfinflicted powerlessness Lawmakers have been so thoroughly intimidated by the White House that I get physically ill watching the likes of Nancy Pelosi Jane Harman Bob Graham and Jay Rockefeller moan about how secretive and nasty the Bush administration has been Harman complained recently that when she was ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee some of the material on interrogations was so highly classified that she had to take a 8220second oath8221 to protect it What about the solemn oath they all take to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic Should not that oath transcend and govern others that an administration might require for access to secret materials Senator Dick Durbin of the Senate Intelligence Committee has complained that he was aware that classified information did not justify the conclusion in 2002 that Iraq had unconventional weapons but he could not say anything because it was classified Durbin explained 8230 We8217re dutybound once we enter that room to respect classified information Everything you hear is supposed to stay in the room8230I certainly had enough to know that the statements that were made about mushroom clouds were not the conclusions of someone in the administration who was really being honest about the full debate But you really know walking in the room what the rules of the game will be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has admitted knowing for several years about the Bush administration8217s eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant She was briefed on it when she was ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when Bush and Cheney took office One key unanswered question is this Was she told that within days of their taking officethat is seven months before 911 the National Security Agency8217s electronic vacuum cleaner had already begun to suck up information on Americansthe Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act not to mention the Constitution be damned In a Washington Post oped of Jan 15 2006 Pelosi proudly advertised her uniquely long tenure on the Intelligence Committee and acknowledged that she was one of the privileged handful of lawmakers who were briefed 8220This is how I came to be informed of President Bush8217s authorization for the NSA to conduct certain types of surveillance8221 She then proceeded to demonstrate the bowing and scraping characteristic of her subservient attitude toward the Executive Branch 8220But when the administration notifies Congress in this manner it is not seeking approval There is a clear expectation that the information will be shared by no one including other members of the intelligence committees As a result only a few members of Congress were aware of the president8217s surveillance program and they were constrained from discussing it more widely8221 And so too may we assume with respect to torture This is oversight Neutered Watchdogs Rockefeller and Reyes What can we expect from the current Senate and House oversight chairmen regarding the recently disclosed deliberate destruction of two tapes of harsh interrogations of Abu Zubayda and Abd alRahim alNashiri AlNashiri is thought to have played a role in the attack on the USS Cole On the Senate side expect nothing of Mr Milquetoast Jay Rockefeller chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who it is said is so afraid of his own shadow that he only ventures outdoors at night or in bad weather House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes has a different kind of problem and should recuse himself He has been fawning all over Jos233 Rodriguez the former CIA Deputy Director of Operations who ordered the tapes destroyed On August 16 2007 Congressman Reyes told a conference in El Paso he considered Rodriguez 8220an American hero8221 proudly adding that 8220with a few liberties that Hollywood takes the exploits of Jos233 Rodriguez are documented in the FOX TV series 8220248221 I am told that almost every episode of 8220248221 includes at least one scene glorifying torture usually with lead man Jack Bauer playing a main role Reyes made it clear he is a big fan of Bauer and 8220248221 Were that not enough after Rodriguez8217 role in destroying the interrogation tapes became public Reyes immediately cautioned against allowing investigations to find just one 8220scapegoat8221 no secret to whom he was referring And so unless Reyes does recuse himself look for a 8220complete and thorough8221 investigation of the kind favored by the Nixon White House Just when you may have thought it could not get any worse Torture as Technique Stark Differences in View On Sept 6 2006 the very day Bush bragged about his 8220alternative set of procedures for interrogation8221 and appealed for legislation allowing the CIA to continue using them the head of Army intelligence Lt Gen John Kimmons took a very different tack Conducting a Pentagon briefing shortly before the president gave his own speech Kimmons underscored the fact that the revised Army manual for interrogation is in sync with the Geneva treaties Then conceding past 8220transgressions and mistakes8221 Kimmons updated something I learned 45 years ago as a second lieutenant in Army intelligence 8220No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices I think history tells us that I think the empirical evidence of the last five years hard years tells us that8221 Grabbing the headlines the following day was Bush8217s admission that the CIA has taken 8220highvalue8221 captives to prisons abroad for interrogation using 8220tough8221 techniques prohibited by the revised Army field manualand by Geneva for that matter Gen Kimmons displayed uncommon courage in facing into that wind How About Stop Torture Because It8217s Wrong Have you noticed the shameful silence of our institutional churches synagogues and mosques True on occasion a professor of moral theology will speak out Professor William Schweiker of the Chicago Divinity School for example has heaped scorn on the scenario of the lone knower of the facts whose torture is thought to be able to save millions of lives He notes that such is 8220the stuff of bad spy movies and bad exam questions in ethics courses8221 S chweiker warns Christians in particular 8220Not to fall prey to fear and questionable reasoning and this continue to support an unjust and vile practice that demeans the nation8217s highest political and moral ideals even as it desecrates one of the most important practices and symbols Baptism of the Christian faith8221 And to its credit the National Religious Campaign Against Torture a coalition of 130 religious organizations from left to right on the political spectrum yesterday issued a strong call for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the CIA8217s destruction of the videotapes of harsh interrogation techniques NRCAT8217s founder Princeton Theological Seminary professor George Hunsinger told the press that 8220to acknowledge that waterboarding is torture is like conceding that the sun rises in the east8221 adding 8220All the dissembling in high places that makes these shocking abuses possible must be brought to an end But they will undoubtedly continue unless those responsible for them are held accountable Clearly a joint probe by the Justice Department and the CIA 8212 agencies that are both seriously compromised 8212 is not enough A special counsel is an essential first step8221 But where are the official voices of the institutional churches synagogues and mosques in this country In effect they are ordaining Jack Bauer with their silence This Happened Before With very few exceptions the institutional churches in Nazi Germany kept a shameful silence denying believers the moral authority and leadership so needed to stand up to Gestapo torturers Indeed many of the bishopslike military leaders and juristsswore a personal oath to Hitler For his part the Nazi leader moved quite quickly to ensure that there was a pastorwhether Evangelical or Catholicin every parish in Germany He saw this as a source of support and stability for his regime And sadly it was While the Nazis were systematically torturing and even murdering defenseless victims they kept repeating assurances that not a single hair of anyone8217s head would be harmed Shades of the familiar refrain 8220we do not torture8221 And the propaganda machine under Joseph Goebbels made a fine art of what President Bush calls the need to 8220catapult the propaganda8221 Sebastian Haffner a young German lawyer in Berlin during the thirties kept a journal that his children subsequently published in book form as 8220Defying Hitler8221 His fascinating account of Germany in the thirties provides many thoughtful insights into prevailing attitudes and the lack of moral leadership Haffner8217s journal depicted the kind of ambiance in which the approach of the Grand Inquisitor would and did flourish8220in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and become obedient8221 8220The weather in March 1933 was glorious Was it not wonderful to8230merge with festive crowds and listen to speeches about freedom and homeland It was certainly better than having one8217s belly pumped up with a water hose in some hidden secret police cellar8221 Breeding and Breakdown Haffner closes his chapter on 1933 with observations that in my view apply much too aptly to America today 8220The sequence of events is as you see not so unnatural It is wholly within the normal range of psychology and it helps to explain the almost inexplicable The only thing that is missing is what in animals is called 8216breeding8217 This is a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces something noble and steely a reserve of pride principle and dignity to be drawn on in the hour of trial It is missing in Germans As a nation we are soft unreliable and without backbone That was shown in March 1933 At the moment of truth when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion the Germans collectively and limply collapsed They yielded and capitulated and suffered a nervous breakdown8221 CIA8217s John Kiriakou says he is now convinced that waterboarding is torture and he is against it He adds 8220Americans are better than that8221 But Are We Better Than That Sadly that remains to be seen With virtually all religious institutions politicians and educators all squandering what moral authority they have left the Jack Bauer culture threatens to win out in the end We cannot let that happen The upcoming duel on the missing interrogation tapes will again bring the issue of torture front and center And strangely waterboarding and other Jack Bauer tradecraft tools still enjoy a strong constituency Here8217s where we come in for we are the ones we8217ve been waiting for As one of my intelligence alumni colleagues noted recently this is about our country losing its soul Let8217s rise to the occasion and stop unconscionable policies like torture True patriotism goes well beyond a flagonthelapel As Dr Martin Luther King Jr noted 8220Sometimes you have to put your body into it8221 Besides we need to keep the water hose from pumping up our bellies and those of our loved ones I only wish that were as remote a possibility as it was before President Bush and his associates came up with their 8220alternative set of procedures8221 RAY McGOVERN was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and Robert Gates8217 branch chief in the early 1970s McGovern now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity VIPS He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair He can be reached at rrmcgovernaolcom An earlier shorter version of this piece appeared on Consortiumnewscom amp160 amp160

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<p>The recent electoral victory of Barack Obama and the Democratic party presents a unique opportunity to overturn the most perverse policy of the Bush administration and the religious right, the conservative repressive sexual agenda. The following nine proposals can help frame a new sexual agenda to be introduced in the first 100 days.</p> <p>For the last three decades the religious right fought a take-no-prisoners war over popular morality. Taking power with Bush&#8217;s victory in 2000, Christian conservatives were finally in the position to impose their beliefs as public policy. And they did so with a vengeance. At the local, state and federal levels, religious zealots, working through the Republican party, took control of the apparatus of the State and aggressively implemented a diverse set of programs to further their goal of creating a morally upstanding, Christian society. Family life, sexual relations, education, scientific knowledge and popular entertainment became battlegrounds of the culture wars.</p> <p>The culture wars played a decisive role in the 2000 and 2004 elections, but were eclipsed in the 2006 Congressional elections, the religious right&#8217;s moral fervor spent. While sex issues were all but absent from the 2008 national presidential campaign, they did help rally the conservative faithful at the state level. Efforts to outlaw gay marriage were successful in Arizona (Proposition 102), California (Proposition 8)and Florida (Marriage Protection Amendment) as was Arkansas&#8217; Proposed Initiative Act No. 1 that prohibits co-habiting couples of the same sex, whether gay or straight, from either adopting a child or serving as foster parents.</p> <p>Nevertheless, efforts in Colorado (Amendment 45) and South Dakota (Initiated Measure 11) to, respectively, establish &#8220;fetal personhood&#8221; and ban abortion failed. And in Washington, voters approved a proposition permitting physician-assisted suicide similar to one already in force in Oregon. In 2008, it was the collapsing economy, failed Bush policies and culture-war fatigue as well as Obama&#8217;s broad popular appeal that turned the tide for the Democrats.</p> <p>The Democratic landslide provides a unique opportunity for Congress and the President-elect to quickly address at least one of the many profound failings of the Bush administration, its repressive sex policies. The following proposals can help frame the upcoming battle for political reform and, hopefully, finally put an end to the religious right&#8217;s culture wars.</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>Proposal #1: Safeguard Roe v Wade</p> <p>President-elect Obama was a co-sponsor of the 2007 Senate version of the Freedom of Choice Act (S. 1173) that would reaffirm Roe as a fundamental right. As he stated: &#8220;Throughout my career, I&#8217;ve been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.&#8221; Congress should pass and Obama should sign the Freedom on Choice Act.</p> <p>If enacted, the law would effectively overturn many state and federal restrictions imposed over the last eight years on a woman&#8217;s ability to choose an abortion. In particular, the Act would lift requirements on health-care providers to provide questionable medical &#8220;information&#8221; about the risks of having an abortion; lift restrictions limiting abortion providers to only licensed physicians; lift parental-notification and approval requirements for minors seeking an abortion; and overturn the dubiously-named &#8220;partial-birth abortions&#8221; laws.</p> <p>One of the critical features of the Roe decision was establishing personhood at the moment of birth. As evident in Colorado voters&#8217; rejection of the &#8220;fetal personhood&#8221; proposition, the notion of personhood at the moment of conception is a veiled attempt to undercut Roe. Medico-scientific advances are pushing the moment of birth earlier and earlier before full-term is reached, with an increasing number of ever-smaller preemies living healthy lives. This is a remarkable accomplishment and should only strengthen the need to ensure that personhood remains at birth.</p> <p>Proposal #2: End Abstinence Policies</p> <p>The Bush administration&#8217;s abstinence-only crusade is a failure. Mounting research data indicates an upswing in pregnancy among teen girls, including Sarah Palin&#8217;s daughter, Bristol, and that the abstinence-only policy must be replaced. Abstinence-only education contributes to unwanted pregnancies, oftentimes leading to unwanted abortions. According to the ACLU, the federal government has spent more than $700 million since 1997 on abstinence-only programs and, last year, allocated approximately $170 million to such programs.</p> <p>Obama once insisted: &#8220;As President, I will improve access to affordable health care and work to ensure that our teens are getting the information and services they need to stay safe and healthy.&#8221; Democrats need to take Obama at his word and quickly move to end funding for existing abstinence-only programs and implement a more humane, sex-positive and age- appropriate educational programs.</p> <p>In addition, humane sex education is only half the challenge in addressing the needs of teens and young people regarding their sexual health. The monies that have been wasted on abstinence-only programs should be more wisely spent on providing health care screenings and, where appropriate, birth control materials. A young person needs to be supported in terms of both her/his mind and body for an effective sex education program to work.</p> <p>Proposal #3: Remove Religion from the Classroom</p> <p>U.S. District Judge John Jones ruled in December 2005 that the board of Dover, PA, school district had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by requiring biology teachers to include &#8220;intelligent design&#8221; in their curriculum. In a trial recalling the legendary 1925 Scopes monkey trial, the judge found that such intellectual hokum was nothing more than a disguised form of creationism smuggled into the classroom under a different name.</p> <p>For the last half-century, Americans have attempted to restricted religious practice in public life, especially prayer in school. In 1962, Engel v. Vitale ended state-mandated, teacher-led prayer; the follow years, Abington Township v. Schemmp extended Engel. The 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman called for the strick separation of church and state. And the 1985 Wallace v. Jaffree decision ended the moment of prayer in the classroom. While believes of all strips need to have their First Amedment rights protected, even in voluntary group meeting in schools, relgion needs to removed from the classroom.</p> <p>The tyranny of religion is the ignorance it fosters. As evident in the Dover decision and other battles over evolution, this ignornace has found expression and public-policy legitimacy in the many false Bush-administration claims like those that linked abortion to breast cancer and advised that condoms to not prevent conception or transmission of sexual diseases. The administration of lies must be thoroughly repudiated and replaced.</p> <p>Proposal #4: Accept Civil Unions &amp;amp; Marriage among Same-Sex Couples</p> <p>President-elect Obama has come out in favor of civil unions and in opposition to marriage among same-sex couples. The recent electoral decisions banning gay marriage in Arizona, California and Florida reflect a deep fear among many Americas about the meaning of marriage, personal intimacy, in a rapidly changing world.</p> <p>According to the Human Rights Campaign, twenty-six additional states that have constitutionally restricted marriage to one man and one woman. These states are: Alabama (2006), Alaska (1998), Arkansas (2004), Colorado, Georgia (2004), Kansas (2005), Idaho (2006), Kentucky (2004), Louisiana (2004), Michigan (2004), Mississippi (2004), Missouri (2004), Montana (2004), Nebraska (2000), Nevada (2002), North Dakota (2004), Ohio 2004), Oklahoma (2004), Oregon (2004), South Carolina (2006), South Dakota (2006), Tennessee (2006), Texas (2005), Utah (2004), Virginia (2006) and Wisconsin (2006).</p> <p>In addition, fifteen states have passed laws, but not constitutional amendments, restricting marriage to one man and one woman. These include Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.</p> <p>However, the question that haunts these popular initiatives is simple: Are they Constitutional? Since America was first settled by English colonists nearly four centuries ago, there has been a persistent battle between civil and religious authorities over who had the power to legitimized a marriage agreement. Is marriage a legal contract between consenting adults involving property relations or a sacred relation involving a holy union mediated by god? In practice, civil society has won the battle and determines formal marital agreements. However, religious organizations persist in laying claim to a role in sanctifying these relations. This confusion must finally be put to rest.</p> <p>Gay marriage is legal in two states, Connecticut and Massachusetts. A peculiarly historic irony informs the gay-marriage issue as Obama assumes the presidency. When Obama&#8217;s parents married in 1960, twenty-two states had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. These states ranged from traditional hard-core racist strongholds like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to otherwise moderate Delaware and Maryland. The Supreme Court&#8217;s now-celebrated Loving decision of 1967 voided &#8220;racial hygiene&#8221; laws, finding that state &#8220;anti-miscegenation&#8221; law violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution&#8217;s 14th Amendment. A similar Court decision could well apply to marriage among gay men and women and, thus, finally bring full bourgeois rights to a discriminated minority.</p> <p>Proposal #5: End &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask/Don&#8217;t Tell&#8221;</p> <p>President-elect Obama earlier this year announced his intention to end the &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask/Don&#8217;t Tell&#8221; [DADT] policy banning gay people from military service. &#8220;There&#8217;s increasing recognition within the armed forces that this is a counterproductive strategy,&#8221; he said, &#8220;ya know, we&#8217;re spending large sums of money to kick highly qualified gays or lesbians out of our military, some of whom possess specialties like Arab-language capabilities that we desperately need. That doesn&#8217;t make us more safe&#8221;. [NY Daily News, April 11, 2008]</p> <p>Congress should pass and the new president should sign the Military Readiness Enhancement Act [MREA]. MREA ends the discriminatory and unworkable policies inherent to DADT. It was introduced in the 109th Congress by Rep. Martin Meehan (D-MA) and has 122 bipartisan co-sponsors.</p> <p>In a 2006 report, the Boston Globe found that since 1994 a total of 9,682 soldiers have been discharged on sexual ground. It reports that &#8220;the number of soldiers facing discharge under the [DADT] policy has dropped steadily &#8212; from 1,273 in 2001 to 906 in 2002 and 787 in 2003 &#8230; .&#8221; Time magazine argues that &#8220;because the military is fighting two wars, commanders discharge only about 600 bisexuals, gays and lesbians each year, down from about 1,200 a year in the late &#8217;90s.&#8221; [Boston Globe, March 19, 2006; Time, July 23, 2008]</p> <p>The new president and Congress could join an increasing number of former military leaders calling for DADT&#8217;s repeal. General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former supporter of DADT, is one of its fiercest critics, arguing that it is simply an unworkable policy. &#8220;When that day [of ending DADT] comes, gay men and lesbians will no longer have to conceal who they are, and the military will no longer need to sacrifice those whose service it cannot afford to lose.&#8221;</p> <p>His assessment is shared by former defense secretary William Cohen. He argues that &#8220;we&#8217;re hearing from within the military what we&#8217;re hearing from within society,that we&#8217;re becoming a much more open, tolerant society for diverse opinions and orientation.&#8221; It&#8217;s time to deposit DADT in the dustbin of history.</p> <p>Proposal #6: Adopt Enlightened Obscenity Standards</p> <p>The &#8217;08 presidential campaign was remarkable for the absence of any discussion by the two leading candidates of obscenity or pornography, decency. Bob Peters, president of the conservative advocacy group, Morality in Media, solicited replies from both candidates as to their respective positions on enforcing pornography laws. He reports that neither candidate replied to his inquiry. The candidates&#8217; shared silence on the issue of media pornography speaks volumes as to the relative acceptance of &#8220;indecent&#8221; materials among consenting adult Americans. [OneNewsNow, August 15,2008]</p> <p>Federal obscenity policies are framed by an effort to protect the &#8220;public&#8221; for what is broadly considered pornographic or &#8220;indecent&#8221; materials. These efforts focus on two principal areas: (i) indecent expressions offered over broadcast media like television and radio that might offend a viewer/listener and (ii) the display of sexually explicit images of children on the Internet.</p> <p>In the wake of Janet Jackson now infamous &#8220;accidental&#8221; display of her breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show and incidents involving Cher and Nicole Richie during live award shows in 2002 and 2003, the issue of &#8220;fleeting&#8221; expletives is now under consideration by the Supreme Court. This decision could be as significant as the 1978 FCC vs. Pacifica ruling against the broadcast (i.e., the censorship) of George Carlin&#8217;s &#8220;seven dirty words&#8221;. Times change, one can only wonder if justice does as well?</p> <p>The Court recently upheld, in a 7-to-2 ruling, the 2003 &#8220;Protect Act&#8221; (an acronym for Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today) that seeks to curb sexually explicit images of children on the Internet. The law applies to &#8220;any person who knowingly advertises, promotes, presents, distributes, or solicits&#8221; child pornography. Some civil libertarians wonder whether movies or innocent photographs of babies in the bath might be covered by the law. The two dissenting justices were David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.</p> <p>As a Constitutional lawyer, President-elect Obama will likely give special consideration to his appointments to the FCC and, in time, the federal courts. One can only hope these appointments will encourage personal freedoms and enhance individual choice while preserving and protecting the privacy of those most vulnerable to violation and without genuine consent. Justices like Souter and Ginsburg.</p> <p>Proposal #7: Decriminalize &amp;amp; Regulate Commercial Sex</p> <p>President-elect Obama must have met one or more commercial sex workers during his days organizing on the streets of Chicago&#8217;s South Side. Our next president knows something about American urban life. He must know, like most Americans, that, like the &#8220;war on drugs&#8221;, every attempt to halt this illegal activity has failed.</p> <p>The FBI reports that in 2005, 85,000 arrests were made for prostitution or commercial vice; such arrests declined by 13 percent (from 98,000) over the preceding decade. Law enforcement anti-prostitution efforts are focused on public nuisance offenses. Thus, they tend to target streetwalkers, massage-parlor workers (often non-documented migrants) and strippers or pole-dancers in would-be gentlemen&#8217;s clubs. The secret sex trade, accessed through escort services, craigslist and news weeklies, flourishes.</p> <p>Two states have decriminalized and regulated commercial sex. In Nevada, brothel prostitution is regulated in rural counties. In Rhode Island, private consensual commercial adult sex has been decriminalized, although the state still enforces laws against streetwalkers and brothel prostitutes. In years to come, we are likely to see further decriminalization efforts in other states and localities.</p> <p>The Democrats and the next president can make a big dent in the &#8220;war on drugs&#8221; and commercial vice by decriminalizing and regulating both enterprises. In addition, they should support the adoption of national &#8220;Safe Harbor Laws&#8221; that protect young people (to 18 years of age) from criminal prosecution if arrested for prostitution and that provide the needed social and medical services for their rehabilitation.</p> <p>Proposal #8: Develop Better Diagnostic, Treatment &amp;amp; Incarceration Methods for Sex Offenders</p> <p>The President-elect and the Congress have a unique opportunity to address one of America&#8217;s oldest and thorniest questions: How to deal with sex offenders. They have been part of the social landscape since the nation&#8217;s earliest colonization and persist as social deviants, increasingly identified as criminals. As presented on shows like NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Dateline&#8221; series, &#8220;To Catch a Predator&#8221;, their apparent omni-presence fosters a state of constant fear and trepidation among the American.</p> <p>In response to vocal public outrage over the apparent ubiqutous presence of offenders &#8220;free&#8221; in their community, state goverments are pushing far-reaching civil confinement law. With its passage earlier this year, New York joined nineteen other states that permit the continued imprisonment of sex offenders after they have completed their sentence. Civil confinement permits the state to transform a criminal sentence with a specified duration into an indeterminate life sentence.</p> <p>The President-elect and the Congress should initiate a two-front educational campaign that addresses the issue of sexual offenders. The first front would be directed to the general public and help deal with the widespread fear about the actual treat represented by sex offenders. It can also inform participants about the realities of childhood sexuality. Thus, it can dispel many popular myths, like sex crime is on the increase. It can help the public recognize sexual abuse and assess the experiences of both the victim and perpetrator of such behavior. Equally important, such a campaign would include a &#8220;professional&#8221; component made up of thoughtful representatives from appropriate federal agencies, law enforcement groups, criminology, public interest and legal organizations, psychology and other fields that addresses the issues of sex offenders.</p> <p>The output from such a &#8220;blue ribbon&#8221; committee could lead to legislative, law-enforcement and clinical recommendations that could help America finally address the problem of sex offenders. It would be an invaluable contribution by the Obama administration and a progressive Congress.</p> <p>Proposal #9: Reform, Extend &amp;amp; Strengthen PEPFAR</p> <p>President-elect Obama should move quickly to adopt Congress&#8217; revision of the Bush administration&#8217;s PEPFAR programs (for President&#8217;s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). Bush first promulgated it in his 2003 State of the Union address, declaring: &#8220;I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.&#8221; And it did.</p> <p>PEPFAR, the centerpiece effort for U.S. &#8220;soft&#8221; foreign diplomacy, suffers the same failures as other Bush-administration programs that deal with cultural values, including abortion and teen sex education. It is intended to improve the care, treatment and prevention of those suffering from HIV/AIDS in developing countries. While limitedly successful, for anything is better then nothing, it could never achieve its true potential because of its ideological blinders. Put simply, its prevention efforts are inhibited by its restrictions on condom.</p> <p>Earlier this year Congressed passed legislation reauthorizing PEPFAR (HR-5501). It allocate $50 billion for PEPFAR over the next five years, rejected White House efforts to hold funding to $30 billion. It also removed a requirement that at least one-third of HIV prevention funds went to abstinence-until-marriage programs. It signals a new PEPFAR.</p> <p>The new 111th Congress should quickly pass this reauthorization legislation and the new president should sigh it. It will signal not only a change in foreign health-care policy and &#8220;soft&#8221; diplomacy, but perhaps a change in overall international relations as well. Of course, the great-unanswered questions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,Iraq and Palestine-Israel remain to be addressed.</p> <p>DAVID ROSEN is the author of the forthcoming, &#8220;America&#8217;s Grand Sex Scandals: From Pochontas to George W. Bush&#8221; (Key, 2009), and can be reached at <a href="mailto:drosen@ix.netcom.com" type="external">drosen@ix.netcom.com</a>.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

A New Sexual Agenda

https://counterpunch.org/2008/11/28/a-new-sexual-agenda/

2008-11-28

4left

The recent electoral victory of Barack Obama and the Democratic party presents a unique opportunity to overturn the most perverse policy of the Bush administration and the religious right the conservative repressive sexual agenda The following nine proposals can help frame a new sexual agenda to be introduced in the first 100 days For the last three decades the religious right fought a takenoprisoners war over popular morality Taking power with Bush8217s victory in 2000 Christian conservatives were finally in the position to impose their beliefs as public policy And they did so with a vengeance At the local state and federal levels religious zealots working through the Republican party took control of the apparatus of the State and aggressively implemented a diverse set of programs to further their goal of creating a morally upstanding Christian society Family life sexual relations education scientific knowledge and popular entertainment became battlegrounds of the culture wars The culture wars played a decisive role in the 2000 and 2004 elections but were eclipsed in the 2006 Congressional elections the religious right8217s moral fervor spent While sex issues were all but absent from the 2008 national presidential campaign they did help rally the conservative faithful at the state level Efforts to outlaw gay marriage were successful in Arizona Proposition 102 California Proposition 8and Florida Marriage Protection Amendment as was Arkansas8217 Proposed Initiative Act No 1 that prohibits cohabiting couples of the same sex whether gay or straight from either adopting a child or serving as foster parents Nevertheless efforts in Colorado Amendment 45 and South Dakota Initiated Measure 11 to respectively establish 8220fetal personhood8221 and ban abortion failed And in Washington voters approved a proposition permitting physicianassisted suicide similar to one already in force in Oregon In 2008 it was the collapsing economy failed Bush policies and culturewar fatigue as well as Obama8217s broad popular appeal that turned the tide for the Democrats The Democratic landslide provides a unique opportunity for Congress and the Presidentelect to quickly address at least one of the many profound failings of the Bush administration its repressive sex policies The following proposals can help frame the upcoming battle for political reform and hopefully finally put an end to the religious right8217s culture wars Proposal 1 Safeguard Roe v Wade Presidentelect Obama was a cosponsor of the 2007 Senate version of the Freedom of Choice Act S 1173 that would reaffirm Roe as a fundamental right As he stated 8220Throughout my career I8217ve been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice and have consistently had a 100 prochoice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL ProChoice America8221 Congress should pass and Obama should sign the Freedom on Choice Act If enacted the law would effectively overturn many state and federal restrictions imposed over the last eight years on a woman8217s ability to choose an abortion In particular the Act would lift requirements on healthcare providers to provide questionable medical 8220information8221 about the risks of having an abortion lift restrictions limiting abortion providers to only licensed physicians lift parentalnotification and approval requirements for minors seeking an abortion and overturn the dubiouslynamed 8220partialbirth abortions8221 laws One of the critical features of the Roe decision was establishing personhood at the moment of birth As evident in Colorado voters8217 rejection of the 8220fetal personhood8221 proposition the notion of personhood at the moment of conception is a veiled attempt to undercut Roe Medicoscientific advances are pushing the moment of birth earlier and earlier before fullterm is reached with an increasing number of eversmaller preemies living healthy lives This is a remarkable accomplishment and should only strengthen the need to ensure that personhood remains at birth Proposal 2 End Abstinence Policies The Bush administration8217s abstinenceonly crusade is a failure Mounting research data indicates an upswing in pregnancy among teen girls including Sarah Palin8217s daughter Bristol and that the abstinenceonly policy must be replaced Abstinenceonly education contributes to unwanted pregnancies oftentimes leading to unwanted abortions According to the ACLU the federal government has spent more than 700 million since 1997 on abstinenceonly programs and last year allocated approximately 170 million to such programs Obama once insisted 8220As President I will improve access to affordable health care and work to ensure that our teens are getting the information and services they need to stay safe and healthy8221 Democrats need to take Obama at his word and quickly move to end funding for existing abstinenceonly programs and implement a more humane sexpositive and age appropriate educational programs In addition humane sex education is only half the challenge in addressing the needs of teens and young people regarding their sexual health The monies that have been wasted on abstinenceonly programs should be more wisely spent on providing health care screenings and where appropriate birth control materials A young person needs to be supported in terms of both herhis mind and body for an effective sex education program to work Proposal 3 Remove Religion from the Classroom US District Judge John Jones ruled in December 2005 that the board of Dover PA school district had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by requiring biology teachers to include 8220intelligent design8221 in their curriculum In a trial recalling the legendary 1925 Scopes monkey trial the judge found that such intellectual hokum was nothing more than a disguised form of creationism smuggled into the classroom under a different name For the last halfcentury Americans have attempted to restricted religious practice in public life especially prayer in school In 1962 Engel v Vitale ended statemandated teacherled prayer the follow years Abington Township v Schemmp extended Engel The 1971 Lemon v Kurtzman called for the strick separation of church and state And the 1985 Wallace v Jaffree decision ended the moment of prayer in the classroom While believes of all strips need to have their First Amedment rights protected even in voluntary group meeting in schools relgion needs to removed from the classroom The tyranny of religion is the ignorance it fosters As evident in the Dover decision and other battles over evolution this ignornace has found expression and publicpolicy legitimacy in the many false Bushadministration claims like those that linked abortion to breast cancer and advised that condoms to not prevent conception or transmission of sexual diseases The administration of lies must be thoroughly repudiated and replaced Proposal 4 Accept Civil Unions ampamp Marriage among SameSex Couples Presidentelect Obama has come out in favor of civil unions and in opposition to marriage among samesex couples The recent electoral decisions banning gay marriage in Arizona California and Florida reflect a deep fear among many Americas about the meaning of marriage personal intimacy in a rapidly changing world According to the Human Rights Campaign twentysix additional states that have constitutionally restricted marriage to one man and one woman These states are Alabama 2006 Alaska 1998 Arkansas 2004 Colorado Georgia 2004 Kansas 2005 Idaho 2006 Kentucky 2004 Louisiana 2004 Michigan 2004 Mississippi 2004 Missouri 2004 Montana 2004 Nebraska 2000 Nevada 2002 North Dakota 2004 Ohio 2004 Oklahoma 2004 Oregon 2004 South Carolina 2006 South Dakota 2006 Tennessee 2006 Texas 2005 Utah 2004 Virginia 2006 and Wisconsin 2006 In addition fifteen states have passed laws but not constitutional amendments restricting marriage to one man and one woman These include Delaware Hawaii Illinois Indiana Iowa Maine Maryland Minnesota New Hampshire North Carolina Pennsylvania Vermont Washington West Virginia and Wyoming However the question that haunts these popular initiatives is simple Are they Constitutional Since America was first settled by English colonists nearly four centuries ago there has been a persistent battle between civil and religious authorities over who had the power to legitimized a marriage agreement Is marriage a legal contract between consenting adults involving property relations or a sacred relation involving a holy union mediated by god In practice civil society has won the battle and determines formal marital agreements However religious organizations persist in laying claim to a role in sanctifying these relations This confusion must finally be put to rest Gay marriage is legal in two states Connecticut and Massachusetts A peculiarly historic irony informs the gaymarriage issue as Obama assumes the presidency When Obama8217s parents married in 1960 twentytwo states had laws prohibiting interracial marriage These states ranged from traditional hardcore racist strongholds like Alabama Mississippi and Louisiana to otherwise moderate Delaware and Maryland The Supreme Court8217s nowcelebrated Loving decision of 1967 voided 8220racial hygiene8221 laws finding that state 8220antimiscegenation8221 law violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution8217s 14th Amendment A similar Court decision could well apply to marriage among gay men and women and thus finally bring full bourgeois rights to a discriminated minority Proposal 5 End 8220Don8217t AskDon8217t Tell8221 Presidentelect Obama earlier this year announced his intention to end the 8220Don8217t AskDon8217t Tell8221 DADT policy banning gay people from military service 8220There8217s increasing recognition within the armed forces that this is a counterproductive strategy8221 he said 8220ya know we8217re spending large sums of money to kick highly qualified gays or lesbians out of our military some of whom possess specialties like Arablanguage capabilities that we desperately need That doesn8217t make us more safe8221 NY Daily News April 11 2008 Congress should pass and the new president should sign the Military Readiness Enhancement Act MREA MREA ends the discriminatory and unworkable policies inherent to DADT It was introduced in the 109th Congress by Rep Martin Meehan DMA and has 122 bipartisan cosponsors In a 2006 report the Boston Globe found that since 1994 a total of 9682 soldiers have been discharged on sexual ground It reports that 8220the number of soldiers facing discharge under the DADT policy has dropped steadily 8212 from 1273 in 2001 to 906 in 2002 and 787 in 2003 8230 8221 Time magazine argues that 8220because the military is fighting two wars commanders discharge only about 600 bisexuals gays and lesbians each year down from about 1200 a year in the late 821790s8221 Boston Globe March 19 2006 Time July 23 2008 The new president and Congress could join an increasing number of former military leaders calling for DADT8217s repeal General John Shalikashvili former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former supporter of DADT is one of its fiercest critics arguing that it is simply an unworkable policy 8220When that day of ending DADT comes gay men and lesbians will no longer have to conceal who they are and the military will no longer need to sacrifice those whose service it cannot afford to lose8221 His assessment is shared by former defense secretary William Cohen He argues that 8220we8217re hearing from within the military what we8217re hearing from within societythat we8217re becoming a much more open tolerant society for diverse opinions and orientation8221 It8217s time to deposit DADT in the dustbin of history Proposal 6 Adopt Enlightened Obscenity Standards The 821708 presidential campaign was remarkable for the absence of any discussion by the two leading candidates of obscenity or pornography decency Bob Peters president of the conservative advocacy group Morality in Media solicited replies from both candidates as to their respective positions on enforcing pornography laws He reports that neither candidate replied to his inquiry The candidates8217 shared silence on the issue of media pornography speaks volumes as to the relative acceptance of 8220indecent8221 materials among consenting adult Americans OneNewsNow August 152008 Federal obscenity policies are framed by an effort to protect the 8220public8221 for what is broadly considered pornographic or 8220indecent8221 materials These efforts focus on two principal areas i indecent expressions offered over broadcast media like television and radio that might offend a viewerlistener and ii the display of sexually explicit images of children on the Internet In the wake of Janet Jackson now infamous 8220accidental8221 display of her breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show and incidents involving Cher and Nicole Richie during live award shows in 2002 and 2003 the issue of 8220fleeting8221 expletives is now under consideration by the Supreme Court This decision could be as significant as the 1978 FCC vs Pacifica ruling against the broadcast ie the censorship of George Carlin8217s 8220seven dirty words8221 Times change one can only wonder if justice does as well The Court recently upheld in a 7to2 ruling the 2003 8220Protect Act8221 an acronym for Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today that seeks to curb sexually explicit images of children on the Internet The law applies to 8220any person who knowingly advertises promotes presents distributes or solicits8221 child pornography Some civil libertarians wonder whether movies or innocent photographs of babies in the bath might be covered by the law The two dissenting justices were David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg As a Constitutional lawyer Presidentelect Obama will likely give special consideration to his appointments to the FCC and in time the federal courts One can only hope these appointments will encourage personal freedoms and enhance individual choice while preserving and protecting the privacy of those most vulnerable to violation and without genuine consent Justices like Souter and Ginsburg Proposal 7 Decriminalize ampamp Regulate Commercial Sex Presidentelect Obama must have met one or more commercial sex workers during his days organizing on the streets of Chicago8217s South Side Our next president knows something about American urban life He must know like most Americans that like the 8220war on drugs8221 every attempt to halt this illegal activity has failed The FBI reports that in 2005 85000 arrests were made for prostitution or commercial vice such arrests declined by 13 percent from 98000 over the preceding decade Law enforcement antiprostitution efforts are focused on public nuisance offenses Thus they tend to target streetwalkers massageparlor workers often nondocumented migrants and strippers or poledancers in wouldbe gentlemen8217s clubs The secret sex trade accessed through escort services craigslist and news weeklies flourishes Two states have decriminalized and regulated commercial sex In Nevada brothel prostitution is regulated in rural counties In Rhode Island private consensual commercial adult sex has been decriminalized although the state still enforces laws against streetwalkers and brothel prostitutes In years to come we are likely to see further decriminalization efforts in other states and localities The Democrats and the next president can make a big dent in the 8220war on drugs8221 and commercial vice by decriminalizing and regulating both enterprises In addition they should support the adoption of national 8220Safe Harbor Laws8221 that protect young people to 18 years of age from criminal prosecution if arrested for prostitution and that provide the needed social and medical services for their rehabilitation Proposal 8 Develop Better Diagnostic Treatment ampamp Incarceration Methods for Sex Offenders The Presidentelect and the Congress have a unique opportunity to address one of America8217s oldest and thorniest questions How to deal with sex offenders They have been part of the social landscape since the nation8217s earliest colonization and persist as social deviants increasingly identified as criminals As presented on shows like NBC8217s 8220Dateline8221 series 8220To Catch a Predator8221 their apparent omnipresence fosters a state of constant fear and trepidation among the American In response to vocal public outrage over the apparent ubiqutous presence of offenders 8220free8221 in their community state goverments are pushing farreaching civil confinement law With its passage earlier this year New York joined nineteen other states that permit the continued imprisonment of sex offenders after they have completed their sentence Civil confinement permits the state to transform a criminal sentence with a specified duration into an indeterminate life sentence The Presidentelect and the Congress should initiate a twofront educational campaign that addresses the issue of sexual offenders The first front would be directed to the general public and help deal with the widespread fear about the actual treat represented by sex offenders It can also inform participants about the realities of childhood sexuality Thus it can dispel many popular myths like sex crime is on the increase It can help the public recognize sexual abuse and assess the experiences of both the victim and perpetrator of such behavior Equally important such a campaign would include a 8220professional8221 component made up of thoughtful representatives from appropriate federal agencies law enforcement groups criminology public interest and legal organizations psychology and other fields that addresses the issues of sex offenders The output from such a 8220blue ribbon8221 committee could lead to legislative lawenforcement and clinical recommendations that could help America finally address the problem of sex offenders It would be an invaluable contribution by the Obama administration and a progressive Congress Proposal 9 Reform Extend ampamp Strengthen PEPFAR Presidentelect Obama should move quickly to adopt Congress8217 revision of the Bush administration8217s PEPFAR programs for President8217s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Bush first promulgated it in his 2003 State of the Union address declaring 8220I ask the Congress to commit 15 billion over the next five years to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean8221 And it did PEPFAR the centerpiece effort for US 8220soft8221 foreign diplomacy suffers the same failures as other Bushadministration programs that deal with cultural values including abortion and teen sex education It is intended to improve the care treatment and prevention of those suffering from HIVAIDS in developing countries While limitedly successful for anything is better then nothing it could never achieve its true potential because of its ideological blinders Put simply its prevention efforts are inhibited by its restrictions on condom Earlier this year Congressed passed legislation reauthorizing PEPFAR HR5501 It allocate 50 billion for PEPFAR over the next five years rejected White House efforts to hold funding to 30 billion It also removed a requirement that at least onethird of HIV prevention funds went to abstinenceuntilmarriage programs It signals a new PEPFAR The new 111th Congress should quickly pass this reauthorization legislation and the new president should sigh it It will signal not only a change in foreign healthcare policy and 8220soft8221 diplomacy but perhaps a change in overall international relations as well Of course the greatunanswered questions of Iraq Afghanistan PakistanIraq and PalestineIsrael remain to be addressed DAVID ROSEN is the author of the forthcoming 8220America8217s Grand Sex Scandals From Pochontas to George W Bush8221 Key 2009 and can be reached at drosenixnetcomcom amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

The/DET recent/ADJ electoral/ADJ victory/NOUN of/ADP Barack/PROPN Obama/PROPN and/CCONJ the/DET Democratic/ADJ party/NOUN presents/VERB a/DET unique/ADJ opportunity/NOUN to/PART overturn/VERB the/DET most/ADV perverse/ADJ policy/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Bush/PROPN administration/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET religious/ADJ right/NOUN the/DET conservative/ADJ repressive/ADJ sexual/ADJ agenda/NOUN The/DET following/VERB nine/NUM proposals/NOUN can/AUX help/VERB frame/VERB a/DET new/ADJ sexual/ADJ agenda/NOUN to/PART be/AUX introduced/VERB in/ADP the/DET first/ADJ 100/NUM days/NOUN For/ADP the/DET last/ADJ three/NUM decades/NOUN the/DET religious/ADJ right/NOUN fought/VERB a/DET takenoprisoners/NOUN war/NOUN over/ADP popular/ADJ morality/NOUN Taking/NOUN power/NOUN with/ADP Bush8217s/PROPN victory/NOUN in/ADP 2000/NUM Christian/ADJ conservatives/NOUN were/AUX finally/ADV in/ADP the/DET position/NOUN to/PART impose/VERB their/PRON beliefs/NOUN as/ADP public/ADJ policy/NOUN And/CCONJ they/PRON did/VERB 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<p>Rep. Dennis Kucinich tells us why he isn&#8217;t buckling under pressure to vote for the president&#8217;s health care reform bill: &#8220;Every plan that&#8217;s put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry.&#8221;</p> <p>This interview was recorded Tuesday, March 9.</p> <p>{g_podcast_box}</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Transcript:</p> <p>Peter Scheer: This is the Truthdig podcast. I&#8217;m Peter Scheer. Earlier today my brother Josh and I spoke with Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who explained why he opposes the president&#8217;s health care reform bill. He also told us about his own bill calling for a full withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Here now is our interview.</p> <p>P.S.: So Congressman, you had on Monday an interview with &#8220;Countdown&#8221; that got lots of headlines where you said that you would not vote for the health care reform bill. You didn&#8217;t vote for the first health care reform bill. Is that a firm &#8220;no,&#8221; is there something that they could put in the bill that would get you to vote &#8220;yes&#8221; for it?</p> <p>Dennis Kucinich: I have had several meetings with the president on this bill. And I have indicated my concerns. No effort was made to address the concerns that I raised. I offered to come to the health care summit. The White House wasn&#8217;t interested. Even at this late date I have suggested that they resurrect a robust public option, and protect the legal right of states to set up their own single-payer system. They&#8217;re not interested. You know, I&#8217;m still open to the White House&#8217;s efforts to continue to make the bill one that can be supported. But I just don&#8217;t know if any further efforts on their part can be expected. And you have to keep in mind I&#8217;ve led the way on health care in two presidential campaigns advocating Medicare for all. With the help of a California delegation in 2000, and again in 2004 and 2008, I brought the issue of Medicare for all to the Democratic platform and ask them to take a position on it. When I supported in committee a public option that was a compromise. But that public option was stripped. When I attached an amendment in committee to protect the rights of states to set up their own single-payer, for a Medicare-for-all program, and to protect a legal attack on the insurance companies, that amendment was stripped. I&#8217;m still waiting to see if the White House has any interest in changing any of the provisions of the bill to make it worth supporting.</p> <p>P.S.: It must be awfully frustrating that they are stonewalling you and yet they seem to be making gestures to the pro-life congressmen who are threatening not to support the bill.</p> <p>D.K.: I can tell you that I think that our country has not properly dealt with the abortion issue. We can move very strongly to make abortions less necessary by having prenatal care, postnatal care, childcare, universal health care, and a living wage. That would help create a culture of life, and I think that would do more than anything else that could be done to create conditions that would help heal the divisions in this society over the abortion issue. But efforts to try to deal with it in just the ordinary give and take of the legislative process are always going to be difficult.</p> <p>Josh Scheer: I am going to jump in real quick. The bill that they are bringing up, is that the insurance companies are going to get what they want and we, we as the government, are going to spend trillions of dollars, right?</p> <p>D.K.: Well, 70 billion dollars a year, in terms of subsidies. And the problem is there&#8217;s no control of premiums. We&#8217;ve had five consecutive double-digit increases in premiums by the insurance industry. In the last five years. And there&#8217;s no end in sight to the increase in premiums. And why would they limit their rapaciousness in premiums when the government is going to be subsidizing health care?</p> <p>P.S.: Well, isn&#8217;t the president or his aides, what have they said to you in these discussions?</p> <p>D.K.: Well, they want my vote, I understand that. But they&#8217;re not really going to change the bill. When you force people to buy private insurance and you&#8217;ve got a situation where the government on one hand isn&#8217;t going to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies, which means that pharmaceutical costs are going to be driven up, and we&#8217;re subsidizing the insurance companies, on the other hand, to the tune of 70 billion a year. This can only drive up the overall costs of health care and put Medicare in jeopardy. I think that the suggestion that &#8220;we don&#8217;t have the votes for what you&#8217;re advocating, Dennis,&#8221; which is what I&#8217;ve been told over and over, I haven&#8217;t&#8217; seen any example where they really tried. I haven&#8217;t seen the fight, I haven&#8217;t seen the stand. I haven&#8217;t seen anyone really stake something on trying to cover everyone and to minimize the role of the insurance companies. At this point right now what we have is insurance care, more than health care. And just because someone&#8217;s insured doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re going to get health care. Half the bankruptcies of the United States are connected to people who are insured. Why is that? Because just having insurance doesn&#8217;t solve all your problems. If we keep this thing locked in the framework of private for-profit health care, I don&#8217;t think we can ever get out. We intensify the hold that private insurers have on the country.</p> <p>J.S.: Your amendment wasn&#8217;t also a straight-government program, right? It was allowing the states to have the option, in a way in competition to the insurance companies, whereas the Obama plan does mandate, could force us to get health care from a private insurer, right?</p> <p>D.K.: The amendment that I had was to address [the] condition where currently insurance companies are challenging regional and state plans to set up health insurance programs using the Employee Retirement Income Security Act as a basis. What I wanted to do was to create a waiver so that any state that would apply to the right to have a single-payer plan would waive the &#8220;risk of pre-emption,&#8221; which is being used by insurance companies to attack the rights of states to set up single-payer plans. That amendment passed the committee; it was stripped after it passed the committee. As was the single-payer provisions of the bill. I&#8217;m sorry if I said single-payer, the public option provision was stripped out. I keep thinking about single-payer because the single-payer proposal that&#8217;s embodied in the bill I wrote with John Conyers, HR 676, isn&#8217;t a government takeover of hospitals, it&#8217;s the government paying the bills that all the health care assets in the country be converted to not-for-profit. Except for the financial structure, everything stays the same as far as the bill. The government doesn&#8217;t go into the business of owning real estate.</p> <p>P.S.: We&#8217;ve seen throughout this debate huge majorities of the country favoring a public option and yet the president&#8217;s never really fought for it, even though he said he favored it. In fact, it&#8217;s the first thing to get dealt away. Why do you think that is?</p> <p>D.K.: The insurance companies have enormous influence. Every time we have seen, whenever the House proposal came through, when the Senate proposal came through, the White House proposal came through. Each time health care stocks went up on Wall Street. And investment analysts recommended that people buy health care stocks. Because that&#8217;s the nature of business. On one hand you can look at that system and say &#8220;they&#8217;re in it to make money, what do you expect?&#8221; But on the other hand, if you think that health care is a privilege based on an ability to pay, you have every right to make that observation. If you think that health care is a fundamental right in democratic society, that&#8217;s an outrage that every plan that has been put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry. It&#8217;s like heads they win, tails we lose. We have to do better than that. And that&#8217;s why in this debate I&#8217;ve tried to keep alive the hope for policies to be brought forward even at this late date that could create real competition. Such as a public option, even though I didn&#8217;t come into it favoring the public option because single-payer is much more extensive than public option. But at least you create some competition. Without the competition, we&#8217;ve got huge increases in rates.</p> <p>J.S.: Do the Democrats want, I know you said this on MSNBC about building it by sand &#8230; Why can&#8217;t you pass this weakened health care bill and try to get something better in the future? Could you maybe go a little deeper on that? Is it better to not have anything?</p> <p>D.K.: People which way? Here&#8217;s the thing. If we have 31 million people declared to have private insurance, what we would have done, effectively, is to privatize further our health insurance system. And this is a step in the direction of the insurance companies moving more and more into the Medicare program itself. A few years ago we had to fight back an effort to privatize Social Security and I see this as opening, permitting the insurance companies to put themselves within the circumference on an attack on Medicare itself. With the government providing the subsidies and guarantees of profits. There are people who are framing this as a fight, in moral terms, as a fight for principle. And what&#8217;s the principle? The principle of private, for-profit insurance which gouges people. And which makes money by not providing health care. To me, this isn&#8217;t about left or right, this isn&#8217;t even about Democrats or Republicans; it&#8217;s about up and down. And there&#8217;s another game going on over our heads. Insurance companies are playing to win whether the insurance bill passes or not. You have to look at the stock market quotes on health insurance companies. I have been ready to compromise by supporting the public option. And once that was stripped, it was a confirmation of the power of the insurance companies in order to prevent any kind of competition. And without competition what you have is a rigged game. They&#8217;re in a position to collude, there&#8217;s no indication that the antitrust exemption, which the insurance companies lost in a vote in the House two weeks ago, is going to pass the Senate. There&#8217;s no hope of being able to control insurance companies premiums with the government having to subsidize the rates. I&#8217;m just saying we need health care, not insurance care. And if the national government can&#8217;t step up to the challenge, then the states are going to move forward. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s important to protect the rights of states to create single-payer systems without the private insurance companies using ERISA to block single-payer. Even at this late date I&#8217;m still listening very carefully to what&#8217;s being said, but unless there is a dramatic change being brought forward in the next week, I don&#8217;t see how this bill deserves my support.</p> <p>P.S.: You&#8217;re at the center of another great moral issue of our time, which is the war in Afghanistan. You have a bill calling for a return of all troops from Afghanistan within 30 days or a year, as I understand it?</p> <p>D.K.: Right.</p> <p>P.S.: And is that coming up for a vote soon?</p> <p>D.K.: We&#8217;ll have a vote on it tomorrow. It&#8217;s the first time that we would have had a vote and debate on Afghanistan since the war began with the attack on the al-Qaida training camps after 9/11. We, as a Congress, have a responsibility to the American people and to the troops to debate this war, and an article that was published in The Washington Post last month revealed that 1,000 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan, and 30 percent of them had been veterans in the war in Iraq. So there&#8217;s an impact on our troops that&#8217;s not being discussed, there&#8217;s an impact on innocent civilians which has escaped discussion in the Congress. There&#8217;s an impact on the federal budget. Hundreds of billions of dollars being spent for a war where there is no end in sight, and where every historical analysis indicates Afghanistan is not a country to be conquered. We are in a war supporting a state that has been charitably described as a narco-state and uncharitably described as a kleptocracy. You have the [Hamid] Karzai government engaging in crony capitalism using money presumed to be from the U.S. to help set up their friends in business through a favored bank, and with Karzai&#8217;s friends and family building villas in Dubai. So of course this is an issue which demands a debate. And my bill would favor a timeline for withdrawal, it invokes the War Powers Resolution, and it is intended to secure Congress&#8217; constitutional responsibilities within Article 1, Section 8, to decide whether America goes to war or stays to war.</p> <p>J.S.: And you&#8217;re going to get three hours&#8217; debate tomorrow.</p> <p>D.K.: There will be three hours of debate on the floor of the House.</p> <p>J.S.: So every member can come voice their concerns.</p> <p>D.K.: And members who want to take a position on this will be able to. And it&#8217;s important that members of Congress, whatever their position, be heard from. We cannot continue to drift into a war that keeps moving far towards the horizon that is deepening with a surge that is costing more, that has yet to produce any results that would suggest those who were advocating the war have been able to rescue the legitimacy of their position.</p> <p>P.S.: Is it possible that your bill will be used as a way for members of the House to register their protest against the war but also support the war financially?</p> <p>D.K.: Well, this has been a consistent problem in the Congress of the United States. The course has held that ultimately Congress&#8217; power of the purse can end the war. But this bill certainly could end this war if people decide to vote for it. We&#8217;ve just taken an important step in the direction of getting out of Afghanistan. But what keeps the troops in Afghanistan is the funding. So Congress will have a second chance to vote against a supplemental. This is why I vote against the supplemental. Congress fuels the war with money.</p> <p>P.S.: You know throughout the health care debate and the debate about the war, it seems that the House is a lot more responsible to the will of the public. How do we get rid of the Senate?</p> <p>(Laughter)</p> <p>D.K.: The only way you can get rid of the Senate is not to run for it.</p> <p>P.S.: Josh, you want to follow that up?</p> <p>J.S.: I think the design of the system, right, is the balance of representatives of the people&#8217;s body, it&#8217;s a long six-year term, so a little old. &#8230;</p> <p>P.S.: More responsive to the will of insurance companies.</p> <p>D.K.: We cannot sustain this health care system, it&#8217;s financially unsustainable, and it&#8217;s morally unsustainable. The reason why there&#8217;s 47 million Americans out of health insurance is that people can&#8217;t afford it. So the government is going to subsidize private insurance to enable people to be able to have health care. Why don&#8217;t we just cut out the middleman? It&#8217;s a novel idea. Cut the insurance companies out of the business. Use the money for people.</p> <p>P.S.: At some point does this feeding frenzy on the government, with the bailout and the giveaway to insurance companies, and the military-industrial complex, at some point doesn&#8217;t it have to come crashing down?</p> <p>D.K.: Well, it has, the subprime meltdown, the bailouts to Wall Street, the tax breaks that have gone to the top 1 percent, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the expanding military budget, is all about the acceleration of the wealth of this country upwards into fewer and fewer hands. Not only 15 million people unemployed, 12 million people underemployed, 8-10 million people in danger of losing their homes. One-quarter to one-third people underwater in their mortgages. Commercial real estate collapsing. Regional small banks in trouble. We have a financial system that is falling apart when Wall Street is giving out multimillion-dollar bonuses totaling billions of dollars. And this divide between Main Street and Wall Street keeps growing. And this health care plan is an intensification of the divisions; we have to really decide if there is such a thing as government of the people &#8212; because right now Wall Street is calling the shots. The Fed is calling the shots on behalf of Wall Street. The Fed is putting money and banks have taken it and parked it and not loaned it to businesses. The government loses its ability to be able to chart a course that would protect the interest of the public. Our monetary policy is wrong. Our trade policy is wrong. We should have a full-employment economy. We don&#8217;t. We should have health care for all. We don&#8217;t. We should have a right to own a home in this country, there&#8217;s no such thing. People should have a decent education. Education has been shoved aside. All of these fundamental assumptions about what it means to have a chance to take part of the American dream are just being trashed &#8212; with war and with the financial excess of the speculator class on Wall Street. It&#8217;s a very trying time for our nation and I think that America can recover from all of this, but we can&#8217;t do it by asking for interest groups to be involved in the allocation of health care, of jobs, of credit, of housing. There has to be a fundamental defining role for the government to play as an arbiter, as an advocate, as a regulator, and as a force for public good.</p> <p>P.S.: Well, Congressman, thank you so much for your time and good work.</p> <p>D.K.: I appreciate the chance to talk with you. Good day, Josh.</p> <p>P.S.: Bye, Dennis.</p> <p>D.K.: Bye now.</p>

Kucinich: 'Heads They Win, Tails We Lose' (Update: Transcript)

https://truthdig.com/articles/kucinich-heads-they-win-tails-we-lose-update-transcript/

2010-03-10

4left

Rep Dennis Kucinich tells us why he isn8217t buckling under pressure to vote for the president8217s health care reform bill 8220Every plan that8217s put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry8221 This interview was recorded Tuesday March 9 g_podcast_box Transcript Peter Scheer This is the Truthdig podcast I8217m Peter Scheer Earlier today my brother Josh and I spoke with Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich who explained why he opposes the president8217s health care reform bill He also told us about his own bill calling for a full withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan Here now is our interview PS So Congressman you had on Monday an interview with 8220Countdown8221 that got lots of headlines where you said that you would not vote for the health care reform bill You didn8217t vote for the first health care reform bill Is that a firm 8220no8221 is there something that they could put in the bill that would get you to vote 8220yes8221 for it Dennis Kucinich I have had several meetings with the president on this bill And I have indicated my concerns No effort was made to address the concerns that I raised I offered to come to the health care summit The White House wasn8217t interested Even at this late date I have suggested that they resurrect a robust public option and protect the legal right of states to set up their own singlepayer system They8217re not interested You know I8217m still open to the White House8217s efforts to continue to make the bill one that can be supported But I just don8217t know if any further efforts on their part can be expected And you have to keep in mind I8217ve led the way on health care in two presidential campaigns advocating Medicare for all With the help of a California delegation in 2000 and again in 2004 and 2008 I brought the issue of Medicare for all to the Democratic platform and ask them to take a position on it When I supported in committee a public option that was a compromise But that public option was stripped When I attached an amendment in committee to protect the rights of states to set up their own singlepayer for a Medicareforall program and to protect a legal attack on the insurance companies that amendment was stripped I8217m still waiting to see if the White House has any interest in changing any of the provisions of the bill to make it worth supporting PS It must be awfully frustrating that they are stonewalling you and yet they seem to be making gestures to the prolife congressmen who are threatening not to support the bill DK I can tell you that I think that our country has not properly dealt with the abortion issue We can move very strongly to make abortions less necessary by having prenatal care postnatal care childcare universal health care and a living wage That would help create a culture of life and I think that would do more than anything else that could be done to create conditions that would help heal the divisions in this society over the abortion issue But efforts to try to deal with it in just the ordinary give and take of the legislative process are always going to be difficult Josh Scheer I am going to jump in real quick The bill that they are bringing up is that the insurance companies are going to get what they want and we we as the government are going to spend trillions of dollars right DK Well 70 billion dollars a year in terms of subsidies And the problem is there8217s no control of premiums We8217ve had five consecutive doubledigit increases in premiums by the insurance industry In the last five years And there8217s no end in sight to the increase in premiums And why would they limit their rapaciousness in premiums when the government is going to be subsidizing health care PS Well isn8217t the president or his aides what have they said to you in these discussions DK Well they want my vote I understand that But they8217re not really going to change the bill When you force people to buy private insurance and you8217ve got a situation where the government on one hand isn8217t going to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies which means that pharmaceutical costs are going to be driven up and we8217re subsidizing the insurance companies on the other hand to the tune of 70 billion a year This can only drive up the overall costs of health care and put Medicare in jeopardy I think that the suggestion that 8220we don8217t have the votes for what you8217re advocating Dennis8221 which is what I8217ve been told over and over I haven8217t8217 seen any example where they really tried I haven8217t seen the fight I haven8217t seen the stand I haven8217t seen anyone really stake something on trying to cover everyone and to minimize the role of the insurance companies At this point right now what we have is insurance care more than health care And just because someone8217s insured doesn8217t mean they8217re going to get health care Half the bankruptcies of the United States are connected to people who are insured Why is that Because just having insurance doesn8217t solve all your problems If we keep this thing locked in the framework of private forprofit health care I don8217t think we can ever get out We intensify the hold that private insurers have on the country JS Your amendment wasn8217t also a straightgovernment program right It was allowing the states to have the option in a way in competition to the insurance companies whereas the Obama plan does mandate could force us to get health care from a private insurer right DK The amendment that I had was to address the condition where currently insurance companies are challenging regional and state plans to set up health insurance programs using the Employee Retirement Income Security Act as a basis What I wanted to do was to create a waiver so that any state that would apply to the right to have a singlepayer plan would waive the 8220risk of preemption8221 which is being used by insurance companies to attack the rights of states to set up singlepayer plans That amendment passed the committee it was stripped after it passed the committee As was the singlepayer provisions of the bill I8217m sorry if I said singlepayer the public option provision was stripped out I keep thinking about singlepayer because the singlepayer proposal that8217s embodied in the bill I wrote with John Conyers HR 676 isn8217t a government takeover of hospitals it8217s the government paying the bills that all the health care assets in the country be converted to notforprofit Except for the financial structure everything stays the same as far as the bill The government doesn8217t go into the business of owning real estate PS We8217ve seen throughout this debate huge majorities of the country favoring a public option and yet the president8217s never really fought for it even though he said he favored it In fact it8217s the first thing to get dealt away Why do you think that is DK The insurance companies have enormous influence Every time we have seen whenever the House proposal came through when the Senate proposal came through the White House proposal came through Each time health care stocks went up on Wall Street And investment analysts recommended that people buy health care stocks Because that8217s the nature of business On one hand you can look at that system and say 8220they8217re in it to make money what do you expect8221 But on the other hand if you think that health care is a privilege based on an ability to pay you have every right to make that observation If you think that health care is a fundamental right in democratic society that8217s an outrage that every plan that has been put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry It8217s like heads they win tails we lose We have to do better than that And that8217s why in this debate I8217ve tried to keep alive the hope for policies to be brought forward even at this late date that could create real competition Such as a public option even though I didn8217t come into it favoring the public option because singlepayer is much more extensive than public option But at least you create some competition Without the competition we8217ve got huge increases in rates JS Do the Democrats want I know you said this on MSNBC about building it by sand 8230 Why can8217t you pass this weakened health care bill and try to get something better in the future Could you maybe go a little deeper on that Is it better to not have anything DK People which way Here8217s the thing If we have 31 million people declared to have private insurance what we would have done effectively is to privatize further our health insurance system And this is a step in the direction of the insurance companies moving more and more into the Medicare program itself A few years ago we had to fight back an effort to privatize Social Security and I see this as opening permitting the insurance companies to put themselves within the circumference on an attack on Medicare itself With the government providing the subsidies and guarantees of profits There are people who are framing this as a fight in moral terms as a fight for principle And what8217s the principle The principle of private forprofit insurance which gouges people And which makes money by not providing health care To me this isn8217t about left or right this isn8217t even about Democrats or Republicans it8217s about up and down And there8217s another game going on over our heads Insurance companies are playing to win whether the insurance bill passes or not You have to look at the stock market quotes on health insurance companies I have been ready to compromise by supporting the public option And once that was stripped it was a confirmation of the power of the insurance companies in order to prevent any kind of competition And without competition what you have is a rigged game They8217re in a position to collude there8217s no indication that the antitrust exemption which the insurance companies lost in a vote in the House two weeks ago is going to pass the Senate There8217s no hope of being able to control insurance companies premiums with the government having to subsidize the rates I8217m just saying we need health care not insurance care And if the national government can8217t step up to the challenge then the states are going to move forward That8217s why it8217s important to protect the rights of states to create singlepayer systems without the private insurance companies using ERISA to block singlepayer Even at this late date I8217m still listening very carefully to what8217s being said but unless there is a dramatic change being brought forward in the next week I don8217t see how this bill deserves my support PS You8217re at the center of another great moral issue of our time which is the war in Afghanistan You have a bill calling for a return of all troops from Afghanistan within 30 days or a year as I understand it DK Right PS And is that coming up for a vote soon DK We8217ll have a vote on it tomorrow It8217s the first time that we would have had a vote and debate on Afghanistan since the war began with the attack on the alQaida training camps after 911 We as a Congress have a responsibility to the American people and to the troops to debate this war and an article that was published in The Washington Post last month revealed that 1000 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan and 30 percent of them had been veterans in the war in Iraq So there8217s an impact on our troops that8217s not being discussed there8217s an impact on innocent civilians which has escaped discussion in the Congress There8217s an impact on the federal budget Hundreds of billions of dollars being spent for a war where there is no end in sight and where every historical analysis indicates Afghanistan is not a country to be conquered We are in a war supporting a state that has been charitably described as a narcostate and uncharitably described as a kleptocracy You have the Hamid Karzai government engaging in crony capitalism using money presumed to be from the US to help set up their friends in business through a favored bank and with Karzai8217s friends and family building villas in Dubai So of course this is an issue which demands a debate And my bill would favor a timeline for withdrawal it invokes the War Powers Resolution and it is intended to secure Congress8217 constitutional responsibilities within Article 1 Section 8 to decide whether America goes to war or stays to war JS And you8217re going to get three hours8217 debate tomorrow DK There will be three hours of debate on the floor of the House JS So every member can come voice their concerns DK And members who want to take a position on this will be able to And it8217s important that members of Congress whatever their position be heard from We cannot continue to drift into a war that keeps moving far towards the horizon that is deepening with a surge that is costing more that has yet to produce any results that would suggest those who were advocating the war have been able to rescue the legitimacy of their position PS Is it possible that your bill will be used as a way for members of the House to register their protest against the war but also support the war financially DK Well this has been a consistent problem in the Congress of the United States The course has held that ultimately Congress8217 power of the purse can end the war But this bill certainly could end this war if people decide to vote for it We8217ve just taken an important step in the direction of getting out of Afghanistan But what keeps the troops in Afghanistan is the funding So Congress will have a second chance to vote against a supplemental This is why I vote against the supplemental Congress fuels the war with money PS You know throughout the health care debate and the debate about the war it seems that the House is a lot more responsible to the will of the public How do we get rid of the Senate Laughter DK The only way you can get rid of the Senate is not to run for it PS Josh you want to follow that up JS I think the design of the system right is the balance of representatives of the people8217s body it8217s a long sixyear term so a little old 8230 PS More responsive to the will of insurance companies DK We cannot sustain this health care system it8217s financially unsustainable and it8217s morally unsustainable The reason why there8217s 47 million Americans out of health insurance is that people can8217t afford it So the government is going to subsidize private insurance to enable people to be able to have health care Why don8217t we just cut out the middleman It8217s a novel idea Cut the insurance companies out of the business Use the money for people PS At some point does this feeding frenzy on the government with the bailout and the giveaway to insurance companies and the militaryindustrial complex at some point doesn8217t it have to come crashing down DK Well it has the subprime meltdown the bailouts to Wall Street the tax breaks that have gone to the top 1 percent the war in Iraq the war in Afghanistan the expanding military budget is all about the acceleration of the wealth of this country upwards into fewer and fewer hands Not only 15 million people unemployed 12 million people underemployed 810 million people in danger of losing their homes Onequarter to onethird people underwater in their mortgages Commercial real estate collapsing Regional small banks in trouble We have a financial system that is falling apart when Wall Street is giving out multimilliondollar bonuses totaling billions of dollars And this divide between Main Street and Wall Street keeps growing And this health care plan is an intensification of the divisions we have to really decide if there is such a thing as government of the people 8212 because right now Wall Street is calling the shots The Fed is calling the shots on behalf of Wall Street The Fed is putting money and banks have taken it and parked it and not loaned it to businesses The government loses its ability to be able to chart a course that would protect the interest of the public Our monetary policy is wrong Our trade policy is wrong We should have a fullemployment economy We don8217t We should have health care for all We don8217t We should have a right to own a home in this country there8217s no such thing People should have a decent education Education has been shoved aside All of these fundamental assumptions about what it means to have a chance to take part of the American dream are just being trashed 8212 with war and with the financial excess of the speculator class on Wall Street It8217s a very trying time for our nation and I think that America can recover from all of this but we can8217t do it by asking for interest groups to be involved in the allocation of health care of jobs of credit of housing There has to be a fundamental defining role for the government to play as an arbiter as an advocate as a regulator and as a force for public good PS Well Congressman thank you so much for your time and good work DK I appreciate the chance to talk with you Good day Josh PS Bye Dennis DK Bye now

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<p>During the recent visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington, the White House seemed bent on trying in every way possible to extend him a cool reception. The Chinese expected a state dinner, normally accorded to a head of state on the first official visit to the United States. Hu got a lunch instead. The White House announcer introduced Hu as the president of not the People&#8217;s Republic but the Republic of China, which is Taiwan&#8217;s official name. A known Falun Gong supporter was allowed onto the White House grounds to hackle Hu during his formal reception speech. Adding insult to injury, Vice President Cheney was caught snoozing during Hu&#8217;s press conference.</p> <p>But while Hu received a frosty reception in Washington, D.C., he was treated as a superstar in the state of Washington by the kings of the computer industry (Microsoft), the world&#8217;s largest coffee shop chain (Starbucks), and America&#8217;s preeminent aircraft maker (Boeing), who know better than anyone that China is doing everything right by the global capital. Bush might have begrudged Hu the honor of a state dinner, but Bill Gates regaled the Chinese president with a formal banquet at his $100 million lakeside mansion. Among the guests were executives from Costco, Weyerhaeuser, and Amazon.com &#8211;all eager to show the Chinese leader their appreciation for his efforts in providing American businesses with an ample supply of cheap labor, a stable currency exchange and an affable investment climate.</p> <p>For China and its communist leaders to come this far it has been a long, hard road that started in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping took control of the country. Deng had been purged from the party leadership as &#8220;China&#8217;s No. 2 Capitalist Roader&#8221; during the Cultural Revolution on account of his pro-private enterprise leanings, because he had advocated that the peasants be allowed private plots within the people&#8217;s communes to earn extra income. After Mao&#8217;s death, Deng kicked off his version of &#8220;socialism with Chinese characteristics&#8221; with the maxim that individual initiatives must be allowed to flourish in order to increase productivity. His most notable slogan of the time was to &#8220;let some get rich first, so others can get rich later&#8221;, openly condoning the inequality that would result from his reform process. If this sounds like Ronald Reagan&#8217;s neo-liberal &#8220;trickle down economics,&#8221; it&#8217;s because that&#8217;s exactly what it is: both Ronald Reagan and Deng Xiaoping were great fans of the neo-liberal guru Milton Friedman.</p> <p>In 1980, I was a visiting professor at the People&#8217;s University in Beijing, which was at the time the elite party cadre training school. In October of that year, the chair of my Scientific Socialism Department informed me that I was given the unique honor, as a China-born foreign expert teaching social sciences, to attend a lecture at the Chinese People&#8217;s Political Consultative Conference that was to be given by the Nobel Laureate and America&#8217;s best selling author of Free to Choose, Milton Friedman. When I arrived at the majestic conference hall, Friedman was already sitting at the dais, flanked by top Communist Party leaders and ministerial-level officials. His lecture focused on the inflationary crisis in the West, but his message to the Chinese was clear: inflation and slow growth are the results of intrusive government policies that hinder the functioning of a free market economy. To turn their economies around, countries had to cut taxes, shrink the size of the governments, and reduce labor costs. Friedman predicted that in November of that year his friend Ronald Reagan would be elected U.S. president and that he would enact policies according to that vision. He also prophesied that Ronald Reagan and Great Britain&#8217;s Margaret Thatcher would lead the rest of the world into the promised land of growth and prosperity.</p> <p>To me, Milton Friedman was a far-right neo-liberal economist who favored the opening of markets in developing countries by political means or military intervention, if necessary. It was his students from Chicago University that General Pinochet had invited to transform Chile&#8217;s economy after he overthrew the legally elected president Allende with CIA help in 1973.</p> <p>The &#8220;Chicago Boys&#8221; ordered a &#8220;shock treatment,&#8221; which called for drastic reduction in the money supply and government spending. It also called for the privatization of state enterprises, abolished taxes on corporate profits, and welcomed foreign investment to exploit the country&#8217;s natural resources. Under the gunpoint of the military junta, labor laws were suspended and political dissent was silenced. The &#8220;shock treatment&#8221; of the 1970s pushed Chile&#8217;s unemployment rate to 22 per cent; real wages dropped by 40 per cent , and the country&#8217;s industrial output fell by 12.9 per cent &#8211;making it Chile&#8217;s worst depression since the 1930s.</p> <p>But my Chinese hosts were not troubled by such facts. They wanted Friedman to show them how to jump-start their economy. It is intriguing how early the Chinese had searched out Friedman for guidance &#8211;only one year after Thatcher began her brutal &#8220;there is no other alternative&#8221; reforms. So just as Ronald Reagan started his &#8220;revolution&#8221; in America by stripping away social and welfare safety nets that had been in place since the FDR era, Deng and his supporters followed Friedman&#8217;s recipe to &#8220;get the government off the people&#8217;s back,&#8221; ushering China into the neo-liberal universe.</p> <p>China started its economic reforms by abolishing the people&#8217;s communes. Suddenly, without the collectives, the peasants had to privately purchase seed, fertilizer and water rights, and to pay higher taxes to support a large cadre of local party officials. But the prices of farm products were kept low, forcing many to work as migrant workers in the cities. Others followed when their land was seized for urban and industrial development. Once in the cities, they were given neither residential status nor legal rights and protection, but they were nevertheless expected to be gainfully employed. Otherwise, under the &#8220;custody and repatriation&#8221; laws, beggars, vagrants and those with no employment were repatriated back to their villages, held at detention centers, or even used as forced labor. The Chinese version of the English &#8220;enclosure&#8221; process created approximately 150 million impoverished migrants who had to sell their labor cheaply in order to survive. Meanwhile, state enterprises were slowly privatized. Their employees no longer enjoyed the guarantee of &#8220;the iron rice bowl&#8221; and had to find jobs on the open labor market. The masses of rural migrants, joined by growing numbers of laid-off state enterprise workers, provided China with an endless supply of cheap labor.</p> <p>Through all this, China&#8217;s neo-liberal communist bureaucrats have been more interested in protecting employers than in enforcing labor laws. This is evidenced by persistent labor and safety violations that lead to spectacular gas explosions, mine cave-ins, and flooding that kill thousands of people every year. In 2003, for instance, there were 136,340 reported deaths from industrial accidents. But while China accounted for 80 per cent of the world&#8217;s total coal mining-related deaths that year, it produced only 35 per cent of the world&#8217;s coal. At the same time, nearly half of China&#8217;s migrant workers were forced to work while their wages were held back &#8211;to the tune of roughly $12 billion collectively owed in back pay. Yet in China it is illegal to organize independent unions or strike. Labor leaders are regularly jailed and prosecuted as criminals; their families are harassed.</p> <p>The secret of China&#8217;s economic miracle is its browbeaten working class. The picture of China&#8217;s Gilded Age of inequality is not pretty. On the average, the yearly income of a Chinese peasant in 2003 was $317. The monthly wages of factory workers ranged between $62 and $100 &#8211;only marginally higher than in 1993, even as China&#8217;s economy grew by almost 10 per cent annually during the same period. On the other side of the social spectrum is the increasingly wealthy urban middle class that is emerging on the coattails of the coterie of the super-rich. In 2006 Shanghai held a &#8220;millionaire fair,&#8221; featuring displays of luxury sedans, yachts, a piece of jewelry priced at $25 million, and a diamond-studded dog leash valued at $61,000.</p> <p>To be sure, the wealth that can afford such luxuries was not created by enterprising efforts of individuals with unique abilities or skills. According to a report by the China Rights Forum, only 5 per cent of China&#8217;s 20,000 richest people have made it on merit. More than 90 per cent are related to senior government or Communist Party officials. The richest among them are the relatives of the very top officials who had used their position to pass the laws that have transformed state-owned industries into stock holding companies, and then appointed family members as managers. In this way the children of top party officials &#8211;China&#8217;s new &#8220;princelings&#8221; &#8211;took over China&#8217;s most strategic and profitable industries: banking, transportation, power generation, natural resources, media, and weapons. Once in management positions, they get loans from government-controlled banks, acquire foreign partners, and list their companies on Hong Kong or New York stock exchanges to raise more capital. Each step of the way the princelings enrich themselves &#173;not only as major shareholders of the companies, but also from the kickbacks they get by awarding contracts to foreign firms. To call this &#8220;socialism with Chinese characteristics&#8221; is a joke. Even capitalism is not the appropriate term. A Chinese sociologist has defined it as &#8220;high-tech feudalism with Chinese characteristics.&#8221;</p> <p>As Confucius observed long time ago, when top officials are crooked, local level cadres are bound to follow suit, and rampant unchecked corruption ensues. Peasants complain that local officials seize their farmland with minimal compensation and then sell it off at high prices to developers who build high-rise apartments, factories and shopping malls. Workers complain of layoffs without pensions, abuse on the job, and work with no pay. The enormity of environmental degradation due to official indifference is only surfacing now. The Chinese public is not indifferent; demonstrations of discontent are on the rise. In 2004, the Public Security Bureau reported that the number of &#8220;mass incidents&#8221; had risen to 74,000. In 2005, the number jumped another 13 percent. &#8220;A protest begins in China every five minutes. If the protests run longer than five minutes, then there are two going on at the same time,&#8221; observed David Zweig, an expert on Chinese politics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.</p> <p>As the number of protests increases, so does the intensity of violence used to suppress them. The worst occurred last December, when a special paramilitary unit of the national police force shot and killed as many as 20 protesters in the Guangdong village of Dongzhou. This is the largest known killing of unarmed civilians in China since 1989, and has been dubbed as the &#8220;Mini-Tiananmen Massacre.&#8221; The protest began over the forced eviction of villagers from their land to make room for the construction of a foreign-financed wind power plant. When the villagers rejected the official offer of $3 per family in compensation, which one resident described as &#8220;not enough to buy toilet paper to wipe one&#8217;s ass,&#8221; they were brought face-to-face with paramilitary policemen carrying AK-47 assault rifles and flanked with tanks. According to the New York Times, the police started firing tear gas into 1,000 demonstrators around 7 p.m. When that failed to scare the people, &#8220;at about 8 p.m. they started using guns, shooting bullets into the ground, but not really targeting anybody. Finally, at about 10 p.m. they started killing people.&#8221; Vicious repressions similar to this have been reported all across the country.</p> <p>Polarization, violence and political instability have been the well-known effects of globalization experienced by other countries whose regimes had come under the spell of neo-liberal ideology. Almost every country in Latin America, with the exception of Cuba, had been implementing neo-liberal policies lauded as the solution to poverty and stagnation for decades. Instead, as governments lost their sovereignty to the multi-nationals, U.S. banks and IMF, these policies only brought more poverty and misery. The resulting mass protests and the weakening of military regimes eventually opened up a political space for voters to express their views. In country after county, voters have been choosing to elect leftist candidates to lead them out of the neo-liberal trap. Voters in three of the most economically developed countries &#8211;Argentina, Brazil, and Chile &#8211;have done so. Among the poorer nations, Peru is going the way of Venezuela and Bolivia, where they have done so as well.</p> <p>Unfortunately, there is no such option in China. The one-party system allows for no opposition candidates for Chinese voters to choose from. Instead, Hu Jingtao came into office in 2002 with the specific task of introducing a kinder and gentler policy to cool off public resentment. He and Premier Wen Jiabao promised to crack down on corruption and introduce welfare programs to provide relief to the rural poor. But these reforms can only go so far without threatening the privileges of the officials and undermining the very attraction China has to foreign investors. And, above all, the mandate of Hu is to maintain the political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party, which, after all, did not order the June 4 Massacre in 1989 to let its power slip away. The party&#8217;s greatest fear is that political relaxation would lead to a &#8220;colored revolution&#8221; of the type that has beleaguered so many ex-Soviet states &#8211;from Georgia and Ukraine, to Kyrgyzstan. Hu is very clear on that score, blaming the collapse of the Soviet Union on former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. &#8220;When managing ideology, we have to learn from Cuba and North Korea. Although North Korea has encountered temporary economic problems, its policies are consistently correct&#8221;, he has been heard to say. In the last few years under Hu, according to Robin Munro of China Labour Bulletin, &#8220;if anything, the numbers of arrests of dissidents, labor and rural rights activists and Internet free thinkers has been even higher than during Jiang Zemin&#8217;s last years in office.&#8221;</p> <p>The rest of the world is so mesmerized by China&#8217;s phenomenal growth that few foreigners are willing to be critical and find themselves on the wrong side &#8211;be it of an argument or of a lucrative opportunity. Others prefer to withhold judgment in the belief that authoritarian governments eventually evolve into democracies, as was the case in Spain, Taiwan and South Korea. Even Chinese leaders were at one time fascinated by Samuel Huntington&#8217;s theory on &#8220;new authoritarianism,&#8221; which advocated that developing countries should have benevolent dictatorship until they mature economically. The 1989 Tiananmen Square unrest stopped that way of thinking.</p> <p>The party now does everything possible to preclude a &#8220;peaceful evolution. Rather than having to contend with opposition politics, &#8220;. It has preferred to toss aside Marxist tenets and incorporate capitalists into its ranks (as the new constitution allows). Chinese communist leaders are so obsessed iwith maintaining their rule that they are combing through Chinese dynastic histories for models. A few years ago the state-run CCTV aired a 44-part blockbuster docudrama on the life of Emperor Yongzheng in the Qing dynasty, which depicted him as a ruthless ruler who worked hard to improve the lives of his people, and who in the process rejuvenated the dynasty to last several generations after his death. The then President Jiang Zemin was believed to be trying to fashion himself as a modern Yongzheng. Currently, the Han dynasty is in telecasting vogue and Hu Jintao is said to be beholden to its most powerful and expansionistic ruler, who was also one of China&#8217;s most able administrators ever, Emperor Wu. The narcissistic mindset of Chinese Communist leaders, preoccupied with holding onto power, is likely to lead to a catastrophe.</p> <p>Self-serving as they are, however, China&#8217;s Communist rulers also serve the interests of global capital. Foreign-financed companies, according to the latest Chinese customs data, control about 60 per cent of China&#8217;s exports. Most of the profits go to foreign investors. Dong Tao, an economist in Hong Kong, estimates that while &#8220;a Barbie doll costs $20, China only gets about 35 cents of that.&#8221; Yasheng Huang of the Sloan School of Management at MIT agrees. &#8220;[W]hile China gets the wage benefits of globalization, it does not get to keep the profits of globalization.&#8221; The situation has generated a domestic chorus of complaints accusing the government of selling off Chinese banks and enterprises to foreigners and overseas Chinese investors to the detriment of homegrown competitors. During the last session of the National People&#8217;s Congress, some delegates were brave enough to challenge the party&#8217;s attempt to legalize the right to private property on the grounds that it ran counter to the founding principles of the People&#8217;s Republic of China.</p> <p>What&#8217;s in it for America if all this discontent, until now kept under the lid, were to burst out into a political upheaval China&#8217;s Communist rulers could no longer control? America&#8217;s big business will almost certainly advocate intervention to prop up the Communist regime. China is, after all, the ultimate trophy of the neo-liberal globalists, who will not allow it to fall without a fight. Besides, the United States is the largest consumer of Chinese products, and China is America&#8217;s largest creditor. The two economies are practically joined at the hip.</p> <p>Come to think of it, China and the U.S.A. are two sides of the same coin &#8211;both disfigured by their respective neo-liberal policies. If China&#8217;s face doesn&#8217;t look pretty, neither does America&#8217;s. After 25 years of the neo-liberal order, chief executives of America&#8217;s largest companies, who once made 69 times more than their average employees, now make 431 times as much. After years of cuts in government spending, U.S. infant mortality rate is ranked 31st out of 32 industrialized countries &#8211;just slightly better than Latvia&#8217;s. When our democratic government is willing to offer billion dollar taxcuts to the rich but has no money to purchase body armor for its irregular troops in Iraq, isn&#8217;t it about time for the average, underpaid and underserved Americans to wake up and join forces with the increasingly global movement against the neo-liberal global agenda?</p> <p>PETER KWONG is a professor of Asian American Studies at the Graduate Center and Hunter College of the City University of New York. His latest book is <a href="" type="internal">Chinese America: The Untold Story of America&#8217;s Oldest New Community</a>.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

The Chinese Face of Neoliberalism

https://counterpunch.org/2006/10/07/the-chinese-face-of-neoliberalism/

2006-10-07

4left

During the recent visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington the White House seemed bent on trying in every way possible to extend him a cool reception The Chinese expected a state dinner normally accorded to a head of state on the first official visit to the United States Hu got a lunch instead The White House announcer introduced Hu as the president of not the People8217s Republic but the Republic of China which is Taiwan8217s official name A known Falun Gong supporter was allowed onto the White House grounds to hackle Hu during his formal reception speech Adding insult to injury Vice President Cheney was caught snoozing during Hu8217s press conference But while Hu received a frosty reception in Washington DC he was treated as a superstar in the state of Washington by the kings of the computer industry Microsoft the world8217s largest coffee shop chain Starbucks and America8217s preeminent aircraft maker Boeing who know better than anyone that China is doing everything right by the global capital Bush might have begrudged Hu the honor of a state dinner but Bill Gates regaled the Chinese president with a formal banquet at his 100 million lakeside mansion Among the guests were executives from Costco Weyerhaeuser and Amazoncom 8211all eager to show the Chinese leader their appreciation for his efforts in providing American businesses with an ample supply of cheap labor a stable currency exchange and an affable investment climate For China and its communist leaders to come this far it has been a long hard road that started in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping took control of the country Deng had been purged from the party leadership as 8220China8217s No 2 Capitalist Roader8221 during the Cultural Revolution on account of his proprivate enterprise leanings because he had advocated that the peasants be allowed private plots within the people8217s communes to earn extra income After Mao8217s death Deng kicked off his version of 8220socialism with Chinese characteristics8221 with the maxim that individual initiatives must be allowed to flourish in order to increase productivity His most notable slogan of the time was to 8220let some get rich first so others can get rich later8221 openly condoning the inequality that would result from his reform process If this sounds like Ronald Reagan8217s neoliberal 8220trickle down economics8221 it8217s because that8217s exactly what it is both Ronald Reagan and Deng Xiaoping were great fans of the neoliberal guru Milton Friedman In 1980 I was a visiting professor at the People8217s University in Beijing which was at the time the elite party cadre training school In October of that year the chair of my Scientific Socialism Department informed me that I was given the unique honor as a Chinaborn foreign expert teaching social sciences to attend a lecture at the Chinese People8217s Political Consultative Conference that was to be given by the Nobel Laureate and America8217s best selling author of Free to Choose Milton Friedman When I arrived at the majestic conference hall Friedman was already sitting at the dais flanked by top Communist Party leaders and ministeriallevel officials His lecture focused on the inflationary crisis in the West but his message to the Chinese was clear inflation and slow growth are the results of intrusive government policies that hinder the functioning of a free market economy To turn their economies around countries had to cut taxes shrink the size of the governments and reduce labor costs Friedman predicted that in November of that year his friend Ronald Reagan would be elected US president and that he would enact policies according to that vision He also prophesied that Ronald Reagan and Great Britain8217s Margaret Thatcher would lead the rest of the world into the promised land of growth and prosperity To me Milton Friedman was a farright neoliberal economist who favored the opening of markets in developing countries by political means or military intervention if necessary It was his students from Chicago University that General Pinochet had invited to transform Chile8217s economy after he overthrew the legally elected president Allende with CIA help in 1973 The 8220Chicago Boys8221 ordered a 8220shock treatment8221 which called for drastic reduction in the money supply and government spending It also called for the privatization of state enterprises abolished taxes on corporate profits and welcomed foreign investment to exploit the country8217s natural resources Under the gunpoint of the military junta labor laws were suspended and political dissent was silenced The 8220shock treatment8221 of the 1970s pushed Chile8217s unemployment rate to 22 per cent real wages dropped by 40 per cent and the country8217s industrial output fell by 129 per cent 8211making it Chile8217s worst depression since the 1930s But my Chinese hosts were not troubled by such facts They wanted Friedman to show them how to jumpstart their economy It is intriguing how early the Chinese had searched out Friedman for guidance 8211only one year after Thatcher began her brutal 8220there is no other alternative8221 reforms So just as Ronald Reagan started his 8220revolution8221 in America by stripping away social and welfare safety nets that had been in place since the FDR era Deng and his supporters followed Friedman8217s recipe to 8220get the government off the people8217s back8221 ushering China into the neoliberal universe China started its economic reforms by abolishing the people8217s communes Suddenly without the collectives the peasants had to privately purchase seed fertilizer and water rights and to pay higher taxes to support a large cadre of local party officials But the prices of farm products were kept low forcing many to work as migrant workers in the cities Others followed when their land was seized for urban and industrial development Once in the cities they were given neither residential status nor legal rights and protection but they were nevertheless expected to be gainfully employed Otherwise under the 8220custody and repatriation8221 laws beggars vagrants and those with no employment were repatriated back to their villages held at detention centers or even used as forced labor The Chinese version of the English 8220enclosure8221 process created approximately 150 million impoverished migrants who had to sell their labor cheaply in order to survive Meanwhile state enterprises were slowly privatized Their employees no longer enjoyed the guarantee of 8220the iron rice bowl8221 and had to find jobs on the open labor market The masses of rural migrants joined by growing numbers of laidoff state enterprise workers provided China with an endless supply of cheap labor Through all this China8217s neoliberal communist bureaucrats have been more interested in protecting employers than in enforcing labor laws This is evidenced by persistent labor and safety violations that lead to spectacular gas explosions mine caveins and flooding that kill thousands of people every year In 2003 for instance there were 136340 reported deaths from industrial accidents But while China accounted for 80 per cent of the world8217s total coal miningrelated deaths that year it produced only 35 per cent of the world8217s coal At the same time nearly half of China8217s migrant workers were forced to work while their wages were held back 8211to the tune of roughly 12 billion collectively owed in back pay Yet in China it is illegal to organize independent unions or strike Labor leaders are regularly jailed and prosecuted as criminals their families are harassed The secret of China8217s economic miracle is its browbeaten working class The picture of China8217s Gilded Age of inequality is not pretty On the average the yearly income of a Chinese peasant in 2003 was 317 The monthly wages of factory workers ranged between 62 and 100 8211only marginally higher than in 1993 even as China8217s economy grew by almost 10 per cent annually during the same period On the other side of the social spectrum is the increasingly wealthy urban middle class that is emerging on the coattails of the coterie of the superrich In 2006 Shanghai held a 8220millionaire fair8221 featuring displays of luxury sedans yachts a piece of jewelry priced at 25 million and a diamondstudded dog leash valued at 61000 To be sure the wealth that can afford such luxuries was not created by enterprising efforts of individuals with unique abilities or skills According to a report by the China Rights Forum only 5 per cent of China8217s 20000 richest people have made it on merit More than 90 per cent are related to senior government or Communist Party officials The richest among them are the relatives of the very top officials who had used their position to pass the laws that have transformed stateowned industries into stock holding companies and then appointed family members as managers In this way the children of top party officials 8211China8217s new 8220princelings8221 8211took over China8217s most strategic and profitable industries banking transportation power generation natural resources media and weapons Once in management positions they get loans from governmentcontrolled banks acquire foreign partners and list their companies on Hong Kong or New York stock exchanges to raise more capital Each step of the way the princelings enrich themselves 173not only as major shareholders of the companies but also from the kickbacks they get by awarding contracts to foreign firms To call this 8220socialism with Chinese characteristics8221 is a joke Even capitalism is not the appropriate term A Chinese sociologist has defined it as 8220hightech feudalism with Chinese characteristics8221 As Confucius observed long time ago when top officials are crooked local level cadres are bound to follow suit and rampant unchecked corruption ensues Peasants complain that local officials seize their farmland with minimal compensation and then sell it off at high prices to developers who build highrise apartments factories and shopping malls Workers complain of layoffs without pensions abuse on the job and work with no pay The enormity of environmental degradation due to official indifference is only surfacing now The Chinese public is not indifferent demonstrations of discontent are on the rise In 2004 the Public Security Bureau reported that the number of 8220mass incidents8221 had risen to 74000 In 2005 the number jumped another 13 percent 8220A protest begins in China every five minutes If the protests run longer than five minutes then there are two going on at the same time8221 observed David Zweig an expert on Chinese politics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology As the number of protests increases so does the intensity of violence used to suppress them The worst occurred last December when a special paramilitary unit of the national police force shot and killed as many as 20 protesters in the Guangdong village of Dongzhou This is the largest known killing of unarmed civilians in China since 1989 and has been dubbed as the 8220MiniTiananmen Massacre8221 The protest began over the forced eviction of villagers from their land to make room for the construction of a foreignfinanced wind power plant When the villagers rejected the official offer of 3 per family in compensation which one resident described as 8220not enough to buy toilet paper to wipe one8217s ass8221 they were brought facetoface with paramilitary policemen carrying AK47 assault rifles and flanked with tanks According to the New York Times the police started firing tear gas into 1000 demonstrators around 7 pm When that failed to scare the people 8220at about 8 pm they started using guns shooting bullets into the ground but not really targeting anybody Finally at about 10 pm they started killing people8221 Vicious repressions similar to this have been reported all across the country Polarization violence and political instability have been the wellknown effects of globalization experienced by other countries whose regimes had come under the spell of neoliberal ideology Almost every country in Latin America with the exception of Cuba had been implementing neoliberal policies lauded as the solution to poverty and stagnation for decades Instead as governments lost their sovereignty to the multinationals US banks and IMF these policies only brought more poverty and misery The resulting mass protests and the weakening of military regimes eventually opened up a political space for voters to express their views In country after county voters have been choosing to elect leftist candidates to lead them out of the neoliberal trap Voters in three of the most economically developed countries 8211Argentina Brazil and Chile 8211have done so Among the poorer nations Peru is going the way of Venezuela and Bolivia where they have done so as well Unfortunately there is no such option in China The oneparty system allows for no opposition candidates for Chinese voters to choose from Instead Hu Jingtao came into office in 2002 with the specific task of introducing a kinder and gentler policy to cool off public resentment He and Premier Wen Jiabao promised to crack down on corruption and introduce welfare programs to provide relief to the rural poor But these reforms can only go so far without threatening the privileges of the officials and undermining the very attraction China has to foreign investors And above all the mandate of Hu is to maintain the political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party which after all did not order the June 4 Massacre in 1989 to let its power slip away The party8217s greatest fear is that political relaxation would lead to a 8220colored revolution8221 of the type that has beleaguered so many exSoviet states 8211from Georgia and Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan Hu is very clear on that score blaming the collapse of the Soviet Union on former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev 8220When managing ideology we have to learn from Cuba and North Korea Although North Korea has encountered temporary economic problems its policies are consistently correct8221 he has been heard to say In the last few years under Hu according to Robin Munro of China Labour Bulletin 8220if anything the numbers of arrests of dissidents labor and rural rights activists and Internet free thinkers has been even higher than during Jiang Zemin8217s last years in office8221 The rest of the world is so mesmerized by China8217s phenomenal growth that few foreigners are willing to be critical and find themselves on the wrong side 8211be it of an argument or of a lucrative opportunity Others prefer to withhold judgment in the belief that authoritarian governments eventually evolve into democracies as was the case in Spain Taiwan and South Korea Even Chinese leaders were at one time fascinated by Samuel Huntington8217s theory on 8220new authoritarianism8221 which advocated that developing countries should have benevolent dictatorship until they mature economically The 1989 Tiananmen Square unrest stopped that way of thinking The party now does everything possible to preclude a 8220peaceful evolution Rather than having to contend with opposition politics 8220 It has preferred to toss aside Marxist tenets and incorporate capitalists into its ranks as the new constitution allows Chinese communist leaders are so obsessed iwith maintaining their rule that they are combing through Chinese dynastic histories for models A few years ago the staterun CCTV aired a 44part blockbuster docudrama on the life of Emperor Yongzheng in the Qing dynasty which depicted him as a ruthless ruler who worked hard to improve the lives of his people and who in the process rejuvenated the dynasty to last several generations after his death The then President Jiang Zemin was believed to be trying to fashion himself as a modern Yongzheng Currently the Han dynasty is in telecasting vogue and Hu Jintao is said to be beholden to its most powerful and expansionistic ruler who was also one of China8217s most able administrators ever Emperor Wu The narcissistic mindset of Chinese Communist leaders preoccupied with holding onto power is likely to lead to a catastrophe Selfserving as they are however China8217s Communist rulers also serve the interests of global capital Foreignfinanced companies according to the latest Chinese customs data control about 60 per cent of China8217s exports Most of the profits go to foreign investors Dong Tao an economist in Hong Kong estimates that while 8220a Barbie doll costs 20 China only gets about 35 cents of that8221 Yasheng Huang of the Sloan School of Management at MIT agrees 8220While China gets the wage benefits of globalization it does not get to keep the profits of globalization8221 The situation has generated a domestic chorus of complaints accusing the government of selling off Chinese banks and enterprises to foreigners and overseas Chinese investors to the detriment of homegrown competitors During the last session of the National People8217s Congress some delegates were brave enough to challenge the party8217s attempt to legalize the right to private property on the grounds that it ran counter to the founding principles of the People8217s Republic of China What8217s in it for America if all this discontent until now kept under the lid were to burst out into a political upheaval China8217s Communist rulers could no longer control America8217s big business will almost certainly advocate intervention to prop up the Communist regime China is after all the ultimate trophy of the neoliberal globalists who will not allow it to fall without a fight Besides the United States is the largest consumer of Chinese products and China is America8217s largest creditor The two economies are practically joined at the hip Come to think of it China and the USA are two sides of the same coin 8211both disfigured by their respective neoliberal policies If China8217s face doesn8217t look pretty neither does America8217s After 25 years of the neoliberal order chief executives of America8217s largest companies who once made 69 times more than their average employees now make 431 times as much After years of cuts in government spending US infant mortality rate is ranked 31st out of 32 industrialized countries 8211just slightly better than Latvia8217s When our democratic government is willing to offer billion dollar taxcuts to the rich but has no money to purchase body armor for its irregular troops in Iraq isn8217t it about time for the average underpaid and underserved Americans to wake up and join forces with the increasingly global movement against the neoliberal global agenda PETER KWONG is a professor of Asian American Studies at the Graduate Center and Hunter College of the City University of New York His latest book is Chinese America The Untold Story of America8217s Oldest New Community 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their/PRON average/ADJ employees/NOUN now/ADV make/VERB 431/NUM times/NOUN as/ADV much/ADV After/ADP years/NOUN of/ADP cuts/NOUN in/ADP government/NOUN spending/VERB US/PROPN infant/NOUN mortality/NOUN rate/NOUN is/AUX ranked/VERB 31st/NOUN out/ADP of/ADP 32/NUM industrialized/VERB countries/NOUN 8211just/VERB slightly/ADV better/ADV than/ADP Latvia8217s/PROPN When/SCONJ our/PRON democratic/ADJ government/NOUN is/AUX willing/ADJ to/PART offer/VERB billion/NUM dollar/NOUN taxcuts/NOUN to/ADP the/DET rich/ADJ but/CCONJ has/VERB no/DET money/NOUN to/PART purchase/VERB body/NOUN armor/NOUN for/ADP its/PRON irregular/ADJ troops/NOUN in/ADP Iraq/PROPN isn8217/NOUN t/VERB it/PRON about/ADP time/NOUN for/SCONJ the/DET average/ADJ underpaid/ADJ and/CCONJ underserved/VERB Americans/PROPN to/PART wake/VERB up/ADP and/CCONJ join/VERB forces/NOUN with/ADP the/DET increasingly/ADV global/ADJ movement/NOUN against/ADP the/DET neoliberal/ADJ global/ADJ agenda/PROPN PETER/PROPN KWONG/PROPN is/AUX a/DET professor/NOUN of/ADP Asian/ADJ American/PROPN Studies/PROPN at/ADP the/DET Graduate/PROPN Center/PROPN and/CCONJ Hunter/PROPN College/PROPN of/ADP the/DET City/PROPN University/PROPN of/ADP New/PROPN York/PROPN His/PRON latest/ADJ book/NOUN is/AUX Chinese/PROPN America/PROPN The/DET Untold/PROPN Story/PROPN of/ADP America8217s/PROPN Oldest/PROPN New/PROPN Community/PROPN amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN

<p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>Despite the global hype associated with reversing aid, debt and trade injustices during the past few days, it hasn&#8217;t been an easy time for the huge Non-Governmental Organizations at the centre of the action.</p> <p>A front-page London New Statesman article on May 30 revealed that Oxfam&#8217;s revolving-door relationship with chancellor Gordon Brown has neutered the demands, strategies and tactics of the 450-member NGO campaign, &#8216;Make Poverty History&#8217;. The website of the British magazine Red Pepper followed up with a devastating political critique of the campaign, including a refusal to countenance any anti-war message that will embarrass Brown and Tony Blair.</p> <p>Embarrassment of this sort seems endemic amongst the charity-minded. The Bob Geldof superstar concert series &#8216;Live 8&#8217; correctly stood accused of being &#8216;hideously white&#8217; (as Black Information Link put it), since only one band from Africa was scheduled amongst dozens at the five major performances. (A hastily arranged additional concert in Johannesburg may lead to a kind of outsourcing for black bands.) In any case, Sir Bob&#8217;s mid-1980s Live Aid famine relief strategy is widely understood to have flopped because it ignored the countervailing roles of imperial power relations, capital accumulation, unreformable global institutions and venal local elites &#173; problems repeated and indeed amplified in Live 8.</p> <p>There was another PR disaster in early June, just a month before the Group of 8 (G8) leaders meet in Gleneagles, Scotland: white wristbands favoured by Blair as a mark of his commitment to Africa were revealed as products of Chinese forced labor at a Shenzhen firm, Tat Shing. According to the London Telegrap, &#8216;Christian Aid, which bought more than 500,000 wristbands from Tat Shing, claims that Oxfam failed to tell other charities that it had decided to stop ordering from the Shenzhen company. Oxfam said it told its coalition partners of its decision, but &#8220;perhaps could have put it in writing&#8221;.&#8217;</p> <p>Do these gaffes signify something deeper? Merely careless paternalism? Or perhaps a sense that the main outcomes of this campaign are to be celebrated in media buzz, fashion statements, celebrity chasing and the NGOs&#8217; proximity to power? NGOs or organic social movements</p> <p>The heart of the problem is that the large mainstream NGOs &#173; and here we do not mean War on Want, the World Development Movement and Christian Aid &#8211; are not putting serious pressure on the G8. For example, when anti-poverty campaigners call for&#8221;cancellation of poor countries&#8217; unpayable debts&#8221;, this leaves undefined what, exactly, is &#8216;unpayable&#8217; (quite a weasel word) and concedes that the vast populations of lower-middle income countries will suffer under indefinite debt peonage. NGO and rock star endorsements of the partial debt relief gimmick announced by Gordon Brown and the G8 finance ministers on June 11 illustrate the confusion.</p> <p>Semantic wiggling is just one of the problems associated with the best of these initiatives, the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), whose International Facilitation Group was established in Johannesburg late last year. Many excellent African organizations have joined the campaign, but have they fully applied their minds, and social-change instincts?</p> <p>For GCAP, &#8216;A single global title for the mobilization is needed to provide focus, cohesion and to maximise impact of activity The aim of &#8220;White Band Day&#8221; will be to get everyone around the world that wants to end poverty to wear a white band on those days.&#8217;</p> <p>There is a need for focus and cohesion. But if it is addressed in the manner conceived by GCAP&#8217;s strategists, it could have the reverse effect: organizational demobilization accompanied by lowest-common-denominator analyses and demands.</p> <p>To illustrate, GCAP&#8217;s first newsletter, issued on June 14, is a 3600-word report-back on campaigning across the world. Yet it contains no reference to organic anti-poverty activism in the Global South, such as &#8211; in no particular order &#8211; labor strikes, popular mobilizations for AIDS-treatment and other health services, reconnections of water/electricity, land and housing occupations, anti-GMO and pro-food security campaigns, women&#8217;s organizing, municipal budget campaigns, student and youth movements, community resistance to displacements caused by dam construction and the like, anti-debt and reparations movements, environmental justice struggles, immigrants&#8217; rights campaigns, political movements to take state power, etc etc. No mention of Bolivia, Venezuela, Palestine, Iraq.</p> <p>GCAP has superb member organizations across the Third World, to be sure, but as a network it just seems to float in the air, disconnected from the reality of anti-poverty protest. It&#8217;s as if the formidable recent upsurge of unrest &#8211; 1980s-90s IMF Riots, high-profile indigenous people&#8217;s protests since Zapatismo in 1994, global justice activism since Seattle in 1999, the Social Forum movement since 2001, anti-war demos since 2001, autonomist protests and the Latin American left&#8217;s revival &#8211; never happened, don&#8217;t exist, aren&#8217;t worthy of acknowledgment much less integration and amplification.</p> <p>Worse, GCAP&#8217;s promotion of the already watered-down UN Millennium Development Goals could draw away energy and resources in many Third World countries, from organic struggles and organizational imperatives. If GCAP is successful, we foresee a tsunami of distraction, flooding out the diverse local struggles that could instead &#173; if nurtured carefully &#173; support a genuinely bottom-up, internationally-linked, networked fight against injustice.</p> <p>In contrast to the GCAP rhetoric, albeit sometimes off the beaten path, serious activists are crossing borders, races, classes and political traditions in sector after sector: land (Via Campesino), healthcare (International Peoples Health Council), free schooling (Global Campaign for Education), water (the People&#8217;s World Water Forum), energy/climate change (the Durban Declaration), debt (Jubilee South), democratic development finance (IFIs-Out! and World Bank Bonds Boycott), trade (Our World is Not for Sale) and so on.</p> <p>Of course, it is not at all easy to interlock the already overlapping grassroots and shopfloor justice campaigns. South Africans now campaigning for an overall programme of &#8216;decommodification&#8217; and socio-economic rights know this, thanks to the various movements&#8217; political splits (mainly over the merits of alignment to the corruption-ridden, neoliberal ruling party of Thabo Mbeki).</p> <p>To be sure, there is broad unity in the South Africans&#8217; objectives &#173; free anti-retroviral medicines to fight AIDS; at least 50 litres of free water and 1 kiloWatt hour of free electricity for each individual every day; extensive land reform; prohibitions on service disconnections and evictions; free education; the right to employment; and even a monthly &#8216;Basic Income Grant&#8217; &#173; but very hard work lies ahead to connect the concrete struggles. Globophiles, globophobes</p> <p>Still, without coherence emerging from struggles fought by mass movements across the Global South (including in Northern ghettoes), the construction of a top-down campaign against poverty is both unrealistic and subject to early cooption. According to Catherine Quarmby in the New Statesman last month, &#8216;Some of the most intriguing criticism of the softly-softly approach has come from within the government itself. One senior government source suggests that Oxfam has failed to learn one of the essential techniques of negotiation &#8211; if you agree on the basics too early you forfeit real influence.&#8217;</p> <p>Unfortunately this is no aberration, but part of a pattern dating at least to 1995, when Oxfam International broke from the 50 Years is Enough protests against the World Bank, endorsing a large inflow of taxpayer funding at the very peak of the Washington Consensus mentality.</p> <p>By 2002, Oxfam&#8217;s leading policy analyst, quoted in the Washington Post, happily revealed an agenda of divide-and-conquer, between &#8216;globophobes&#8217; (the global justice movement protesting the WTO/IMF/World Bank) and &#8216;globophiles&#8217; (Oxfam): &#8216;Breaking with some of its anti-globalization allies, the aid agency Oxfam International issued a report yesterday that praised international trade as a potentially enormous boon to the world&#8217;s poor&#8230; &#8220;The extreme element of the anti-globalization movement is wrong,&#8221; said Kevin Watkins, a senior policy adviser for Oxfam who wrote most of the report. &#8220;Trade can deliver much more [for poor countries] than aid or debt relief.&#8221;&#8216;</p> <p>As then-director of Food First, Anuradha Mittal, complained, &#8216;We are disappointed that Oxfam, one of the NGO leaders on food security, has chosen to undermine the demands of social movements and think tanks in the South such as Via Campesina, Movement of Landless Workers (Brazil), Third World Network, Focus on the Global South, and Africa Trade Network which have demanded that governments must uphold the rights of all people to food sovereignty and the right to food rather than industry-led export-oriented production Oxfam undermines the demands of social movements and think tanks in the South.&#8217;</p> <p>Proximity to Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue has unfortunately become a malign substitute for political common sense. For instance, Mohammad Akhter, chief executive officer of Interaction, the 160-member NGO coalition many of whose members are considered de facto subsidiaries of US AID, met Wolfowitz late last month and publicly pronounced: &#8216;The World Bank is in good hands.&#8217;</p> <p>A few days earlier, Interaction and Oxfam had thrown a grateful going-away bash for James Wolfensohn, even though on three high-profile occasions &#173; the World Commission on Dams, Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative and Extractive Industries Review &#173; he seduced NGOs into multi-stakeholder reviews, and then broke their hearts by allying instead with corporate and state suiters.</p> <p>As a result of these sorts of influences, there appears little benefit &#173; and great risk &#8211; for African NGOs to adopt as a high priority top-down Make Poverty History and even GCAP campaigns which endorse MDG end-goals dreamt up in the backrooms of the UN, where Bush administration ideologues breathe down bureaucrats&#8217; necks to reduce funding obligations, impose patriarchal and Christian-fundamentalist values, remove the word &#8216;rights&#8217; from (already fatuous) official rhetoric, and strip the few progressive UN agencies of any clout. Even Johannesburg-based Civicus International staff have informally relabeled their objective the &#8216;Minimalist Development Goals&#8217;.</p> <p>Why, then, do those white bands grace some African NGO wrists and heads, from Civicus&#8217; chief executive officer at the last World Economic Forum in Davos, to a few defiant pro-MDG NGOers at the Africa Social Forum? When Civicus staff brought two huge bags of the headbands to Lusaka and made a pitch for the campaign, it provoked such resentment &#173; alongside a futile appeal to endorse a &#8216;Joint Facilitation Committee&#8217; with the hated World Bank &#173; that the bags were left closed. South Africa&#8217;s whiteband (&#8216;witdoeke&#8217;) problem</p> <p>If we flash back 19 years, to mid-1986, we get a better perspective on why wearing white headbands is so distasteful for the South African left. At the time, Cape Town&#8217;s African township Crossroads had a population of 100 000+ and a high profile in anti-apartheid protest in part because of its location near the airport. Over a fortnight&#8217;s time, violence erupted, leaving 60 people dead and approximately 60,000 people homeless as a reactionary paramilitary gang swept through, known as the &#8216;witdoeke&#8217;, whose leader was specifically mandated by the apartheid regime to terrorise anti-apartheid activists.</p> <p>According to a reliable history of the area, &#8216;The person selected for this in Crossroads was Johnson Ngxobongwana. Ngxobongwana had evolved from being a local warlord to a strong political voice in Crossroads. As chairman of the ward committee he had built up a popular following, and acquired a retinue of local thugs, known as witdoeke (white-cloths) for the white headbands they wore for identification. Unbeknownst to most people he also had &#8220;unofficial&#8221; sponsorship from South Africa&#8217;s apartheid government and its security forces. Ngxobongwana was able to use these resources to eliminate rivals in the area, as well as marginalise women&#8217;s groups and youth groups.&#8217;</p> <p>The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found Crossroads&#8217; fate to be comparable with techniques used in Johannesburg, Durban and other sites where violence emanating from the witdoeke-style Inkatha movement killed tens of thousands of people: &#8216;In the South African context, contra-mobilization was used to organise and support &#8220;moderate blacks&#8221; to oppose the revolutionary movements. Of necessity, it was a covert strategy &#8211; concealing the hand of the state as provider of logistical, political and financial support &#8211; and making use of &#8220;surrogate&#8221; forces. Hence, the state would not be seen to be involved in the conflict and violence between groupings and the resistance organizations.&#8217;</p> <p>No one is suggesting that putting on a white headband or wristband makes you a collaborator with neoliberalism, dividing-and-conquering the oppressed forces, and supporting &#8216;moderate&#8217; NGOs so that they gain bantustan-style rewards from the global apartheid establishment.</p> <p>Nevertheless, from the standpoint of the resistance organizations, it is overdue that we collectively consider our fundamental visions, and in particular whether the much welcomed globalization of people &#173; and of culture, ideas, hospitality, travel and political solidarity &#173; can be accompanied by what we&#8217;d argue is just as desperately needed: the deglobalization of capital.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>More Bilge from Bono</p> <p>After all, the danger of NGO-lubricated ideological alignment with the neoliberal forces is serious. At a time men like Jeffrey Sachs are celebrated as saviours of the world&#8217;s poor &#173; for example, in a Bono song dedication at last month&#8217;s big New York City concert &#8211; a deeper critique of markets and the NGOs which legitimate them is desperately needed.</p> <p>Bono in particular has been obsequious. At the last New Labour party convention, Bono labeled Blair/Brown the &#8216;Lennon and McCartney of poverty reduction&#8217;. According to Quarmby, &#8216;some groups involved in Make Poverty History were horrified. John Hilary, director of campaigns and policy at War on Want, was in the audience. &#8220;When Bono said that, many NGO leaders who were there put their heads in their hands and groaned It&#8217;s a killer blow for us. To see the smiles on the faces of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair! This is exactly what they want &#8211; they want people to believe that this is their crusade, without actually changing their policy.&#8221;&#8216;</p> <p>Are the Make Poverty History campaign objectives for Gleneagles &#8211; greater Third World exposure to market mechanisms, a few crumbs of debt relief and a doubling of (neoliberally-conditioned) aid &#173; actually worth endorsing as a reformist step forward &#173; or should they be condemned as more of the same? In his book Deglobalization, Bello has convincingly set out the justice movement&#8217;s case for disempowering and defunding the global-scale institutions that push capitalism down Third World throats.</p> <p>So when Sachs, Oxfam, Mbeki and others continue to insist that the way to cure poverty is to expand the world market and reverse Africa&#8217;s alleged &#8216;marginalization&#8217;, they elide the reality that Africa&#8217;s trade/GDP ratio has for many years topped the world charts, and the reality that ever-greater reliance upon exporting cash-crops and minerals &#173; most of which have suffered huge declines in price due to gluts &#173; is a recipe for underdevelopment.</p> <p>When debt relief comes with more Western neoliberal conditionality, the reality is that people often end up in worse shape after relief than before.</p> <p>And when G8 &#8216;phantom aid&#8217; continues to foster Northern interests above those of the Third World&#8217;s people, it should be rethought entirely. In late May, Christian Aid&#8217;s brilliant Ghanaian researcher/campaigner Charles Abugre declared &#173; personally not organizationally &#8211; to a Globalise Resistance conference in London: &#8216;Stop the aid! It&#8217;s done too much damage!&#8217; Bauble, or Noose?</p> <p>What, then, should be done in coming weeks, especially on July 2 in Edinburgh? As Naomi Klein suggested at a University of KwaZulu-Natal anti-corporate conference on June 10, &#8216;A million people are going to Edinburgh and joining hands, wearing white, in a circle around the entire city, and it&#8217;s going to be one big, giant bracelet. Everyone will wear bracelets, and then they&#8217;ll be a bracelet. Are you excited about this? I always had concerns that some of these big corporate NGOs were less interested in contesting power than acting as accessories to power. But being a giant bracelet for the G8 takes this a little too far.&#8217;</p> <p>Instead, suggested Klein, &#8216;Encircle the G8! But instead of declaring themselves a piece of jewelry, they should say, we are a noose, we are putting pressure and we are squeezing these neoliberal policies that are taking lives around the world. Just like the noose that killed Ken Saro-Wiwa ten years ago this November.&#8217;</p> <p>That is indeed the choice: to be a bauble for &#173; or a noose against &#173; neoliberalism. By joining those active across the Third World in concrete struggles Northerners can offer real, lasting solidarity.</p> <p>In making the choice, especially in Britain, consider whether the symbolism of the colour white is appropriate. Are NGOs and their friends painting themselves as virgins at an alter, on the verge of marrying G8 leaders like Bush, Berlusconi, Chirac, Blair? Alternatively, will the NGO-led masses be waving white flags of surrender on July 2 in Edinburgh, with these headbands and wristbands?</p> <p>It&#8217;s rather hard to tell. According to Make Poverty History&#8217;s Bruce Whitehead, &#8216;It&#8217;s not a march in the sense of a demonstration, but more of a walk. It is going to be very much a family affair. The emphasis is on fun in the sun. The intention is to welcome the G8 leaders to Scotland and to ask them to deliver trade justice, debt cancellation and increased aid to developing countries.&#8217;</p> <p>Perhaps Whitehead and Make Poverty History need a change of both attitude and attire. After all, &#8216;white&#8217; armies have traditionally fought &#8216;red&#8217; armies. Fortunately, unlike Russia in the late 1910s or Crossroads in the mid-1980s, today&#8217;s armies of NGOs and social movements are not carrying weapons of physical destruction, only ideas, energy and a few material resources.</p> <p>Still, we can&#8217;t help but conclude that, in contrast to the red social movement struggles for dignity and justice, those wearing white and adopting the NGOs&#8217; weak programme may appear as well, if not explicit agents of the G8, then at minimum their decorations.</p> <p>Hence when protesting against Wolfowitz on his mid-June Africa trip, against the Gleneagles meeting of the world&#8217;s rulers in early July, and against the World Bank and IMF annual meetings during the late September days of anti-war action in Washington, DC, we&#8217;ll encourage our comrades to wear something more colourful, with politics to match.</p> <p>Patrick Bond is based at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban ( <a href="http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs" type="external">http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs)</a>;</p> <p>Dennis Brutus is a poet and professor emeritus at University of Pittsburgh, and works with Jubilee South Africa and the Centre for Economic Justice ( <a href="http://www.worldbankboycott.org/" type="external">http://www.worldbankboycott.org</a>);</p> <p>Virginia Setshedi is a Soweto-based anti-privatization activist employed at the Freedom of Expression Institute ( <a href="http://www.fxi.org.za/" type="external">http://www.fxi.org.za</a>).</p> <p>They can be reached at: <a href="mailto:pbond@mail.ngo.za" type="external">pbond@mail.ngo.za</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

How Glo-Bono-Phonies and Trojan Horse NGOs Sabotage the Struggle Against Neoliberalism

https://counterpunch.org/2005/06/17/how-glo-bono-phonies-and-trojan-horse-ngos-sabotage-the-struggle-against-neoliberalism/

2005-06-17

4left

amp160 Despite the global hype associated with reversing aid debt and trade injustices during the past few days it hasn8217t been an easy time for the huge NonGovernmental Organizations at the centre of the action A frontpage London New Statesman article on May 30 revealed that Oxfam8217s revolvingdoor relationship with chancellor Gordon Brown has neutered the demands strategies and tactics of the 450member NGO campaign 8216Make Poverty History8217 The website of the British magazine Red Pepper followed up with a devastating political critique of the campaign including a refusal to countenance any antiwar message that will embarrass Brown and Tony Blair Embarrassment of this sort seems endemic amongst the charityminded The Bob Geldof superstar concert series 8216Live 88217 correctly stood accused of being 8216hideously white8217 as Black Information Link put it since only one band from Africa was scheduled amongst dozens at the five major performances A hastily arranged additional concert in Johannesburg may lead to a kind of outsourcing for black bands In any case Sir Bob8217s mid1980s Live Aid famine relief strategy is widely understood to have flopped because it ignored the countervailing roles of imperial power relations capital accumulation unreformable global institutions and venal local elites 173 problems repeated and indeed amplified in Live 8 There was another PR disaster in early June just a month before the Group of 8 G8 leaders meet in Gleneagles Scotland white wristbands favoured by Blair as a mark of his commitment to Africa were revealed as products of Chinese forced labor at a Shenzhen firm Tat Shing According to the London Telegrap 8216Christian Aid which bought more than 500000 wristbands from Tat Shing claims that Oxfam failed to tell other charities that it had decided to stop ordering from the Shenzhen company Oxfam said it told its coalition partners of its decision but 8220perhaps could have put it in writing82218217 Do these gaffes signify something deeper Merely careless paternalism Or perhaps a sense that the main outcomes of this campaign are to be celebrated in media buzz fashion statements celebrity chasing and the NGOs8217 proximity to power NGOs or organic social movements The heart of the problem is that the large mainstream NGOs 173 and here we do not mean War on Want the World Development Movement and Christian Aid 8211 are not putting serious pressure on the G8 For example when antipoverty campaigners call for8221cancellation of poor countries8217 unpayable debts8221 this leaves undefined what exactly is 8216unpayable8217 quite a weasel word and concedes that the vast populations of lowermiddle income countries will suffer under indefinite debt peonage NGO and rock star endorsements of the partial debt relief gimmick announced by Gordon Brown and the G8 finance ministers on June 11 illustrate the confusion Semantic wiggling is just one of the problems associated with the best of these initiatives the Global Call to Action Against Poverty GCAP whose International Facilitation Group was established in Johannesburg late last year Many excellent African organizations have joined the campaign but have they fully applied their minds and socialchange instincts For GCAP 8216A single global title for the mobilization is needed to provide focus cohesion and to maximise impact of activity The aim of 8220White Band Day8221 will be to get everyone around the world that wants to end poverty to wear a white band on those days8217 There is a need for focus and cohesion But if it is addressed in the manner conceived by GCAP8217s strategists it could have the reverse effect organizational demobilization accompanied by lowestcommondenominator analyses and demands To illustrate GCAP8217s first newsletter issued on June 14 is a 3600word reportback on campaigning across the world Yet it contains no reference to organic antipoverty activism in the Global South such as 8211 in no particular order 8211 labor strikes popular mobilizations for AIDStreatment and other health services reconnections of waterelectricity land and housing occupations antiGMO and profood security campaigns women8217s organizing municipal budget campaigns student and youth movements community resistance to displacements caused by dam construction and the like antidebt and reparations movements environmental justice struggles immigrants8217 rights campaigns political movements to take state power etc etc No mention of Bolivia Venezuela Palestine Iraq GCAP has superb member organizations across the Third World to be sure but as a network it just seems to float in the air disconnected from the reality of antipoverty protest It8217s as if the formidable recent upsurge of unrest 8211 1980s90s IMF Riots highprofile indigenous people8217s protests since Zapatismo in 1994 global justice activism since Seattle in 1999 the Social Forum movement since 2001 antiwar demos since 2001 autonomist protests and the Latin American left8217s revival 8211 never happened don8217t exist aren8217t worthy of acknowledgment much less integration and amplification Worse GCAP8217s promotion of the already watereddown UN Millennium Development Goals could draw away energy and resources in many Third World countries from organic struggles and organizational imperatives If GCAP is successful we foresee a tsunami of distraction flooding out the diverse local struggles that could instead 173 if nurtured carefully 173 support a genuinely bottomup internationallylinked networked fight against injustice In contrast to the GCAP rhetoric albeit sometimes off the beaten path serious activists are crossing borders races classes and political traditions in sector after sector land Via Campesino healthcare International Peoples Health Council free schooling Global Campaign for Education water the People8217s World Water Forum energyclimate change the Durban Declaration debt Jubilee South democratic development finance IFIsOut and World Bank Bonds Boycott trade Our World is Not for Sale and so on Of course it is not at all easy to interlock the already overlapping grassroots and shopfloor justice campaigns South Africans now campaigning for an overall programme of 8216decommodification8217 and socioeconomic rights know this thanks to the various movements8217 political splits mainly over the merits of alignment to the corruptionridden neoliberal ruling party of Thabo Mbeki To be sure there is broad unity in the South Africans8217 objectives 173 free antiretroviral medicines to fight AIDS at least 50 litres of free water and 1 kiloWatt hour of free electricity for each individual every day extensive land reform prohibitions on service disconnections and evictions free education the right to employment and even a monthly 8216Basic Income Grant8217 173 but very hard work lies ahead to connect the concrete struggles Globophiles globophobes Still without coherence emerging from struggles fought by mass movements across the Global South including in Northern ghettoes the construction of a topdown campaign against poverty is both unrealistic and subject to early cooption According to Catherine Quarmby in the New Statesman last month 8216Some of the most intriguing criticism of the softlysoftly approach has come from within the government itself One senior government source suggests that Oxfam has failed to learn one of the essential techniques of negotiation 8211 if you agree on the basics too early you forfeit real influence8217 Unfortunately this is no aberration but part of a pattern dating at least to 1995 when Oxfam International broke from the 50 Years is Enough protests against the World Bank endorsing a large inflow of taxpayer funding at the very peak of the Washington Consensus mentality By 2002 Oxfam8217s leading policy analyst quoted in the Washington Post happily revealed an agenda of divideandconquer between 8216globophobes8217 the global justice movement protesting the WTOIMFWorld Bank and 8216globophiles8217 Oxfam 8216Breaking with some of its antiglobalization allies the aid agency Oxfam International issued a report yesterday that praised international trade as a potentially enormous boon to the world8217s poor8230 8220The extreme element of the antiglobalization movement is wrong8221 said Kevin Watkins a senior policy adviser for Oxfam who wrote most of the report 8220Trade can deliver much more for poor countries than aid or debt relief82218216 As thendirector of Food First Anuradha Mittal complained 8216We are disappointed that Oxfam one of the NGO leaders on food security has chosen to undermine the demands of social movements and think tanks in the South such as Via Campesina Movement of Landless Workers Brazil Third World Network Focus on the Global South and Africa Trade Network which have demanded that governments must uphold the rights of all people to food sovereignty and the right to food rather than industryled exportoriented production Oxfam undermines the demands of social movements and think tanks in the South8217 Proximity to Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue has unfortunately become a malign substitute for political common sense For instance Mohammad Akhter chief executive officer of Interaction the 160member NGO coalition many of whose members are considered de facto subsidiaries of US AID met Wolfowitz late last month and publicly pronounced 8216The World Bank is in good hands8217 A few days earlier Interaction and Oxfam had thrown a grateful goingaway bash for James Wolfensohn even though on three highprofile occasions 173 the World Commission on Dams Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative and Extractive Industries Review 173 he seduced NGOs into multistakeholder reviews and then broke their hearts by allying instead with corporate and state suiters As a result of these sorts of influences there appears little benefit 173 and great risk 8211 for African NGOs to adopt as a high priority topdown Make Poverty History and even GCAP campaigns which endorse MDG endgoals dreamt up in the backrooms of the UN where Bush administration ideologues breathe down bureaucrats8217 necks to reduce funding obligations impose patriarchal and Christianfundamentalist values remove the word 8216rights8217 from already fatuous official rhetoric and strip the few progressive UN agencies of any clout Even Johannesburgbased Civicus International staff have informally relabeled their objective the 8216Minimalist Development Goals8217 Why then do those white bands grace some African NGO wrists and heads from Civicus8217 chief executive officer at the last World Economic Forum in Davos to a few defiant proMDG NGOers at the Africa Social Forum When Civicus staff brought two huge bags of the headbands to Lusaka and made a pitch for the campaign it provoked such resentment 173 alongside a futile appeal to endorse a 8216Joint Facilitation Committee8217 with the hated World Bank 173 that the bags were left closed South Africa8217s whiteband 8216witdoeke8217 problem If we flash back 19 years to mid1986 we get a better perspective on why wearing white headbands is so distasteful for the South African left At the time Cape Town8217s African township Crossroads had a population of 100 000 and a high profile in antiapartheid protest in part because of its location near the airport Over a fortnight8217s time violence erupted leaving 60 people dead and approximately 60000 people homeless as a reactionary paramilitary gang swept through known as the 8216witdoeke8217 whose leader was specifically mandated by the apartheid regime to terrorise antiapartheid activists According to a reliable history of the area 8216The person selected for this in Crossroads was Johnson Ngxobongwana Ngxobongwana had evolved from being a local warlord to a strong political voice in Crossroads As chairman of the ward committee he had built up a popular following and acquired a retinue of local thugs known as witdoeke whitecloths for the white headbands they wore for identification Unbeknownst to most people he also had 8220unofficial8221 sponsorship from South Africa8217s apartheid government and its security forces Ngxobongwana was able to use these resources to eliminate rivals in the area as well as marginalise women8217s groups and youth groups8217 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found Crossroads8217 fate to be comparable with techniques used in Johannesburg Durban and other sites where violence emanating from the witdoekestyle Inkatha movement killed tens of thousands of people 8216In the South African context contramobilization was used to organise and support 8220moderate blacks8221 to oppose the revolutionary movements Of necessity it was a covert strategy 8211 concealing the hand of the state as provider of logistical political and financial support 8211 and making use of 8220surrogate8221 forces Hence the state would not be seen to be involved in the conflict and violence between groupings and the resistance organizations8217 No one is suggesting that putting on a white headband or wristband makes you a collaborator with neoliberalism dividingandconquering the oppressed forces and supporting 8216moderate8217 NGOs so that they gain bantustanstyle rewards from the global apartheid establishment Nevertheless from the standpoint of the resistance organizations it is overdue that we collectively consider our fundamental visions and in particular whether the much welcomed globalization of people 173 and of culture ideas hospitality travel and political solidarity 173 can be accompanied by what we8217d argue is just as desperately needed the deglobalization of capital amp160 More Bilge from Bono After all the danger of NGOlubricated ideological alignment with the neoliberal forces is serious At a time men like Jeffrey Sachs are celebrated as saviours of the world8217s poor 173 for example in a Bono song dedication at last month8217s big New York City concert 8211 a deeper critique of markets and the NGOs which legitimate them is desperately needed Bono in particular has been obsequious At the last New Labour party convention Bono labeled BlairBrown the 8216Lennon and McCartney of poverty reduction8217 According to Quarmby 8216some groups involved in Make Poverty History were horrified John Hilary director of campaigns and policy at War on Want was in the audience 8220When Bono said that many NGO leaders who were there put their heads in their hands and groaned It8217s a killer blow for us To see the smiles on the faces of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair This is exactly what they want 8211 they want people to believe that this is their crusade without actually changing their policy82218216 Are the Make Poverty History campaign objectives for Gleneagles 8211 greater Third World exposure to market mechanisms a few crumbs of debt relief and a doubling of neoliberallyconditioned aid 173 actually worth endorsing as a reformist step forward 173 or should they be condemned as more of the same In his book Deglobalization Bello has convincingly set out the justice movement8217s case for disempowering and defunding the globalscale institutions that push capitalism down Third World throats So when Sachs Oxfam Mbeki and others continue to insist that the way to cure poverty is to expand the world market and reverse Africa8217s alleged 8216marginalization8217 they elide the reality that Africa8217s tradeGDP ratio has for many years topped the world charts and the reality that evergreater reliance upon exporting cashcrops and minerals 173 most of which have suffered huge declines in price due to gluts 173 is a recipe for underdevelopment When debt relief comes with more Western neoliberal conditionality the reality is that people often end up in worse shape after relief than before And when G8 8216phantom aid8217 continues to foster Northern interests above those of the Third World8217s people it should be rethought entirely In late May Christian Aid8217s brilliant Ghanaian researchercampaigner Charles Abugre declared 173 personally not organizationally 8211 to a Globalise Resistance conference in London 8216Stop the aid It8217s done too much damage8217 Bauble or Noose What then should be done in coming weeks especially on July 2 in Edinburgh As Naomi Klein suggested at a University of KwaZuluNatal anticorporate conference on June 10 8216A million people are going to Edinburgh and joining hands wearing white in a circle around the entire city and it8217s going to be one big giant bracelet Everyone will wear bracelets and then they8217ll be a bracelet Are you excited about this I always had concerns that some of these big corporate NGOs were less interested in contesting power than acting as accessories to power But being a giant bracelet for the G8 takes this a little too far8217 Instead suggested Klein 8216Encircle the G8 But instead of declaring themselves a piece of jewelry they should say we are a noose we are putting pressure and we are squeezing these neoliberal policies that are taking lives around the world Just like the noose that killed Ken SaroWiwa ten years ago this November8217 That is indeed the choice to be a bauble for 173 or a noose against 173 neoliberalism By joining those active across the Third World in concrete struggles Northerners can offer real lasting solidarity In making the choice especially in Britain consider whether the symbolism of the colour white is appropriate Are NGOs and their friends painting themselves as virgins at an alter on the verge of marrying G8 leaders like Bush Berlusconi Chirac Blair Alternatively will the NGOled masses be waving white flags of surrender on July 2 in Edinburgh with these headbands and wristbands It8217s rather hard to tell According to Make Poverty History8217s Bruce Whitehead 8216It8217s not a march in the sense of a demonstration but more of a walk It is going to be very much a family affair The emphasis is on fun in the sun The intention is to welcome the G8 leaders to Scotland and to ask them to deliver trade justice debt cancellation and increased aid to developing countries8217 Perhaps Whitehead and Make Poverty History need a change of both attitude and attire After all 8216white8217 armies have traditionally fought 8216red8217 armies Fortunately unlike Russia in the late 1910s or Crossroads in the mid1980s today8217s armies of NGOs and social movements are not carrying weapons of physical destruction only ideas energy and a few material resources Still we can8217t help but conclude that in contrast to the red social movement struggles for dignity and justice those wearing white and adopting the NGOs8217 weak programme may appear as well if not explicit agents of the G8 then at minimum their decorations Hence when protesting against Wolfowitz on his midJune Africa trip against the Gleneagles meeting of the world8217s rulers in early July and against the World Bank and IMF annual meetings during the late September days of antiwar action in Washington DC we8217ll encourage our comrades to wear something more colourful with politics to match Patrick Bond is based at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZuluNatal Durban httpwwwukznaczaccs Dennis Brutus is a poet and professor emeritus at University of Pittsburgh and works with Jubilee South Africa and the Centre for Economic Justice httpwwwworldbankboycottorg Virginia Setshedi is a Sowetobased antiprivatization activist employed at the Freedom of Expression Institute httpwwwfxiorgza They can be reached at pbondmailngoza amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Urban planners in many cities around the world are imposing regulations that discourage the creation of affordable housing while slums expand, experts said.</p> <p>Nearly 55 percent of the world&#8217;s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to two-thirds by 2050, according to data from the United Nations.</p> <p>At the same time, the number of people living in slums and informal settlements in cities is also rising, U.N. data showed.</p> <p>Much of their need for affordable housing could be met if city planners eased regulations that govern the use of land, said Alain Bertaud at New York University&#8217;s Marron Institute of Urban Management.</p> <p>They should instead allow markets to determine density and affordability, he said during a visit to Mumbai this week.</p> <p>&#8220;Poor planning regulations are responsible for unaffordable housing in many prosperous cities,&#8221; Bertaud told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.</p> <p>He pointed to Mumbai&#8217;s Floor Space Index (FSI), which regulates the amount of floor space in a building relative to the size of the plot of land it sits on.</p> <p>The FSI in Mumbai is set fairly low, which means there is less space available for residences and businesses.</p> <p>The policy has contributed to huge imbalances, said Bertaud.</p> <p>Mumbai has some of the priciest real estate in the world, while more than half its population lives in slums.</p> <p>Instead of imposing such strict regulations, planners should allow the market to determine how much floor space a building should have, Bertaud said.</p> <p>He said that would encourage the development of lower cost housing, which is in high demand.</p> <p>&#8220;The market will happily serve the poor if regulators allow it, with basic health and safety guidelines and fewer limits,&#8221; said Bimal Patel, president of CEPT University in Ahmedabad.</p> <p>With urban populations rising rapidly in India, Patel and Bertaud said that planners urgently need to change their approaches and use land more efficiently.</p> <p>Investing in public transport infrastructure is also important, as it would provide people with quicker access to suburban areas where they could afford housing, said Bertaud.</p> <p>Many people are forced to live in inner city slums, because they would otherwise face long and expensive commutes to their places of work.</p> <p>&#8220;Cities like Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore prove that with the right policy, cities can grow rapidly while improving their infrastructure and their environment,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Reporting by Rina Chandran @rinachandran. Editing by Jared Ferrie. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LIMA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday backed air strikes by the United States and its allies on Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program but Argentina, Brazil and Peru voiced caution during a regional summit about the escalating military action.</p> U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrive for the family photo of the VIII Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado <p>Speaking at the Summit of the Americas in Peru, Trudeau and several other Western Hemisphere leaders forcefully condemned the use of chemical weapons, following a suspected poison gas attack last week in a Damascus suburb that killed up to 75 people and sparked international outcry.</p> <p>Washington blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s government for the attack and, together with Britain and France, launched missile strikes overnight on what it said were Syrian chemical weapons facilities.</p> <p>&#8220;Canada stands with our friends in this necessary response and we condemn in the strongest possible terms the use of chemical weapons in last week&#8217;s attack,&#8221; Trudeau said in his speech. &#8220;Those responsible must be brought to justice.&#8221;</p> <p>But the retaliatory action drew pleas for caution from several Latin American countries.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s deep concern in Brazil with the escalation of military conflict in Syria,&#8221; Brazilian President Michel Temer told the summit. &#8220;It&#8217;s time to find permanent solutions based on international law to a war that has been going for far too long and ended too many lives.&#8221;</p> Leaders of the Americas participate in the opening session of the Americas Summit in Lima, Peru April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Andres Stapff <p>Peru, a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, called for moderation from all parties involved in Syria and said it was working to find a political solution, according to a foreign ministry statement.</p> <p>Argentine President Mauricio Macri also appealed for greater coordination on Syria &#8220;in the framework of existing international commitments&#8221;, remarks later echoed by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.</p> <p>Outside the summit, the strikes drew swift condemnation from left-leaning governments in Bolivia and Cuba, outspoken critics of U.S. influence.</p> <p>But Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a close U.S. ally in Latin America, appeared to back Washington as he condemned chemical weapons.</p> <p>&#8220;We support actions to punish their use and seek their total elimination,&#8221; Santos said.</p> <p>The Pentagon said the missile strikes in Syria had hit every target. It said the military action was aimed at delivering an unambiguous signal to the Syrian government and deterring the future use of chemical weapons.</p> <p>The official theme of the Summit of the Americas is the fight against corruption. Many countries in attendance are also expected to condemn a pending election in Venezuela.</p> <p>But Syria, China and trade loomed over the talks on Saturday as Washington seeks to advance the agenda of U.S. President Donald Trump, which is widely unpopular in the region.</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>Trump canceled his attendance at the summit to focus on Syria. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, filling in for him, was expected to discuss Syria in his speech on Saturday and in meetings with heads of state.</p> NAFTA TALKS <p>Pence met with Pena Nieto privately at the summit. The Mexican leader told reporters they would discuss not just the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) but also maintaining a relationship of &#8220;mutual respect&#8221; between their two countries.</p> <p>Pence and Pena Nieto kept their remarks to reporters extremely brief - in contrast to the more expansive and warmer tone struck by Pence and Trudeau during the public part of a meeting held minutes earlier.</p> <p>Trudeau said there was &#8220;positive momentum&#8221; on reworking the NAFTA accord - which groups Canada, Mexico and the United States - while Pence said talks were encouraging.</p> <p>&#8220;As the president said very recently, we think we&#8217;re close,&#8221; Pence said before starting the meeting with Pena Nieto. &#8220;We are hopeful that we can conclude a successful renegotiation of NAFTA.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting By Roberta Rampton, Lisandra Paraguassu, Teresa Cespedes; Writing by Mitra Taj; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Alistair Bell</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A Russian bid for the United Nations Security Council to condemn U.S., British and French air strikes on Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack failed on Saturday after only China and Bolivia joined Russia to vote in favor of a draft resolution.</p> Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya speaks after Members of the United Nations Security Council voted against a Russian resolution condemning 'aggression' against Syria by the U.S. and its allies during an emergency meeting on Syria at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz <p>The 15-member council met on Saturday, at Russia&#8217;s request, the fifth time it has met on Syria since a suspected deadly toxic gas attack in the Syrian town of Douma a week ago. The United States, France and Britain fired 105 missiles overnight in retaliation, targeting Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program.</p> <p>&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you wait for the outcome of the investigation you called for?&#8221; Russia&#8217;s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said after the vote. He accused the United States, France and Britain of &#8220;demonstrating a blatant disregard for international law.&#8221;</p> United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Karen Pierce, UK Ambassador to the United Nations vote against a Russian resolution condemning 'aggression' against Syria by the U.S. and its allies during an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz <p>&#8220;I hope hot heads will cool down and that will be it,&#8221; he told reporters.</p> <p>International investigators from the global chemical weapons watchdog are in Syria and were due to start their inquiry on Saturday into the suspected toxic gas attack. Russia and Syria have said there was no evidence of a chemical weapons attack.</p> <p>The United States, France and Britain defended their military action as legal during the Security Council meeting.</p> FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council attend a meeting on Syria at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz <p>&#8220;We are confident that we have crippled Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program. We are prepared to sustain this pressure, if the Syrian regime is foolish enough to test our will,&#8221; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said.</p> <p>&#8220;If the Syrian regime uses this poison gas again, the United States is locked and loaded,&#8221; Haley said.</p> <p>During an address to the Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all states &#8220;to show restraint in these dangerous circumstances and to avoid any acts that could escalate matters and worsen the suffering of the Syrian people.&#8221;</p> <p>Eight countries voted against the Russian-drafted text on Saturday, while Peru, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia and Equatorial Guinea abstained. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, France, Britain or the United States to pass.</p> <p>The council failed on Tuesday to approve three draft resolutions on chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Russia vetoed a U.S. text, while two Russian-drafted resolutions failed to get a minimum nine votes to pass.</p> <p>Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Jason Neely and David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to shift the course of the 7-year-old civil war.</p> <p>The United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago, targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities including a research and development in Damascus&#8217; Barzeh district and two installations near Homs.</p> <p>The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his superpower ally Russia, but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war.</p> <p>The air attack, denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression, was unlikely to alter the course of a multi-sided war that has killed at least half a million people.</p> <p>&#8220;We believe that by hitting Barzeh in particular we&#8217;ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program,&#8221; Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump called the operation a success on Twitter and proclaimed: &#8220;Mission accomplished.&#8221;</p> <p>However, McKenzie acknowledged elements of Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-trump/trump-mission-accomplished-on-perfectly-executed-syria-strike-idUSKBN1HL0TW" type="external">Trump: 'mission accomplished' on 'perfectly executed' Syria strike</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-scene/syria-strike-reduces-research-center-to-smoking-rubble-idUSKBN1HL107" type="external">Syria strike reduces research center to smoking rubble</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-israel/syria-strikes-are-important-signal-to-iran-and-hezbollah-israeli-minister-idUSKBN1HL0A4" type="external">Syria strikes are 'important signal' to Iran and Hezbollah: Israeli minister</a> <p>In New York, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, &#8220;the United States is locked and loaded.&#8221;</p> <p>At the United Nations, Russia said the U.S.-led strikes would complicate U.N. efforts to broker a political solution to the conflict in Syria.</p> <p>Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Saturday that the strikes were &#8220;unacceptable and lawless.&#8221;</p> <p>Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption &#8220;Morning of resilience&#8221;.</p> <p>Ten hours after the missiles hit, smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh, where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed.</p> <p>There were no immediate reports of casualties.</p> <p>Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally, but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used. Syria fired 40 unguided surface to air missiles - but only after the Western strikes had ended, the Pentagon said.</p> <p>&#8220;We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets,&#8221; McKenzie said.</p> <p>The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people. They concluded Assad&#8217;s government was to blame for gassing the Damascus suburb.</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as &#8220;limited and targeted&#8221;, with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war.</p> <p>U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis called the strikes a &#8220;one-time shot.&#8221;</p> THREE TARGETS <p>Washington described its targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons, a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs, and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.</p> <p>The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets, and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria&#8217;s ability to produce such weapons.</p> <p>U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria, but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation.</p> <p>Syrian state media called the attack a &#8220;flagrant violation of international law&#8221;. Iran&#8217;s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals.</p> <p>Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma later on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings.</p> <p>Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.</p> <p>However, Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a one-off, unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad.</p> A missile is seen crossing over Damascus, Syria April 14, 2018. SANA/Handout via REUTERS <p>A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia.</p> <p>The Western countries were at pains to avoid further escalation, including any unexpected conflict with their superpower rival Russia. French Defence Minister Florence Parly said the Russians &#8220;were warned beforehand&#8221;, to avert conflict.</p> <p>Dmitry Belik, a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes, told Reuters: &#8220;The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical. Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages.&#8221;</p> <p>The Western intervention has virtually no chance of altering the military balance of power at a time when Assad is in his strongest position since the war&#8217;s early months.</p> ASSAD STRONG <p>In Douma, site of the suspected gas attack, the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad&#8217;s government of the entire war.</p> <p>Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has let Assad crush the rebel threat to topple him.</p> Slideshow (16 Images) <p>The United States, Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years, arming rebels, bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group. But they have refrained from targeting Assad&#8217;s government, apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.</p> <p>Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him.</p> <p>The combined U.S., British and French assault involved more missiles, but appears to have struck more limited targets, than a similar strike Trump ordered a year ago in retaliation for an earlier suspected chemical weapons attack. That strike had effectively no impact on the war.</p> <p>Mattis said the United States had conclusive evidence that chlorine gas had been used in the April 7 attack. Evidence that the nerve agent sarin was also used was inconclusive, he said.</p> <p>Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad&#8217;s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although, unlike nerve agents, chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week.</p> <p>Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry,; Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Joel Schectman in Washington; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Polina Ivanova in Moscow, Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Peter Graff, Kevin Liffey and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Yara Bayoumy, Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States is &#8220;locked and loaded&#8221; to strike again if Syria&#8217;s President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s government again uses chemical weapons, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the Security Council on Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;We are confident that we have crippled Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program. We are prepared to sustain this pressure, if the Syrian regime is foolish enough to test our will,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>&#8220;If the Syrian regime uses this poison gas again, the United States is locked and loaded,&#8221; Haley said.</p> <p>Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Poor urban planning to blame for pricey housing and expanding slums, experts say Canada backs Syria strikes but others at Americas summit concerned Russia fails in U.N. bid to condemn U.S.-led strikes on Syria U.S. says air strikes cripple Syria chemical weapons program If Syria uses toxic gas again, U.S. 'locked and loaded': U.N. envoy Haley

https://reuters.com/article/us-india-landrights-property/poor-urban-planning-to-blame-for-pricey-housing-and-expanding-slums-experts-say-idUSKBN1F71S9

2018-01-18

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MUMBAI Thomson Reuters Foundation Urban planners in many cities around the world are imposing regulations that discourage the creation of affordable housing while slums expand experts said Nearly 55 percent of the world8217s population lives in urban areas a proportion that is expected to increase to twothirds by 2050 according to data from the United Nations At the same time the number of people living in slums and informal settlements in cities is also rising UN data showed Much of their need for affordable housing could be met if city planners eased regulations that govern the use of land said Alain Bertaud at New York University8217s Marron Institute of Urban Management They should instead allow markets to determine density and affordability he said during a visit to Mumbai this week 8220Poor planning regulations are responsible for unaffordable housing in many prosperous cities8221 Bertaud told the Thomson Reuters Foundation He pointed to Mumbai8217s Floor Space Index FSI which regulates the amount of floor space in a building relative to the size of the plot of land it sits on The FSI in Mumbai is set fairly low which means there is less space available for residences and businesses The policy has contributed to huge imbalances said Bertaud Mumbai has some of the priciest real estate in the world while more than half its population lives in slums Instead of imposing such strict regulations planners should allow the market to determine how much floor space a building should have Bertaud said He said that would encourage the development of lower cost housing which is in high demand 8220The market will happily serve the poor if regulators allow it with basic health and safety guidelines and fewer limits8221 said Bimal Patel president of CEPT University in Ahmedabad With urban populations rising rapidly in India Patel and Bertaud said that planners urgently need to change their approaches and use land more efficiently Investing in public transport infrastructure is also important as it would provide people with quicker access to suburban areas where they could afford housing said Bertaud Many people are forced to live in inner city slums because they would otherwise face long and expensive commutes to their places of work 8220Cities like Seoul Shanghai Hong Kong and Singapore prove that with the right policy cities can grow rapidly while improving their infrastructure and their environment8221 he said Reporting by Rina Chandran rinachandran Editing by Jared Ferrie Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news womens rights trafficking property rights climate change and resilience Visit newstrustorg to see more stories Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LIMA Reuters Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday backed air strikes by the United States and its allies on Syria8217s chemical weapons program but Argentina Brazil and Peru voiced caution during a regional summit about the escalating military action US Vice President Mike Pence and Canadas Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrive for the family photo of the VIII Summit of the Americas in Lima Peru April 14 2018 REUTERSIvan Alvarado Speaking at the Summit of the Americas in Peru Trudeau and several other Western Hemisphere leaders forcefully condemned the use of chemical weapons following a suspected poison gas attack last week in a Damascus suburb that killed up to 75 people and sparked international outcry Washington blamed Syrian President Bashar alAssad8217s government for the attack and together with Britain and France launched missile strikes overnight on what it said were Syrian chemical weapons facilities 8220Canada stands with our friends in this necessary response and we condemn in the strongest possible terms the use of chemical weapons in last week8217s attack8221 Trudeau said in his speech 8220Those responsible must be brought to justice8221 But the retaliatory action drew pleas for caution from several Latin American countries 8220There8217s deep concern in Brazil with the escalation of military conflict in Syria8221 Brazilian President Michel Temer told the summit 8220It8217s time to find permanent solutions based on international law to a war that has been going for far too long and ended too many lives8221 Leaders of the Americas participate in the opening session of the Americas Summit in Lima Peru April 14 2018 REUTERSAndres Stapff Peru a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council called for moderation from all parties involved in Syria and said it was working to find a political solution according to a foreign ministry statement Argentine President Mauricio Macri also appealed for greater coordination on Syria 8220in the framework of existing international commitments8221 remarks later echoed by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto Outside the summit the strikes drew swift condemnation from leftleaning governments in Bolivia and Cuba outspoken critics of US influence But Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos a close US ally in Latin America appeared to back Washington as he condemned chemical weapons 8220We support actions to punish their use and seek their total elimination8221 Santos said The Pentagon said the missile strikes in Syria had hit every target It said the military action was aimed at delivering an unambiguous signal to the Syrian government and deterring the future use of chemical weapons The official theme of the Summit of the Americas is the fight against corruption Many countries in attendance are also expected to condemn a pending election in Venezuela But Syria China and trade loomed over the talks on Saturday as Washington seeks to advance the agenda of US President Donald Trump which is widely unpopular in the region Slideshow 7 Images Trump canceled his attendance at the summit to focus on Syria US Vice President Mike Pence filling in for him was expected to discuss Syria in his speech on Saturday and in meetings with heads of state NAFTA TALKS Pence met with Pena Nieto privately at the summit The Mexican leader told reporters they would discuss not just the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA but also maintaining a relationship of 8220mutual respect8221 between their two countries Pence and Pena Nieto kept their remarks to reporters extremely brief in contrast to the more expansive and warmer tone struck by Pence and Trudeau during the public part of a meeting held minutes earlier Trudeau said there was 8220positive momentum8221 on reworking the NAFTA accord which groups Canada Mexico and the United States while Pence said talks were encouraging 8220As the president said very recently we think we8217re close8221 Pence said before starting the meeting with Pena Nieto 8220We are hopeful that we can conclude a successful renegotiation of NAFTA8221 Reporting By Roberta Rampton Lisandra Paraguassu Teresa Cespedes Writing by Mitra Taj Editing by Daniel Flynn and Alistair Bell Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles UNITED NATIONS Reuters A Russian bid for the United Nations Security Council to condemn US British and French air strikes on Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack failed on Saturday after only China and Bolivia joined Russia to vote in favor of a draft resolution Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya speaks after Members of the United Nations Security Council voted against a Russian resolution condemning aggression against Syria by the US and its allies during an emergency meeting on Syria at the UN headquarters in New York US April 14 2018 REUTERSEduardo Munoz The 15member council met on Saturday at Russia8217s request the fifth time it has met on Syria since a suspected deadly toxic gas attack in the Syrian town of Douma a week ago The United States France and Britain fired 105 missiles overnight in retaliation targeting Syria8217s chemical weapons program 8220Why didn8217t you wait for the outcome of the investigation you called for8221 Russia8217s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said after the vote He accused the United States France and Britain of 8220demonstrating a blatant disregard for international law8221 United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Karen Pierce UK Ambassador to the United Nations vote against a Russian resolution condemning aggression against Syria by the US and its allies during an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria at the UN headquarters in New York US April 14 2018 REUTERSEduardo Munoz 8220I hope hot heads will cool down and that will be it8221 he told reporters International investigators from the global chemical weapons watchdog are in Syria and were due to start their inquiry on Saturday into the suspected toxic gas attack Russia and Syria have said there was no evidence of a chemical weapons attack The United States France and Britain defended their military action as legal during the Security Council meeting FILE PHOTO Members of the United Nations Security Council attend a meeting on Syria at the UN headquarters in New York US April 13 2018 REUTERSEduardo Munoz 8220We are confident that we have crippled Syria8217s chemical weapons program We are prepared to sustain this pressure if the Syrian regime is foolish enough to test our will8221 US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said 8220If the Syrian regime uses this poison gas again the United States is locked and loaded8221 Haley said During an address to the Security Council UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres urged all states 8220to show restraint in these dangerous circumstances and to avoid any acts that could escalate matters and worsen the suffering of the Syrian people8221 Eight countries voted against the Russiandrafted text on Saturday while Peru Kazakhstan Ethiopia and Equatorial Guinea abstained A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia China France Britain or the United States to pass The council failed on Tuesday to approve three draft resolutions on chemical weapons attacks in Syria Russia vetoed a US text while two Russiandrafted resolutions failed to get a minimum nine votes to pass Reporting by Michelle Nichols editing by Jason Neely and David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONBEIRUT Reuters Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria8217s chemical weapons program but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to shift the course of the 7yearold civil war The United States France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities including a research and development in Damascus8217 Barzeh district and two installations near Homs The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Syrian President Bashar alAssad and his superpower ally Russia but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria8217s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war The air attack denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression was unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war that has killed at least half a million people 8220We believe that by hitting Barzeh in particular we8217ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program8221 Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon US President Donald Trump called the operation a success on Twitter and proclaimed 8220Mission accomplished8221 However McKenzie acknowledged elements of Syria8217s chemical weapons program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future Related Coverage Trump mission accomplished on perfectly executed Syria strike Syria strike reduces research center to smoking rubble Syria strikes are important signal to Iran and Hezbollah Israeli minister In New York US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again 8220the United States is locked and loaded8221 At the United Nations Russia said the USled strikes would complicate UN efforts to broker a political solution to the conflict in Syria Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Saturday that the strikes were 8220unacceptable and lawless8221 Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombedout research lab but also of Assad arriving at work as usual with the caption 8220Morning of resilience8221 Ten hours after the missiles hit smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed There were no immediate reports of casualties Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used Syria fired 40 unguided surface to air missiles but only after the Western strikes had ended the Pentagon said 8220We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets8221 McKenzie said The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people They concluded Assad8217s government was to blame for gassing the Damascus suburb British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as 8220limited and targeted8221 with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis called the strikes a 8220onetime shot8221 THREE TARGETS Washington described its targets as a center near Damascus for the research development production and testing of chemical and biological weapons a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria8217s ability to produce such weapons UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation Syrian state media called the attack a 8220flagrant violation of international law8221 Iran8217s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma later on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings Russia whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold Warera hostility has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up antiRussian hysteria However Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a oneoff unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad A missile is seen crossing over Damascus Syria April 14 2018 SANAHandout via REUTERS A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia The Western countries were at pains to avoid further escalation including any unexpected conflict with their superpower rival Russia French Defence Minister Florence Parly said the Russians 8220were warned beforehand8221 to avert conflict Dmitry Belik a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes told Reuters 8220The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages8221 The Western intervention has virtually no chance of altering the military balance of power at a time when Assad is in his strongest position since the war8217s early months ASSAD STRONG In Douma site of the suspected gas attack the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town state TV reported That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta marking one of the biggest victories for Assad8217s government of the entire war Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has let Assad crush the rebel threat to topple him Slideshow 16 Images The United States Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years arming rebels bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group But they have refrained from targeting Assad8217s government apart from a volley of US missiles last year Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power they held back in the past from striking his government lacking a wider strategy to defeat him The combined US British and French assault involved more missiles but appears to have struck more limited targets than a similar strike Trump ordered a year ago in retaliation for an earlier suspected chemical weapons attack That strike had effectively no impact on the war Mattis said the United States had conclusive evidence that chlorine gas had been used in the April 7 attack Evidence that the nerve agent sarin was also used was inconclusive he said Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use although its use as a weapon is banned Allegations of Assad8217s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although unlike nerve agents chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry Additional reporting by Steve Holland Idrees Ali Yara Bayoumy Joel Schectman in Washington Samia Nakhoul Tom Perry Laila Bassam Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut Kinda Makieh in Barzeh Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London and JeanBaptiste Vey Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris Polina Ivanova in Moscow Michelle Nichols in New York Writing by Peter Graff Kevin Liffey and Doina Chiacu Editing by Yara Bayoumy Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles UNITED NATIONS Reuters The United States is 8220locked and loaded8221 to strike again if Syria8217s President Bashar alAssad8217s government again uses chemical weapons US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the Security Council on Saturday 8220We are confident that we have crippled Syria8217s chemical weapons program We are prepared to sustain this pressure if the Syrian regime is foolish enough to test our will8221 she said 8220If the Syrian regime uses this poison gas again the United States is locked and loaded8221 Haley said Reporting by Michelle Nichols Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>TThe celebrations of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Italian unification in March, 2011, were overshadowed by the crisis in Libya. Coinciding with Italy&#8217;s birthday, Silvio Berlusconi&#8217;s government decided to make seven air bases available to NATO allies for the bombing of Colonel Gaddafi&#8217;s forces.</p> <p>By coincidence, this was one hundred years since the Italians invented aerial bombardment and initiated its practice precisely over Libya. A century later, the bomber returns to the scene of its bloody birth. Clio seems to take a perverse enjoyment in ensuring that history repeats itself, first acting as imperialism then as humanitarian intervention, without even needing to change the stage-set.</p> <p>On 1st November, 1911, Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped the first bomb from an aeroplane. According to the Ottoman authorities it hit the military hospital in Ayn Zara in the Libyan desert. The Italians strongly denied targeting an installation protected by the Geneva Convention. Modern aerial warfare and the propaganda battle which has accompanied it ever since was underway from the start.</p> <p>Lt. Gavotti&#8217;s four bombs were modified hand grenades, but soon the Italians had learned how to drop incendiary bomb and shrapnel bombs &#8211; what we would now call cluster munitions.</p> <p>The initial impact of aircraft overhead was alarming and disorientating to the forces below. Panic spread as an airplane engine was heard approaching. But soon enough the Turks and Arabs below learned the limitations of aerial bombardment and their terror subsided. The Italians decided that they had to increase the terrorising effect of their bombing and strafing to keep the enemy on the run. The Italian pilots also realised that fixed targets like villages or oases were easier to find and strike than mobile guerrillas.</p> <p>The British Arabist, G.F. Abbott who was with the mixed Turkish-Arab forces resisting the invasion noted that they soon recovered from their fear partly because bombs which fell into the sand tended to explode harmlessly. But he added, &#8220;The women and children in the villages are practically the only victims, and this fact excited the anger of the Arabs.&#8221;</p> <p>Antagonising the civilian population was an unfortunate side-effect of the bombing which became a major factor in turning the Italian invasion into a protracted counter-insurgency.</p> <p>When the idea of occupying Libya as a fiftieth birthday present to themselves was turned into practice in September, 1911, Italians were assured of a quick victory there. They were told that the Ottoman Turkish regime was thoroughly hated by the Arabs living there and that a warm welcome could be expected for the soldiers bringing civilization and liberation from the Sultan&#8217;s tyranny. To use modern parlance, Italians were encouraged to expect a cakewalk. The media assured the soldiers, &#8220;Arab hostility is nothing but a Turkish fable.&#8221;</p> <p>Gavotti&#8217;s dropping of the first bombs in history barely a month into the campaign was evidence of how quickly the Italians realised that things were not going to plan. Resistance in the main cities like Tripoli was quickly crushed but in the great expanses of territory even the 100,000 troops deployed by Italy were not enough to regulate a thousand-mile-wide country stretching deep into the Sahara. The newly-invented airplane offered a way of displaying Italian power across vast swathes of land which were in effect controlled by local Arabs who preferred the Muslim Turks to the Christian Italians &#8211; not least when the Italians preached civilization via shrapnel bombs dropped from a few thousand feet.</p> <p>The alleged cruelty of local Arabs and Turks towards captured Italian soldiers was one of the justifications for the widening use of reprisals from the air and on the ground in Libya. In a fight against uncivilized folk like them the rules of war could be suspended. But the Libyans proved harder to terrify into submission than Rome anticipated.</p> <p>Nevertheless, on 9th November, 1911, the Italian government declared victory, even though the war was only just beginning. With the mission far from accomplished, the war was vastly more costly than Italians had expected. Characteristically, the prime minister, Giovanni Giolitti, lied to Parliament in Rome saying the war had cost 512 million lire. That was a huge figure given that the War Ministry&#8217;s last annual peacetime budget was only 399 million lire. But in reality off-balance sheet accounting hid another billion lire in costs of the war against the Ottoman Empire over Libya. As for the human cost, 8,000 Italians were killed or wounded. No-one counted the Arab dead.</p> <p>Although the Italian elite had economic aims in occupying Libya wrapped up in nationalist and civilizational rhetoric, oil was not the Italian motive. Only at the end of the Fascist period was any serious exploration undertaken which indicated that oil lay beneath the desert. Libya&#8217;s first major oil strike was outside Gaddafi&#8217;s home town of Sirte in 1959. At the end of thirty years of Italian rule, salt was still Libya&#8217;s main export. Italians were fed the idea that Libya would return to being the bread basket of the Mediterranean as it had been under the Roman Empire. Few in 1911 seem to have realised that the desert had spread over the Roman fields and cities long ago.</p> <p>As the war dragged on enthusiasm in Italy waned but the newspapers and instant books of the day record how united the opinion-makers were in support of the war at its opening shots. Above all, there was admiration for the airmen dealing death from the sky. The cult of the pilot soaring across the sky while clinically disposing of a dot-like savage foe below was born.</p> <p>The greatest living Italian poet Gabriele D&#8217;Annunzion immediately sought to immortalize Lt. Gavotti&#8217;s act in his Canzone della Diana. (A few laters in the First World War, D&#8217;Annunzio would take to the skies over Vienna and drop leaflets threatening bombs to come.)Giovanni Pascole sentimentalised the feats of Italian pilots as the Libyan war passed it first Christmas in La Notte di Natale. The Futurist, Filippo Marinetti, took the air over Libya itself to urge Italian soldiers below to fix bayonets and charge.</p> <p>Everybody seemed to support the invasion at the beginning. The great philosopher and future anti-Fascist, Benedetto Croce declared &#8211;apparently without irony &#8211; that occupying Libya was a worthy birthday gift to Italy on the fiftieth anniversary of its unification. The 1907 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, E.T. Moneta, became the first &#8211; though by no means the last recipient of the dynamite fortune&#8217;s largesse &#8211; to anticipate Barak Obama&#8217;s faith in aerial bombardment as a tool of progress for humanity and therefore declared it was not against his pacifist principles. The Catholic hierarchy had been hostile to the secular not to say Masonic Italian political elite but it endorsed Giolitti&#8217;s crusade in Libya with as much enthusiasm as its predecessors had backed the original version over eight hundred years earlier.</p> <p>The meeting of the poetry scholars of the Dante Aligheri Society on 20thSeptember, 1911, broke up with cries of &#8220;To Tripoli!&#8221;</p> <p>It was not only Italian proto-Fascist intellectuals like D&#8217;Annunzio and Marinetti who swooned at the thought of a pilot soaring high over the desert dealing death to savages below. Sweden&#8217;s Gustaf Janson described the intoxicating sense of unbridled power and of the pilot&#8217;s impunity in action against primitives below whose air defence was incapable of revenging their casualties: &#8220;The empty earth beneath him, the empty sky above him and he, the solitary man, sailing between them! A feeling of power seizes him. He was flying through space to assert the indisputable superiority of the white race.</p> <p>Within his reach he had the proof, seven high-explosive bombs. To be able to sling them from the heavens themselves &#8211; that was convincing and irrefutable.&#8221;</p> <p>A few Italians protested the naked aggression. It was left to the extremist Socialist newspaper editor, Benito Mussolini, to make the most unconditional rejection of the war. He was arrested after dismissing the national flag as a &#8220;rag to stick on a dunghill&#8221; in a speech denouncing the war in Forl&#236;. This was a stark contrast with the attitude of the ex-Marxist in power as Duce of Fascism after 1922. The airplane and the destructive power it could project enthralled Mussolini the Fascist as it had repelled Mussolini the Marxist. He declared that the airplane was &#8220;the first Fascist.&#8221; He became a born-again bomber.</p> <p>Mussolini&#8217;s rejection of Marxism and his embrace of the thrill of ultra-modern war was simultaneous. Almost as soon as he came to power, Mussolini was taken up for his first flight by the war ace, Mario Stoppiani, who described the Duce&#8217;s &#8220;enthusiastic delirium&#8221; with the experience. Then he learned to fly (and to the alarm of his more pedestrian ally, Hitler, would take charge of the controls of planes with the timid Fuehrer on board.) Until George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin has there been a political leader who piloted himself so publicly?</p> <p>The airplane was also used to suppress his opponents: Mafia bosses and Libyan tribal chiefs would be taken for a one-way flight out over the Mediterranean and pushed to their deaths in the sea below.</p> <p>Mussolini developed the use of air power to repress rebels in Libya and eventually broke their resistance after almost twenty-five years occupation. In Ethiopia he took his war for civilization to new depths. Fascist Italy announced it would abolish slavery there but first it had to conquer the natives. The exiled Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, described to the League of Nations how the Italians used crop-spraying techniques designed to kill insects to poison his people. Mussolini&#8217;s regime made no bones about its methods and did not hide behind cant about having &#8220;no reports of civilian casualties.&#8221;</p> <p>Flying Fascists became the order of the day as Mussolini became expansionist in the mid-1930s. His eldest son, Vittorio and his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, took part as pilots in bombing Ethiopia.Mussolini&#8217;s son, Bruno, wrote a lyrical description of what it was like to watch Ethiopians explode like petals when he dropped his bombs among them.</p> <p>Bertrand Russell saw Bruno Mussolini&#8217;s evocation of air power&#8217;s immaculate ability to destroy puny humans as embodying the reality of the modern totalitarian regimes, but worse still of a future world controlled from the air. Russell asked, &#8220;If one could imagine a government that governed from an aeroplane&#8230; wouldn&#8217;t such a government get a completely different view of its opposition?&#8221; Russell feared that a regime of air power would &#8220;exterminate&#8221; any resistance or dissent. He thought the bomber rendered mass conscript armies redundant and highly-skilled mercenaries would replace them willing to do the bidding of their masters rather being part of the people: &#8220;&#8221;We seem now, through the aeroplane, to be returning to the need for forces composed of comparatively few highly trained men. It is to be expected, therefore, that the form of government, in every country exposed to serious war, will be such as airmen will like, which is not likely to be democracy.&#8221;</p> <p>But the Italian Fascists were to discover that air power was a two-way street. Libyans and Ethiopians could not declare &#8220;no fly zones&#8221; over Rome or bombard Florence, but after 1940, the British then the Americans could. Italian pioneering efforts at air warfare were widely admired and imitated.</p> <p>Fiorello La Guardia was trained to fly by Italian instructors after the United States entered the First World War in 1917. The American pioneer of bombing, Billy Mitchell, recognised Italy&#8217;s role as an air power pioneer and became an admirer of the Fascist regime, calling it in 1927 &#8220;one of the greatest constructive powers for good government that exists in the world today.&#8221; Like Mussolini&#8217;s air chiefs, Mitchell was a moderniser who got left behind by the pace of change: he agreed with the Fascist airmen that aircraft carriers had no future.</p> <p>In Britain, too, there were close links between Fascism and flying. Lady Houston, who funded Supermarine&#8217;s embryo Spitfire to compete in the Remy Schneider Flying Trophy also offered &#163;200,000 to the British Union of Fascists led by flying enthusiast Oswald Mosley &#8211; so her contribution to defeating Fascism was greater than the effect of backing the British Union of Fascists &#8211; aspects of the patriotic myth which are omitted the Leslie Howard film First of the Few (1942).</p> <p>Even today there is the odd, even erotic, irony that Mosley&#8217;s step-granddaughter, the glamorous model Daphne Guinness is amorously linked to Bernard-Henri Levi, the chief French exponent of bombing as the path to freedom in Libya &#8211; a strange misalliance between the Repubblica Salo and the R&#233;publique Sarkozyste, or a reconciliation of a false dichotomy?</p> <p>But whatever the role of other countries in pioneering air flight or even Fascism, Italy can fairly claim to have got both off the ground. It put the warplane in the sky soon enough with a Fascist at the joy-stick. Giulio Douhet was the first serious strategist of bombing. Although he backed Mussolini, Douhet&#8217;s career as a practitioner of airpower was stymied in Fascist Italy by rivals with better party credentials.</p> <p>One of the few dissenting voices in 1911 belonged to a schoolboy in Ferrara who would become the second most famous Fascist after Mussolini not least for his flying exploits. Then the fifteen year old Italo Balbo broke with the nationalist atmosphere and published an article denouncing the invasion of the territory which he would come to rule after 1933 as Mussolini&#8217;s viceroy. But in the meantime Balbo became Italy&#8217;s own Charles Lindbergh &#8211; a celebrity pioneer aviator who criss-crossed much of the globe to demonstrate the new Fascist regime&#8217;s commitment to the most modern manifestation of power &#8211; the airplane.</p> <p>Back in 1911 like Mussolini, Balbo was an odd man out. Of course not every future Fascist opposed the war. Sergio Panunzio, for instance, remonstrated with the young Balbo for publishing an article against the pro-war consensus: &#8220;Why? To go against the grain, against reality, against the government.&#8221; Panunzio anticipated the classic Fascist argument that right was made by the might of media opinion and the might of state power.</p> <p>Italians were to be proud of pioneering military aviation in the cause of civilization. In 1911, Italians achieved a series of aerial firsts: the first night flight, the first aerial photograph, the first aerial bombing &#8211; and the first plane to be shot down. Some pedants pointed out that if balloon-launched explosives were included then it was Italian territory which was the first target of bombing as far back as 1849. Then the Austrians besieging rebel Venice sent balloons filled with explosives drifting across la Serenissima which crashed onto the Austrian troops on the other side causing the first casualties of aerial friendly-fire. The governor of Libya, Balbo himself, fell victim to friendly fire when his three-engined plane was shot down by his own anti-aircraft forces at Tobruk on 28th June, 1940. In 1941, Bruno Mussolini was also killed testing a new plane. The airplane was beginning to eat the Fascists and the nation which gave birth to its military role.</p> <p>Rejecting any romantic nostalgia for the days of one-on-one fighter-pilot duels in the First World War, Balbo was the proponent of launching &#8220;hundreds and hundreds&#8221; of planes into the sky in future wars. Mass attacks were to be the Fascist approach to aerial warfare &#8211; but Mussolini&#8217;s regime was stronger on intimidating bombast than putting resources into such a vast expensive programme. It was the democracies who built and deployed the first fleets of heavy bombers.</p> <p>As the Second World War progressed, northern Italy was especially badly hit by bombing as the Allies advanced to drive out the Germans and destroy Mussolini&#8217;s Salo regime. Leaving aside the human cost, the cultural losses were enormous. Buildings like La Scala in Milan or the Bramante church housing Leonardo&#8217;s Last Supper in its miraculously unscathed refectory could be rebuilt but the works of art in them like the Mantegna fresco of the Life of St. James in the Ovetari Chapel in Padua were lost when shattered by Allied bombs.</p> <p>The impact of the Second World War left Italians deeply suspicious of getting involved in warfare, let alone bombing former colonial territory. In 1999, Italy broke the tabu. Led by ex-Marxists, the Italian government accepted the use of their country as the main launching ground for airstrikes on Serbia over Kosovo briefly part of Mussolini&#8217;s inglorious new Roman Empire (1941-43). Fishermen in the Adriatic still moan about the risks of falling victim to NATO ordinance dumped in the sea. But now a regime with &#8220;post-Fascist&#8221; participation competes with the post-Marxists to justify Italy&#8217;s renewal of war over Libya just in time for the centenary of a Italy as the mid-wife of aerial warfare.</p> <p>On this morbid anniversary, the crusade for civilization then has become a crusade for human rights today. The machinery of the contemporary crusaders may be faster than the bi-planes of 1911 and the bombs are certainly vastly more explosive, but the unanimity of the politicians and media across the West are a strange echo of Italy&#8217;s echo-chamber of mutually reinforcing propaganda from the men in power and men of the press. But today there isn&#8217;t even a Mussolini in parliament or the media to oppose air power as a force for progress!</p> <p>Sources</p> <p>Italians have written extensively about the war for Libya in 1911 and the invention of aerial bombardment by their fellow countrymen.</p> <p>Useful English sources include:</p> <p>Richard Bosworth, Italy and the Approach of the First World War (Macmillan: London, 1983)</p> <p>Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011),</p> <p>Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2007)</p> <p>Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing translated by Haverty Rugg (Granta: London, 2001)</p> <p>Bertrand Russell, Power with an introduction by Kirk Willis (Unwin, 1938, reprinted by Routledge: London, 1995)</p> <p>Dan Segre, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1987)</p> <p>David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War. Europe, 1904-1914 paperback edition (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000)</p> <p>John Wright, The Emergence of Libya: Historical Essays(Society for Libyan Studies: London, 2008).</p> <p>MARK ALMOND, Oxford historian, is Visiting Professor in International Relations at Bilkent University, Turkey. He can be reached through his <a href="" type="internal">website.</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

100 Years of Bombing Libya

https://counterpunch.org/2011/04/05/100-years-of-bombing-libya/

2011-04-05

4left

TThe celebrations of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Italian unification in March 2011 were overshadowed by the crisis in Libya Coinciding with Italy8217s birthday Silvio Berlusconi8217s government decided to make seven air bases available to NATO allies for the bombing of Colonel Gaddafi8217s forces By coincidence this was one hundred years since the Italians invented aerial bombardment and initiated its practice precisely over Libya A century later the bomber returns to the scene of its bloody birth Clio seems to take a perverse enjoyment in ensuring that history repeats itself first acting as imperialism then as humanitarian intervention without even needing to change the stageset On 1st November 1911 Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped the first bomb from an aeroplane According to the Ottoman authorities it hit the military hospital in Ayn Zara in the Libyan desert The Italians strongly denied targeting an installation protected by the Geneva Convention Modern aerial warfare and the propaganda battle which has accompanied it ever since was underway from the start Lt Gavotti8217s four bombs were modified hand grenades but soon the Italians had learned how to drop incendiary bomb and shrapnel bombs 8211 what we would now call cluster munitions The initial impact of aircraft overhead was alarming and disorientating to the forces below Panic spread as an airplane engine was heard approaching But soon enough the Turks and Arabs below learned the limitations of aerial bombardment and their terror subsided The Italians decided that they had to increase the terrorising effect of their bombing and strafing to keep the enemy on the run The Italian pilots also realised that fixed targets like villages or oases were easier to find and strike than mobile guerrillas The British Arabist GF Abbott who was with the mixed TurkishArab forces resisting the invasion noted that they soon recovered from their fear partly because bombs which fell into the sand tended to explode harmlessly But he added 8220The women and children in the villages are practically the only victims and this fact excited the anger of the Arabs8221 Antagonising the civilian population was an unfortunate sideeffect of the bombing which became a major factor in turning the Italian invasion into a protracted counterinsurgency When the idea of occupying Libya as a fiftieth birthday present to themselves was turned into practice in September 1911 Italians were assured of a quick victory there They were told that the Ottoman Turkish regime was thoroughly hated by the Arabs living there and that a warm welcome could be expected for the soldiers bringing civilization and liberation from the Sultan8217s tyranny To use modern parlance Italians were encouraged to expect a cakewalk The media assured the soldiers 8220Arab hostility is nothing but a Turkish fable8221 Gavotti8217s dropping of the first bombs in history barely a month into the campaign was evidence of how quickly the Italians realised that things were not going to plan Resistance in the main cities like Tripoli was quickly crushed but in the great expanses of territory even the 100000 troops deployed by Italy were not enough to regulate a thousandmilewide country stretching deep into the Sahara The newlyinvented airplane offered a way of displaying Italian power across vast swathes of land which were in effect controlled by local Arabs who preferred the Muslim Turks to the Christian Italians 8211 not least when the Italians preached civilization via shrapnel bombs dropped from a few thousand feet The alleged cruelty of local Arabs and Turks towards captured Italian soldiers was one of the justifications for the widening use of reprisals from the air and on the ground in Libya In a fight against uncivilized folk like them the rules of war could be suspended But the Libyans proved harder to terrify into submission than Rome anticipated Nevertheless on 9th November 1911 the Italian government declared victory even though the war was only just beginning With the mission far from accomplished the war was vastly more costly than Italians had expected Characteristically the prime minister Giovanni Giolitti lied to Parliament in Rome saying the war had cost 512 million lire That was a huge figure given that the War Ministry8217s last annual peacetime budget was only 399 million lire But in reality offbalance sheet accounting hid another billion lire in costs of the war against the Ottoman Empire over Libya As for the human cost 8000 Italians were killed or wounded Noone counted the Arab dead Although the Italian elite had economic aims in occupying Libya wrapped up in nationalist and civilizational rhetoric oil was not the Italian motive Only at the end of the Fascist period was any serious exploration undertaken which indicated that oil lay beneath the desert Libya8217s first major oil strike was outside Gaddafi8217s home town of Sirte in 1959 At the end of thirty years of Italian rule salt was still Libya8217s main export Italians were fed the idea that Libya would return to being the bread basket of the Mediterranean as it had been under the Roman Empire Few in 1911 seem to have realised that the desert had spread over the Roman fields and cities long ago As the war dragged on enthusiasm in Italy waned but the newspapers and instant books of the day record how united the opinionmakers were in support of the war at its opening shots Above all there was admiration for the airmen dealing death from the sky The cult of the pilot soaring across the sky while clinically disposing of a dotlike savage foe below was born The greatest living Italian poet Gabriele D8217Annunzion immediately sought to immortalize Lt Gavotti8217s act in his Canzone della Diana A few laters in the First World War D8217Annunzio would take to the skies over Vienna and drop leaflets threatening bombs to comeGiovanni Pascole sentimentalised the feats of Italian pilots as the Libyan war passed it first Christmas in La Notte di Natale The Futurist Filippo Marinetti took the air over Libya itself to urge Italian soldiers below to fix bayonets and charge Everybody seemed to support the invasion at the beginning The great philosopher and future antiFascist Benedetto Croce declared 8211apparently without irony 8211 that occupying Libya was a worthy birthday gift to Italy on the fiftieth anniversary of its unification The 1907 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate ET Moneta became the first 8211 though by no means the last recipient of the dynamite fortune8217s largesse 8211 to anticipate Barak Obama8217s faith in aerial bombardment as a tool of progress for humanity and therefore declared it was not against his pacifist principles The Catholic hierarchy had been hostile to the secular not to say Masonic Italian political elite but it endorsed Giolitti8217s crusade in Libya with as much enthusiasm as its predecessors had backed the original version over eight hundred years earlier The meeting of the poetry scholars of the Dante Aligheri Society on 20thSeptember 1911 broke up with cries of 8220To Tripoli8221 It was not only Italian protoFascist intellectuals like D8217Annunzio and Marinetti who swooned at the thought of a pilot soaring high over the desert dealing death to savages below Sweden8217s Gustaf Janson described the intoxicating sense of unbridled power and of the pilot8217s impunity in action against primitives below whose air defence was incapable of revenging their casualties 8220The empty earth beneath him the empty sky above him and he the solitary man sailing between them A feeling of power seizes him He was flying through space to assert the indisputable superiority of the white race Within his reach he had the proof seven highexplosive bombs To be able to sling them from the heavens themselves 8211 that was convincing and irrefutable8221 A few Italians protested the naked aggression It was left to the extremist Socialist newspaper editor Benito Mussolini to make the most unconditional rejection of the war He was arrested after dismissing the national flag as a 8220rag to stick on a dunghill8221 in a speech denouncing the war in Forl236 This was a stark contrast with the attitude of the exMarxist in power as Duce of Fascism after 1922 The airplane and the destructive power it could project enthralled Mussolini the Fascist as it had repelled Mussolini the Marxist He declared that the airplane was 8220the first Fascist8221 He became a bornagain bomber Mussolini8217s rejection of Marxism and his embrace of the thrill of ultramodern war was simultaneous Almost as soon as he came to power Mussolini was taken up for his first flight by the war ace Mario Stoppiani who described the Duce8217s 8220enthusiastic delirium8221 with the experience Then he learned to fly and to the alarm of his more pedestrian ally Hitler would take charge of the controls of planes with the timid Fuehrer on board Until George W Bush and Vladimir Putin has there been a political leader who piloted himself so publicly The airplane was also used to suppress his opponents Mafia bosses and Libyan tribal chiefs would be taken for a oneway flight out over the Mediterranean and pushed to their deaths in the sea below Mussolini developed the use of air power to repress rebels in Libya and eventually broke their resistance after almost twentyfive years occupation In Ethiopia he took his war for civilization to new depths Fascist Italy announced it would abolish slavery there but first it had to conquer the natives The exiled Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie described to the League of Nations how the Italians used cropspraying techniques designed to kill insects to poison his people Mussolini8217s regime made no bones about its methods and did not hide behind cant about having 8220no reports of civilian casualties8221 Flying Fascists became the order of the day as Mussolini became expansionist in the mid1930s His eldest son Vittorio and his soninlaw Galeazzo Ciano took part as pilots in bombing EthiopiaMussolini8217s son Bruno wrote a lyrical description of what it was like to watch Ethiopians explode like petals when he dropped his bombs among them Bertrand Russell saw Bruno Mussolini8217s evocation of air power8217s immaculate ability to destroy puny humans as embodying the reality of the modern totalitarian regimes but worse still of a future world controlled from the air Russell asked 8220If one could imagine a government that governed from an aeroplane8230 wouldn8217t such a government get a completely different view of its opposition8221 Russell feared that a regime of air power would 8220exterminate8221 any resistance or dissent He thought the bomber rendered mass conscript armies redundant and highlyskilled mercenaries would replace them willing to do the bidding of their masters rather being part of the people 82208221We seem now through the aeroplane to be returning to the need for forces composed of comparatively few highly trained men It is to be expected therefore that the form of government in every country exposed to serious war will be such as airmen will like which is not likely to be democracy8221 But the Italian Fascists were to discover that air power was a twoway street Libyans and Ethiopians could not declare 8220no fly zones8221 over Rome or bombard Florence but after 1940 the British then the Americans could Italian pioneering efforts at air warfare were widely admired and imitated Fiorello La Guardia was trained to fly by Italian instructors after the United States entered the First World War in 1917 The American pioneer of bombing Billy Mitchell recognised Italy8217s role as an air power pioneer and became an admirer of the Fascist regime calling it in 1927 8220one of the greatest constructive powers for good government that exists in the world today8221 Like Mussolini8217s air chiefs Mitchell was a moderniser who got left behind by the pace of change he agreed with the Fascist airmen that aircraft carriers had no future In Britain too there were close links between Fascism and flying Lady Houston who funded Supermarine8217s embryo Spitfire to compete in the Remy Schneider Flying Trophy also offered 163200000 to the British Union of Fascists led by flying enthusiast Oswald Mosley 8211 so her contribution to defeating Fascism was greater than the effect of backing the British Union of Fascists 8211 aspects of the patriotic myth which are omitted the Leslie Howard film First of the Few 1942 Even today there is the odd even erotic irony that Mosley8217s stepgranddaughter the glamorous model Daphne Guinness is amorously linked to BernardHenri Levi the chief French exponent of bombing as the path to freedom in Libya 8211 a strange misalliance between the Repubblica Salo and the R233publique Sarkozyste or a reconciliation of a false dichotomy But whatever the role of other countries in pioneering air flight or even Fascism Italy can fairly claim to have got both off the ground It put the warplane in the sky soon enough with a Fascist at the joystick Giulio Douhet was the first serious strategist of bombing Although he backed Mussolini Douhet8217s career as a practitioner of airpower was stymied in Fascist Italy by rivals with better party credentials One of the few dissenting voices in 1911 belonged to a schoolboy in Ferrara who would become the second most famous Fascist after Mussolini not least for his flying exploits Then the fifteen year old Italo Balbo broke with the nationalist atmosphere and published an article denouncing the invasion of the territory which he would come to rule after 1933 as Mussolini8217s viceroy But in the meantime Balbo became Italy8217s own Charles Lindbergh 8211 a celebrity pioneer aviator who crisscrossed much of the globe to demonstrate the new Fascist regime8217s commitment to the most modern manifestation of power 8211 the airplane Back in 1911 like Mussolini Balbo was an odd man out Of course not every future Fascist opposed the war Sergio Panunzio for instance remonstrated with the young Balbo for publishing an article against the prowar consensus 8220Why To go against the grain against reality against the government8221 Panunzio anticipated the classic Fascist argument that right was made by the might of media opinion and the might of state power Italians were to be proud of pioneering military aviation in the cause of civilization In 1911 Italians achieved a series of aerial firsts the first night flight the first aerial photograph the first aerial bombing 8211 and the first plane to be shot down Some pedants pointed out that if balloonlaunched explosives were included then it was Italian territory which was the first target of bombing as far back as 1849 Then the Austrians besieging rebel Venice sent balloons filled with explosives drifting across la Serenissima which crashed onto the Austrian troops on the other side causing the first casualties of aerial friendlyfire The governor of Libya Balbo himself fell victim to friendly fire when his threeengined plane was shot down by his own antiaircraft forces at Tobruk on 28th June 1940 In 1941 Bruno Mussolini was also killed testing a new plane The airplane was beginning to eat the Fascists and the nation which gave birth to its military role Rejecting any romantic nostalgia for the days of oneonone fighterpilot duels in the First World War Balbo was the proponent of launching 8220hundreds and hundreds8221 of planes into the sky in future wars Mass attacks were to be the Fascist approach to aerial warfare 8211 but Mussolini8217s regime was stronger on intimidating bombast than putting resources into such a vast expensive programme It was the democracies who built and deployed the first fleets of heavy bombers As the Second World War progressed northern Italy was especially badly hit by bombing as the Allies advanced to drive out the Germans and destroy Mussolini8217s Salo regime Leaving aside the human cost the cultural losses were enormous Buildings like La Scala in Milan or the Bramante church housing Leonardo8217s Last Supper in its miraculously unscathed refectory could be rebuilt but the works of art in them like the Mantegna fresco of the Life of St James in the Ovetari Chapel in Padua were lost when shattered by Allied bombs The impact of the Second World War left Italians deeply suspicious of getting involved in warfare let alone bombing former colonial territory In 1999 Italy broke the tabu Led by exMarxists the Italian government accepted the use of their country as the main launching ground for airstrikes on Serbia over Kosovo briefly part of Mussolini8217s inglorious new Roman Empire 194143 Fishermen in the Adriatic still moan about the risks of falling victim to NATO ordinance dumped in the sea But now a regime with 8220postFascist8221 participation competes with the postMarxists to justify Italy8217s renewal of war over Libya just in time for the centenary of a Italy as the midwife of aerial warfare On this morbid anniversary the crusade for civilization then has become a crusade for human rights today The machinery of the contemporary crusaders may be faster than the biplanes of 1911 and the bombs are certainly vastly more explosive but the unanimity of the politicians and media across the West are a strange echo of Italy8217s echochamber of mutually reinforcing propaganda from the men in power and men of the press But today there isn8217t even a Mussolini in parliament or the media to oppose air power as a force for progress Sources Italians have written extensively about the war for Libya in 1911 and the invention of aerial bombardment by their fellow countrymen Useful English sources include Richard Bosworth Italy and the Approach of the First World War Macmillan London 1983 Azar Gat A History of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to the Cold War Oxford University Press Oxford 2011 Alan Kramer Dynamic of Destruction Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War Oxford University Press Oxford 2007 Sven Lindqvist A History of Bombing translated by Haverty Rugg Granta London 2001 Bertrand Russell Power with an introduction by Kirk Willis Unwin 1938 reprinted by Routledge London 1995 Dan Segre Italo Balbo A Fascist Life University of California Press Berkeley 1987 David Stevenson Armaments and the Coming of War Europe 19041914 paperback edition Oxford University Press Oxford 2000 John Wright The Emergence of Libya Historical EssaysSociety for Libyan Studies London 2008 MARK ALMOND Oxford historian is Visiting Professor in International Relations at Bilkent University Turkey He can be reached through his website amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>A few years ago, I started to realize something. Whenever I was less than five minutes early for Mass, I had to go to the overflow room, and I would typically have to step over people sitting on the floor to get there. The church was filled to the gills every Sunday, with young families and children most of the time. But we had a compelling priest, and we were in one of the poshest areas in Paris, the kind of place that has historically been conspicuously Catholic&#8212;comparable to the mainline Protestant tradition in some of the most affluent neighborhoods in older American cities.</p> <p>Then I moved. And I saw the same thing. I live in a very different neighborhood now, one that is &#8220;upwardly mobile,&#8221; as real estate agencies coyly say. But on Sunday morning the church is packed. There are upscale Catholics and the senior citizens you see everywhere, but also immigrant families, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and Indian Ocean countries. There are the kinds of hipsters you might not expect to be religious. There are children everywhere.</p> <p>I have started going to other, random parishes on Sundays, just to see if this is a real trend. And indeed, Sunday high Mass is packed in most parishes in Paris. This is also true in Lyon, the second biggest city in the country.</p> <p>If there is a Catholic revival in France&#8212;the evidence is still mostly anecdotal in a nation where 53 percent of citizens identify as Catholic but only 5 percent regularly attend Mass, according to <a href="https://international.la-croix.com/news/the-sociology-of-french-catholics/4491" type="external">a recent poll</a> conducted by Ipsos and reported by the Catholic newspaper La Croix&#8212;it may be starting in the cities, with the highly educated and, as the presidential campaign to be decided on May 7 may prove, with those highly attuned to politics. Now this is fine. You need a mustard seed. The French Revolution was originally an elite phenomenon, and historians like <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&amp;amp;linkCode=qs&amp;amp;keywords=9780520222021" type="external">Rodney Stark</a> have shown that for all the talk of early Christianity in Rome as &#8220;a religion of slaves,&#8221; it also appealed early and consistently to the elite. But now I have seen something I never expected. I think that in my entire life I had never seen more than a dozen people in the church in the village that my family hails from on any day other than Christmas and Easter. When I returned recently, it was about two-thirds full. There are also more activities outside of weekly Mass than I remember; the parish is now caring for a family of Iraqi Christians, and local teenagers have started a project with a local crafts school to beautify the church.</p> <p>At first, the revival of Catholicism in France was something you could fleetingly smell in the air. I would notice more and more of my Easter-and-Christmas Catholic college friends posting Facebook updates about going to church, raising money for Christians in the Middle East or handing out food to the homeless with some a Catholic charity. I have two previously irreligious friends who, out of nowhere, dropped their high-status careers and walked the road to Compostela, still one of the most active pilgrimage destinations in the world, had a religious experience when they got there and changed their lives when they returned.</p> <p>The rise of the &#8216;zombie Catholic&#8217;</p> <p>True, vocations to the priesthood, perhaps the ultimate criterion of the church&#8217;s health, are not palpably growing, but it is significant that they have finally plateaued after a multi-decade decline. The number of priests in the Archdiocese of Paris has already showed <a href="http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dpars.html#stats" type="external">an uptick</a>, something than can only help attract people to the pews.</p> <p>The Ipsos survey also suggested that Mass attendance may not be the only measure of the strength of Catholicism. It estimated that 23 percent of the French population are &#8220;involved Catholics&#8221; who &#8220;feel attached to the Church by means of their donations, their family lives or their commitments&#8221; and who &#8220;live their lives differently&#8221; than less engaged Catholics.</p> <p>Another category of church members, with a less flattering name, has been much discussed lately: &#8220; <a href="http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/why-frances-zombie-catholics-are-so-powerful-85256/" type="external">zombie Catholics</a>,&#8221; who may not attend Mass but have proven highly influential in this year&#8217;s presidential campaign. The historian Robert Zaretsky described them in the journal Foreign Policy as such: &#8220;Highly educated and meritocratic&#8230;[with] a strong attachment to social, community and family activities; and a general wariness over the role of the state in private and community affairs, including [Catholic schools].&#8221;</p> <p>The resurgent Catholic bloc was foreshadowed by the backlash in the 1980s to the Socialist government&#8217;s unsuccessful plan to merge public and private schools, and by the opposition to same-sex marriage in 2013.</p> <p>Then, last Nov. 20, something happened in French politics that made the world raise an eyebrow. That was when France&#8217;s Republican (conservative) Party held the first round of its first-ever primary for a presidential nominee and a previously written-off candidate named Fran&#231;ois Fillon smashed all his competitors, coming in 15 points ahead&amp;#160;of Alain Jupp&#233;, the frontrunner in most polls. (One week later he beat Jupp&#233; in the run-off election almost exactly two to one.)</p> <p>What made Fillon stand out was his pride in his Catholicism and his friendliness toward socially conservative causes in a country so secular and so libertine that this makes one an odd duckling even in a conservative party&#8217;s primary. (Jupp&#233; described himself as an &#8220; <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/world/conservative-francois-fillon-wins-french-primary-strong-appeal-catholics" type="external">agnostic Catholic</a>.&#8221;) During a primetime interview in January, Fillon put his hand on his heart and <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20170106-fillons-christian-faith-back-french-election-issue" type="external">said</a>: &#8220;I am a Gaullist and furthermore a Christian. It means that I will never take a decision that would run counter to the respect of human dignity, the respect of the individual and solidarity.&#8221; To millions of devout Catholics, this was like milk and honey. He had broken a powerful French taboo: mentioning religion in public. As a left-wing friend of mine put it: &#8220;He has a right to be Catholic, but he doesn&#8217;t have the right to say it and run for president.&#8221;</p> <p>No one believes committed Catholics provided all of Fillon&#8217;s margin of victory in the primary, but they provided a crucial measure of support. According to a poll conducted for the news site Atlantico in late November, 83 percent of &#8220;practicing&#8221; Catholics were planning to vote for Fillon in the Republican Party run-off.</p> <p>Campaign shenanigans are froth, but they can establish as incontrovertible something that could be glimpsed only through a glass, darkly. I first wrote about the French &#8220; <a href="http://theweek.com/articles/531469/there-christianrevival-starting-france" type="external">Christian revival</a>&#8221; for the American edition of The Week in early 2015. When the piece filtered back across the Atlantic to the world of French Catholicism, the main piece of feedback I got from most of my Catholic acquaintances boiled down to, &#8220;I&#8217;ve been seeing it too, but couldn&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s real.&#8221;</p> <p>The reversal of May 1968 France is known as one of the most fiercely secular countries on earth. A <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/02/01/faith-few-strong-links-to-national-identity/" type="external">Pew Research Center survey</a> released in February found that only 10 percent of French citizens considered &#8220;being a Christian&#8221; a &#8220;very important&#8221; part of French identity&#8211;compared with 30 percent in Italy and 32 percent in the United States responding affirmatively to the same question about their own countries. The French Revolution was a rebellion against altar as much as against the throne&#8212;the Reign of Terror was an orgy of anticlerical violence&#8212;and the struggle between progressive forces and the church played out over centuries.</p> <p>That struggle seemed to have ended in a complete and permanent victory for the secular side. The 1905 law establishing the separation of church and state is an obvious marker, but the May 1968 student and worker protests proved almost as important. The cultural heights of the country were seized by those who were shaped by the 1968 spirit of libertarian free love&#8212;and who, Steve Jobs-like, added a love of money to its love of sex and its patina of counterculture. The result was laws liberalizing divorce and abortion, and a secularism so harsh that nobody outside the country can understand why banning the Islamic veil from schools is supposed to make sense.</p> <p>The resurgence of Catholicism as a political force in France in fact began in 2013 with the startling intensity of La Manif Pour Tous(&#8220;Protest for All&#8221;), the movement formed to oppose France&#8217;s same-sex marriage bill. Why this issue, more than abortion or contraception, suddenly got Catholics off their behinds is a bit of a mystery; there has not been a comparable backlash against same-sex marriage among Catholics in the United States. Laurent Bouvet, a political-science professor at Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, speculated to the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ee4bf05e-944f-11e6-a80e-bcd69f323a8b" type="external">Financial Times</a> last fall that traditional Catholics in France &#8220;never really accepted the Revolutionary notion that individual freedom should supersede the moral authority of the priest or the family head. They are&#8230;wary of the concept of equality.&#8221;</p> <p>Whatever the reason, La Manif&#8212;officially a secular, nonpartisan nonprofit, but in reality almost completely a Catholic phenomenon&#8212;moved <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21004322" type="external">hundreds of thousands to take to the streets</a> in protest of the government&#8217;s policy, over several weeks&amp;#160;in 2013. The marches <a href="https://thetablet.org/french-rally-defends-traditional-marriage/" type="external">included</a> pink, baby blue and white balloons, along with signs with such messages as &#8220;Father + Mother = nothing better for a child.&#8221; For years, the question about La Manif and the energy it unleashed was whether this newfound political intensity would produce results at the polls; Fillon&#8212;who is not vowing to overturn same-sex marriage but <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-fillon-idUSKBN13D259" type="external">remains opposed</a> to the adoption of children by gay couples&#8212;may have showed that it can.</p> <p>More interesting is La Manif&#8217;s potential as a kind of &#8220; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2013/04/23/kahn-mai-68-envers-mariage-gay_n_3138065.html" type="external">May &#8217;68 in reverse</a>,&#8221; in the words of commentators like Jean-Fran&#231;ois Kahn, or as a touchstone for a decisive shift in mores, as well as an incubator of leaders, social networks and experiments that end up pollinating across the culture.</p> <p>Indeed, many movements and ideas have arisen thanks to La Manif. On one end of the spectrum is Les Veilleurs(&#8220;The Watchmen&#8221;), a leaderless movement of youngsters who, after the same-sex marriage bill was passed, spent nights standing in front of government buildings holding candles, reading poems and protesting government&#8217;s encroachment on Christian society, with a few of them getting arrested. The movement seemed to be made up mostly of idealistic youngsters who got the adrenaline rush of their life during the Manif protests and didn&#8217;t want to quit it.</p> <p>While La Manif remained scrupulously nonpartisan&#8212;even though no one was oblivious that its appeal was to the right&#8212;some of its alumni founded Sens Commun (&#8220;Common Sense&#8221;), a group affiliated with France&#8217;s Republican Party with the avowed goal of playing a role similar to that of the Christian right in strengthening America&#8217;s Republican Party. Still, many of France&#8217;s newly observant Catholics are, like most French people, jaded about politics. Catholic social teaching appeals to them precisely because, though it commands engagement in the public square, it transcends any partisan platform. These are not conservatives in either the American or traditional French, soil-and-tradition mold. They are just as likely to bang on about Pope Francis&#8217;s environmental encyclical, &#8220;Laudato Si&#8217;,&#8221; or his calls for solidarity with migrants as they are to wax enthusiastic about John Paul II&#8217;s theology of the body. One of La Manif&#8217;s most prominent spokesmen, Tugdual Derville, promotes the concept of &#8220;integral ecology,&#8221; or &#8220; <a href="http://www.tugdualderville.fr/mots-clefs/ecologie-humaine-2" type="external">&#233;cologie humaine</a>,&#8221; a term that tries to signify that care for the environment, care for the poor and care for the unborn go together. It seems that the vast majority have never been to a traditional Latin Mass.</p> <p>Strengthening the arguments of Catholics who are wary of becoming too partisan, Fran&#231;ois Fillon&#8217;s campaign is turning out like something out of a Biblical morality tale. The shining knight of the new French Catholic Right has become enmeshed in a scandal relating to an alleged fake job held by his wife, a devastating blow for the man whose appeal in the Republican primary was largely based on his probity. As of late March, he was running third in <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-poll-idUSKBN16V0HH" type="external">public opinion polls</a>, behind an independent centrist candidate, Emmanuel Macron, and the leader of the far-right National Front party, Marine Le Pen (who has been making a late bid for Catholic votes, though she <a href="http://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/03/24/french-presidential-candidates-are-breaking-tradition-playing-religion" type="external">admits</a>, &#8220;I only go to church for weddings, funerals and baptisms.&#8221;) The election may turn out to be a warning from Providence about what happens when Christians put their faith in political leaders.</p> <p>The Catholic social network So, while many new Catholics are politically active, some talk about being &#8220;meta-political,&#8221; as the popular Catholic lawyer and <a href="http://www.koztoujours.fr/lauteur" type="external">blogger</a> (and author of <a href="http://www.koztoujours.fr/identitaire-le-mauvais-genie-du-christianisme" type="external">Identity: The Evil Genius of Christianity</a>) put it. They understand not only that the magisterium transcends political boundaries; they understand a fundamental lesson of May 1968: Politics is downstream from culture.</p> <p>These new Catholics have identified the enemy as &#8220;liberalism,&#8221; in the French sense of a drive for ever-greater individual liberty. Liberalism, in this view, is responsible for sexual depravity and the culture of death, and for the excesses of globalized capitalism red-in-tooth-and-claw. Pope Francis&#8217; warnings about a &#8220;throwaway culture&#8221; that leads both to abortions and to quasi-slaves in third world factories making disposable consumer items of questionable worth are tailor-made for them.</p> <p>Some exponents of this doctrine have started an intellectual review called Limite (&#8220;Limits&#8221;), marrying a scathing critique of capitalism to excoriation of progressive dogmas regarding sexuality. The inaugural issue featured an article criticizing artificial contraception for going against the philosophy of consuming organic, locally sourced products. It is hard to tell how much of this is genuine and how much of it is artful trolling of a French left that likes to think of itself as the opponent to &#8220;liberalism.&#8221;</p> <p>And in Lyon, new Catholics opened a &#8220;cooperative caf&#233;&#8221; named after Simone Weil, the mystical Jewish-born philosopher who had a lifelong love affair with Catholicism. Young people gather there to hear speakers on the evils of globalization, environmental degradation and the culture of death.</p> <p>Protest movements and intellectual reviews are well and good, but if a tree must be judged by its fruits, then the true criterion of whether the new Catholicism is for real will be the Beatitudes. One reason to be optimistic is the story of a nonprofit named Entourage.</p> <p>Entourage is an iPhone app that bills itself as a &#8220;social network for those who don&#8217;t have a social network.&#8221; It helps volunteers for organizations that help the homeless coordinate and share information. But it is also a public-facing app that helps anyone help the homeless around them. Someone can post about a person on the corner of such-and-such streets who needs a blanket, and someone else can bring it to them.</p> <p>Jean-Marc Potdevin, the founder of Entourage, is as earnest as anyone you will meet. An engineer by training, he became wealthy by working in several internet startups before undergoing what he calls a mid-life crisis: Why was he working so hard when he didn&#8217;t need to, and what for? Although raised Catholic, he had stopped believing, praying or attending church. One day, Potdevin decided to walk the road to Compostela, and he says that during his trip he had an encounter with Christ. In his earlier career as a scientist, &#8220;I worked in a cognitive science research lab, so I know the mind can play tricks on you,&#8221; he quickly adds after describing how he believes the Lord spoke to him. After two years of working out his mystical experience under spiritual guidance, he got the idea for Entourage after spending more time with homeless people. Some who work at Entourage used to live in the streets, and the nonprofit has an advisory group made up of homeless people. More and more homeless people can now find smartphones, get online through free Wi-Fi hotspots and are now on Entourage making requests.</p> <p>In a first world country, he explains, homeless people can find ways to feed themselves or get emergency health care or shelter: &#8220;I&#8217;m not saying things are good, they&#8217;re not, but that&#8217;s not [addressing] what kills homeless people. What kills homeless people is loneliness.&#8221; Behind the practical good that Entourage can do, he unfurls a vision that goes beyond hot meals to enabling social connections. &#8220;Look at this society, where it&#8217;s a permanent rat race, where we&#8217;re all divided,&#8221; he says. &#8220;What are we missing? We&#8217;re missing the face of Christ, which is in the poor.&#8221;</p> <p>Potdevin makes it clear that even though he does not hide his faith, Entourage is a secular group, with that status enshrined in the nonprofit&#8217;s by-laws, and that he works with everyone. He seeks to partner with as many groups that help the homeless as possible, whether secular, Christian, Jewish or Muslim. But some groups refuse to work with him because he doesn&#8217;t hide his faith, he says.</p> <p>But this isn&#8217;t about Entourage. After all, in every era and country Catholics are coming up with worthy initiatives to help the needy. The French government recently launched a contest called &#8220;La France s&#8217;engage,&#8221; awarding grants to the innovative nonprofits that received the most online votes. Voters could vote again each day, and every Catholic I knew on Facebook and Twitter kept pestering their followers to vote for Entourage repeatedly. As the app vied for first place, a story came out trying to trigger bien-pensant outrage at Potdevin for appearing at an event where a spokesman for La Manif had been featured, but Entourage nevertheless <a href="http://www.associations.gouv.fr/annonce-des-laureats-la-france-s-engage-session-2017.html" type="external">triumphed</a>. The victory cannot be credited wholly to Catholic networks, as Potdevin&#8217;s friends in the startup world also beat their drums. Nonetheless, the fact that an app like Entourage could win is a sign of serious engagement by Catholics, and engagement for the right causes.</p> <p>The new Catholics comprise a movement that is still young and small, and which faces many pitfalls. It is still, sociologically, an elite movement. It might be lured by the temptations of politicization. It might still frizzle out. But I don&#8217;t think so. I believe this is a real movement of the Spirit&#8212;one that could change the country in my daughter&#8217;s lifetime.</p> <p>This article also appeared in print, under the headline &#8220;Religion is playing an unexpectedly large role in this spring&#8217;s presidential election,&#8221; in the April 17, 2017 issue.</p> <p>Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, who lives in Paris, is a contributing writer to America, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and a columnist at TheWeek.com.</p>

Zombie Catholics vs. French Secularism

https://eppc.org/publications/zombie-catholics-vs-french-secularism/

1right-center

A few years ago I started to realize something Whenever I was less than five minutes early for Mass I had to go to the overflow room and I would typically have to step over people sitting on the floor to get there The church was filled to the gills every Sunday with young families and children most of the time But we had a compelling priest and we were in one of the poshest areas in Paris the kind of place that has historically been conspicuously Catholic8212comparable to the mainline Protestant tradition in some of the most affluent neighborhoods in older American cities Then I moved And I saw the same thing I live in a very different neighborhood now one that is 8220upwardly mobile8221 as real estate agencies coyly say But on Sunday morning the church is packed There are upscale Catholics and the senior citizens you see everywhere but also immigrant families mostly from subSaharan Africa and Indian Ocean countries There are the kinds of hipsters you might not expect to be religious There are children everywhere I have started going to other random parishes on Sundays just to see if this is a real trend And indeed Sunday high Mass is packed in most parishes in Paris This is also true in Lyon the second biggest city in the country If there is a Catholic revival in France8212the evidence is still mostly anecdotal in a nation where 53 percent of citizens identify as Catholic but only 5 percent regularly attend Mass according to a recent poll conducted by Ipsos and reported by the Catholic newspaper La Croix8212it may be starting in the cities with the highly educated and as the presidential campaign to be decided on May 7 may prove with those highly attuned to politics Now this is fine You need a mustard seed The French Revolution was originally an elite phenomenon and historians like Rodney Stark have shown that for all the talk of early Christianity in Rome as 8220a religion of slaves8221 it also appealed early and consistently to the elite But now I have seen something I never expected I think that in my entire life I had never seen more than a dozen people in the church in the village that my family hails from on any day other than Christmas and Easter When I returned recently it was about twothirds full There are also more activities outside of weekly Mass than I remember the parish is now caring for a family of Iraqi Christians and local teenagers have started a project with a local crafts school to beautify the church At first the revival of Catholicism in France was something you could fleetingly smell in the air I would notice more and more of my EasterandChristmas Catholic college friends posting Facebook updates about going to church raising money for Christians in the Middle East or handing out food to the homeless with some a Catholic charity I have two previously irreligious friends who out of nowhere dropped their highstatus careers and walked the road to Compostela still one of the most active pilgrimage destinations in the world had a religious experience when they got there and changed their lives when they returned The rise of the 8216zombie Catholic8217 True vocations to the priesthood perhaps the ultimate criterion of the church8217s health are not palpably growing but it is significant that they have finally plateaued after a multidecade decline The number of priests in the Archdiocese of Paris has already showed an uptick something than can only help attract people to the pews The Ipsos survey also suggested that Mass attendance may not be the only measure of the strength of Catholicism It estimated that 23 percent of the French population are 8220involved Catholics8221 who 8220feel attached to the Church by means of their donations their family lives or their commitments8221 and who 8220live their lives differently8221 than less engaged Catholics Another category of church members with a less flattering name has been much discussed lately 8220 zombie Catholics8221 who may not attend Mass but have proven highly influential in this year8217s presidential campaign The historian Robert Zaretsky described them in the journal Foreign Policy as such 8220Highly educated and meritocratic8230with a strong attachment to social community and family activities and a general wariness over the role of the state in private and community affairs including Catholic schools8221 The resurgent Catholic bloc was foreshadowed by the backlash in the 1980s to the Socialist government8217s unsuccessful plan to merge public and private schools and by the opposition to samesex marriage in 2013 Then last Nov 20 something happened in French politics that made the world raise an eyebrow That was when France8217s Republican conservative Party held the first round of its firstever primary for a presidential nominee and a previously writtenoff candidate named Fran231ois Fillon smashed all his competitors coming in 15 points aheadamp160of Alain Jupp233 the frontrunner in most polls One week later he beat Jupp233 in the runoff election almost exactly two to one What made Fillon stand out was his pride in his Catholicism and his friendliness toward socially conservative causes in a country so secular and so libertine that this makes one an odd duckling even in a conservative party8217s primary Jupp233 described himself as an 8220 agnostic Catholic8221 During a primetime interview in January Fillon put his hand on his heart and said 8220I am a Gaullist and furthermore a Christian It means that I will never take a decision that would run counter to the respect of human dignity the respect of the individual and solidarity8221 To millions of devout Catholics this was like milk and honey He had broken a powerful French taboo mentioning religion in public As a leftwing friend of mine put it 8220He has a right to be Catholic but he doesn8217t have the right to say it and run for president8221 No one believes committed Catholics provided all of Fillon8217s margin of victory in the primary but they provided a crucial measure of support According to a poll conducted for the news site Atlantico in late November 83 percent of 8220practicing8221 Catholics were planning to vote for Fillon in the Republican Party runoff Campaign shenanigans are froth but they can establish as incontrovertible something that could be glimpsed only through a glass darkly I first wrote about the French 8220 Christian revival8221 for the American edition of The Week in early 2015 When the piece filtered back across the Atlantic to the world of French Catholicism the main piece of feedback I got from most of my Catholic acquaintances boiled down to 8220I8217ve been seeing it too but couldn8217t believe it8217s real8221 The reversal of May 1968 France is known as one of the most fiercely secular countries on earth A Pew Research Center survey released in February found that only 10 percent of French citizens considered 8220being a Christian8221 a 8220very important8221 part of French identity8211compared with 30 percent in Italy and 32 percent in the United States responding affirmatively to the same question about their own countries The French Revolution was a rebellion against altar as much as against the throne8212the Reign of Terror was an orgy of anticlerical violence8212and the struggle between progressive forces and the church played out over centuries That struggle seemed to have ended in a complete and permanent victory for the secular side The 1905 law establishing the separation of church and state is an obvious marker but the May 1968 student and worker protests proved almost as important The cultural heights of the country were seized by those who were shaped by the 1968 spirit of libertarian free love8212and who Steve Jobslike added a love of money to its love of sex and its patina of counterculture The result was laws liberalizing divorce and abortion and a secularism so harsh that nobody outside the country can understand why banning the Islamic veil from schools is supposed to make sense The resurgence of Catholicism as a political force in France in fact began in 2013 with the startling intensity of La Manif Pour Tous8220Protest for All8221 the movement formed to oppose France8217s samesex marriage bill Why this issue more than abortion or contraception suddenly got Catholics off their behinds is a bit of a mystery there has not been a comparable backlash against samesex marriage among Catholics in the United States Laurent Bouvet a politicalscience professor at Versailles SaintQuentinenYvelines University speculated to the Financial Times last fall that traditional Catholics in France 8220never really accepted the Revolutionary notion that individual freedom should supersede the moral authority of the priest or the family head They are8230wary of the concept of equality8221 Whatever the reason La Manif8212officially a secular nonpartisan nonprofit but in reality almost completely a Catholic phenomenon8212moved hundreds of thousands to take to the streets in protest of the government8217s policy over several weeksamp160in 2013 The marches included pink baby blue and white balloons along with signs with such messages as 8220Father Mother nothing better for a child8221 For years the question about La Manif and the energy it unleashed was whether this newfound political intensity would produce results at the polls Fillon8212who is not vowing to overturn samesex marriage but remains opposed to the adoption of children by gay couples8212may have showed that it can More interesting is La Manif8217s potential as a kind of 8220 May 821768 in reverse8221 in the words of commentators like JeanFran231ois Kahn or as a touchstone for a decisive shift in mores as well as an incubator of leaders social networks and experiments that end up pollinating across the culture Indeed many movements and ideas have arisen thanks to La Manif On one end of the spectrum is Les Veilleurs8220The Watchmen8221 a leaderless movement of youngsters who after the samesex marriage bill was passed spent nights standing in front of government buildings holding candles reading poems and protesting government8217s encroachment on Christian society with a few of them getting arrested The movement seemed to be made up mostly of idealistic youngsters who got the adrenaline rush of their life during the Manif protests and didn8217t want to quit it While La Manif remained scrupulously nonpartisan8212even though no one was oblivious that its appeal was to the right8212some of its alumni founded Sens Commun 8220Common Sense8221 a group affiliated with France8217s Republican Party with the avowed goal of playing a role similar to that of the Christian right in strengthening America8217s Republican Party Still many of France8217s newly observant Catholics are like most French people jaded about politics Catholic social teaching appeals to them precisely because though it commands engagement in the public square it transcends any partisan platform These are not conservatives in either the American or traditional French soilandtradition mold They are just as likely to bang on about Pope Francis8217s environmental encyclical 8220Laudato Si82178221 or his calls for solidarity with migrants as they are to wax enthusiastic about John Paul II8217s theology of the body One of La Manif8217s most prominent spokesmen Tugdual Derville promotes the concept of 8220integral ecology8221 or 8220 233cologie humaine8221 a term that tries to signify that care for the environment care for the poor and care for the unborn go together It seems that the vast majority have never been to a traditional Latin Mass Strengthening the arguments of Catholics who are wary of becoming too partisan Fran231ois Fillon8217s campaign is turning out like something out of a Biblical morality tale The shining knight of the new French Catholic Right has become enmeshed in a scandal relating to an alleged fake job held by his wife a devastating blow for the man whose appeal in the Republican primary was largely based on his probity As of late March he was running third in public opinion polls behind an independent centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron and the leader of the farright National Front party Marine Le Pen who has been making a late bid for Catholic votes though she admits 8220I only go to church for weddings funerals and baptisms8221 The election may turn out to be a warning from Providence about what happens when Christians put their faith in political leaders The Catholic social network So while many new Catholics are politically active some talk about being 8220metapolitical8221 as the popular Catholic lawyer and blogger and author of Identity The Evil Genius of Christianity put it They understand not only that the magisterium transcends political boundaries they understand a fundamental lesson of May 1968 Politics is downstream from culture These new Catholics have identified the enemy as 8220liberalism8221 in the French sense of a drive for evergreater individual liberty Liberalism in this view is responsible for sexual depravity and the culture of death and for the excesses of globalized capitalism redintoothandclaw Pope Francis8217 warnings about a 8220throwaway culture8221 that leads both to abortions and to quasislaves in third world factories making disposable consumer items of questionable worth are tailormade for them Some exponents of this doctrine have started an intellectual review called Limite 8220Limits8221 marrying a scathing critique of capitalism to excoriation of progressive dogmas regarding sexuality The inaugural issue featured an article criticizing artificial contraception for going against the philosophy of consuming organic locally sourced products It is hard to tell how much of this is genuine and how much of it is artful trolling of a French left that likes to think of itself as the opponent to 8220liberalism8221 And in Lyon new Catholics opened a 8220cooperative caf2338221 named after Simone Weil the mystical Jewishborn philosopher who had a lifelong love affair with Catholicism Young people gather there to hear speakers on the evils of globalization environmental degradation and the culture of death Protest movements and intellectual reviews are well and good but if a tree must be judged by its fruits then the true criterion of whether the new Catholicism is for real will be the Beatitudes One reason to be optimistic is the story of a nonprofit named Entourage Entourage is an iPhone app that bills itself as a 8220social network for those who don8217t have a social network8221 It helps volunteers for organizations that help the homeless coordinate and share information But it is also a publicfacing app that helps anyone help the homeless around them Someone can post about a person on the corner of suchandsuch streets who needs a blanket and someone else can bring it to them JeanMarc Potdevin the founder of Entourage is as earnest as anyone you will meet An engineer by training he became wealthy by working in several internet startups before undergoing what he calls a midlife crisis Why was he working so hard when he didn8217t need to and what for Although raised Catholic he had stopped believing praying or attending church One day Potdevin decided to walk the road to Compostela and he says that during his trip he had an encounter with Christ In his earlier career as a scientist 8220I worked in a cognitive science research lab so I know the mind can play tricks on you8221 he quickly adds after describing how he believes the Lord spoke to him After two years of working out his mystical experience under spiritual guidance he got the idea for Entourage after spending more time with homeless people Some who work at Entourage used to live in the streets and the nonprofit has an advisory group made up of homeless people More and more homeless people can now find smartphones get online through free WiFi hotspots and are now on Entourage making requests In a first world country he explains homeless people can find ways to feed themselves or get emergency health care or shelter 8220I8217m not saying things are good they8217re not but that8217s not addressing what kills homeless people What kills homeless people is loneliness8221 Behind the practical good that Entourage can do he unfurls a vision that goes beyond hot meals to enabling social connections 8220Look at this society where it8217s a permanent rat race where we8217re all divided8221 he says 8220What are we missing We8217re missing the face of Christ which is in the poor8221 Potdevin makes it clear that even though he does not hide his faith Entourage is a secular group with that status enshrined in the nonprofit8217s bylaws and that he works with everyone He seeks to partner with as many groups that help the homeless as possible whether secular Christian Jewish or Muslim But some groups refuse to work with him because he doesn8217t hide his faith he says But this isn8217t about Entourage After all in every era and country Catholics are coming up with worthy initiatives to help the needy The French government recently launched a contest called 8220La France s8217engage8221 awarding grants to the innovative nonprofits that received the most online votes Voters could vote again each day and every Catholic I knew on Facebook and Twitter kept pestering their followers to vote for Entourage repeatedly As the app vied for first place a story came out trying to trigger bienpensant outrage at Potdevin for appearing at an event where a spokesman for La Manif had been featured but Entourage nevertheless triumphed The victory cannot be credited wholly to Catholic networks as Potdevin8217s friends in the startup world also beat their drums Nonetheless the fact that an app like Entourage could win is a sign of serious engagement by Catholics and engagement for the right causes The new Catholics comprise a movement that is still young and small and which faces many pitfalls It is still sociologically an elite movement It might be lured by the temptations of politicization It might still frizzle out But I don8217t think so I believe this is a real movement of the Spirit8212one that could change the country in my daughter8217s lifetime This article also appeared in print under the headline 8220Religion is playing an unexpectedly large role in this spring8217s presidential election8221 in the April 17 2017 issue PascalEmmanuel Gobry who lives in Paris is a contributing writer to America a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC and a columnist at TheWeekcom

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<p>Oakland.</p> <p>Writing in the context of the Algerian Revolution, Frantz Fanon was a merciless critic of the moderating efforts of self-appointed political leaders. When confronted with mass rebellion, such leaders will immediately use the threat of violence as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the oppressors, promising to pacify the masses if reforms are made. As Fanon describes it in The Wretched of the Earth,</p> <p>Nonviolence is an attempt to settle the colonial problem around the negotiating table before the irreparable is done&#8230; But the masses, without waiting for the chairs to be placed around the negotiating table, listen to their own voice and begin committing outrages and setting fire to buildings&#8230;</p> <p>Of course, between colonial Algeria and postindustrial Oakland, there are undeniable differences. But while Fanon&#8217;s context is not our own, the acuity of his understanding of revolutionary political dynamics is unparalleled, and two weeks on from the police murder of Oscar Grant III by transit police officer Johannes Mehserle, his words bear heeding if we are to avoid succumbing to the divide-and-conquer strategies of the oppressors.</p> <p>&#8220;An Intentional Act&#8221;</p> <p>The rebellion which shook the streets of Oakland a week ago has irreversibly changed the political equation surrounding the murder, as rebellions tend to do. The Midas touch of popular action leaves little intact. Several days ago, rumors swirled that California Attorney General Jerry Brown was leaning hard on Alameda Country District Attorney Tom Orloff to conclude his investigation and charge Mehserle quickly in order to head off any potential disruption at a scheduled Wednesday rally. This pressure yielded quick results: Orloff issued a warrant for murder, <a href="" type="internal">claiming that</a> &#8220;the evidence indicates is an unlawful killing done by an intentional act, and from the evidence we have there is nothing that would mitigate that.&#8221; Moreover with <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=6647338&amp;amp;page=1" type="external">the Grant family claiming</a> that he and other officers used racial slurs the night of the execution, many will no doubt push for a hate crime enhancement. Mehserle was duly arrested, not in California, but across state lines in Nevada. While this was ostensibly for security in the face of death threats, state lines are more effective against police jurisdiction than death threats.</p> <p>It would seem that all was well in Oakland, but it&#8217;s worth asking how such pressure came to bear on the Attorney General and D.A. in the first place. Protest organizers insist on avoiding this thorny question, for fear that they may be painted with the brush of violence, but only those in bad faith could realistically deny that it was the street-level resistance of a week ago that led the state to act. Could anyone actually argue with a straight face that Mehserle&#8217;s arrest resulted from anything but the threat of continued rebellion on the streets?</p> <p>&#8220;Listening to George Jackson&#8221;</p> <p>But it is this most basic of truths that protest organizers from the newly-formed Coalition Against Police Executions (CAPE) have insistently ignored. After the events of last week, the ostensible organizers of the demonstration at Fruitvale BART were among the first to attack the anger expressed later that night. One organizer was brought to tears by the scenes on the television, <a href="" type="internal">claiming that his hard work</a> had been &#8220;destroyed by a group of anarchists.&#8221; There is a distinct irony here, as those who peddling the &#8220;outside agitators&#8221; line were almost without exception absent on Wednesday, admitting that they watched events unfold on television. The insistence that it was &#8220;anarchists&#8221; who led the youth astray that night has been <a href="" type="internal">thoroughly discredited</a> by <a href="" type="internal">those actually present</a>, including KPFA reporter and Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) Minister of Information <a href="" type="internal">JR, who insists that</a>: &#8220;I have seen many reports talking about white invaders taking over the rebellion, which is b.s.&#8221; He adds:</p> <p>I&#8217;m proud of Oakland people in general and youngstas specifically for standing up to the occupying army in our community: the police and the city officials that support the system that lets the police kill us wantonly. The rebellion was just the beginning of a longer political education class in Amerikkkan politics and how it fails to meet the needs of its Black and Brown low income dwellers.</p> <p>Where did the &#8220;outside agitator&#8221; sound byte, with all its paternalistic and racist implications, come from in the first place? As one might suspect, it was the police who first deployed it, the media who followed, and the unwitting organizers who followed. At a &#8220;town hall meeting&#8221; led by black clergy and community leaders, CAPE organizers and other speakers were tacitly criticized for their criticism of the black youth who took to the streets to express a righteous fury, and for using the &#8220;anarchist&#8221; line to divide the movement. Representatives of both Baptist churches and the Nation of Islam pointedly emphasized that anger at Grant&#8217;s murder was justified, with <a href="" type="internal">Reverend Kane thunderously insisting that we shouldn&#8217;t blame the youth</a> in the streets for &#8220;listening to George Jackson&#8221; and &#8220;uncompromising revolutionaries&#8221; instead of the prophets of nonviolence.</p> <p>And another truth was affirmed at that meeting, which it should be noted represented a largely middle-class segment of Oakland&#8217;s black community: much like at the Fruitvale BART protest, it was these most militant voices who received the loudest applause. But while this was obvious to many onlookers, the lesson was not reflected in CAPE&#8217;s subsequent organizing efforts.</p> <p>A Culture of Fear</p> <p>In the run-up to Wednesday&#8217;s official demonstration, it became clear that those dissenting from CAPE&#8217;s strategy of moderation were unwelcome. While the organizing committee said that they welcomed a broad range of participants, all major decisions had been made beforehand, and the politics of reconciliation endorsed by the coalition was hidden behind an appeal to the desires of the Grant family (although a member of that family had expressed a different view at the previous town meeting). Those who dissented from the now-discredited claim of &#8220;outside agitators&#8221; were shouted down, and efforts to add an amnesty for all those arrested last Wednesday to CAPE&#8217;s list of demands were rejected out of hand.</p> <p>Things became more serious on the topic of security, which organizers deemed the &#8220;top priority.&#8221; While you might have thought this meant securing the well-being of the marchers in an atmosphere of rampant police violence, this was in reality more about securing the public image of CAPE from public and media criticism. Security was placed in the hands of a self-selected committee, and headed by a private security officer with a private security mentality: surround the march entirely and intersperse unidentified informants to root out possible troublemakers. A solitary protest, insisting that we not &#8220;recreate police structures&#8221; or facilitate a &#8220;culture of fear,&#8221; was ruled out-of-order on procedural grounds and met with a deafening consensus of silence.</p> <p>But one error stood out above all others: the organizers&#8217; open neglect for the obvious fact that the attention paid by Mayor Dellums and D.A. Orloff to the case, the national media attention it garnered, and the subsequent arrest of Mehserle were only the result of last week&#8217;s rebellion.</p> <p>&#8220;I See A Lot of Warriors Out There&#8221;</p> <p>The official march gathered outside City Hall in Frank Ogawa Plaza, with speakers including Mayor Ron Dellums, rapper Too $hort, and CAPE leadership, all of whom emphasized the &#8220;peaceful&#8221; nature of the gathering. Much like last Wednesday night, <a href="" type="internal">Dellums was greeted</a> by a mixture of sparse applause and booing, despite being introduced by CAPE leader Dereca Blackmon as an ally in the struggle for change. More than 1,000 outraged Oaklanders then proceeded down 14th Street, walking in the footsteps of those who had taken to the streets in a more militant fashion a week prior. After gathering outside the office of the D.A. and hearing several more speakers, the crowd turned to return to City Hall, led by the roaring engines of several motorcycles blaring <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphy" type="external">hyphy hip-hop</a> for an energized crowd. Police and march security darted here and there, attempting to defuse any disruptions.</p> <p>Upon returning to City Hall, marchers were corralled by CAPE security into Frank Ogawa Plaza once again, and all remained calm for the moment. But despite the best efforts of the CAPE organizing committee, it was clear that not all speakers shared their analysis of the events leading up to the state&#8217;s decision to arrest Mehserle. The final speaker insisted that not even arrest or conviction was sufficient, since &#8220;that pig was just doing what pigs do.&#8221; It was police policy that needed to be changed, and continued militant action was the only way that this could be accomplished. As he concluded, the speaker added a knowing observation alongside a plea: &#8220;I see a lot of warriors out there,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and I just want to ask you to make sure that the babies and the children get home safely tonight.&#8221;</p> <p>But this radical message would be redirected and distorted through CAPE&#8217;s nonviolent lens, as a representative would immediately insist that, &#8220;you heard the man, let&#8217;s all go home with our children and keep it peaceful.&#8221;</p> <p>Repressive Tolerance</p> <p>As the crowd left the plaza, CAPE security cordons sought to direct people across Broadway on 14th and onward toward home, but many had not finished for the evening. As the crowd poured into the street and made clear its intention to remain, a line of riot police formed behind the security cordon. The same chants heard a week ago made an encore appearance, specifically, &#8220;No Justice, No Peace, Fuck the Police!&#8221; In an ingenious display of pageantry the security force channeled this unrest into a gesture of victory, convincing the police to stand down momentarily.</p> <p>But this symbolic victory was to be short-lived. The street remained crowded with even more protestors than a week prior, and those gathered had clearly not been pacified by Mehserle&#8217;s arrest. When it became clear that the crowd would not disperse voluntarily, it was announced that the police would return in 10 minutes, and that the streets needed to be cleared. And when this still didn&#8217;t work, march security took it upon themselves to move the crowd, forming cordons, linking arms, and physically pushing the angry demonstrators off the streets. If Herbert Marcuse was concerned with &#8220;repressive tolerance,&#8221; here was a case of repression under a scarcely tolerant veneer.</p> <p>Not all of the security team agreed with these tactics. Some had even broken from the &#8220;official&#8221; security orientation in disagreement, and when the streets were being cleared, others removed their vests and refused to participate in this policing of the streets. The clear irony of the situation was this: here were representatives of those same &#8220;community leaders&#8221; who had a week prior denounced the &#8220;manipulation&#8221; of the city&#8217;s youth, physically pushing those same young people off the street.</p> <p>&#8220;Security&#8221; Withdraws</p> <p>If the effort required to physically push peaceful demonstrators off the street was not proof enough that the self-appointed security apparatus did not represent the will of those angry youth present at the rally, then what happened a moment later would make this astonishingly clear. After a conflict between protestors and fundamentalist Christian provocateurs, the security force made the amateurish mistake of leaving unattended those whom they had just put so much effort into moving off the streets.</p> <p>Without a minute&#8217;s delay, the crowd returned to the street, this time at 13th and Broadway. A few more sweeps with security cordons proved ineffective, and seemed only to agitate some of the protestors, who entered into open conflict with the security team (with the mainstream press claiming that there was even a physical confrontation at one point). As a last-ditch effort, some security officials were seen consulting directly with police and a city councilperson, but toward what end it remains unclear. Realizing that they had clearly lost control of the situation, and in an effort to publicly wash their hands of the rebelliousness, CAPE&#8217;s security detail made a very public retreat.</p> <p>To be clear: the internal security team were neither infiltrators nor police (as some had suggested last week), but merely an unfortunate example of what happens when well-meaning, nonviolent organizers adopt a police mindset and step in to play the role of the oppressors in an effort to blunt popular rage. And to be even clearer: there is nothing wrong with popular security or revolutionary discipline, but when imposed on those most affected against their will, popular sentiment will either prevail or suffer repression.</p> <p>&#8220;Oakland Is Closed, Go Home&#8221;</p> <p>After the security team withdrew, it was only a few short minutes before a young black protestor took five flying kicks at a bus stop window, thereby setting the tone for what would follow. As the first glass disintegrated onto the pavement, a <a href="" type="internal">crowd of youths of all colors</a> rushed in as if on cue, venting its rage on a nearby Wells Fargo. Within seconds, a half dozen teargas canisters landed in the vicinity, and the crowd scattered. Either by design or sheer contingency, most ran into the City Center Mall, demolishing a number of storefronts, but these were not the &#8220;mom and pop&#8221; businesses that had borne the brunt a week ago, but instead mostly large chains. (The press, never above even the most ridiculous of contradictions, would later refer to the destruction of &#8220;Oakland landmarks, like Jamba Juice and Radio Shack&#8221;).</p> <p>The best among the security volunteers had remained, encouraging the crowd to stay smart, to stay in groups, and to avoid arrest. After the police had enforced a degree of calm, heated debates broke out on the sidewalks, which clearly reflected the class cleavages that divided the majority of the marchers from those who took to the streets afterward. One man was enraged by the efforts of well-dressed black onlookers to disarm his anger: &#8220;you can&#8217;t tell me shit! These motherfuckers sent me to the hospital, I had tubes coming out all over my body! We&#8217;re the ones that are suffering!&#8221; Another, who identified himself as a close friend of <a href="" type="internal">the late Gary King</a>, confronted an apparently middle-class black woman who attempted to restrain him. Infuriated, he singlehandedly confronted an entire line of riot cops, cursing and spitting on their visors, and was very nearly assaulted in response.</p> <p>If age and class clearly distinguished those who attended the march from those who remained in the streets, then we are right to wonder which of these groups has a more acute awareness of police violence. While many in &#8220;the community&#8221; more generally certainly hoped for a peaceful response to the murder of Oscar Grant, those who voted with their feet for militant action were largely those most affected by police repression in Oakland.</p> <p>OPD again decided to make a tactical withdrawal, hoping a hands-off approach would defuse tensions, circling the city in cruisers with their right rear doors slightly open for easy deployment. But when the remaining protestors refused to disperse, police returned on motorcycles, one making the apocryphal loudspeaker announcement: &#8220;Oakland is closed, go home.&#8221; A small group of police gathered near a crowd of young black men, and when the signal was given they advanced into the crowd, dividing it in two and arresting a young man for no reason whatsoever, in what appeared to be an open provocation. The rest of the night, small lines of riot police physically pushed small groups of protestors up the street, back and forth, until one-by-one they relented and decided to call it a night. Some 18 arrests have been reported in total, with some bystanders claiming to have been arrested for no reason.</p> <p>&#8220;The Bullet or the Bullet&#8221;</p> <p>In a written response to the murder of Oscar Grant, revolutionary Bay Area rapper <a href="" type="internal">Paris had the following to say</a> on the subject of a &#8220;peaceful&#8221; response to police murder:</p> <p>Hopefully we won&#8217;t see the same course of events take place that always seem to happen &#8211;brutality/murder, then outrage, the protest, then acquittal, then more outrage&#8230; followed by a cooling off period and eventually back to business as usual. That&#8217;s why I don&#8217;t fuck with protests&#8211;the powers that be do what they want to do regardless of what the people say.</p> <p>Rather, Paris insists that only militant action will be able to create any change: &#8220;I&#8217;ve heard the calls for calm after our brother&#8217;s murder and to stop the violence&#8230;and I disagree&#8230; If an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, then I guess we&#8217;ll all be bumpin&#8217; into shit, &#8216;cause this has to stop now.&#8221; Whether we agree or not with Paris&#8217; strategic prescriptions, at the very least he has grasped better than many the political dynamics that have unfolded in the case of Oscar Grant. The city only responded when threatened with continued militant action in the streets: it is this that explains the sudden interest that Mayor Dellums , the District Attorney, and the state Attorney General showed in the case, and it is this alone that explains the hasty arrest carried out Tuesday.</p> <p>There is little that the moderate leaders fear more than &#8220;this impatient violence of the masses,&#8221; and they will go out of their way, according to Fanon, to dismiss and discredit it: &#8220;The official leaders, draped in their years of experience, will pitilessly disown these &#8216;adventurers and anarchists&#8217;.&#8221; Fanon himself was no friend of anarchists, but nor did he approve of a self-appointed leadership that would kidnap the popular will. While initially effective, those leaders promoting the strategy of moderation and conciliation would soon find themselves obsolete, outpaced by the action of the masses, who discover their own strength by using it. &#8220;The consciousness of the people rebels against any pacificiation. From now on the demagogues, the opportunists, and the magicians have a difficult task.&#8221;</p> <p>The events of the last week are but a warning, both to the powers that be in Oakland and the United States and to the self-appointed leadership of resistance movements. To the city, county, state, and nation: arrest is not enough, conviction will not be enough. And to the CAPE leadership, in the Fanonian spirit of unity: don&#8217;t be so rigid as to be outpaced by the masses in the street, and if you are, accept your obsolescence with grace.</p> <p>GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley. He lives in Oakland, and can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

"Oakland is Closed!"

https://counterpunch.org/2009/01/16/quot-oakland-is-closed-quot/

2009-01-16

4left

Oakland Writing in the context of the Algerian Revolution Frantz Fanon was a merciless critic of the moderating efforts of selfappointed political leaders When confronted with mass rebellion such leaders will immediately use the threat of violence as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the oppressors promising to pacify the masses if reforms are made As Fanon describes it in The Wretched of the Earth Nonviolence is an attempt to settle the colonial problem around the negotiating table before the irreparable is done8230 But the masses without waiting for the chairs to be placed around the negotiating table listen to their own voice and begin committing outrages and setting fire to buildings8230 Of course between colonial Algeria and postindustrial Oakland there are undeniable differences But while Fanon8217s context is not our own the acuity of his understanding of revolutionary political dynamics is unparalleled and two weeks on from the police murder of Oscar Grant III by transit police officer Johannes Mehserle his words bear heeding if we are to avoid succumbing to the divideandconquer strategies of the oppressors 8220An Intentional Act8221 The rebellion which shook the streets of Oakland a week ago has irreversibly changed the political equation surrounding the murder as rebellions tend to do The Midas touch of popular action leaves little intact Several days ago rumors swirled that California Attorney General Jerry Brown was leaning hard on Alameda Country District Attorney Tom Orloff to conclude his investigation and charge Mehserle quickly in order to head off any potential disruption at a scheduled Wednesday rally This pressure yielded quick results Orloff issued a warrant for murder claiming that 8220the evidence indicates is an unlawful killing done by an intentional act and from the evidence we have there is nothing that would mitigate that8221 Moreover with the Grant family claiming that he and other officers used racial slurs the night of the execution many will no doubt push for a hate crime enhancement Mehserle was duly arrested not in California but across state lines in Nevada While this was ostensibly for security in the face of death threats state lines are more effective against police jurisdiction than death threats It would seem that all was well in Oakland but it8217s worth asking how such pressure came to bear on the Attorney General and DA in the first place Protest organizers insist on avoiding this thorny question for fear that they may be painted with the brush of violence but only those in bad faith could realistically deny that it was the streetlevel resistance of a week ago that led the state to act Could anyone actually argue with a straight face that Mehserle8217s arrest resulted from anything but the threat of continued rebellion on the streets 8220Listening to George Jackson8221 But it is this most basic of truths that protest organizers from the newlyformed Coalition Against Police Executions CAPE have insistently ignored After the events of last week the ostensible organizers of the demonstration at Fruitvale BART were among the first to attack the anger expressed later that night One organizer was brought to tears by the scenes on the television claiming that his hard work had been 8220destroyed by a group of anarchists8221 There is a distinct irony here as those who peddling the 8220outside agitators8221 line were almost without exception absent on Wednesday admitting that they watched events unfold on television The insistence that it was 8220anarchists8221 who led the youth astray that night has been thoroughly discredited by those actually present including KPFA reporter and Prisoners of Conscience Committee POCC Minister of Information JR who insists that 8220I have seen many reports talking about white invaders taking over the rebellion which is bs8221 He adds I8217m proud of Oakland people in general and youngstas specifically for standing up to the occupying army in our community the police and the city officials that support the system that lets the police kill us wantonly The rebellion was just the beginning of a longer political education class in Amerikkkan politics and how it fails to meet the needs of its Black and Brown low income dwellers Where did the 8220outside agitator8221 sound byte with all its paternalistic and racist implications come from in the first place As one might suspect it was the police who first deployed it the media who followed and the unwitting organizers who followed At a 8220town hall meeting8221 led by black clergy and community leaders CAPE organizers and other speakers were tacitly criticized for their criticism of the black youth who took to the streets to express a righteous fury and for using the 8220anarchist8221 line to divide the movement Representatives of both Baptist churches and the Nation of Islam pointedly emphasized that anger at Grant8217s murder was justified with Reverend Kane thunderously insisting that we shouldn8217t blame the youth in the streets for 8220listening to George Jackson8221 and 8220uncompromising revolutionaries8221 instead of the prophets of nonviolence And another truth was affirmed at that meeting which it should be noted represented a largely middleclass segment of Oakland8217s black community much like at the Fruitvale BART protest it was these most militant voices who received the loudest applause But while this was obvious to many onlookers the lesson was not reflected in CAPE8217s subsequent organizing efforts A Culture of Fear In the runup to Wednesday8217s official demonstration it became clear that those dissenting from CAPE8217s strategy of moderation were unwelcome While the organizing committee said that they welcomed a broad range of participants all major decisions had been made beforehand and the politics of reconciliation endorsed by the coalition was hidden behind an appeal to the desires of the Grant family although a member of that family had expressed a different view at the previous town meeting Those who dissented from the nowdiscredited claim of 8220outside agitators8221 were shouted down and efforts to add an amnesty for all those arrested last Wednesday to CAPE8217s list of demands were rejected out of hand Things became more serious on the topic of security which organizers deemed the 8220top priority8221 While you might have thought this meant securing the wellbeing of the marchers in an atmosphere of rampant police violence this was in reality more about securing the public image of CAPE from public and media criticism Security was placed in the hands of a selfselected committee and headed by a private security officer with a private security mentality surround the march entirely and intersperse unidentified informants to root out possible troublemakers A solitary protest insisting that we not 8220recreate police structures8221 or facilitate a 8220culture of fear8221 was ruled outoforder on procedural grounds and met with a deafening consensus of silence But one error stood out above all others the organizers8217 open neglect for the obvious fact that the attention paid by Mayor Dellums and DA Orloff to the case the national media attention it garnered and the subsequent arrest of Mehserle were only the result of last week8217s rebellion 8220I See A Lot of Warriors Out There8221 The official march gathered outside City Hall in Frank Ogawa Plaza with speakers including Mayor Ron Dellums rapper Too hort and CAPE leadership all of whom emphasized the 8220peaceful8221 nature of the gathering Much like last Wednesday night Dellums was greeted by a mixture of sparse applause and booing despite being introduced by CAPE leader Dereca Blackmon as an ally in the struggle for change More than 1000 outraged Oaklanders then proceeded down 14th Street walking in the footsteps of those who had taken to the streets in a more militant fashion a week prior After gathering outside the office of the DA and hearing several more speakers the crowd turned to return to City Hall led by the roaring engines of several motorcycles blaring hyphy hiphop for an energized crowd Police and march security darted here and there attempting to defuse any disruptions Upon returning to City Hall marchers were corralled by CAPE security into Frank Ogawa Plaza once again and all remained calm for the moment But despite the best efforts of the CAPE organizing committee it was clear that not all speakers shared their analysis of the events leading up to the state8217s decision to arrest Mehserle The final speaker insisted that not even arrest or conviction was sufficient since 8220that pig was just doing what pigs do8221 It was police policy that needed to be changed and continued militant action was the only way that this could be accomplished As he concluded the speaker added a knowing observation alongside a plea 8220I see a lot of warriors out there8221 he said 8220and I just want to ask you to make sure that the babies and the children get home safely tonight8221 But this radical message would be redirected and distorted through CAPE8217s nonviolent lens as a representative would immediately insist that 8220you heard the man let8217s all go home with our children and keep it peaceful8221 Repressive Tolerance As the crowd left the plaza CAPE security cordons sought to direct people across Broadway on 14th and onward toward home but many had not finished for the evening As the crowd poured into the street and made clear its intention to remain a line of riot police formed behind the security cordon The same chants heard a week ago made an encore appearance specifically 8220No Justice No Peace Fuck the Police8221 In an ingenious display of pageantry the security force channeled this unrest into a gesture of victory convincing the police to stand down momentarily But this symbolic victory was to be shortlived The street remained crowded with even more protestors than a week prior and those gathered had clearly not been pacified by Mehserle8217s arrest When it became clear that the crowd would not disperse voluntarily it was announced that the police would return in 10 minutes and that the streets needed to be cleared And when this still didn8217t work march security took it upon themselves to move the crowd forming cordons linking arms and physically pushing the angry demonstrators off the streets If Herbert Marcuse was concerned with 8220repressive tolerance8221 here was a case of repression under a scarcely tolerant veneer Not all of the security team agreed with these tactics Some had even broken from the 8220official8221 security orientation in disagreement and when the streets were being cleared others removed their vests and refused to participate in this policing of the streets The clear irony of the situation was this here were representatives of those same 8220community leaders8221 who had a week prior denounced the 8220manipulation8221 of the city8217s youth physically pushing those same young people off the street 8220Security8221 Withdraws If the effort required to physically push peaceful demonstrators off the street was not proof enough that the selfappointed security apparatus did not represent the will of those angry youth present at the rally then what happened a moment later would make this astonishingly clear After a conflict between protestors and fundamentalist Christian provocateurs the security force made the amateurish mistake of leaving unattended those whom they had just put so much effort into moving off the streets Without a minute8217s delay the crowd returned to the street this time at 13th and Broadway A few more sweeps with security cordons proved ineffective and seemed only to agitate some of the protestors who entered into open conflict with the security team with the mainstream press claiming that there was even a physical confrontation at one point As a lastditch effort some security officials were seen consulting directly with police and a city councilperson but toward what end it remains unclear Realizing that they had clearly lost control of the situation and in an effort to publicly wash their hands of the rebelliousness CAPE8217s security detail made a very public retreat To be clear the internal security team were neither infiltrators nor police as some had suggested last week but merely an unfortunate example of what happens when wellmeaning nonviolent organizers adopt a police mindset and step in to play the role of the oppressors in an effort to blunt popular rage And to be even clearer there is nothing wrong with popular security or revolutionary discipline but when imposed on those most affected against their will popular sentiment will either prevail or suffer repression 8220Oakland Is Closed Go Home8221 After the security team withdrew it was only a few short minutes before a young black protestor took five flying kicks at a bus stop window thereby setting the tone for what would follow As the first glass disintegrated onto the pavement a crowd of youths of all colors rushed in as if on cue venting its rage on a nearby Wells Fargo Within seconds a half dozen teargas canisters landed in the vicinity and the crowd scattered Either by design or sheer contingency most ran into the City Center Mall demolishing a number of storefronts but these were not the 8220mom and pop8221 businesses that had borne the brunt a week ago but instead mostly large chains The press never above even the most ridiculous of contradictions would later refer to the destruction of 8220Oakland landmarks like Jamba Juice and Radio Shack8221 The best among the security volunteers had remained encouraging the crowd to stay smart to stay in groups and to avoid arrest After the police had enforced a degree of calm heated debates broke out on the sidewalks which clearly reflected the class cleavages that divided the majority of the marchers from those who took to the streets afterward One man was enraged by the efforts of welldressed black onlookers to disarm his anger 8220you can8217t tell me shit These motherfuckers sent me to the hospital I had tubes coming out all over my body We8217re the ones that are suffering8221 Another who identified himself as a close friend of the late Gary King confronted an apparently middleclass black woman who attempted to restrain him Infuriated he singlehandedly confronted an entire line of riot cops cursing and spitting on their visors and was very nearly assaulted in response If age and class clearly distinguished those who attended the march from those who remained in the streets then we are right to wonder which of these groups has a more acute awareness of police violence While many in 8220the community8221 more generally certainly hoped for a peaceful response to the murder of Oscar Grant those who voted with their feet for militant action were largely those most affected by police repression in Oakland OPD again decided to make a tactical withdrawal hoping a handsoff approach would defuse tensions circling the city in cruisers with their right rear doors slightly open for easy deployment But when the remaining protestors refused to disperse police returned on motorcycles one making the apocryphal loudspeaker announcement 8220Oakland is closed go home8221 A small group of police gathered near a crowd of young black men and when the signal was given they advanced into the crowd dividing it in two and arresting a young man for no reason whatsoever in what appeared to be an open provocation The rest of the night small lines of riot police physically pushed small groups of protestors up the street back and forth until onebyone they relented and decided to call it a night Some 18 arrests have been reported in total with some bystanders claiming to have been arrested for no reason 8220The Bullet or the Bullet8221 In a written response to the murder of Oscar Grant revolutionary Bay Area rapper Paris had the following to say on the subject of a 8220peaceful8221 response to police murder Hopefully we won8217t see the same course of events take place that always seem to happen 8211brutalitymurder then outrage the protest then acquittal then more outrage8230 followed by a cooling off period and eventually back to business as usual That8217s why I don8217t fuck with protests8211the powers that be do what they want to do regardless of what the people say Rather Paris insists that only militant action will be able to create any change 8220I8217ve heard the calls for calm after our brother8217s murder and to stop the violence8230and I disagree8230 If an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind then I guess we8217ll all be bumpin8217 into shit 8216cause this has to stop now8221 Whether we agree or not with Paris8217 strategic prescriptions at the very least he has grasped better than many the political dynamics that have unfolded in the case of Oscar Grant The city only responded when threatened with continued militant action in the streets it is this that explains the sudden interest that Mayor Dellums the District Attorney and the state Attorney General showed in the case and it is this alone that explains the hasty arrest carried out Tuesday There is little that the moderate leaders fear more than 8220this impatient violence of the masses8221 and they will go out of their way according to Fanon to dismiss and discredit it 8220The official leaders draped in their years of experience will pitilessly disown these 8216adventurers and anarchists82178221 Fanon himself was no friend of anarchists but nor did he approve of a selfappointed leadership that would kidnap the popular will While initially effective those leaders promoting the strategy of moderation and conciliation would soon find themselves obsolete outpaced by the action of the masses who discover their own strength by using it 8220The consciousness of the people rebels against any pacificiation From now on the demagogues the opportunists and the magicians have a difficult task8221 The events of the last week are but a warning both to the powers that be in Oakland and the United States and to the selfappointed leadership of resistance movements To the city county state and nation arrest is not enough conviction will not be enough And to the CAPE leadership in the Fanonian spirit of unity don8217t be so rigid as to be outpaced by the masses in the street and if you are accept your obsolescence with grace GEORGE CICCARIELLOMAHER is a PhD candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley He lives in Oakland and can be reached at gjcmatberkeleyedu amp160 amp160 amp160

Oakland/PROPN Writing/VERB in/ADP the/DET context/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Algerian/PROPN Revolution/PROPN Frantz/PROPN Fanon/PROPN was/AUX a/DET merciless/ADJ critic/NOUN of/ADP the/DET moderating/VERB efforts/NOUN of/ADP selfappointed/VERB political/ADJ leaders/NOUN When/SCONJ confronted/VERB with/ADP mass/ADJ rebellion/NOUN such/ADJ leaders/NOUN will/AUX immediately/ADV use/VERB the/DET threat/NOUN of/ADP violence/NOUN as/ADP a/DET bargaining/NOUN chip/NOUN in/ADP negotiations/NOUN with/ADP the/DET oppressors/NOUN promising/VERB to/PART pacify/VERB the/DET masses/NOUN if/SCONJ reforms/NOUN are/AUX made/VERB As/SCONJ Fanon/PROPN describes/VERB it/PRON in/ADP The/DET Wretched/PROPN of/ADP the/DET Earth/PROPN Nonviolence/PROPN is/AUX an/DET attempt/NOUN to/PART settle/VERB the/DET colonial/ADJ problem/NOUN around/ADP the/DET negotiating/NOUN table/NOUN before/SCONJ the/DET irreparable/ADJ is/AUX done8230/PROPN But/CCONJ the/DET masses/NOUN without/ADP waiting/VERB for/SCONJ the/DET 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<p>Another week to go before the euro blows up, or so we&#8217;re told again for the thousandth time. More likely is that the ECB does barely enough to keep the show on the road, fiscal austerity continues and riots intensify on the streets of Madrid, Athens, Rome and Paris.&amp;#160; Like the film, &#8220;there will be blood&#8221; before there is any likely change toward a sensible growth-oriented policy in the euro zone.</p> <p>Given the travails of the euro zone, why has the euro remained relatively robust?&amp;#160; Surely, a currency that is supposedly within weeks of vanishing should be trading closer to parity with the dollar?&amp;#160; Yet one continues to be struck by the divergence of opinion and actual market action.&amp;#160; For all the talk about the euro possibly vaporizing by Christmas, it is striking that it remains stubbornly stable at around $1.34 to the dollar, substantially above the low of $1.20, which was reached in May 2010 (when predictions of parity with the dollar were rampant).</p> <p>By the same token, we have a paradox on the other side as well:&amp;#160; every time it appears as if a solution to the problems posed by the euro look to be close to resolution, the euro strengthens. Perhaps this isn&#8217;t so odd, except that the solution that virtually everybody agrees will work &#8211; namely, a sustained bond-buying operation taken up by the European Central Bank (ECB) &#8211; is said to represent a form of &#8220;quantitative easing&#8221; and aren&#8217;t we always told that &#8220;QE&#8221; represents &#8220;printing money&#8221;, which should cause a currency to go down?&amp;#160; Isn&#8217;t that what all of the opponents of the Fed&#8217;s program last year were asserting?</p> <p>Of course, in the case of the European Monetary Union, ECB President Mario Draghi insists that such bond buying will not take place in the absence of proper &#8220;sequencing&#8221;, by which he means agreed fiscal austerity first, bond buying afterward.&amp;#160; The effect of the former will negate any potential impact of the latter, since the &#8220;inflation channel&#8221; (to the extent that inflation occurs at all) can only come through fiscal policy.&amp;#160; And certainly, in the teeth of a severe recession, such cuts as those proposed by the client state governments of Italy and Greece (along with a renewed assault by President Sarkozy on the French welfare state) will almost certainly exacerbate the profoundly deflationary pressures now operating in the eurozone.&amp;#160; Ultimately, this will surely have the result of creating substantially more social instability and bloodshed, but it might have little impact on the euro itself.</p> <p>So what is actually happening to the euro? Let&#8217;s take a step back from the panic talk. The most recent data from the COMEX suggests that speculators are heavily short on the euro and yet the currency has fallen less than 10 per cent from its recent highs. &amp;#160; The question one might legitimately pose is:&amp;#160; at what point does the current fiscal austerity produce higher deficits, which in theory should produce a weaker euro (as the euros become &#8220;easier to get&#8221;)?</p> <p>I have been wrestling with this issue, and keep getting back to a strong currency, even with increased fiscal deficits. Why?</p> <p>For one, the ECB&#8217;s bond purchases in the secondary market are operationally sustainable and non-inflationary.&amp;#160; When the ECB undertakes its bond buying operation, the ECB debt purchases merely shift net financial assets held by the &#8216;economy&#8217; from national government liabilities to ECB liabilities in the form of clearing balances at the ECB.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;At the same time, so-called PIIGS government liabilities shift from &#8216;the economy&#8217; to the ECB.&amp;#160; Note:&amp;#160;this process does not&amp;#160;alter any &#8216;flows&#8217; or &#8216;net stocks of euros in the real economy.</p> <p>As long as the ECB imposes austerity terms and conditions, the bond buying will not be inflationary. Inflation from this channel comes from spending. &amp;#160;However, in this case the ECB support comes only with reduced spending via its imposition of fiscal austerity. &amp;#160; Draghi has now made this explicit and it is almost certainly the German quid pro quo for tacitly supporting a proposed expansion of the Secondary Market Program (SMP). &amp;#160;And reduced spending means reduced aggregate demand, which therefore means reduced inflation and a stronger currency.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; We also know from an authority no less than the Bank of International Settlements (ironically, the same initials as &#8220;blood in streets&#8221;) that banks cannot lend out reserves, so increasing reserves in the banking system is NOT inflationary per se, as the Weimar hyperinflation hyperventilators continue to warn us.</p> <p>Now consider the trade channel: despite today&#8217;s rapidly weakening economy (Europe is almost certainly in recession today),&amp;#160; we are not seeing much deterioration in the euro zone&#8217;s current account deficit. The Eurozone, in fact, seems to be a pretty self-contained, and somewhat mercantilist economy, which displays far less proclivity to import when the economy slides. So even though imports go down, so too do trade deficits, due to falling demand. Exports don&#8217;t fall and may in fact go up in this kind of environment.</p> <p>So that&#8217;s euro friendly.</p> <p>As far as what happens if the ECB were to expand significantly its bond buying program in the secondary market, the notion that the euro would fall is akin to the reasoning that the dollar would collapse if it engaged in QE2. And if what is called quantitative easing was inflationary, Japan would be hyperinflating by now, with the US not far behind.</p> <p>There is NO sign that the ECB&#8217;s buying of euro denominated government bonds has resulted in any kind of monetary inflation, as nothing but deflationary pressures continue to mount in that ongoing debt implosion. The reason there is no inflation from the ECB bond buying is because all it does is shift investor holdings from national govt. debt to ECB balances, which changes nothing in the real economy.</p> <p>But the question which persistently arises when one advocates a larger institutional role for the ECB is&amp;#160; whether the ECB&#8217;s balance sheet would be impaired, and the MMT contention has long been NO, because if the ECB bought the bonds then, by definition, the &#8220;profligates&#8221; do not default. In fact, as the monopoly provider of the euro, the ECB could easily set the rate at which it buys the bonds (say, 4% for Italy) and eventually it would replenish its capital via the profits it would receive from buying the distressed debt (not that the ECB requires capital in an operational sense; as usual with the euro zone, this is a political issue). At some point, Professor Paul de Grauwe is right :&amp;#160; convinced that the ECB was serious about resolving the solvency issue, the markets would begin to buy the bonds again and effectively do the ECB&#8217;s heavy lifting for them. The bonds would not be trading at these distressed levels if not for the solvency issue, which the ECB can easily address if it chooses to do so.&amp;#160; But this is a question of political will, not operational &#8220;sustainability&#8221;.</p> <p>So the grand irony of the day remains this: while there is nothing the ECB can do to cause monetary inflation, even if it wanted to, the ECB, fearing inflation, holds back on the bond buying that would eliminate the national govt. solvency risk but not halt the deflationary monetary forces currently in place.</p> <p>Okay, so who takes the losses?&amp;#160; Well, presuming the bonds don&#8217;t mature at par, no question that a private bank which sells a bond at today&#8217;s distressed levels might well take a loss and if the losses are big enough, then banks in this position might well need a recapitalization program.. And in this scenario Germany too could take a hit, as does every other national government as they use national fiscal resources to recapitalize. And the hit will get bigger the longer the Germans continue to push this crisis to the brink.</p> <p>But that is a separate issue from the question of whether the bond buying program per se will pose a threat to the ECB&#8217;s balance sheet. It will not:&amp;#160; a big income transfer from the private bond holders who sell to the ECB, which can build up its capital base via the profits it makes on purchasing these distressed bonds.&amp;#160; So again, the notion of an ECB being capital constrained is insane.</p> <p>By contrast, the status quo is a loser for everybody, including Germany.&amp;#160; A broader ECB role as lender of last resort of the kind the Germans are still publicly resisting, along with their unhelpful talk of haircuts and greater private sector losses, actually do MUCH MORE to wreck Germany&#8217;s credit position than the policy measures which virtually everybody else in Europe is recommending.&amp;#160; Why would any private bondholder with a modicum of fiduciary responsibility buy a European bond, knowing that the rules of the game have changed and that the private buyer could find himself/herself with losses being unilaterally imposed?&amp;#160; The good news is that there finally appears to be some recognition of the dangers of this approach.&amp;#160; Per the Wall Street Journal &amp;#160;</p> <p>&#8220;Ms. Merkel signalled on Friday that she is having second thoughts about the wisdom of emphasizing bondholder losses: &#8216;We have a draft for the ESM, which must be changed in the light of developments&#8217; in financial markets since the Greek-restructuring decision in July, she said after meeting Austria&#8217;s chancellor in Berlin.</p> <p>Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter, speaking at a conference in Hamburg on Friday, was more direct. &#8216;Trust in government treasuries was so thoroughly destroyed by involving private sector investors in the debt relief that you have to wonder why anyone still buys government bonds at all,&#8217; Ms. Fekter said.&#8221;</p> <p>There are other issues which are making Germany&#8217;s position increasingly untenable, notably on the political front, in particular the mounting strains between France and Germany.&amp;#160; Wolf Richter notes that virtually every leading candidate in the French Presidential campaign envisages a much more aggressive role for the ECB going forward.&amp;#160; If Chancellor Merkel thinks she&#8217;s going to have a tough time now, wait until she is potentially dealing with Francois Hollande, the French Socialist Presidential candidate, who is now ahead in all of the polls, and who advocates with a five-point plan which is anathema to Germany&#8217;s governing coalition:</p> <p>As Richter notes, issues 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all non-starters amongst Berlin&#8217;s policy making elites.&amp;#160; Even more extreme are the views of Socialist candidate, Arnaud Montebourg, who has openly spoken of &#8220;the annexation of the French right by the Prussian right.&#8221;</p> <p>On the right, things are not much better.&amp;#160; French President Nicolas Sarkozy risks being outflanked by National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, (her father is Jean Marie Le Pen) who is adopting an explicitly anti-euro candidacy , which is gaining traction as France&#8217;s new austerity measures continue to bite into economic growth. &amp;#160; In his futile attempts to maintain France&#8217;s AAA credit rating via increased fiscal austerity, Sarko risks being hoist by his own petard, as the likely impact of such measures will be to take French unemployment back into double digits.&amp;#160; Paying obeisance to the shrine of Moody&#8217;s, Fitch and S&amp;amp;P via fiscal austerity is the economic equivalent of seeking to negotiate a peace treaty with Al Qaeda.</p> <p>True, Germany might well decide that enough is enough, that the ECB&#8217;s actions represent &#8220;printing money&#8221; and may therefore initiate a process of leaving the euro zone.&amp;#160; But let us be clear about the consequences:&amp;#160; Were it to adopt this approach, Germany would likely suffer from a huge trade shock, particularly as its aversion to &#8220;fiscal profligacy&#8221; would doom it to much higher levels of unemployment (unless the government all of a sudden experienced a Damascene conversion to Keynesianism &#8211; about as likely as a Klansman attending a Presidential rally for Barack Obama) or reverting to its former policy of dollar buying. It might also affect the living standards of the average German as well because Germany&#8217;s large manufacturers originally bought into the currency union because they felt it would prevent the likes of chronic currency devaluers, such as the Italians, to use this expedient to achieve a higher share of world trade at Germany&#8217;s expense. Were they confronted with the loss of market share, German multinationals might simply move manufacturing facilities to the new, low cost regions of Europe to preserve market share and cost advantage or, at the very least, use the threat of moving to extort cuts in wages and benefits to German workers as a quid pro quo for remaining at home.&amp;#160; Perhaps there would be blood in the streets of Berlin at that point as well.</p> <p>In fact, it is doubly ironic that Germany chastises its neighbors for their &#8220;profligacy&#8221; but relies on their &#8220;living beyond their means&#8221; to produce a trade surplus that allows its government to run smaller budget deficits. Germany is, in fact, structurally reliant on dis-saving abroad to grow at all. Current account deficits in other parts of the euro zone are required for German growth. It is the height of hypocrisy for Germans to berate the southern states for over-spending when that spending is the only thing that has allowed Germany&#8217;s economy to grow. It is also mindless for Germans to be advocating harsh austerity for the south states and hacking into their spending potential and not to think that it won&#8217;t reverberate back onto Germany.</p> <p>Now, of course, German Chancellor Angela Merkel may not consciously know all of these things.&amp;#160; In fact, she termed accusations of Germany seeking to dominate Europe &#8220;bizarre&#8221;.&amp;#160; But it is clear to any objective observer that the political quid pro quo for greater ECB involvement in dealing with Europe&#8217;s national solvency crisis is German control over the overall fiscal conduct of countries like Greece, Italy, etc. Mario Draghi is Italian, but the ECB head is playing a German game of chicken: he is embracing exactly the strategy that Angela Merkel&#8217;s political director, Klaus Schuler, laid out several weeks ago: holding out for fiscal union commitments from the weaker &#8220;Club Med&#8221; countries, in return for turning the ECB into a lender of last resort.&amp;#160; So whilst many Germans might think they want a smaller, more cohesive euro zone without the troublesome profligates, the policy elites in fact recognize that a &#8220;United States of Germany&#8221; under the guise of a United States of Europe, actually suits their aspirations to dominate Europe politically and economically.&amp;#160; Which is why the outlines of a deal along the lines of increased ECB involved as a quid pro quo for greater German control of fiscal policy across the euro zone, is emerging. &amp;#160; It&#8217;s the equivalent of the golden rule:&amp;#160; &#8220;He who has the gold, rules.&#8221;</p> <p>It is high stakes poker, and one which will ultimately lead to far more bloodshed.&amp;#160; The reality is that there is no plan B.&amp;#160; Just keep raising taxes and cutting spending even as those actions work to cause deficits to go higher rather than lower. So while the solvency and funding issue is likely to be resolved, the relief rally in the markets won&#8217;t last long as the funding will continue to be conditional to ongoing austerity and negative growth. And the austerity looks likely to not only continue but also to intensify, even as the euro zone has already slipped into recession. So there appears to be no chance that the ECB would fund and at the same time mandate the higher deficits needed for a recovery, In which case the only thing that will end the austerity is blood on the streets in sufficient quantity to trigger chaos and a change in governance.</p> <p>And by the way, the notion suggested by some that this horrible dynamic could be arrested by the Fed acting as a kind of global central banker of last resort is asinine. &amp;#160; As Bill Mitchell noted recently:</p> <p>As of today, the 1 Euro = 1.3294 U.S. dollars. So just purchasing the PIIGS debt to fund their 2010 deficits would have required the US Federal Reserve sell around 347,024 million USD which is about 5.8 per cent of the US GDP over the last four quarters. That is a huge injection of US dollars into the world foreign exchange markets.</p> <p>The volume of spending that would be required are even larger than the estimates provided here. That is, because to really solve the Euro crisis the deficits in (probably) all the EMU nations have to rise substantially.</p> <p>What do you think would happen to the US dollar currency value? The answer is that it would drop very significantly. The word collapse might be more appropriate than drop&#8230;At this point in the crisis, there is nothing to be gained by a massive US dollar depreciation and the inflationary impulses such a large depreciation would probably impart.</p> <p>Blaming the Fed for a failure to backstop the eurozone&#8217;s bonds is akin to blaming a bystander for not standing in front of a bullet when he witnesses somebody taking out a gun, and shooting another person.&amp;#160; The triggerman bears ultimate responsibility.&amp;#160; By the same token, the euro crisis is a crisis which has its roots in the eurozone&#8217;s flawed financial architecture (no less an authority than Jacques Delors has recently admitted this)&amp;#160; and can only be solved by the Europeans, specifically, the ECB, which is the only institution in the EMU that can spend without recourse to prior funding, due to the flawed design of the monetary system that was forced upon the member states at the inception of the union.&amp;#160; But Mario Draghi accepts the German political quid pro quo: in order to act, he will insist on greater fiscal austerity as a necessary condition, which will perversely have impact of deflating these economies into the ground further and engender HIGHER public deficits.&amp;#160; Obviously this is one reason the Germans felt so comfortable in naming an Italian to the ECB. Trojan horses apparently don&#8217;t just come in Greek forms these days. A Europe, where countries such as Italy and Greece become client states of Germany provides a much more effective outcome for Germany than, say, trying to do the same thing via another destructive World War.</p> <p>MARSHALL AUERBACK&amp;#160; is a portfolio strategist with Madison Street Partners, LLC, a Denver based investment management group, and a Fellow with the Economists for Peace and Security. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:MAuer1959@aol.com" type="external">MAuer1959@aol.com</a></p>

There Will Be Blood

https://counterpunch.org/2011/12/05/there-will-be-blood-2/

2011-12-05

4left

Another week to go before the euro blows up or so we8217re told again for the thousandth time More likely is that the ECB does barely enough to keep the show on the road fiscal austerity continues and riots intensify on the streets of Madrid Athens Rome and Parisamp160 Like the film 8220there will be blood8221 before there is any likely change toward a sensible growthoriented policy in the euro zone Given the travails of the euro zone why has the euro remained relatively robustamp160 Surely a currency that is supposedly within weeks of vanishing should be trading closer to parity with the dollaramp160 Yet one continues to be struck by the divergence of opinion and actual market actionamp160 For all the talk about the euro possibly vaporizing by Christmas it is striking that it remains stubbornly stable at around 134 to the dollar substantially above the low of 120 which was reached in May 2010 when predictions of parity with the dollar were rampant By the same token we have a paradox on the other side as wellamp160 every time it appears as if a solution to the problems posed by the euro look to be close to resolution the euro strengthens Perhaps this isn8217t so odd except that the solution that virtually everybody agrees will work 8211 namely a sustained bondbuying operation taken up by the European Central Bank ECB 8211 is said to represent a form of 8220quantitative easing8221 and aren8217t we always told that 8220QE8221 represents 8220printing money8221 which should cause a currency to go downamp160 Isn8217t that what all of the opponents of the Fed8217s program last year were asserting Of course in the case of the European Monetary Union ECB President Mario Draghi insists that such bond buying will not take place in the absence of proper 8220sequencing8221 by which he means agreed fiscal austerity first bond buying afterwardamp160 The effect of the former will negate any potential impact of the latter since the 8220inflation channel8221 to the extent that inflation occurs at all can only come through fiscal policyamp160 And certainly in the teeth of a severe recession such cuts as those proposed by the client state governments of Italy and Greece along with a renewed assault by President Sarkozy on the French welfare state will almost certainly exacerbate the profoundly deflationary pressures now operating in the eurozoneamp160 Ultimately this will surely have the result of creating substantially more social instability and bloodshed but it might have little impact on the euro itself So what is actually happening to the euro Let8217s take a step back from the panic talk The most recent data from the COMEX suggests that speculators are heavily short on the euro and yet the currency has fallen less than 10 per cent from its recent highs amp160 The question one might legitimately pose isamp160 at what point does the current fiscal austerity produce higher deficits which in theory should produce a weaker euro as the euros become 8220easier to get8221 I have been wrestling with this issue and keep getting back to a strong currency even with increased fiscal deficits Why For one the ECB8217s bond purchases in the secondary market are operationally sustainable and noninflationaryamp160 When the ECB undertakes its bond buying operation the ECB debt purchases merely shift net financial assets held by the 8216economy8217 from national government liabilities to ECB liabilities in the form of clearing balances at the ECBamp160amp160At the same time socalled PIIGS government liabilities shift from 8216the economy8217 to the ECBamp160 Noteamp160this process does notamp160alter any 8216flows8217 or 8216net stocks of euros in the real economy As long as the ECB imposes austerity terms and conditions the bond buying will not be inflationary Inflation from this channel comes from spending amp160However in this case the ECB support comes only with reduced spending via its imposition of fiscal austerity amp160 Draghi has now made this explicit and it is almost certainly the German quid pro quo for tacitly supporting a proposed expansion of the Secondary Market Program SMP amp160And reduced spending means reduced aggregate demand which therefore means reduced inflation and a stronger currencyamp160amp160 We also know from an authority no less than the Bank of International Settlements ironically the same initials as 8220blood in streets8221 that banks cannot lend out reserves so increasing reserves in the banking system is NOT inflationary per se as the Weimar hyperinflation hyperventilators continue to warn us Now consider the trade channel despite today8217s rapidly weakening economy Europe is almost certainly in recession todayamp160 we are not seeing much deterioration in the euro zone8217s current account deficit The Eurozone in fact seems to be a pretty selfcontained and somewhat mercantilist economy which displays far less proclivity to import when the economy slides So even though imports go down so too do trade deficits due to falling demand Exports don8217t fall and may in fact go up in this kind of environment So that8217s euro friendly As far as what happens if the ECB were to expand significantly its bond buying program in the secondary market the notion that the euro would fall is akin to the reasoning that the dollar would collapse if it engaged in QE2 And if what is called quantitative easing was inflationary Japan would be hyperinflating by now with the US not far behind There is NO sign that the ECB8217s buying of euro denominated government bonds has resulted in any kind of monetary inflation as nothing but deflationary pressures continue to mount in that ongoing debt implosion The reason there is no inflation from the ECB bond buying is because all it does is shift investor holdings from national govt debt to ECB balances which changes nothing in the real economy But the question which persistently arises when one advocates a larger institutional role for the ECB isamp160 whether the ECB8217s balance sheet would be impaired and the MMT contention has long been NO because if the ECB bought the bonds then by definition the 8220profligates8221 do not default In fact as the monopoly provider of the euro the ECB could easily set the rate at which it buys the bonds say 4 for Italy and eventually it would replenish its capital via the profits it would receive from buying the distressed debt not that the ECB requires capital in an operational sense as usual with the euro zone this is a political issue At some point Professor Paul de Grauwe is right amp160 convinced that the ECB was serious about resolving the solvency issue the markets would begin to buy the bonds again and effectively do the ECB8217s heavy lifting for them The bonds would not be trading at these distressed levels if not for the solvency issue which the ECB can easily address if it chooses to do soamp160 But this is a question of political will not operational 8220sustainability8221 So the grand irony of the day remains this while there is nothing the ECB can do to cause monetary inflation even if it wanted to the ECB fearing inflation holds back on the bond buying that would eliminate the national govt solvency risk but not halt the deflationary monetary forces currently in place Okay so who takes the lossesamp160 Well presuming the bonds don8217t mature at par no question that a private bank which sells a bond at today8217s distressed levels might well take a loss and if the losses are big enough then banks in this position might well need a recapitalization program And in this scenario Germany too could take a hit as does every other national government as they use national fiscal resources to recapitalize And the hit will get bigger the longer the Germans continue to push this crisis to the brink But that is a separate issue from the question of whether the bond buying program per se will pose a threat to the ECB8217s balance sheet It will notamp160 a big income transfer from the private bond holders who sell to the ECB which can build up its capital base via the profits it makes on purchasing these distressed bondsamp160 So again the notion of an ECB being capital constrained is insane By contrast the status quo is a loser for everybody including Germanyamp160 A broader ECB role as lender of last resort of the kind the Germans are still publicly resisting along with their unhelpful talk of haircuts and greater private sector losses actually do MUCH MORE to wreck Germany8217s credit position than the policy measures which virtually everybody else in Europe is recommendingamp160 Why would any private bondholder with a modicum of fiduciary responsibility buy a European bond knowing that the rules of the game have changed and that the private buyer could find himselfherself with losses being unilaterally imposedamp160 The good news is that there finally appears to be some recognition of the dangers of this approachamp160 Per the Wall Street Journal amp160 8220Ms Merkel signalled on Friday that she is having second thoughts about the wisdom of emphasizing bondholder losses 8216We have a draft for the ESM which must be changed in the light of developments8217 in financial markets since the Greekrestructuring decision in July she said after meeting Austria8217s chancellor in Berlin Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter speaking at a conference in Hamburg on Friday was more direct 8216Trust in government treasuries was so thoroughly destroyed by involving private sector investors in the debt relief that you have to wonder why anyone still buys government bonds at all8217 Ms Fekter said8221 There are other issues which are making Germany8217s position increasingly untenable notably on the political front in particular the mounting strains between France and Germanyamp160 Wolf Richter notes that virtually every leading candidate in the French Presidential campaign envisages a much more aggressive role for the ECB going forwardamp160 If Chancellor Merkel thinks she8217s going to have a tough time now wait until she is potentially dealing with Francois Hollande the French Socialist Presidential candidate who is now ahead in all of the polls and who advocates with a fivepoint plan which is anathema to Germany8217s governing coalition As Richter notes issues 1 2 3 and 5 are all nonstarters amongst Berlin8217s policy making elitesamp160 Even more extreme are the views of Socialist candidate Arnaud Montebourg who has openly spoken of 8220the annexation of the French right by the Prussian right8221 On the right things are not much betteramp160 French President Nicolas Sarkozy risks being outflanked by National Front leader Marine Le Pen her father is Jean Marie Le Pen who is adopting an explicitly antieuro candidacy which is gaining traction as France8217s new austerity measures continue to bite into economic growth amp160 In his futile attempts to maintain France8217s AAA credit rating via increased fiscal austerity Sarko risks being hoist by his own petard as the likely impact of such measures will be to take French unemployment back into double digitsamp160 Paying obeisance to the shrine of Moody8217s Fitch and SampampP via fiscal austerity is the economic equivalent of seeking to negotiate a peace treaty with Al Qaeda True Germany might well decide that enough is enough that the ECB8217s actions represent 8220printing money8221 and may therefore initiate a process of leaving the euro zoneamp160 But let us be clear about the consequencesamp160 Were it to adopt this approach Germany would likely suffer from a huge trade shock particularly as its aversion to 8220fiscal profligacy8221 would doom it to much higher levels of unemployment unless the government all of a sudden experienced a Damascene conversion to Keynesianism 8211 about as likely as a Klansman attending a Presidential rally for Barack Obama or reverting to its former policy of dollar buying It might also affect the living standards of the average German as well because Germany8217s large manufacturers originally bought into the currency union because they felt it would prevent the likes of chronic currency devaluers such as the Italians to use this expedient to achieve a higher share of world trade at Germany8217s expense Were they confronted with the loss of market share German multinationals might simply move manufacturing facilities to the new low cost regions of Europe to preserve market share and cost advantage or at the very least use the threat of moving to extort cuts in wages and benefits to German workers as a quid pro quo for remaining at homeamp160 Perhaps there would be blood in the streets of Berlin at that point as well In fact it is doubly ironic that Germany chastises its neighbors for their 8220profligacy8221 but relies on their 8220living beyond their means8221 to produce a trade surplus that allows its government to run smaller budget deficits Germany is in fact structurally reliant on dissaving abroad to grow at all Current account deficits in other parts of the euro zone are required for German growth It is the height of hypocrisy for Germans to berate the southern states for overspending when that spending is the only thing that has allowed Germany8217s economy to grow It is also mindless for Germans to be advocating harsh austerity for the south states and hacking into their spending potential and not to think that it won8217t reverberate back onto Germany Now of course German Chancellor Angela Merkel may not consciously know all of these thingsamp160 In fact she termed accusations of Germany seeking to dominate Europe 8220bizarre8221amp160 But it is clear to any objective observer that the political quid pro quo for greater ECB involvement in dealing with Europe8217s national solvency crisis is German control over the overall fiscal conduct of countries like Greece Italy etc Mario Draghi is Italian but the ECB head is playing a German game of chicken he is embracing exactly the strategy that Angela Merkel8217s political director Klaus Schuler laid out several weeks ago holding out for fiscal union commitments from the weaker 8220Club Med8221 countries in return for turning the ECB into a lender of last resortamp160 So whilst many Germans might think they want a smaller more cohesive euro zone without the troublesome profligates the policy elites in fact recognize that a 8220United States of Germany8221 under the guise of a United States of Europe actually suits their aspirations to dominate Europe politically and economicallyamp160 Which is why the outlines of a deal along the lines of increased ECB involved as a quid pro quo for greater German control of fiscal policy across the euro zone is emerging amp160 It8217s the equivalent of the golden ruleamp160 8220He who has the gold rules8221 It is high stakes poker and one which will ultimately lead to far more bloodshedamp160 The reality is that there is no plan Bamp160 Just keep raising taxes and cutting spending even as those actions work to cause deficits to go higher rather than lower So while the solvency and funding issue is likely to be resolved the relief rally in the markets won8217t last long as the funding will continue to be conditional to ongoing austerity and negative growth And the austerity looks likely to not only continue but also to intensify even as the euro zone has already slipped into recession So there appears to be no chance that the ECB would fund and at the same time mandate the higher deficits needed for a recovery In which case the only thing that will end the austerity is blood on the streets in sufficient quantity to trigger chaos and a change in governance And by the way the notion suggested by some that this horrible dynamic could be arrested by the Fed acting as a kind of global central banker of last resort is asinine amp160 As Bill Mitchell noted recently As of today the 1 Euro 13294 US dollars So just purchasing the PIIGS debt to fund their 2010 deficits would have required the US Federal Reserve sell around 347024 million USD which is about 58 per cent of the US GDP over the last four quarters That is a huge injection of US dollars into the world foreign exchange markets The volume of spending that would be required are even larger than the estimates provided here That is because to really solve the Euro crisis the deficits in probably all the EMU nations have to rise substantially What do you think would happen to the US dollar currency value The answer is that it would drop very significantly The word collapse might be more appropriate than drop8230At this point in the crisis there is nothing to be gained by a massive US dollar depreciation and the inflationary impulses such a large depreciation would probably impart Blaming the Fed for a failure to backstop the eurozone8217s bonds is akin to blaming a bystander for not standing in front of a bullet when he witnesses somebody taking out a gun and shooting another personamp160 The triggerman bears ultimate responsibilityamp160 By the same token the euro crisis is a crisis which has its roots in the eurozone8217s flawed financial architecture no less an authority than Jacques Delors has recently admitted thisamp160 and can only be solved by the Europeans specifically the ECB which is the only institution in the EMU that can spend without recourse to prior funding due to the flawed design of the monetary system that was forced upon the member states at the inception of the unionamp160 But Mario Draghi accepts the German political quid pro quo in order to act he will insist on greater fiscal austerity as a necessary condition which will perversely have impact of deflating these economies into the ground further and engender HIGHER public deficitsamp160 Obviously this is one reason the Germans felt so comfortable in naming an Italian to the ECB Trojan horses apparently don8217t just come in Greek forms these days A Europe where countries such as Italy and Greece become client states of Germany provides a much more effective outcome for Germany than say trying to do the same thing via another destructive World War MARSHALL AUERBACKamp160 is a portfolio strategist with Madison Street Partners LLC a Denver based investment management group and a Fellow with the Economists for Peace and Security He can be reached at MAuer1959aolcom

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<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would be willing to be interviewed under oath by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m looking forward to it, actually,&#8221; Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said of an interview with Mueller, a former FBI director. &#8220;I would do it under oath.&#8221;</p> <p>Although Trump has pledged cooperation with Mueller&#8217;s probe before, Trump made his assertion as the White House and allies in Congress have stepped up attacks on the investigation&#8217;s credibility and Trump himself has hedged on whether he would answer questions.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s attorneys have been talking to Mueller&#8217;s team about an interview, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation. &#8220;I would like to do it as soon as possible,&#8221; Trump said.</p> <p>Trump said, however, that setting a date certain for an interview would be &#8220;subject to my lawyers and all of that.&#8221; Asked whether he thought Mueller would treat him fairly, Trump replied: &#8220;We&#8217;re going to find out.&#8221;</p> <p>Ty Cobb, the lawyer in charge of the White House response to Mueller&#8217;s probe, said in a statement that Trump was speaking hurriedly to reporters before departing on his trip to Davos, Switzerland. Cobb said Trump emphasized that he remained committed to cooperating with the investigation and looked forward to speaking with Mueller.</p> <p>Cobb said Mueller&#8217;s team and Trump&#8217;s personal lawyers were working out the arrangements for a meeting.</p> <p>Sources told Reuters earlier on Wednesday that senior U.S. intelligence officers including CIA Director Mike Pompeo had been questioned by the special counsel&#8217;s team about whether Trump tried to obstruct justice in the Russia probe.</p> <p>Such questioning is further indication that Mueller&#8217;s criminal investigation into purported Russian interference in the election and potential collusion by Trump&#8217;s campaign includes examining the president&#8217;s actions around the probe.</p> <p>In his remarks to reporters on Wednesday, Trump repeated past statements that there was no collusion between the campaign and Russia and &#8220;there&#8217;s no obstruction whatsoever.&#8221; The Kremlin has denied conclusions by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election campaign using hacking and propaganda to try to tilt the race in Trump&#8217;s favor.</p> <p>Trump on Wednesday denied a Washington Post report that last year he had asked then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe whom he had voted for in 2016, which according to reports, left McCabe concerned about civil servants being interrogated about their political leanings.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a working session with mayors at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 24, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think so. I don&#8217;t think I did. I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s the big deal with that, because I would ask you,&#8221; Trump said to reporters.</p> COMEY FIRING <p>In interviews last year with Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers, the sources said Mueller&#8217;s team focused on whether Trump had asked them to lean on James Comey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation director until Trump fired him in May.</p> <p>Comey said Trump dismissed him to try to undermine the agency&#8217;s Russia investigation. His firing led to Mueller&#8217;s appointment to take over the FBI probe and is central to whether Trump may have committed obstruction of justice.</p> <p>Mueller also asked the officials if Trump tried to shut down intelligence investigations into Russian election meddling and into contacts between Russian officials connected with President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s government and associates of Trump or his campaign, the sources said on condition of anonymity.</p> <p>Representatives for the CIA declined to comment on whether Pompeo had been interviewed.</p> <p>More than 20 White House personnel have voluntarily given interviews to Mueller&#8217;s team, Fox News reported on Wednesday.</p> <p>It is unusual for FBI interviews to be conducted under oath, but even if Trump is not interviewed by Mueller&#8217;s team under oath, it would still be a crime for him to lie to federal agents, said Andrew Wright, a professor at Savannah Law School and a former associate counsel to President Barack Obama.</p> <p>That is the charge to which former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos have both pleaded guilty.</p> <p>An oath would be administered if Mueller issues a subpoena for Trump to testify before a grand jury as opposed to a private interview, Wright said.</p> <p>In 1998, charges that then-President Bill Clinton lied under oath to a federal grand jury about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky help lead to his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. Clinton was acquitted by the U.S. Senate.</p> <p>Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Warren Strobel; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe, Doina Chiacu and James Oliphant; Editing by Grant McCool and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who stepped down in January after criticism from President Donald Trump, met on Thursday with a U.S. Justice Department official in an effort to preserve his pension, according to a source familiar with the matter.</p> Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies before the House Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>McCabe planned to retire on Sunday with full benefits, but some or all of his pension could be at risk after the Federal Bureau of Investigation&#8217;s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended firing him for misleading Justice Department investigators about his supervision of probes into Hillary Clinton, Trump&#8217;s presidential opponent, said the source, who requested anonymity.</p> <p>The person spoke anonymously because no decisions have been made, and the matter is still not public.</p> <p>McCabe did not return a call seeking comment.</p> <p>Sunday is McCabe&#8217;s birthday, which triggers his eligibility for full pension benefits, the source said.</p> <p>Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out of town on Thursday, so McCabe met with a person in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein&#8217;s office to make his final appeal in a meeting that lasted more than three hours, the source said.</p> <p>The person spoke anonymously because no decisions have been made.</p> <p>McCabe, a 20-plus-year FBI veteran and lifelong Republican, has been a target of Trump and others who have questioned whether his role in the investigations was politically biased or compromised because his wife, a Democrat, got donations for her Virginia state Senate campaign from Virginia&#8217;s then governor, Terry McAuliffe, a close ally of the Clintons.</p> <p>If Sessions fires McCabe, he could be accused of bending to the will of Trump, who has attacked McCabe on Twitter for his role in the Clinton investigations while his wife received donations from what Trump called &#8220;Clinton Puppets.&#8221;</p> <p>But if Sessions allows McCabe to stay until his retirement, he could face a backlash from conservatives who have attacked the FBI.</p> <p>When asked about it on Thursday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the decision is up to Sessions. However, she also called McCabe a &#8220;bad actor&#8221; and said it is &#8220;well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior.&#8221;</p> &#8220;FACTS AND CIRCUMSTANCES&#8221; <p>It is unclear what will determine if McCabe can retain all or part of his pension if he is fired, the source said.</p> <p>In general, the impact of a person&#8217;s termination depends on facts and circumstances, according to a Justice Department spokeswoman.</p> <p>The recommendation to fire McCabe was based on a report by the Justice Department&#8217;s inspector general, which according to the source says McCabe misled investigators about his communications with a former Wall Street Journal reporter.</p> <p>McCabe denies misleading them in any way.</p> <p>On two occasions in 2016, McCabe authorized an FBI public affairs officer to talk to a Wall Street Journal reporter who was writing about McCabe&#8217;s role in probes related to Clinton, the source said.</p> <p>The FBI has said that at the time McCabe got involved in one of the probes, into Clinton&#8217;s use of a private email server, his wife&#8217;s election campaign was over.</p> <p>One article that discussed McCabe&#8217;s role in the investigation into the Clintons&#8217; charitable foundation claimed some agents thought McCabe was trying to quash the probe which McCabe said was not true.</p> <p>Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by John Walcott and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States slapped sanctions on Russian individuals and entities for U.S. election meddling and cyber attacks but put off targeting oligarchs and government officials close to President Vladimir Putin, prompting lawmakers in both parties to say President Donald Trump needs to do much more.</p> <p>With the United States under pressure to act, the steps announced by the U.S. Treasury Department represented the most significant taken against Moscow since Trump assumed office in January 2017.</p> <p>Along with imposing sanctions on 19 individuals and five entities including Russian intelligence services, the Trump administration publicly blamed Moscow for the first time for a campaign of cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the U.S. power grid including nuclear facilities.</p> <p>The United States also joined Britain, Germany and France in demanding that Russia explain a military-grade nerve toxin attack in England on a former Russian double agent, with Trump saying: &#8220;It certainly looks like the Russians were behind&#8221; the incident.</p> <p>But congressional critics called the administration&#8217;s action a woefully inadequate retaliation for Russia interference in the 2016 U.S. election and other actions.</p> <p>&#8220;The sanctions today are a grievous disappointment and fall far short of what is needed to respond to that attack on our democracy let alone deter Russia&#8217;s escalating aggression, which now includes a chemical weapons attack on the soil of our closest ally,&#8221; said Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.</p> <p>&#8220;Today&#8217;s action, using authorities provided by Congress, is an important step by the administration. But more must be done,&#8221; Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce added. He later urged Trump to sanction Russia for the poisoning in Britain.</p> EXASPERATED <p>Trump has faced fierce criticism in the United States for doing too little to punish Russia for the election meddling and other actions, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether Trump&#8217;s campaign colluded with the Russians, an allegation the president denies.</p> <p>Sixteen of the Russian individuals and entities sanctioned were indicted on Feb. 16 as part of Mueller&#8217;s criminal investigation.</p> <p>&#8220;They didn&#8217;t hit Putin&#8217;s power structure and they didn&#8217;t team up with Europe,&#8221; Brian O&#8217;Toole, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank and a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department&#8217;s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said of the administration&#8217;s actions.</p> <p>A senior administration official told Reuters that Trump, who campaigned on warmer ties with Putin, had grown exasperated with Russian activity. &#8220;A classic bully,&#8221; the official said of Putin.</p> <p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, asked if Russia was a friend or foe, told reporters: &#8220;Russia is going to have to make that determination. They&#8217;re going to have to decide whether they want to be a good actor or a bad actor.&#8221;</p> <p>In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia was preparing retaliatory measures, as U.S.-Russian relations plunged again.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin discusses the Trump administration's tax reform proposal in the White House briefing room in Washington, U.S, April 26, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File photo <p>The Treasury Department said the sanctions were also meant to counter cyber attacks including the NotPetya attack that cost billions of dollars in damage across Europe, Asia and the United States. The United States and Britain last month blamed the Russian military for that attack.</p> <p>Trump has frequently questioned a January 2017 finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign using hacking and propaganda in an effort eventually aimed at tilting the race in Trump&#8217;s favor. Russia denies interfering in the election.</p> <p>But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was unequivocal in saying that Thursday&#8217;s action by his department &#8220;counters Russia&#8217;s continuing destabilizing activities, ranging from interference in the 2016 election to conducting destructive cyber-attacks.&#8221;</p> &#8216;GET SMART&#8217; <p>&#8220;Putin constantly attacks our friends. So, President Trump, are you going to get smart about the threat Russia poses to the United States and our allies?&#8221; Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer asked.</p> FILE PHOTO: Voters cast their votes during the U.S. presidential election in Elyria, Ohio, U.S. November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk/File Photo <p>Mnuchin said there would be additional sanctions against Russian government officials and oligarchs &#8220;for their destabilizing activities.&#8221; Mnuchin did not give a time frame for those sanctions, which he said would sever the individuals&#8217; access to the U.S. financial system.</p> <p>Democratic Senator Robert Menendez said he was glad to see the administration act but noted that Democratic former President Barack Obama&#8217;s administration had already imposed sanctions on many of the people and entities targeted on Thursday.</p> <p>Russian government hackers since at least March 2016 &#8220;have also targeted U.S. government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors,&#8221; a Treasury Department statement said.</p> <p>A senior administration told reporters on a conference call that Russian actors infiltrated parts of the U.S. energy sector.</p> <p>&#8220;We were able to identify where they were located within those business systems and remove them from those business systems,&#8221; the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-shift/with-sanctions-and-condemnation-u-s-hints-at-shift-on-russia-idUSKCN1GS03V" type="external">With sanctions and condemnation, U.S. hints at shift on Russia</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-whitehouse/white-house-will-remain-tough-on-russia-until-its-behavior-changes-idUSKCN1GR313" type="external">White House: will remain tough on Russia until its behavior changes</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-energygrid/in-a-first-u-s-blames-russia-for-cyber-attacks-on-energy-grid-idUSKCN1GR2G3" type="external">In a first, U.S. blames Russia for cyber attacks on energy grid</a> <p>Trump told reporters during a White House event with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar that &#8220;it certainly looks like the Russians were behind&#8221; the use of a nerve agent to attack Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent in England. Trump called it &#8220;something that should never, ever happen, and we&#8217;re taking it very seriously, as I think are many others.&#8221;</p> <p>The new sanctions include Russian intelligence services, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), and six individuals working on behalf of the GRU.</p> <p>Thursday&#8217;s action blocks all property of those targeted that is subject to U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits American citizens from engaging in transactions with them.</p> <p>Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, one of those indicted by Mueller and hit with sanctions on Thursday, said in comments cited by RIA news agency that he already had been hit with U.S. sanctions &#8220;maybe three or four times - I&#8217;m tired of counting.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not worried by this,&#8221; Prigozhin was quoted as saying. &#8220;Except that now I will stop going to McDonald&#8217;s.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz, Timothy Gardner, Lesley Wroughton, Warren Strobel and James Oliphant in Washington, Guy Faulconbridge and Estelle Shirbon in London and Polina Ivanova in Moscow; Editing by Mary Milliken, Will Dunham and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - A Japanese Nobel-winning chemist was discovered wandering in rural Northern Illinois and his wife found dead nearby, some nine hours after they had been reported missing from their home 200 miles away, police said on Wednesday.</p> <p>Nobel Prize winner Ei-ichi Negishi, 82, was transported to a local hospital for treatment after he was spotted walking near Rockford, Illinois, at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, the Ogle County Sheriff&#8217;s Department officials said in a written statement.</p> <p>Deputies later found the couple&#8217;s car and the body of his wife, Sumire Negishi, at the nearby Ochard Hills Landfill, the sheriff&#8217;s department said. Rockford is about 100 miles west of Chicago.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>An autopsy was pending on the body of Sumire Negishi but foul play was not suspected in her death, the sheriff&#8217;s department said. No information was released on the condition of Ei-Ichi Negishi.</p> <p>The couple was reported missing to the Indiana State Police at about 8 p.m. central time on Monday. They were last seen at their home in West Lafayette, near the Purdue University campus where Ei-Ichi is a professor of chemistry.</p> <p>The scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010.</p> <p>Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Michael Perry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to replace his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, but the move is not expected to be made immediately, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.</p> National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster speaks at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, U.S., March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Citing five people with knowledge of the plans, the Post said Trump was considering several possible replacements, including former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Keith Kellogg, the chief of staff of the National Security Council.</p> <p>The White House did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment.</p> <p>On Tuesday, Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the president has signaled in recent days that a shake-up at the top levels of his administration was not over.</p> FILE PHOTO: National security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster waits to be introduced at the FDD National Security Summit in Washington, DC, U.S., October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m really at a point where we&#8217;re getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things that I want,&#8221; Trump told reporters after Tillerson was fired.</p> <p>McMaster is not expected to be ousted immediately, the Post reported. Trump is willing to take his time making the change to avoid humiliating McMaster and carefully choose a strong replacement, the Post said.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump at the 12th East Asia Summit in Manila, Philippines November 14, 2017. Seen next to Trump are U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster (R) and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (C). REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo <p>Trump never personally gelled with McMaster and the president recently told White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that he wanted McMaster replaced, according to the Post.</p> <p>Trump has complained that McMaster, a three-star Army general, is too rigid and that his briefings go on too long and seem irrelevant, the Post reported.</p> <p>McMaster is Trump&#8217;s second national security adviser, succeeding Michael Flynn who was dismissed a year ago for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States.</p> <p>Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Trump says he is willing to testify under oath in U.S.-Russia probe Former FBI official urges Justice Dept not to fire him days before he retires U.S. sanctions Russians for meddling, but not Putin's oligarchs Nobel prize winner hospitalized, wife found deceased in Illinois Trump has decided to remove his national security adviser: Washington Post

https://reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-cia/trump-says-he-is-willing-to-testify-under-oath-in-us-russia-probe-idUSKBN1FD1G2

2018-01-24

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WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would be willing to be interviewed under oath by Special Counsel Robert Mueller who is investigating allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election 8220I8217m looking forward to it actually8221 Trump speaking to reporters at the White House said of an interview with Mueller a former FBI director 8220I would do it under oath8221 Although Trump has pledged cooperation with Mueller8217s probe before Trump made his assertion as the White House and allies in Congress have stepped up attacks on the investigation8217s credibility and Trump himself has hedged on whether he would answer questions Trump8217s attorneys have been talking to Mueller8217s team about an interview according to sources with knowledge of the investigation 8220I would like to do it as soon as possible8221 Trump said Trump said however that setting a date certain for an interview would be 8220subject to my lawyers and all of that8221 Asked whether he thought Mueller would treat him fairly Trump replied 8220We8217re going to find out8221 Ty Cobb the lawyer in charge of the White House response to Mueller8217s probe said in a statement that Trump was speaking hurriedly to reporters before departing on his trip to Davos Switzerland Cobb said Trump emphasized that he remained committed to cooperating with the investigation and looked forward to speaking with Mueller Cobb said Mueller8217s team and Trump8217s personal lawyers were working out the arrangements for a meeting Sources told Reuters earlier on Wednesday that senior US intelligence officers including CIA Director Mike Pompeo had been questioned by the special counsel8217s team about whether Trump tried to obstruct justice in the Russia probe Such questioning is further indication that Mueller8217s criminal investigation into purported Russian interference in the election and potential collusion by Trump8217s campaign includes examining the president8217s actions around the probe In his remarks to reporters on Wednesday Trump repeated past statements that there was no collusion between the campaign and Russia and 8220there8217s no obstruction whatsoever8221 The Kremlin has denied conclusions by US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election campaign using hacking and propaganda to try to tilt the race in Trump8217s favor Trump on Wednesday denied a Washington Post report that last year he had asked thenacting FBI Director Andrew McCabe whom he had voted for in 2016 which according to reports left McCabe concerned about civil servants being interrogated about their political leanings US President Donald Trump speaks at a working session with mayors at the White House in Washington US January 24 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas 8220I don8217t think so I don8217t think I did I don8217t know what8217s the big deal with that because I would ask you8221 Trump said to reporters COMEY FIRING In interviews last year with Pompeo Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers the sources said Mueller8217s team focused on whether Trump had asked them to lean on James Comey the Federal Bureau of Investigation director until Trump fired him in May Comey said Trump dismissed him to try to undermine the agency8217s Russia investigation His firing led to Mueller8217s appointment to take over the FBI probe and is central to whether Trump may have committed obstruction of justice Mueller also asked the officials if Trump tried to shut down intelligence investigations into Russian election meddling and into contacts between Russian officials connected with President Vladimir Putin8217s government and associates of Trump or his campaign the sources said on condition of anonymity Representatives for the CIA declined to comment on whether Pompeo had been interviewed More than 20 White House personnel have voluntarily given interviews to Mueller8217s team Fox News reported on Wednesday It is unusual for FBI interviews to be conducted under oath but even if Trump is not interviewed by Mueller8217s team under oath it would still be a crime for him to lie to federal agents said Andrew Wright a professor at Savannah Law School and a former associate counsel to President Barack Obama That is the charge to which former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos have both pleaded guilty An oath would be administered if Mueller issues a subpoena for Trump to testify before a grand jury as opposed to a private interview Wright said In 1998 charges that thenPresident Bill Clinton lied under oath to a federal grand jury about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky help lead to his impeachment by the US House of Representatives Clinton was acquitted by the US Senate Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Warren Strobel Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe Doina Chiacu and James Oliphant Editing by Grant McCool and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe who stepped down in January after criticism from President Donald Trump met on Thursday with a US Justice Department official in an effort to preserve his pension according to a source familiar with the matter Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies before the House Commerce Justice Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington US June 21 2017 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein McCabe planned to retire on Sunday with full benefits but some or all of his pension could be at risk after the Federal Bureau of Investigation8217s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended firing him for misleading Justice Department investigators about his supervision of probes into Hillary Clinton Trump8217s presidential opponent said the source who requested anonymity The person spoke anonymously because no decisions have been made and the matter is still not public McCabe did not return a call seeking comment Sunday is McCabe8217s birthday which triggers his eligibility for full pension benefits the source said Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out of town on Thursday so McCabe met with a person in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein8217s office to make his final appeal in a meeting that lasted more than three hours the source said The person spoke anonymously because no decisions have been made McCabe a 20plusyear FBI veteran and lifelong Republican has been a target of Trump and others who have questioned whether his role in the investigations was politically biased or compromised because his wife a Democrat got donations for her Virginia state Senate campaign from Virginia8217s then governor Terry McAuliffe a close ally of the Clintons If Sessions fires McCabe he could be accused of bending to the will of Trump who has attacked McCabe on Twitter for his role in the Clinton investigations while his wife received donations from what Trump called 8220Clinton Puppets8221 But if Sessions allows McCabe to stay until his retirement he could face a backlash from conservatives who have attacked the FBI When asked about it on Thursday White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the decision is up to Sessions However she also called McCabe a 8220bad actor8221 and said it is 8220well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior8221 8220FACTS AND CIRCUMSTANCES8221 It is unclear what will determine if McCabe can retain all or part of his pension if he is fired the source said In general the impact of a person8217s termination depends on facts and circumstances according to a Justice Department spokeswoman The recommendation to fire McCabe was based on a report by the Justice Department8217s inspector general which according to the source says McCabe misled investigators about his communications with a former Wall Street Journal reporter McCabe denies misleading them in any way On two occasions in 2016 McCabe authorized an FBI public affairs officer to talk to a Wall Street Journal reporter who was writing about McCabe8217s role in probes related to Clinton the source said The FBI has said that at the time McCabe got involved in one of the probes into Clinton8217s use of a private email server his wife8217s election campaign was over One article that discussed McCabe8217s role in the investigation into the Clintons8217 charitable foundation claimed some agents thought McCabe was trying to quash the probe which McCabe said was not true Reporting by Sarah N Lynch Editing by John Walcott and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The United States slapped sanctions on Russian individuals and entities for US election meddling and cyber attacks but put off targeting oligarchs and government officials close to President Vladimir Putin prompting lawmakers in both parties to say President Donald Trump needs to do much more With the United States under pressure to act the steps announced by the US Treasury Department represented the most significant taken against Moscow since Trump assumed office in January 2017 Along with imposing sanctions on 19 individuals and five entities including Russian intelligence services the Trump administration publicly blamed Moscow for the first time for a campaign of cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the US power grid including nuclear facilities The United States also joined Britain Germany and France in demanding that Russia explain a militarygrade nerve toxin attack in England on a former Russian double agent with Trump saying 8220It certainly looks like the Russians were behind8221 the incident But congressional critics called the administration8217s action a woefully inadequate retaliation for Russia interference in the 2016 US election and other actions 8220The sanctions today are a grievous disappointment and fall far short of what is needed to respond to that attack on our democracy let alone deter Russia8217s escalating aggression which now includes a chemical weapons attack on the soil of our closest ally8221 said Adam Schiff top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee 8220Today8217s action using authorities provided by Congress is an important step by the administration But more must be done8221 Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce added He later urged Trump to sanction Russia for the poisoning in Britain EXASPERATED Trump has faced fierce criticism in the United States for doing too little to punish Russia for the election meddling and other actions and Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether Trump8217s campaign colluded with the Russians an allegation the president denies Sixteen of the Russian individuals and entities sanctioned were indicted on Feb 16 as part of Mueller8217s criminal investigation 8220They didn8217t hit Putin8217s power structure and they didn8217t team up with Europe8221 Brian O8217Toole a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank and a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department8217s Office of Foreign Assets Control said of the administration8217s actions A senior administration official told Reuters that Trump who campaigned on warmer ties with Putin had grown exasperated with Russian activity 8220A classic bully8221 the official said of Putin White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders asked if Russia was a friend or foe told reporters 8220Russia is going to have to make that determination They8217re going to have to decide whether they want to be a good actor or a bad actor8221 In Moscow Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia was preparing retaliatory measures as USRussian relations plunged again FILE PHOTO US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin discusses the Trump administrations tax reform proposal in the White House briefing room in Washington US April 26 2017 REUTERSCarlos BarriaFile photo The Treasury Department said the sanctions were also meant to counter cyber attacks including the NotPetya attack that cost billions of dollars in damage across Europe Asia and the United States The United States and Britain last month blamed the Russian military for that attack Trump has frequently questioned a January 2017 finding by US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign using hacking and propaganda in an effort eventually aimed at tilting the race in Trump8217s favor Russia denies interfering in the election But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was unequivocal in saying that Thursday8217s action by his department 8220counters Russia8217s continuing destabilizing activities ranging from interference in the 2016 election to conducting destructive cyberattacks8221 8216GET SMART8217 8220Putin constantly attacks our friends So President Trump are you going to get smart about the threat Russia poses to the United States and our allies8221 Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer asked FILE PHOTO Voters cast their votes during the US presidential election in Elyria Ohio US November 8 2016 REUTERSAaron JosefczykFile Photo Mnuchin said there would be additional sanctions against Russian government officials and oligarchs 8220for their destabilizing activities8221 Mnuchin did not give a time frame for those sanctions which he said would sever the individuals8217 access to the US financial system Democratic Senator Robert Menendez said he was glad to see the administration act but noted that Democratic former President Barack Obama8217s administration had already imposed sanctions on many of the people and entities targeted on Thursday Russian government hackers since at least March 2016 8220have also targeted US government entities and multiple US critical infrastructure sectors including the energy nuclear commercial facilities water aviation and critical manufacturing sectors8221 a Treasury Department statement said A senior administration told reporters on a conference call that Russian actors infiltrated parts of the US energy sector 8220We were able to identify where they were located within those business systems and remove them from those business systems8221 the official said speaking on condition of anonymity Related Coverage With sanctions and condemnation US hints at shift on Russia White House will remain tough on Russia until its behavior changes In a first US blames Russia for cyber attacks on energy grid Trump told reporters during a White House event with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar that 8220it certainly looks like the Russians were behind8221 the use of a nerve agent to attack Sergei Skripal a former Russian double agent in England Trump called it 8220something that should never ever happen and we8217re taking it very seriously as I think are many others8221 The new sanctions include Russian intelligence services the Federal Security Service FSB and Main Intelligence Directorate GRU and six individuals working on behalf of the GRU Thursday8217s action blocks all property of those targeted that is subject to US jurisdiction and prohibits American citizens from engaging in transactions with them Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin one of those indicted by Mueller and hit with sanctions on Thursday said in comments cited by RIA news agency that he already had been hit with US sanctions 8220maybe three or four times I8217m tired of counting8221 8220I8217m not worried by this8221 Prigozhin was quoted as saying 8220Except that now I will stop going to McDonald8217s8221 Reporting by Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu Additional reporting by Dustin Volz Timothy Gardner Lesley Wroughton Warren Strobel and James Oliphant in Washington Guy Faulconbridge and Estelle Shirbon in London and Polina Ivanova in Moscow Editing by Mary Milliken Will Dunham and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters A Japanese Nobelwinning chemist was discovered wandering in rural Northern Illinois and his wife found dead nearby some nine hours after they had been reported missing from their home 200 miles away police said on Wednesday Nobel Prize winner Eiichi Negishi 82 was transported to a local hospital for treatment after he was spotted walking near Rockford Illinois at 5 am on Tuesday the Ogle County Sheriff8217s Department officials said in a written statement Deputies later found the couple8217s car and the body of his wife Sumire Negishi at the nearby Ochard Hills Landfill the sheriff8217s department said Rockford is about 100 miles west of Chicago Slideshow 2 Images An autopsy was pending on the body of Sumire Negishi but foul play was not suspected in her death the sheriff8217s department said No information was released on the condition of EiIchi Negishi The couple was reported missing to the Indiana State Police at about 8 pm central time on Monday They were last seen at their home in West Lafayette near the Purdue University campus where EiIchi is a professor of chemistry The scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010 Reporting by Dan Whitcomb Editing by Michael Perry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters US President Donald Trump has decided to replace his national security adviser HR McMaster but the move is not expected to be made immediately the Washington Post reported on Thursday National Security Adviser HR McMaster speaks at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington US March 15 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Citing five people with knowledge of the plans the Post said Trump was considering several possible replacements including former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Keith Kellogg the chief of staff of the National Security Council The White House did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment On Tuesday Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the president has signaled in recent days that a shakeup at the top levels of his administration was not over FILE PHOTO National security adviser Lt Gen HR McMaster waits to be introduced at the FDD National Security Summit in Washington DC US October 19 2017 REUTERSYuri GripasFile Photo 8220I8217m really at a point where we8217re getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things that I want8221 Trump told reporters after Tillerson was fired McMaster is not expected to be ousted immediately the Post reported Trump is willing to take his time making the change to avoid humiliating McMaster and carefully choose a strong replacement the Post said FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump at the 12th East Asia Summit in Manila Philippines November 14 2017 Seen next to Trump are US National Security Advisor HR McMaster R and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson C REUTERSJonathan ErnstFile Photo Trump never personally gelled with McMaster and the president recently told White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that he wanted McMaster replaced according to the Post Trump has complained that McMaster a threestar Army general is too rigid and that his briefings go on too long and seem irrelevant the Post reported McMaster is Trump8217s second national security adviser succeeding Michael Flynn who was dismissed a year ago for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States Reporting by Eric Beech Editing by Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Senior U.S. congressional Democrats asked social media companies on Tuesday to investigate reported actions by automated Russia-linked accounts in connection with a Republican memorandum said to be critical of Robert Mueller&#8217;s probe of President Donald Trump&#8217;s ties with Russia.</p> <p>Senator Dianne Feinstein, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, wrote to Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc requesting an &#8220;in-depth forensic examination.&#8221; (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Editing by Franklin Paul)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Americans galvanized by last month&#8217;s Florida school massacre rallied on Saturday at nationwide March For Our Lives protests led by students demanding tighter gun laws.</p> <p>Carrying signs with slogans including &#8220;If they choose guns over our kids, vote them out,&#8221; protesters in Washington jammed Pennsylvania Avenue as students from the Parkland, Florida, high school where 17 people were killed called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue.</p> <p>The massive rallies aim to break a legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become frighteningly common.</p> <p>&#8220;Politicians: either represent the people or get out. Stand with us or beware, the voters are coming,&#8221; Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old junior at the high school, told the crowd.</p> <p>Another Parkland survivor, David Hogg, said the sun was shining on a new day. &#8220;You can hear the people in power shaking,&#8221; he said to loud applause.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians, but as Americans. Because this - this - is not cutting it,&#8221; he said, pointing at the white-domed Capitol. &#8220;We can and we will change the world!&#8221;</p> <p>Television images showed youthful marchers filling streets in cities across the United States including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis and New York.</p> <p>More than 800 demonstrations were set to take place in the United States and around the world, according to coordinators, with sister events taking place as far afield as London, Mauritius and Stockholm.</p> <p>Organizers want the U.S. Congress, many of whose members are up for re-election in November, to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers. On the other side of the debate, gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms.</p> <p>In Los Angeles, marcher Carly Dutcher, a high school freshman from Studio City, California, said she was shocked when a theater teacher showed her and her classmates how they could pull a tampon dispenser off a bathroom wall and use it to battle a school shooter.</p> <p>&#8220;Regardless if I can vote or not, it (gun violence) is the most important issue affecting me and the most important issue in the country right now,&#8221; Dutcher said.</p> Protesters hold photos of victims of school shootings during a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in New York City, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton &#8216;THIS IS THE NORM FOR US&#8217; <p>At a rally near New York&#8217;s Central Park, a moment of silence was held for the Parkland victims. The accused gunman, 19-year-old former Marjory Stoneman student Nikolas Cruz, faces the death penalty if convicted on multiple murder charges.</p> <p>Pop star Paul McCartney was among the marchers, telling CNN he had a personal stake in gun control. &#8220;One of my best friends was shot not far from here,&#8221; he said, referring to Beatles bandmate John Lennon, who was gunned down near the park in 1980.</p> <p>Jack Graziano, a 16-year-old junior from Long Island&#8217;s Massapequa High School, said he wanted gun violence to end so his own children would not have to suffer it.</p> <p>&#8220;Anybody who&#8217;s in high school right now has been growing up on school violence,&#8221; he said. &#8220;As awful as it sounds, this is the norm for us.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (30 Images) <p>Taking aim at the National Rifle Association gun lobby, teenagers chanted, &#8220;Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids have you killed today?&#8221;</p> <p>The youthful U.S. organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities, with singer Demi Lovato and &#8220;Hamilton&#8221; creator Lin-Manuel Miranda among those performing in Washington.</p> <p>&#8220;Trainwreck&#8221; star Amy Schumer is set to appear at the Los Angeles rally. Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife, Amal, have donated $500,000 and said they would be at the Washington rally.</p> <p>On Friday, Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>Democrats and nonpartisan groups hope to register at least 25,000 first-time voters at the rallies, potentially a boost for Democrats, who generally favor stricter gun controls.</p> <p>White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded &#8220;the many courageous young Americans&#8221; exercising their free-speech rights on Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president&#8217;s,&#8221; said Walters, noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban &#8220;bump stock&#8221; devices that let semi-automatic weapons fire like a machine gun.</p> <p>Former president Barack Obama said on Twitter that he and his wife Michelle were inspired by all the young people who made the marches happen.</p> <p>&#8220;Keep at it. You&#8217;re leading us forward. Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change,&#8221; Obama said.</p> <p>Reporting by Ian Simpson, Lacey Johnson, Katanga Johnson and Lauren Young in Washington, Alice Popovici in New York, Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles, and Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach; Editing by Daniel Wallis and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - France was in mourning on Saturday for a French security officer who died from gunshot wounds after voluntarily taking the place of a female hostage during a supermarket siege by an Islamist militant.</p> <p>Arnaud Beltrame, 44, a gendarme who once served in Iraq, had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after being shot by the gunman during the siege at the Super U store in the southwestern town of Trebes near the Pyrenees mountains.</p> <p>His actions were described as heroic by politicians across the political spectrum and calls for a national tribute increased on social media networks.</p> <p>&#8220;He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist,&#8221; President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, not far from Trebes, the tranquil town of about 5,000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon.</p> <p>Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.</p> <p>The attacker, whose rampage began when he fired on a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole, killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday, according to a government readout.</p> <p>Beltrame&#8217;s death took the number killed to four.</p> <p>He was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene. Most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit.</p> <p>He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding, whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table, line open. When shots rang out, elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant. Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times.</p> <p>Politicians from the left and right called Beltrame a &#8220;hero&#8221; on Twitter, including opposition leader Laurent Wauquiez, far-right National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen and Olivier Faure, set to become the next Socialist party head.</p> <p>#ArnaudBeltrame was a trending topic on the social network where people expressed their respect and gratitude for the officer, and thoughts for his wife. Several cities, the National Assembly and police stations lowered their flags in his honor.</p> <p>The Grand Mosque of Paris, the largest in the country, said the Muslim community joined in mourning for a man who had &#8220;fallen heroically under the bullets of the terrorist Redouane Lakdim in the exercise of his mission.&#8221;</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed Beltrame&#8217;s courage and sacrifice on Twitter, saying they would never be forgotten.</p> Flowers and messages in tribute to victim are seen in front of the Gendarmerie of Carcassonne, the day after a hostage situation in Trebes, France March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau ARRESTS <p>Police arrested two people as part of the investigation into the attack, one of them a woman connected to Lakdim, on Friday and a 17-year-old man said to be one of his friends overnight, judicial sources said.</p> <p>Searches at the attacker&#8217;s home showed notes referring to Islamic State that appeared to be a will, as well as a phone and a computer, judicial sources said.</p> <p>Investigators also found three improvised explosive devices, a 7.65 millimeter handgun and a hunting knife in the supermarket, the source said.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>The Islamic State (IS) militant group claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron said security services were checking the claim.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump condemned &#8220;the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;We are with you @EmmanuelMacron!&#8221; he added on Twitter.</p> <p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the ultra-hardline group.</p> <p>France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria, where in recent months IS has lost much of a self-proclaimed &#8220;caliphate&#8221; of territory it seized in 2014.</p> <p>One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015 while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice in July 2016.</p> <p>Beltrame was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005. He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris, Macron said.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s assault was the first deadly Islamist attack in France since October 2017, when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him.</p> <p>Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations.</p> <p>The news of Beltrame&#8217;s death was first announced by France&#8217;s interior minister, who said in a Twitter post: &#8220;Dead for his country. France will never forget his heroism, bravery and sacrifice.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Helen Popper</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army on Saturday paused its bombardment of Douma, the last rebel bastion near Damascus, a war monitor said, as insurgents prepared to leave the rest of their former enclave of eastern Ghouta.</p> Syrian army soldiers fire tracer bullets into the air to celebrate their victory outside Harasta in eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki <p>Buses that will carry thousands of fighters, along with their families and other civilians, into exile in northwestern Syria began entering the southern part of eastern Ghouta.</p> <p>It follows the departure of thousands of others on Friday from the town of Harasta in a similar deal for insurgents to depart with light weapons in return for surrendering their territory.</p> <p>The buses queued at a crossing point before moving into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades, debris and unexploded ordnance.</p> <p>Some captives held by the insurgents were released and state television showed them leaving in a minibus.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-ghouta-civilians/russia-says-over-105000-civilians-have-left-syrias-eastern-ghouta-ria-idUSKBN1H00BQ" type="external">Russia says over 105,000 civilians have left Syria's Eastern Ghouta: RIA</a> <p>The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit, state television said. It broadcast pictures of the massive trenches and other fortifications the rebels were leaving behind.</p> <p>It means only Douma is left of the opposition&#8217;s eastern Ghouta enclave which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400,000 people and constituted the rebels&#8217; main stronghold near Damascus.</p> <p>The army offensive to capture it, heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the seven-year conflict with warplanes, helicopters and artillery, has killed more than 1,600 people, said the war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.</p> <p>Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminately - inaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires.</p> <p>Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally Russia, which has helped his air campaign, have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians.</p> Buses are seen entering into rebels Harasta area in eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria March 23, 2018. REUTERS/ Omar Sanadiki EVACUATION <p>About 7,000 fighters, along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad&#8217;s rule, were to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday, rebels and state media said.</p> <p>They will go to Idlib province in the northwest - the destination for many such &#8220;evacuations&#8221; after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years.</p> <p>It will not mean an end to their experience of war. Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week, killing dozens of people.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups. On Saturday, an explosion at a headquarters for al Qaeda&#8217;s former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others.</p> <p>The Britain-based Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish al-Islam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners.</p> <p>Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted, rebels said on Friday. However, rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting.</p> <p>Wael Alwan, spokesman for the Failaq al-Rahman group that was dominant in Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar, was quoted by al-Hadath television on Saturday as saying he did not trust Russia&#8217;s guarantees.</p> <p>A Russian military webcam at the al-Wafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory on Saturday, carrying children and sacks of belongings.</p> <p>Russia&#8217;s military said on Saturday more than 105,000 people had left eastern Ghouta, including over 700 on Saturday.</p> <p>Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters already too full to take them.</p> <p>Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dale Hudson</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - It might be called Cappuccino Catholicism.</p> Casey Kretsch, 20, from Minnesota, a pilgrim attending the World Meeting of Families, signs a poster drawing of Pope Francis, by artist Mark Gaines, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 23, 2015. REUTERS/Mark Makela <p>Young Catholics told their Church elders on Saturday that the faith should be spread in the places where they like to hang out, such as coffee bars.</p> <p>&#8220;We would like the Church to meet us in the various places in which she currently has little or no presence,&#8221; reads part of a 12-page document written by some 300 young Catholic delegates from around the world, who met for a week at the Vatican.</p> <p>&#8220;The Church should try to find creative new ways to encounter people where they are comfortable and where they naturally socialize: bars, coffee shops, parks, gyms, stadiums and any other popular cultural centers,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>The delegates met in Rome to share their ideas and concerns with Vatican officials ahead of a synod, or meeting of bishops, in October, on the theme of &#8220;Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment&#8221;.</p> <p>At a news conference presenting the paper, which will feed into a larger working document to be used by the bishops, participants said they wanted their Church to be more open and transparent and less severe.</p> <p>The document called for a greater role for women in the Church, which bars them from the priesthood.</p> FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis uses a tablet to register for Panama 2019 World Youth Day during the Angelus prayer in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, Feb. 11, 2018. REUTERS/Max Rossi/File Photo <p>&#8220;What are the places where women can flourish within the Church and society? The Church can approach these problems with real discussion and open-mindedness to different ideas and experiences,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>&#8220;If it is difficult for young people to feel a sense of belonging and leadership in the Church, it is much more so for young women,&#8221; the document said.</p> FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis is greeted by youth as he arrives to lead his Wednesday General Audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, Feb. 14, 2018. REUTERS/Alberto Lingria/File Photo <p>They said they wanted to &#8220;encourage the Church to deepen its understanding of the role of women and to empower</p> <p>young women ...&#8221;</p> <p>Earlier this month, Catholic women led by former Irish president Mary McAleese, demanded a greater decision-making role for women in the Church, urging the pope to tear down its &#8220;walls of misogyny&#8221;.</p> <p>The document said the 1.2 billion-member Church &#8220;oftentimes appears as too severe and is often associated with excessive moralism&#8221;. It called for a Church that is &#8220;welcoming and merciful ... and which loves everyone, even those who are not</p> <p>following the perceived standards&#8221;.</p> <p>Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Andrew Bolton</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Key U.S. Democrats want social media companies to investigate Russia-linked accounts Massive crowds rally across U.S. to urge tighter gun controls France mourns 'hero' officer who took place of hostage in attack As Syrian rebels quit Ghouta, Douma stands alone The Catholic Church - coming to a Starbucks near you?

https://reuters.com/article/usa-trump-russia-congress/key-us-democrats-want-social-media-companies-to-investigate-russia-linked-accounts-idUSL2N1PI130

2018-01-23

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WASHINGTON Jan 23 Reuters Senior US congressional Democrats asked social media companies on Tuesday to investigate reported actions by automated Russialinked accounts in connection with a Republican memorandum said to be critical of Robert Mueller8217s probe of President Donald Trump8217s ties with Russia Senator Dianne Feinstein a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Representative Adam Schiff the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee wrote to Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc requesting an 8220indepth forensic examination8221 Reporting by Patricia Zengerle Editing by Franklin Paul Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONPARKLAND Fla Reuters Hundreds of thousands of Americans galvanized by last month8217s Florida school massacre rallied on Saturday at nationwide March For Our Lives protests led by students demanding tighter gun laws Carrying signs with slogans including 8220If they choose guns over our kids vote them out8221 protesters in Washington jammed Pennsylvania Avenue as students from the Parkland Florida high school where 17 people were killed called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue The massive rallies aim to break a legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one on Feb 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become frighteningly common 8220Politicians either represent the people or get out Stand with us or beware the voters are coming8221 Cameron Kasky a 17yearold junior at the high school told the crowd Another Parkland survivor David Hogg said the sun was shining on a new day 8220You can hear the people in power shaking8221 he said to loud applause 8220We8217re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians but as Americans Because this this is not cutting it8221 he said pointing at the whitedomed Capitol 8220We can and we will change the world8221 Television images showed youthful marchers filling streets in cities across the United States including Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago Los Angeles Miami Minneapolis and New York More than 800 demonstrations were set to take place in the United States and around the world according to coordinators with sister events taking place as far afield as London Mauritius and Stockholm Organizers want the US Congress many of whose members are up for reelection in November to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers On the other side of the debate gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms In Los Angeles marcher Carly Dutcher a high school freshman from Studio City California said she was shocked when a theater teacher showed her and her classmates how they could pull a tampon dispenser off a bathroom wall and use it to battle a school shooter 8220Regardless if I can vote or not it gun violence is the most important issue affecting me and the most important issue in the country right now8221 Dutcher said Protesters hold photos of victims of school shootings during a March For Our Lives demonstration demanding gun control in New York City US March 24 2018 REUTERSShannon Stapleton 8216THIS IS THE NORM FOR US8217 At a rally near New York8217s Central Park a moment of silence was held for the Parkland victims The accused gunman 19yearold former Marjory Stoneman student Nikolas Cruz faces the death penalty if convicted on multiple murder charges Pop star Paul McCartney was among the marchers telling CNN he had a personal stake in gun control 8220One of my best friends was shot not far from here8221 he said referring to Beatles bandmate John Lennon who was gunned down near the park in 1980 Jack Graziano a 16yearold junior from Long Island8217s Massapequa High School said he wanted gun violence to end so his own children would not have to suffer it 8220Anybody who8217s in high school right now has been growing up on school violence8221 he said 8220As awful as it sounds this is the norm for us8221 Slideshow 30 Images Taking aim at the National Rifle Association gun lobby teenagers chanted 8220Hey hey NRA how many kids have you killed today8221 The youthful US organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities with singer Demi Lovato and 8220Hamilton8221 creator LinManuel Miranda among those performing in Washington 8220Trainwreck8221 star Amy Schumer is set to appear at the Los Angeles rally Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife Amal have donated 500000 and said they would be at the Washington rally On Friday Trump signed a 13 trillion spending bill that includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence Democrats and nonpartisan groups hope to register at least 25000 firsttime voters at the rallies potentially a boost for Democrats who generally favor stricter gun controls White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded 8220the many courageous young Americans8221 exercising their freespeech rights on Saturday 8220Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president8217s8221 said Walters noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban 8220bump stock8221 devices that let semiautomatic weapons fire like a machine gun Former president Barack Obama said on Twitter that he and his wife Michelle were inspired by all the young people who made the marches happen 8220Keep at it You8217re leading us forward Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change8221 Obama said Reporting by Ian Simpson Lacey Johnson Katanga Johnson and Lauren Young in Washington Alice Popovici in New York Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles and Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach Editing by Daniel Wallis and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters France was in mourning on Saturday for a French security officer who died from gunshot wounds after voluntarily taking the place of a female hostage during a supermarket siege by an Islamist militant Arnaud Beltrame 44 a gendarme who once served in Iraq had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after being shot by the gunman during the siege at the Super U store in the southwestern town of Trebes near the Pyrenees mountains His actions were described as heroic by politicians across the political spectrum and calls for a national tribute increased on social media networks 8220He fell as a hero giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist8221 President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday Friday8217s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim a 25yearold Moroccanborn French national from the city of Carcassonne not far from Trebes the tranquil town of about 5000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon Lakdim was known to authorities for drugdealing and other petty crimes but had also been under surveillance by security services in 20162017 for links to the radical Salafist movement Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday The attacker whose rampage began when he fired on a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday according to a government readout Beltrame8217s death took the number killed to four He was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene Most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table line open When shots rang out elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times Politicians from the left and right called Beltrame a 8220hero8221 on Twitter including opposition leader Laurent Wauquiez farright National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen and Olivier Faure set to become the next Socialist party head ArnaudBeltrame was a trending topic on the social network where people expressed their respect and gratitude for the officer and thoughts for his wife Several cities the National Assembly and police stations lowered their flags in his honor The Grand Mosque of Paris the largest in the country said the Muslim community joined in mourning for a man who had 8220fallen heroically under the bullets of the terrorist Redouane Lakdim in the exercise of his mission8221 British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed Beltrame8217s courage and sacrifice on Twitter saying they would never be forgotten Flowers and messages in tribute to victim are seen in front of the Gendarmerie of Carcassonne the day after a hostage situation in Trebes France March 24 2018 REUTERSRegis Duvignau ARRESTS Police arrested two people as part of the investigation into the attack one of them a woman connected to Lakdim on Friday and a 17yearold man said to be one of his friends overnight judicial sources said Searches at the attacker8217s home showed notes referring to Islamic State that appeared to be a will as well as a phone and a computer judicial sources said Investigators also found three improvised explosive devices a 765 millimeter handgun and a hunting knife in the supermarket the source said Slideshow 6 Images The Islamic State IS militant group claimed responsibility for the attack Macron said security services were checking the claim US President Donald Trump condemned 8220the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support8221 8220We are with you EmmanuelMacron8221 he added on Twitter More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the ultrahardline group France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria where in recent months IS has lost much of a selfproclaimed 8220caliphate8221 of territory it seized in 2014 One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015 while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice in July 2016 Beltrame was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005 He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris Macron said Friday8217s assault was the first deadly Islamist attack in France since October 2017 when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations The news of Beltrame8217s death was first announced by France8217s interior minister who said in a Twitter post 8220Dead for his country France will never forget his heroism bravery and sacrifice8221 Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry Editing by Mark Heinrich and Helen Popper Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIRUT Reuters The Syrian army on Saturday paused its bombardment of Douma the last rebel bastion near Damascus a war monitor said as insurgents prepared to leave the rest of their former enclave of eastern Ghouta Syrian army soldiers fire tracer bullets into the air to celebrate their victory outside Harasta in eastern Ghouta in Damascus Syria March 23 2018 REUTERSOmar Sanadiki Buses that will carry thousands of fighters along with their families and other civilians into exile in northwestern Syria began entering the southern part of eastern Ghouta It follows the departure of thousands of others on Friday from the town of Harasta in a similar deal for insurgents to depart with light weapons in return for surrendering their territory The buses queued at a crossing point before moving into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades debris and unexploded ordnance Some captives held by the insurgents were released and state television showed them leaving in a minibus Related Coverage Russia says over 105000 civilians have left Syrias Eastern Ghouta RIA The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit state television said It broadcast pictures of the massive trenches and other fortifications the rebels were leaving behind It means only Douma is left of the opposition8217s eastern Ghouta enclave which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400000 people and constituted the rebels8217 main stronghold near Damascus The army offensive to capture it heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the sevenyear conflict with warplanes helicopters and artillery has killed more than 1600 people said the war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminately inaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires Syrian President Bashar alAssad and his close ally Russia which has helped his air campaign have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians Buses are seen entering into rebels Harasta area in eastern Ghouta in Damascus Syria March 23 2018 REUTERS Omar Sanadiki EVACUATION About 7000 fighters along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad8217s rule were to leave the towns of Zamalka Arbin Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday rebels and state media said They will go to Idlib province in the northwest the destination for many such 8220evacuations8221 after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years It will not mean an end to their experience of war Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week killing dozens of people Slideshow 2 Images Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups On Saturday an explosion at a headquarters for al Qaeda8217s former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others The Britainbased Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish alIslam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted rebels said on Friday However rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting Wael Alwan spokesman for the Failaq alRahman group that was dominant in Zamalka Arbin Ein Terma and Jobar was quoted by alHadath television on Saturday as saying he did not trust Russia8217s guarantees A Russian military webcam at the alWafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory on Saturday carrying children and sacks of belongings Russia8217s military said on Saturday more than 105000 people had left eastern Ghouta including over 700 on Saturday Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters already too full to take them Reporting by Angus McDowall Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dale Hudson Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles VATICAN CITY Reuters It might be called Cappuccino Catholicism Casey Kretsch 20 from Minnesota a pilgrim attending the World Meeting of Families signs a poster drawing of Pope Francis by artist Mark Gaines in Philadelphia Pennsylvania September 23 2015 REUTERSMark Makela Young Catholics told their Church elders on Saturday that the faith should be spread in the places where they like to hang out such as coffee bars 8220We would like the Church to meet us in the various places in which she currently has little or no presence8221 reads part of a 12page document written by some 300 young Catholic delegates from around the world who met for a week at the Vatican 8220The Church should try to find creative new ways to encounter people where they are comfortable and where they naturally socialize bars coffee shops parks gyms stadiums and any other popular cultural centers8221 it said The delegates met in Rome to share their ideas and concerns with Vatican officials ahead of a synod or meeting of bishops in October on the theme of 8220Young People the Faith and Vocational Discernment8221 At a news conference presenting the paper which will feed into a larger working document to be used by the bishops participants said they wanted their Church to be more open and transparent and less severe The document called for a greater role for women in the Church which bars them from the priesthood FILE PHOTO Pope Francis uses a tablet to register for Panama 2019 World Youth Day during the Angelus prayer in Saint Peters Square at the Vatican Feb 11 2018 REUTERSMax RossiFile Photo 8220What are the places where women can flourish within the Church and society The Church can approach these problems with real discussion and openmindedness to different ideas and experiences8221 it said 8220If it is difficult for young people to feel a sense of belonging and leadership in the Church it is much more so for young women8221 the document said FILE PHOTO Pope Francis is greeted by youth as he arrives to lead his Wednesday General Audience in Saint Peters Square at the Vatican Feb 14 2018 REUTERSAlberto LingriaFile Photo They said they wanted to 8220encourage the Church to deepen its understanding of the role of women and to empower young women 8221 Earlier this month Catholic women led by former Irish president Mary McAleese demanded a greater decisionmaking role for women in the Church urging the pope to tear down its 8220walls of misogyny8221 The document said the 12 billionmember Church 8220oftentimes appears as too severe and is often associated with excessive moralism8221 It called for a Church that is 8220welcoming and merciful and which loves everyone even those who are not following the perceived standards8221 Reporting By Philip Pullella Editing by Andrew Bolton Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>OTTAWA (Reuters) - The NAFTA trade agreement&#8217;s future hangs in the balance this week as negotiators from the United States, Canada and Mexico try to settle major differences over revamping a pact that President Donald Trump has threatened to abandon.</p> FILE PHOTO: Mexico's Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo (L-R), Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer arrive for a trilateral meeting during the third round of NAFTA talks involving the United States, Mexico and Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo <p>Senior officials from the three nations will meet in Montreal for a week starting on Tuesday in the sixth and penultimate round of talks to modernize the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.</p> <p>Trump, who entered office last year pledging to undo what he described as disastrous trade deals, has portrayed NAFTA as grossly unfair to the United States and its workers.</p> <p>Canada and Mexico, which initially dismissed most of Washington&#8217;s demands as unworkable, now say there is room to maneuver. But that still may not be enough to satisfy Trump and impatient U.S. officials.</p> <p>U.S. threats to walk away from NAFTA, which underpins much of the more than $1 trillion in annual trilateral trade among the three nations, have put markets on edge. The talks are supposed to wrap up by the end of March to avoid clashing with Mexico&#8217;s general elections in July.</p> <p>Trump, who blames NAFTA for killing off hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs and says it has led to a large U.S. trade deficit with Mexico, tweeted last Thursday that &#8220;NAFTA is a bad joke!&#8221;</p> <p>Over the last 10 days the Republican president has generated confusion by indicating that he might extend the deadline for talks while saying that walking away from the table would be the best idea.</p> <p>A council advising Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on NAFTA has concluded that Washington is most likely to announce that it wants out of the pact. It met with Freeland, who says a positive result is still quite possible, last week.</p> <p>&#8220;There is still a shred of optimism, but I have to say the consensus around the room ... felt like it&#8217;s not if, it&#8217;s when he&#8217;s going to pull the plug,&#8221; Rona Ambrose, a council member and former Canadian minister, told CTV television.</p> <p>Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne stressed that Ottawa will not compromise its economic interests.</p> <p>&#8220;Canada will not accept proposals that would be harmful to our economy and to Canadians,&#8221; he said in a speech in Montreal on Monday.</p> <p>Nevertheless, a large majority of economists polled by Reuters are betting the treaty will be renegotiated successfully with only marginal changes.</p> <p>Freeland met Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo in Toronto on Monday to iron out details of the negotiations, and they agreed it will be critical to tackle some of the most complicated issues, Mexico&#8217;s Economy Ministry said in a statement.</p> CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM <p>Canada and Mexico initially said they would not even discuss U.S. demands to set minimum levels of North American content for the auto sector, a clause that would terminate the deal if it is not renegotiated every five years, and to end the so-called Chapter 19 dispute mechanism.</p> <p>Sources close to the talks say Canada and Mexico will now be more flexible on the auto content and dispute resolution issues.</p> FILE PHOTO: Flags are pictured during the fifth round of NAFTA talks involving the United States, Mexico and Canada, in Mexico City, Mexico, November 19, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo <p>&#8220;We have got areas we are going to fight for, obviously, but that doesn&#8217;t mean we can&#8217;t be creative, nimble, clever,&#8221; said one Canadian source familiar with Ottawa&#8217;s strategy.</p> <p>&#8220;There can be very strong lines (in the sand) ... it&#8217;s not to say you don&#8217;t talk around them. Sometimes you find creative ways without necessarily compromising,&#8221; said the source, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.</p> <p>In Mexico, some of the pessimism palpable in late December has given way to cautious optimism that progress towards a deal is possible in Montreal if the Trump administration is prepared to give ground on its toughest proposals.</p> <p>Jaime Zabludovsky, one of the Mexican negotiators of the original NAFTA accord and an adviser to the private sector on the current talks, said the negotiations in Montreal would be a decisive test of the countries&#8217; ability to make progress.</p> <p>&#8220;I think we&#8217;re at a make-or-break moment,&#8221; he said in an interview.</p> <p>One Mexican source familiar with the process said he expected further talks through March and mentioned the possibility that final discussions could, if necessary, be postponed until after the Mexican elections.</p> <p>Despite a U.S. government shutdown, Washington will send a team to the Montreal talks, a Trump administration source said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Christian Plumb and Paul Simao</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - The number of finance jobs to be shifted out of Britain or created overseas by March 2019 due to Brexit has dropped by half compared to six months ago to 5,000 roles, firms employing the bulk of UK-based workers in international finance told Reuters.</p> <p>A Reuters survey of 119 firms, following up on a survey published in September 2017, also found that Paris has overtaken Frankfurt as the most popular destination for the new roles.</p> <p>Some banks lowered the estimates for jobs they need to move as they consider more carefully how much of their operations they will need in the European Union if Britain loses access to the bloc's single market, the survey found. (For a graphic on Brexit and the City, click <a href="https://tmsnrt.rs/2zzQOfC" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2zzQOfC</a>)</p> <p>A more conciliatory tone toward the finance sectors from British Prime Minister Theresa May&#8217;s government and progress in talks with the EU have also had an effect.</p> <p>The findings suggest London will comfortably remain Europe&#8217;s largest financial centre, at least in the short term, boosting supporters of leaving the EU, who say the threat of job losses from one of Britain&#8217;s biggest industries was exaggerated.</p> <p>Executives and politicians predicted a mass exodus of finance jobs from London to rival centres in continental Europe after Britain voted to quit the EU in the summer of 2016.</p> <p>&#8220;The idea of London&#8217;s demise was overdone because it will retain most of the advantages that made it a great financial centre,&#8221; said Peter Hahn, a professor of banking at the London Institute of Banking and Finance.</p> <p>The September survey, which found that they planned to move or create 10,000 jobs on the continent by Brexit Day on March 29, 2019, was also as at the lower end of estimates by industry lobby groups and financial firms.</p> <p>The Bank of England later validated the number.</p> <p>The future of London as Europe&#8217;s financial centre is one of the biggest issues in Brexit talks because it is Britain&#8217;s largest export sector and biggest source of tax. Rival cities within the bloc are battling to draw highly-paid banking jobs and the revenues they bring.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/uk-britain-eu-city-jobs-factbox/factbox-reuters-surveys-uk-financial-services-jobs-post-brexit-idUSKBN1H411Q" type="external">Factbox - Reuters surveys UK financial services jobs post-Brexit</a> <p>International finance firms are building up operations in the EU to ensure they can continue to serve clients if their London operations lose the ability to operate across the bloc - known as the EU financial &#8220;passport&#8221; - once Britain leaves.</p> <p>The companies surveyed - the biggest or most internationally-focused banks, insurers, asset managers, private equity firms and exchanges in Britain - were responding to questions about their plans in the event of a so-called &#8220;hard&#8221; Brexit, where the UK would leave not only the EU but also the single market and Customs Union.</p> <p>Britain and the EU agreed on March 19 to a transition period of 21 months to give time for talks on future trade ties. The deal eases concerns about a hard Brexit but must still be approved by parliament in a vote expected later this year.</p> <p>Canvassing was conducted by email and telephone interviews between Feb. 9 and March 22, just shy of a year before Britain is due to leave.</p> <p>A total of 164 firms were approached, and 119 participated versus 123 in September. A handful of asset managers, exchanges and insurers who responded in September didn&#8217;t respond this time or declined to comment, while a few insurers and asset managers were included for the first time.</p> <p>More than half of the companies surveyed told Reuters they would have to move staff or restructure their businesses because of Brexit. Another quarter said it would have no impact, and the remainder said they didn&#8217;t know or were still mulling over their plans.</p> SHRINKING PROJECTIONS <p>Several banks said they had scaled back their estimates since the last survey was published.</p> <p>Deutsche Bank, which had originally examined moving up to 4,000 staff from London, will now initially shift less than 200 jobs, according to the survey.</p> <p>UBS plans to move 200 staff to Frankfurt from London after previously indicating as many as 1,500 jobs would move, the survey shows.</p> <p>Goldman Sachs, which had considered moving about 1,000 people, now expects to move fewer than 500, it found.</p> <p>The survey indicated 4,798 banking roles would be affected. Many of those would be shifted out of the UK, but some would be new roles in Europe, the executives surveyed said.</p> <p>As in the previous survey, most respondents said bigger moves could be in store in a decade or more, however.</p> <p>&#8220;I doubt there will be a mass migration overnight, but my guess is in 5, if not 10 years, London will be down quite a lot,&#8221; said one executive at a large U.S. bank, who asked not to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the press.</p> <p>&#8220;London was the only game in town, at least in Europe, and now it won&#8217;t be.&#8221;</p> <p>Twenty-five of the 40 banks who said they would make changes to their business as a result of Brexit said they have taken steps such as applying for licences, hiring more office space elsewhere in Europe or moving some contracts with clients to cities in the EU.</p> <p>Only eight of the banks said they have started moving staff or hiring employees locally to bolster their European operations because of Brexit.</p> <p>Most executives said moving staff or assets would be one of the last steps they take in their relocation plans.</p> <p>Although most firms responded before the transition deal was announced, a question was included in the survey about how the firms would cope in the event of such an agreement.</p> <p>The majority of banks responded that it wouldn&#8217;t make any difference to their plans because it doesn&#8217;t clarify anything and is still vulnerable to any number of political scenarios, including the potential collapse of May&#8217;s government.</p> <p>There was a small rise in the number of insurance companies planning to move staff or create jobs overseas, according to the survey.</p> <p>Insurance companies said they planned to move or create 173 jobs overseas, up from 98 in the previous Reuters survey, and the asset management sector plans to move 304 roles.</p> <p>Previous forecasts for job losses in a hard Brexit scenario have ranged from about 30,000 roles, estimated by the Brussels-based Bruegel research group, to up to 75,000 by Oliver Wyman and as many as 232,000 by the London Stock Exchange.</p> <p>The timeframe in the Bruegel estimate was up to March 2020, the Oliver Wyman forecast was up to 2022 and the London Stock Exchange&#8217;s was up to 2024.</p> <p>In a surprise development, Paris has emerged as the biggest winner in the fight for London-based banking jobs that may be moved to cities in the EU after Brexit, the survey found.</p> <p>France&#8217;s capital is on course to gain 2,280 roles, the survey showed.</p> <p>The bulk of those are from HSBC, which continues to indicate it may move 1,000 investment jobs despite comments by the head of its investment bank last year that he expected fewer jobs to leave because the chances of a hard Brexit were receding.</p> <p>Many large finance companies were initially deterred by a perception of France as a country of high taxes and strict labor laws, according to executives.</p> FILE PHOTO: A worker walks past office skyscrapers in the City of London financial district, London, Britain, January 25, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo <p>But efforts by President Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker, to woo the industry by making it easier to hire and fire and cutting taxes on salaries, wealth and capital income appeared to be paying off.</p> <p>Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and HSBC were among the firms that are planning to move at least some staff to Paris, the survey shows.</p> <p>Frankfurt was on course to win the second highest number of jobs with 1,420 roles, followed by Dublin with 612 roles and 407 in Luxembourg, the Reuters survey showed.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn in New York, Stephen Jewkes in Milan, Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Jonathan Saul in London; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia and Russia are working on a historic long-term pact that could extend controls over world crude supplies by major exporters for many years.</p> <p>Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Reuters that Riyadh and Moscow were considering a deal to greatly extend a short-term alliance on oil curbs that began in January 2017 after a crash in crude prices.</p> <p>&#8220;We are working to shift from a year-to-year agreement to a 10 to 20 year agreement,&#8221; the crown prince told Reuters in an interview in New York late on Monday.</p> <p>&#8220;We have agreement on the big picture, but not yet on the detail.&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p>Russia, not a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has worked alongside the 14-member group during previous oil gluts, but a 10 to 20 year deal between the two would be unprecedented.</p> <p>Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia recruited Russia and other non-OPEC countries to help drain oversupply when oil prices collapsed to below $30 a barrel in 2016 from over $100 in 2014.</p> <p>Crude has since recovered to $70 but fast-rising output from U.S. shale producers has capped prices.</p> <p>&#8220;This is all about whether the arrangement is a short-term expedient to deal with this particular crisis in the oil market, or whether it reflects a realignment in world oil,&#8221; said oil historian Daniel Yergin, vice chairman at consultancy IHS Markit.</p> <p>&#8220;OPEC countries want to find a way to institutionalize this relationship rather than to have it be a one-shot deal.&#8221;</p> <p>Robert McNally at consultancy Rapidan Energy Group said Riyadh wanted help in breaking the boom-bust cycles that characterize oil markets by capping crude on the upside as well as by helping lift low oil prices.</p> <p>&#8220;History shows that without a long-term, powerful, competent coherent, disciplined swing producer in the oil markets ... you get space-mountain oil prices. Wild volatility of the sort we have seen in the past 10 to 15 years and that Saudi Arabia and Russia do not want to see again,&#8221; McNally said.</p> <p>He said that would require Russia to join Saudi in building spare production capacity to use when prices rise too much.</p> SAUDI, RUSSIA ALLIANCE &#8220;THICKER THAN OIL&#8221; <p>A long-term pact between Moscow and Riyadh would effectively co-opt Russia to the Saudi-led OPEC cartel while strengthening Russia&#8217;s hand in the Middle East where the United States has long been the dominant super-power.</p> <p>News of the potential oil alliance came at a time when the two have been working to cement an economic relationship despite being at odds over the conflict in Syria, where they back opposing sides.</p> <p>Riyadh supports rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s army, while Russian and Iranian forces have backed Assad &#8211; meaning that Russia effectively sides with Iran, Riyadh&#8217;s regional arch-foe.</p> Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman attends the Annual Horse Race ceremony, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 30, 2017. Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS <p>A meeting between the Saudi crown prince and Russian president Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in China in September 2016 was instrumental in bringing Russia on board to support OPEC, non-OPEC oil curbs.</p> <p>Last October, Saudi King Salman became the first Saudi monarch to visit Russia, providing investment and political support for a Russian economy battered by Western sanctions.</p> <p>&#8220;It is a very important strategic development,&#8221; Helima Croft at RBC Capital Markets said of a potential 10 to 20 year Saudi-Russia oil collaboration.</p> <p>&#8220;First, the Crown Prince is making the statement, not the oil minister, one more clear sign that he (like Putin) is the final word on his country&#8217;s oil policy.</p> <p>&#8220;Second it is one more sign of the major reversal in Saudi-Russia relations. Saudi was a staunch cold war ally of the U.S. Now this Russia-Saudi alliance appears to be thicker than oil and seems to be driven by the personal affinity between Putin and MBS,&#8221; said Croft.</p> The Russian flag and the OPEC logo are seen before a news conference in Vienna, Austria, October 24, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger ARAMCO IPO LATE 2018, EARLY 2019 <p>The crown prince predicted that world oil demand would not peak until 2040, despite advances in renewable energy technologies and the electric vehicle.</p> <p>In an attempt to end Saudi Arabia&#8217;s reliance on oil, he is leading a push to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and gas by 2030.</p> <p>Riyadh plans to raise funds through the flotation of a 5 percent stake in state Saudi oil company Aramco. Time is running out for an initial public offering this year but the crown prince said the IPO could still take place at the end of 2018 or in early 2019, depending on financial market conditions.</p> <p>Saudi Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih said last week that documentation was ready but that a venue for the IPO had not yet been decided. The New York stock exchange is still in the running for the IPO, alongside London and Hong Kong, but Falih said there was a risk of a &#8220;frivolous&#8221; legal action if Aramco were listed in the United States.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Stephen Adler, Jessica Resnick-Ault; Editing by Frances Kerry, Toni Reinhold</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

NAFTA's fate uncertain ahead of Montreal round of talks 5,000 UK finance jobs may be moved by Brexit, half earlier forecast - Reuters Exclusive: OPEC, Russia consider 10- to 20-year oil alliance - Saudi Crown Prince

https://reuters.com/article/us-trade-nafta/naftas-fate-uncertain-ahead-of-montreal-round-of-talks-idUSKBN1FB27R

2018-01-22

2least

OTTAWA Reuters The NAFTA trade agreement8217s future hangs in the balance this week as negotiators from the United States Canada and Mexico try to settle major differences over revamping a pact that President Donald Trump has threatened to abandon FILE PHOTO Mexicos Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo LR Canadas Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer arrive for a trilateral meeting during the third round of NAFTA talks involving the United States Mexico and Canada in Ottawa Ontario Canada September 27 2017 REUTERSChris WattieFile Photo Senior officials from the three nations will meet in Montreal for a week starting on Tuesday in the sixth and penultimate round of talks to modernize the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement Trump who entered office last year pledging to undo what he described as disastrous trade deals has portrayed NAFTA as grossly unfair to the United States and its workers Canada and Mexico which initially dismissed most of Washington8217s demands as unworkable now say there is room to maneuver But that still may not be enough to satisfy Trump and impatient US officials US threats to walk away from NAFTA which underpins much of the more than 1 trillion in annual trilateral trade among the three nations have put markets on edge The talks are supposed to wrap up by the end of March to avoid clashing with Mexico8217s general elections in July Trump who blames NAFTA for killing off hundreds of thousands of US manufacturing jobs and says it has led to a large US trade deficit with Mexico tweeted last Thursday that 8220NAFTA is a bad joke8221 Over the last 10 days the Republican president has generated confusion by indicating that he might extend the deadline for talks while saying that walking away from the table would be the best idea A council advising Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on NAFTA has concluded that Washington is most likely to announce that it wants out of the pact It met with Freeland who says a positive result is still quite possible last week 8220There is still a shred of optimism but I have to say the consensus around the room felt like it8217s not if it8217s when he8217s going to pull the plug8221 Rona Ambrose a council member and former Canadian minister told CTV television Canadian Trade Minister FrancoisPhilippe Champagne stressed that Ottawa will not compromise its economic interests 8220Canada will not accept proposals that would be harmful to our economy and to Canadians8221 he said in a speech in Montreal on Monday Nevertheless a large majority of economists polled by Reuters are betting the treaty will be renegotiated successfully with only marginal changes Freeland met Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo in Toronto on Monday to iron out details of the negotiations and they agreed it will be critical to tackle some of the most complicated issues Mexico8217s Economy Ministry said in a statement CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM Canada and Mexico initially said they would not even discuss US demands to set minimum levels of North American content for the auto sector a clause that would terminate the deal if it is not renegotiated every five years and to end the socalled Chapter 19 dispute mechanism Sources close to the talks say Canada and Mexico will now be more flexible on the auto content and dispute resolution issues FILE PHOTO Flags are pictured during the fifth round of NAFTA talks involving the United States Mexico and Canada in Mexico City Mexico November 19 2017 REUTERSEdgard GarridoFile Photo 8220We have got areas we are going to fight for obviously but that doesn8217t mean we can8217t be creative nimble clever8221 said one Canadian source familiar with Ottawa8217s strategy 8220There can be very strong lines in the sand it8217s not to say you don8217t talk around them Sometimes you find creative ways without necessarily compromising8221 said the source who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation In Mexico some of the pessimism palpable in late December has given way to cautious optimism that progress towards a deal is possible in Montreal if the Trump administration is prepared to give ground on its toughest proposals Jaime Zabludovsky one of the Mexican negotiators of the original NAFTA accord and an adviser to the private sector on the current talks said the negotiations in Montreal would be a decisive test of the countries8217 ability to make progress 8220I think we8217re at a makeorbreak moment8221 he said in an interview One Mexican source familiar with the process said he expected further talks through March and mentioned the possibility that final discussions could if necessary be postponed until after the Mexican elections Despite a US government shutdown Washington will send a team to the Montreal talks a Trump administration source said Additional reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City and Lesley Wroughton in Washington Editing by Christian Plumb and Paul Simao Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters The number of finance jobs to be shifted out of Britain or created overseas by March 2019 due to Brexit has dropped by half compared to six months ago to 5000 roles firms employing the bulk of UKbased workers in international finance told Reuters A Reuters survey of 119 firms following up on a survey published in September 2017 also found that Paris has overtaken Frankfurt as the most popular destination for the new roles Some banks lowered the estimates for jobs they need to move as they consider more carefully how much of their operations they will need in the European Union if Britain loses access to the blocs single market the survey found For a graphic on Brexit and the City click tmsnrtrs2zzQOfC A more conciliatory tone toward the finance sectors from British Prime Minister Theresa May8217s government and progress in talks with the EU have also had an effect The findings suggest London will comfortably remain Europe8217s largest financial centre at least in the short term boosting supporters of leaving the EU who say the threat of job losses from one of Britain8217s biggest industries was exaggerated Executives and politicians predicted a mass exodus of finance jobs from London to rival centres in continental Europe after Britain voted to quit the EU in the summer of 2016 8220The idea of London8217s demise was overdone because it will retain most of the advantages that made it a great financial centre8221 said Peter Hahn a professor of banking at the London Institute of Banking and Finance The September survey which found that they planned to move or create 10000 jobs on the continent by Brexit Day on March 29 2019 was also as at the lower end of estimates by industry lobby groups and financial firms The Bank of England later validated the number The future of London as Europe8217s financial centre is one of the biggest issues in Brexit talks because it is Britain8217s largest export sector and biggest source of tax Rival cities within the bloc are battling to draw highlypaid banking jobs and the revenues they bring Related Coverage Factbox Reuters surveys UK financial services jobs postBrexit International finance firms are building up operations in the EU to ensure they can continue to serve clients if their London operations lose the ability to operate across the bloc known as the EU financial 8220passport8221 once Britain leaves The companies surveyed the biggest or most internationallyfocused banks insurers asset managers private equity firms and exchanges in Britain were responding to questions about their plans in the event of a socalled 8220hard8221 Brexit where the UK would leave not only the EU but also the single market and Customs Union Britain and the EU agreed on March 19 to a transition period of 21 months to give time for talks on future trade ties The deal eases concerns about a hard Brexit but must still be approved by parliament in a vote expected later this year Canvassing was conducted by email and telephone interviews between Feb 9 and March 22 just shy of a year before Britain is due to leave A total of 164 firms were approached and 119 participated versus 123 in September A handful of asset managers exchanges and insurers who responded in September didn8217t respond this time or declined to comment while a few insurers and asset managers were included for the first time More than half of the companies surveyed told Reuters they would have to move staff or restructure their businesses because of Brexit Another quarter said it would have no impact and the remainder said they didn8217t know or were still mulling over their plans SHRINKING PROJECTIONS Several banks said they had scaled back their estimates since the last survey was published Deutsche Bank which had originally examined moving up to 4000 staff from London will now initially shift less than 200 jobs according to the survey UBS plans to move 200 staff to Frankfurt from London after previously indicating as many as 1500 jobs would move the survey shows Goldman Sachs which had considered moving about 1000 people now expects to move fewer than 500 it found The survey indicated 4798 banking roles would be affected Many of those would be shifted out of the UK but some would be new roles in Europe the executives surveyed said As in the previous survey most respondents said bigger moves could be in store in a decade or more however 8220I doubt there will be a mass migration overnight but my guess is in 5 if not 10 years London will be down quite a lot8221 said one executive at a large US bank who asked not to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the press 8220London was the only game in town at least in Europe and now it won8217t be8221 Twentyfive of the 40 banks who said they would make changes to their business as a result of Brexit said they have taken steps such as applying for licences hiring more office space elsewhere in Europe or moving some contracts with clients to cities in the EU Only eight of the banks said they have started moving staff or hiring employees locally to bolster their European operations because of Brexit Most executives said moving staff or assets would be one of the last steps they take in their relocation plans Although most firms responded before the transition deal was announced a question was included in the survey about how the firms would cope in the event of such an agreement The majority of banks responded that it wouldn8217t make any difference to their plans because it doesn8217t clarify anything and is still vulnerable to any number of political scenarios including the potential collapse of May8217s government There was a small rise in the number of insurance companies planning to move staff or create jobs overseas according to the survey Insurance companies said they planned to move or create 173 jobs overseas up from 98 in the previous Reuters survey and the asset management sector plans to move 304 roles Previous forecasts for job losses in a hard Brexit scenario have ranged from about 30000 roles estimated by the Brusselsbased Bruegel research group to up to 75000 by Oliver Wyman and as many as 232000 by the London Stock Exchange The timeframe in the Bruegel estimate was up to March 2020 the Oliver Wyman forecast was up to 2022 and the London Stock Exchange8217s was up to 2024 In a surprise development Paris has emerged as the biggest winner in the fight for Londonbased banking jobs that may be moved to cities in the EU after Brexit the survey found France8217s capital is on course to gain 2280 roles the survey showed The bulk of those are from HSBC which continues to indicate it may move 1000 investment jobs despite comments by the head of its investment bank last year that he expected fewer jobs to leave because the chances of a hard Brexit were receding Many large finance companies were initially deterred by a perception of France as a country of high taxes and strict labor laws according to executives FILE PHOTO A worker walks past office skyscrapers in the City of London financial district London Britain January 25 2018 REUTERSToby MelvilleFile Photo But efforts by President Emmanuel Macron a former investment banker to woo the industry by making it easier to hire and fire and cutting taxes on salaries wealth and capital income appeared to be paying off Goldman Sachs Bank of America Morgan Stanley and HSBC were among the firms that are planning to move at least some staff to Paris the survey shows Frankfurt was on course to win the second highest number of jobs with 1420 roles followed by Dublin with 612 roles and 407 in Luxembourg the Reuters survey showed Additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn in New York Stephen Jewkes in Milan Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Jonathan Saul in London Editing by Sonya Hepinstall Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Saudi Arabia and Russia are working on a historic longterm pact that could extend controls over world crude supplies by major exporters for many years Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Reuters that Riyadh and Moscow were considering a deal to greatly extend a shortterm alliance on oil curbs that began in January 2017 after a crash in crude prices 8220We are working to shift from a yeartoyear agreement to a 10 to 20 year agreement8221 the crown prince told Reuters in an interview in New York late on Monday 8220We have agreement on the big picture but not yet on the detail8221amp160 Russia not a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has worked alongside the 14member group during previous oil gluts but a 10 to 20 year deal between the two would be unprecedented Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia recruited Russia and other nonOPEC countries to help drain oversupply when oil prices collapsed to below 30 a barrel in 2016 from over 100 in 2014 Crude has since recovered to 70 but fastrising output from US shale producers has capped prices 8220This is all about whether the arrangement is a shortterm expedient to deal with this particular crisis in the oil market or whether it reflects a realignment in world oil8221 said oil historian Daniel Yergin vice chairman at consultancy IHS Markit 8220OPEC countries want to find a way to institutionalize this relationship rather than to have it be a oneshot deal8221 Robert McNally at consultancy Rapidan Energy Group said Riyadh wanted help in breaking the boombust cycles that characterize oil markets by capping crude on the upside as well as by helping lift low oil prices 8220History shows that without a longterm powerful competent coherent disciplined swing producer in the oil markets you get spacemountain oil prices Wild volatility of the sort we have seen in the past 10 to 15 years and that Saudi Arabia and Russia do not want to see again8221 McNally said He said that would require Russia to join Saudi in building spare production capacity to use when prices rise too much SAUDI RUSSIA ALLIANCE 8220THICKER THAN OIL8221 A longterm pact between Moscow and Riyadh would effectively coopt Russia to the Saudiled OPEC cartel while strengthening Russia8217s hand in the Middle East where the United States has long been the dominant superpower News of the potential oil alliance came at a time when the two have been working to cement an economic relationship despite being at odds over the conflict in Syria where they back opposing sides Riyadh supports rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar alAssad8217s army while Russian and Iranian forces have backed Assad 8211 meaning that Russia effectively sides with Iran Riyadh8217s regional archfoe Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman attends the Annual Horse Race ceremony in Riyadh Saudi Arabia December 30 2017 Bandar AlgaloudCourtesy of Saudi Royal CourtHandout via REUTERS A meeting between the Saudi crown prince and Russian president Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in China in September 2016 was instrumental in bringing Russia on board to support OPEC nonOPEC oil curbs Last October Saudi King Salman became the first Saudi monarch to visit Russia providing investment and political support for a Russian economy battered by Western sanctions 8220It is a very important strategic development8221 Helima Croft at RBC Capital Markets said of a potential 10 to 20 year SaudiRussia oil collaboration 8220First the Crown Prince is making the statement not the oil minister one more clear sign that he like Putin is the final word on his country8217s oil policy 8220Second it is one more sign of the major reversal in SaudiRussia relations Saudi was a staunch cold war ally of the US Now this RussiaSaudi alliance appears to be thicker than oil and seems to be driven by the personal affinity between Putin and MBS8221 said Croft The Russian flag and the OPEC logo are seen before a news conference in Vienna Austria October 24 2016 REUTERSLeonhard Foeger ARAMCO IPO LATE 2018 EARLY 2019 The crown prince predicted that world oil demand would not peak until 2040 despite advances in renewable energy technologies and the electric vehicle In an attempt to end Saudi Arabia8217s reliance on oil he is leading a push to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and gas by 2030 Riyadh plans to raise funds through the flotation of a 5 percent stake in state Saudi oil company Aramco Time is running out for an initial public offering this year but the crown prince said the IPO could still take place at the end of 2018 or in early 2019 depending on financial market conditions Saudi Oil Minister Khalid alFalih said last week that documentation was ready but that a venue for the IPO had not yet been decided The New York stock exchange is still in the running for the IPO alongside London and Hong Kong but Falih said there was a risk of a 8220frivolous8221 legal action if Aramco were listed in the United States Additional reporting by Stephen Adler Jessica ResnickAult Editing by Frances Kerry Toni Reinhold Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>La Verne, California</p> <p>&#8220;The World is not bound by borders ultimately, it is bound by a moral order. If we do not lead by moral force, we are by acquiescence the followers of those who fail to act and subjects of those who impose their will.&#8221; from A Time to Know)</p> <p>Two recent reports issued by the U.S. Department of State, &#8220;Country Reports on Human Rights Practices&#8221; and the &#8220;Report on Global Anti-Semitism,&#8221; deserve attention in light of the Department&#8217;s professed declaration that &#8220;a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been the promotion of respect for human rights, as embodied in the &#8220;Universal Declaration of Human Rights&#8221; promulgated by the United Nations and asserted by the Department as it &#8220;seeks to (a.) Hold governments accountable to their obligations under universal human rights norms and international human rights instruments; (b.) Promote greater respect for human rights, including freedom from torture, freedom of expression, press freedom, women&#8217;s rights, children&#8217;s rights, and the protection of minorities; and &#169;.) Promote the rule of law, seek accountability, and change cultures of impunity.&#8221; (www.state.gov). The &#8220;Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies equally to all humans wherever they live or, as expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. &#8220;Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.&#8221;</p> <p>Should we apply this moral stance to the Department&#8217;s two reports, we Americans face a conundrum: in the words of Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli human rights attorney from Tel Aviv and a reserve sergeant in the Israeli tank corps, &#8220;For years, American taxpayers money has funded the occupation &#173; the torture chambers, the military apparatus, the bulldozers used in house demolitions, the building of settlements and now the construction of the West Bank wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Americans should be held accountable for where their money is going&#8221; (The Nation: 3/16/2005). Our Department of State, despite its more than fifty years of monetary support to Israel, more than that given to any other nation on the planet, does not hold the state of Israel &#8220;accountable to their obligations under universal human rights norms and international human rights instruments,&#8221; nor does it &#8220;promote respect for human rights&#8221; in Israel, or &#8220;freedom from torture,&#8221; nor does it &#8220;promote the rule of law&#8221; regarding Israel&#8217;s wall, and these are only the allegations as noted in Leibowitz&#8217; article. A more thorough review of these reports reveals the Janus face of the Department of State.</p> <p>The &#8220;Report on Global Anti-Semitism,&#8221; released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor on January 5, 2005 notes &#8220;The increasing frequency and severity of anti-Semitic incidents since the start of the 21st century, particularly in Europe, has compelled the international community to focus on anti-Semitism with renewed vigor.&#8221; No analysis is offered to explain why these incidents erupted since 2000. No mention of the Intifada and Israel&#8217;s occupation of Palestine, no mention of the million bullets fired by the IDF in the opening days of the Intifada, a bullet for every Palestinian child according to Noam Chomsky (&#8220;Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Palestinians&#8221; 3/22/05), no mention of the military crackdown in the West Bank or Gaza, the destruction of homes, the torture chambers, the wanton killings of civilians, the checkpoints and humiliation of the indigenous population, or the illegal continued construction of settlements to mention a few items identified interestingly enough in the &#8220;Country Report,&#8221; though buried in an appendix. No mention of the Bush administration&#8217;s rise to power in that year and its acquiescence to Sharon&#8217;s dictates concerning his invasions into Jenin or Rafah, or his adding to the settlements or to the continued construction of the Wall, all items at deviance with the &#8220;Road Map&#8221; designed by the U.S. and its three accomplices. No mention of how the U.S. protects Israel&#8217;s outrages in the UN Security Council, the vetoes it uses to deflect world opinion as it wishes to assert that Israel return to the demands of Resolution 242 and to remove the illegal wall. In short, while the report reflects a renewed anger and frustration against the Israeli state beginning in 2000, it does not address what may have caused this rise in what it terms anti-Semitism; it merely lists the incidents and denies the possibility that people across the globe, including member states of the EU, which it condemns outright, could have as much reason to express resentment and outrage at the government of Israel as they do about the government of George W. Bush.</p> <p>What is anti-Semitism as defined by the Department of State? &#8220;For the purposes of this report, anti-Semitism is considered to be hatred toward Jews &#173; individually and as a group &#173; that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity. An important issue is the distinction between legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel, and commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character. The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparison with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy concerning a controversial issue.&#8221; The Department&#8217;s definition of anti-Semitism resides in the first sentence, &#8220;hatred toward Jews attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity.&#8221; The remaining two sentences attempt to draw a distinction between &#8220;legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel and &#8220;veiled&#8221; hatred that demonizes Israeli leaders especially as they are compared in their behavior to leaders in Nazi Germany.</p> <p>How legitimate is the distinction? If anti-Semitism is hatred expressed against the Jew as a person or against his/her religion or ethnicity, how does criticism of Israeli political and foreign policy, determined by its elected or appointed leaders, fit that definition? When I criticize George W. Bush and various members of his administration for their policies, domestic or foreign, I do not criticize individual Americans for being American nor do I criticize their religions or their ethnicity. If I place Bush&#8217;s National Strategic Security Report objectives, its expressed empirical goals, in context with those of former leaders with visions of empire, including Hitler, I do not criticize an American for being American or convey a veiled hatred for Americans because they voted Bush into office. I criticize, rather, policies that are anathema to democratic principles and America&#8217;s expressed values and morals as a nation. The distinction is at root subterfuge; it forces legitimate criticism of a state&#8217;s political and human rights actions into a category that stops the criticism in its tracks, thus, in effect, legitimizing the undemocratic, illegal, and abusive state actions should they exist.</p> <p>Having made that point, let me extend the analysis even further to explore the rationale behind the use of the term &#8220;anti-Semitism.&#8221; Joseph Massad, Professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, published an article on this very term in Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line, (2004/720/op63.htm) wherein he presented the evolution of the term and its various misunderstandings in different countries of the world. He marks the philological basis of the term, the &#8220;positing of modern European Jews as direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews,&#8221; the identifying of Jews as Semites because their ancestors spoke Hebrew a Semitic language (a mistaken fact since they spoke Aramaic, the language of the Talmud), the subsequent transformation of the Jews into a racial category based on this understanding (as noted in the State Department&#8217;s definition), and the resulting hatred of European anti-Semitism as directed against European Jews. As Massad notes, &#8220;The claims made by many that any manifestations of hatred against Jews in any geographic location on Earth and in any historical period is &#8216;anti-Semitism&#8217; smacks of a gross misunderstanding of the European history of anti-Semitism.&#8221; Yet this is precisely what the State Department definition does; it applies one understanding of anti-Semitism to all peoples everywhere judging their actions as derived from the same context.</p> <p>Noam Chomsky questions even the need for such a document in the United States directed at anti-Semitism, &#8220;You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism, but they are marginal. There&#8217;s plenty of racism, but it&#8217;s directed against Blacks, Latinos, and Arabs that are targets of enormous racism. Those problems are real, but anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It&#8217;s raised (by privileged people) because they want to make sure there&#8217;s no critical look at the policies the US supports in the Middle East&#8221;</p> <p>Given that context, consider the very fact that the State Department has singled out only maligned and discriminated Jews for its report when the world is filled with people who have endured hatred and discrimination worldwide: in Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Iraq, India, East Timor, the United States, and Palestine to name a few, and all since 2000. Should the State Department publish a report identifying hatred and discrimination against the Jews? Yes. Should it also publish a report that identifies such abuse against all others who suffer such animosity, such disrespect, such indignity, such humiliation, such dehumanization, such suffering and death? Yes. Indeed, this is the point. Our State Department declares that it has responsibility to uphold the &#8220;Universal Declaration of Human Rights,&#8221; thus stamping its actions as pluralistic, objective, and sincere. And while the Department issues the &#8220;Country Reports on Human Rights,&#8221; it does not extract from those reports the human rights abuses as they are directed against individuals or groups because of hatred of that group whether perpetrated by leaders of the state or hate groups within the state.</p> <p>Unless our State Department demonstrates its impartiality across the world, it presents to the people of the world a Janus face that claims equality of treatment even as it looks away from those in torment. Dr. Massad closes his piece with these observations: &#8220;Today we live in a world where anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred, derived from anti-Semitism, is everywhere in evidence. It is not Jews who are being murdered by the thousands by Arab anti-Semitism, but rather Arabs and Muslims who are being murdered by the tens of thousands by Euro-American Christian anti-Semitism and by Israeli Jewish anti-SemitismAnti-Semitism is alive and well today worldwide and its major victims are Arabs and Muslims and no longer Jews. The fight should indeed be against all anti-Semitism no matter who the object of its oppression is, Arab or Jew.&#8221;</p> <p>How just have been the efforts of our Department of State as reflected in these documents? Here&#8217;s the wording that characterizes Israel&#8217;s practices regarding human rights as described in the &#8220;Country Report&#8221;: &#8220;The Government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; however, there were some problems in some areas. Some members of the security forces abused Palestinian detainees. The Government detained on security grounds but without charge thousands of persons in Israel. The Government did little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country&#8217;s Arab citizens. The Government did not recognize marriages performed by non-Orthodox rabbis, compelling many citizens to travel abroad to marry. The Government interfered with individual privacy in some instances. Discrimination and societal violence against women persisted. Trafficking in and abuse of women and foreign workers continued to be problems.&#8221; This constitutes the summary paragraph on human rights abuse in Israel.</p> <p>The body of the report identifies the areas of concern that constitute &#8220;Respect for Human Rights.&#8221; For example, section 1 &#8220;Respect for the integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from (a). Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life.&#8221; &#8220;There were no reports,&#8221; according to the report on Israel, &#8220;of politically motivated killings by the Government or its agents during the year.&#8221; And, indeed, there are no listings of politically motivated killings in section (a) of the report. However, if one turns to the &#8220;Appendix&#8221; at the back of the report where Human Rights abuses are reported in the occupied territories, areas ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control (though since 2000, the report indicates, Israeli forces have resumed authority in the greater part of the occupied areas), we find on page 27, under section (g) &#8220;Excessive Force&#8221; the extrajudicial assassinations of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abd al-Azziz al-Rantisi, high ranking political figures of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, and this does not include the 33 innocent bystanders killed as these two political figures were eliminated by missiles and explosives. An oversight? Deception? No other listing in (g) refers to political figures of this sort. There&#8217;s reference to the 800 Palestinians killed during the course of Israeli military operations during the year including 452 innocent Palestinians and another 4,000 wounded. There&#8217;s notation that Israeli forces used tank shells, heavy machine gun rounds, and rockets from aircraft at targets in residential and business neighborhoods. There&#8217;s mention of the Israeli invasion of Rafah and the Human Rights Watch condemnation of Israel&#8217;s destruction of 50% of Rafah&#8217;s roads, water, sewage, and electrical systems. There&#8217;s a litany of dates and deaths, mostly of children: on May 18, two 16 year old kids, on July 6, a university professor, on September 7, a girl sitting in school shot in the head, on September 19, an 11 year old shot and killed while standing in a doorway, on September 28, Human Rights groups listed as many as 130 Palestinians killed and 430 wounded including 26 under the age of 18, on October 5, a 13 year old girl shot and, then, repeatedly shot at close range as she lay in the dust, and on and on through the rest of October, November and into the following year.</p> <p>Here, in an appendix devoted to the only two remaining areas of Palestine left to the indigenous population, buried at the back of the report, not included in the section devoted to the Israeli Government, we find horrendous acts of Human Rights abuse committed by the Government of Israel, some deceptively misplaced, scattered among Palestinian abuses executed by Hamas or the PA. And I would note that the above paragraph is only a sampling of this deception. In each section of item 1, &#8220;Respect for Human Rights,&#8221; &#173; a, Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life; b, Disappearance; c, Torture and Other Cruel Punishment; d, Arbitrary Arrest or Detention; e, Denial of Fair Public Trial; f, Arbitrary Interference with Privacy; g Excessive Force &#173; the Israeli Government&#8217;s acceptance of Human Rights abuses is itemized, by the U.S. Department of State, page after page: Israeli settlers murder of Palestinians; Physicians for Human Rights in Israel reporting on torture, &#8220;techniques prohibited by law,&#8221; used against Palestinian detainees; 8,300 Palestinians held as security prisoners; the admission that &#8220;Israeli military courts rarely acquitted Palestinians of security offenses&#8221;; recognition that virtually no resolution to any allegation of wrongdoing by an Israeli, whether military or settler, has occurred during the year of the report; admission that the Israeli Government has destroyed over 6,900 acres of Palestinian land to construct the illegal wall; and 15,000 Palestinians have been made homeless by demolition. Each and every one of these abuses cry out for action by the Department of State, based on its own declaration, that it will &#8220;hold accountable governments to their obligations under universal human rights and international human rights instruments.&#8221;</p> <p>But there is no action by those who act in our name. I would revert back to Shamai Leibowitz&#8217; admonition, &#8220;Americans should be held accountable for where their money is going.&#8221; But he does not stop there; he offers us a legitimate means of curtailing these abuses to human rights endorsed by our Government: &#8220;According to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 USC &amp;amp;2304), &#8216;No security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.&#8221; The State Department can act, it can stop all sale of arms and military equipment to Israel. It can act in our name; it can turn its shameful face from the mirror of deception and confront the American people openly, forthrightly, and honestly.</p> <p>The moral foundation that supports individual action does not reside in the laws of a state, such laws can be discriminatory and hence unjust; an individual&#8217;s conscience determines obedience to the state dependent on a conscious understanding that all are equal before the law and receive due recognition, respect and dignity as individuals. Neither states, groups or individuals have a right to impose their beliefs on others to achieve their respective ends if those ends incarcerate others, express open hatred of others, wantonly destroy the property of others, physically abuse others even unto death, enslave others, exploit others, or indoctrinate others. Abduction of children into youth armies, indoctrination of youth to be suicide bombers, intentional indoctrination of civilians, exploitation of girls into prostitution, sanctioning torture all belong in this category. States that employ weapons of wanton destruction resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians belong in this category.</p> <p>Morality abides no borders drawn by man; it recognizes the singleness of the soul that gives rights to every human anywhere. The oppressor never willingly withdraws; freedom to live with dignity and respect must be demanded by those opposed to oppression. Our State Department, speaking and acting in our name, must oppose oppression, not condone it, not stand silently in its presence, and not become the oppressor. Our responsibility is to ensure that it acts in accordance with true morality, a morality that applies justice equally to all. Recognition of that reality and acceptance of it requires that we deplore the inhumane acts of savagery used by the fanatical elements in Palestine as well as the fanatical elements in Israel. Our support for justice must engage the Muslim faithful to constructively confront the fringe groups to cease and desist acts contrary to Islamic teaching, and to bring together the powerful moderating voices of the Christian and Jewish faiths to stand against the Zionist zealots in both religions to halt the savagery they inflict on God&#8217;s children.</p> <p>&#8220;If we do not lead by moral force, we are by acquiescence the followers of those who fail to act and subjects of those who impose their will.&#8221;</p> <p>William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His new book, <a href="" type="internal">Psalms for the 21st Century</a>, was published by Mellen Press. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:cookb@ULV.EDU" type="external">cookb@ULV.EDU</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

The Janus Face of the Department of State

https://counterpunch.org/2005/04/09/the-janus-face-of-the-department-of-state/

2005-04-09

4left

La Verne California 8220The World is not bound by borders ultimately it is bound by a moral order If we do not lead by moral force we are by acquiescence the followers of those who fail to act and subjects of those who impose their will8221 from A Time to Know Two recent reports issued by the US Department of State 8220Country Reports on Human Rights Practices8221 and the 8220Report on Global AntiSemitism8221 deserve attention in light of the Department8217s professed declaration that 8220a central goal of US foreign policy has been the promotion of respect for human rights as embodied in the 8220Universal Declaration of Human Rights8221 promulgated by the United Nations and asserted by the Department as it 8220seeks to a Hold governments accountable to their obligations under universal human rights norms and international human rights instruments b Promote greater respect for human rights including freedom from torture freedom of expression press freedom women8217s rights children8217s rights and the protection of minorities and 169 Promote the rule of law seek accountability and change cultures of impunity8221 wwwstategov The 8220Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies equally to all humans wherever they live or as expressed by Martin Luther King Jr 8220Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere8221 Should we apply this moral stance to the Department8217s two reports we Americans face a conundrum in the words of Shamai Leibowitz an Israeli human rights attorney from Tel Aviv and a reserve sergeant in the Israeli tank corps 8220For years American taxpayers money has funded the occupation 173 the torture chambers the military apparatus the bulldozers used in house demolitions the building of settlements and now the construction of the West Bank wall declared illegal by the International Court of Justice ICJ Americans should be held accountable for where their money is going8221 The Nation 3162005 Our Department of State despite its more than fifty years of monetary support to Israel more than that given to any other nation on the planet does not hold the state of Israel 8220accountable to their obligations under universal human rights norms and international human rights instruments8221 nor does it 8220promote respect for human rights8221 in Israel or 8220freedom from torture8221 nor does it 8220promote the rule of law8221 regarding Israel8217s wall and these are only the allegations as noted in Leibowitz8217 article A more thorough review of these reports reveals the Janus face of the Department of State The 8220Report on Global AntiSemitism8221 released by the Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor on January 5 2005 notes 8220The increasing frequency and severity of antiSemitic incidents since the start of the 21st century particularly in Europe has compelled the international community to focus on antiSemitism with renewed vigor8221 No analysis is offered to explain why these incidents erupted since 2000 No mention of the Intifada and Israel8217s occupation of Palestine no mention of the million bullets fired by the IDF in the opening days of the Intifada a bullet for every Palestinian child according to Noam Chomsky 8220AntiSemitism Zionism and the Palestinians8221 32205 no mention of the military crackdown in the West Bank or Gaza the destruction of homes the torture chambers the wanton killings of civilians the checkpoints and humiliation of the indigenous population or the illegal continued construction of settlements to mention a few items identified interestingly enough in the 8220Country Report8221 though buried in an appendix No mention of the Bush administration8217s rise to power in that year and its acquiescence to Sharon8217s dictates concerning his invasions into Jenin or Rafah or his adding to the settlements or to the continued construction of the Wall all items at deviance with the 8220Road Map8221 designed by the US and its three accomplices No mention of how the US protects Israel8217s outrages in the UN Security Council the vetoes it uses to deflect world opinion as it wishes to assert that Israel return to the demands of Resolution 242 and to remove the illegal wall In short while the report reflects a renewed anger and frustration against the Israeli state beginning in 2000 it does not address what may have caused this rise in what it terms antiSemitism it merely lists the incidents and denies the possibility that people across the globe including member states of the EU which it condemns outright could have as much reason to express resentment and outrage at the government of Israel as they do about the government of George W Bush What is antiSemitism as defined by the Department of State 8220For the purposes of this report antiSemitism is considered to be hatred toward Jews 173 individually and as a group 173 that can be attributed to the Jewish religion andor ethnicity An important issue is the distinction between legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel and commentary that assumes an antiSemitic character The demonization of Israel or vilification of Israeli leaders sometimes through comparison with Nazi leaders and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them indicates an antiSemitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy concerning a controversial issue8221 The Department8217s definition of antiSemitism resides in the first sentence 8220hatred toward Jews attributed to the Jewish religion andor ethnicity8221 The remaining two sentences attempt to draw a distinction between 8220legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel and 8220veiled8221 hatred that demonizes Israeli leaders especially as they are compared in their behavior to leaders in Nazi Germany How legitimate is the distinction If antiSemitism is hatred expressed against the Jew as a person or against hisher religion or ethnicity how does criticism of Israeli political and foreign policy determined by its elected or appointed leaders fit that definition When I criticize George W Bush and various members of his administration for their policies domestic or foreign I do not criticize individual Americans for being American nor do I criticize their religions or their ethnicity If I place Bush8217s National Strategic Security Report objectives its expressed empirical goals in context with those of former leaders with visions of empire including Hitler I do not criticize an American for being American or convey a veiled hatred for Americans because they voted Bush into office I criticize rather policies that are anathema to democratic principles and America8217s expressed values and morals as a nation The distinction is at root subterfuge it forces legitimate criticism of a state8217s political and human rights actions into a category that stops the criticism in its tracks thus in effect legitimizing the undemocratic illegal and abusive state actions should they exist Having made that point let me extend the analysis even further to explore the rationale behind the use of the term 8220antiSemitism8221 Joseph Massad Professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University published an article on this very term in AlAhram Weekly OnLine 2004720op63htm wherein he presented the evolution of the term and its various misunderstandings in different countries of the world He marks the philological basis of the term the 8220positing of modern European Jews as direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews8221 the identifying of Jews as Semites because their ancestors spoke Hebrew a Semitic language a mistaken fact since they spoke Aramaic the language of the Talmud the subsequent transformation of the Jews into a racial category based on this understanding as noted in the State Department8217s definition and the resulting hatred of European antiSemitism as directed against European Jews As Massad notes 8220The claims made by many that any manifestations of hatred against Jews in any geographic location on Earth and in any historical period is 8216antiSemitism8217 smacks of a gross misunderstanding of the European history of antiSemitism8221 Yet this is precisely what the State Department definition does it applies one understanding of antiSemitism to all peoples everywhere judging their actions as derived from the same context Noam Chomsky questions even the need for such a document in the United States directed at antiSemitism 8220You find occasional instances of antiSemitism but they are marginal There8217s plenty of racism but it8217s directed against Blacks Latinos and Arabs that are targets of enormous racism Those problems are real but antiSemitism is no longer a problem fortunately It8217s raised by privileged people because they want to make sure there8217s no critical look at the policies the US supports in the Middle East8221 Given that context consider the very fact that the State Department has singled out only maligned and discriminated Jews for its report when the world is filled with people who have endured hatred and discrimination worldwide in Rwanda Darfur Bosnia Iraq India East Timor the United States and Palestine to name a few and all since 2000 Should the State Department publish a report identifying hatred and discrimination against the Jews Yes Should it also publish a report that identifies such abuse against all others who suffer such animosity such disrespect such indignity such humiliation such dehumanization such suffering and death Yes Indeed this is the point Our State Department declares that it has responsibility to uphold the 8220Universal Declaration of Human Rights8221 thus stamping its actions as pluralistic objective and sincere And while the Department issues the 8220Country Reports on Human Rights8221 it does not extract from those reports the human rights abuses as they are directed against individuals or groups because of hatred of that group whether perpetrated by leaders of the state or hate groups within the state Unless our State Department demonstrates its impartiality across the world it presents to the people of the world a Janus face that claims equality of treatment even as it looks away from those in torment Dr Massad closes his piece with these observations 8220Today we live in a world where antiArab and antiMuslim hatred derived from antiSemitism is everywhere in evidence It is not Jews who are being murdered by the thousands by Arab antiSemitism but rather Arabs and Muslims who are being murdered by the tens of thousands by EuroAmerican Christian antiSemitism and by Israeli Jewish antiSemitismAntiSemitism is alive and well today worldwide and its major victims are Arabs and Muslims and no longer Jews The fight should indeed be against all antiSemitism no matter who the object of its oppression is Arab or Jew8221 How just have been the efforts of our Department of State as reflected in these documents Here8217s the wording that characterizes Israel8217s practices regarding human rights as described in the 8220Country Report8221 8220The Government generally respected the human rights of its citizens however there were some problems in some areas Some members of the security forces abused Palestinian detainees The Government detained on security grounds but without charge thousands of persons in Israel The Government did little to reduce institutional legal and societal discrimination against the country8217s Arab citizens The Government did not recognize marriages performed by nonOrthodox rabbis compelling many citizens to travel abroad to marry The Government interfered with individual privacy in some instances Discrimination and societal violence against women persisted Trafficking in and abuse of women and foreign workers continued to be problems8221 This constitutes the summary paragraph on human rights abuse in Israel The body of the report identifies the areas of concern that constitute 8220Respect for Human Rights8221 For example section 1 8220Respect for the integrity of the Person Including Freedom from a Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life8221 8220There were no reports8221 according to the report on Israel 8220of politically motivated killings by the Government or its agents during the year8221 And indeed there are no listings of politically motivated killings in section a of the report However if one turns to the 8220Appendix8221 at the back of the report where Human Rights abuses are reported in the occupied territories areas ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control though since 2000 the report indicates Israeli forces have resumed authority in the greater part of the occupied areas we find on page 27 under section g 8220Excessive Force8221 the extrajudicial assassinations of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abd alAzziz alRantisi high ranking political figures of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas and this does not include the 33 innocent bystanders killed as these two political figures were eliminated by missiles and explosives An oversight Deception No other listing in g refers to political figures of this sort There8217s reference to the 800 Palestinians killed during the course of Israeli military operations during the year including 452 innocent Palestinians and another 4000 wounded There8217s notation that Israeli forces used tank shells heavy machine gun rounds and rockets from aircraft at targets in residential and business neighborhoods There8217s mention of the Israeli invasion of Rafah and the Human Rights Watch condemnation of Israel8217s destruction of 50 of Rafah8217s roads water sewage and electrical systems There8217s a litany of dates and deaths mostly of children on May 18 two 16 year old kids on July 6 a university professor on September 7 a girl sitting in school shot in the head on September 19 an 11 year old shot and killed while standing in a doorway on September 28 Human Rights groups listed as many as 130 Palestinians killed and 430 wounded including 26 under the age of 18 on October 5 a 13 year old girl shot and then repeatedly shot at close range as she lay in the dust and on and on through the rest of October November and into the following year Here in an appendix devoted to the only two remaining areas of Palestine left to the indigenous population buried at the back of the report not included in the section devoted to the Israeli Government we find horrendous acts of Human Rights abuse committed by the Government of Israel some deceptively misplaced scattered among Palestinian abuses executed by Hamas or the PA And I would note that the above paragraph is only a sampling of this deception In each section of item 1 8220Respect for Human Rights8221 173 a Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life b Disappearance c Torture and Other Cruel Punishment d Arbitrary Arrest or Detention e Denial of Fair Public Trial f Arbitrary Interference with Privacy g Excessive Force 173 the Israeli Government8217s acceptance of Human Rights abuses is itemized by the US Department of State page after page Israeli settlers murder of Palestinians Physicians for Human Rights in Israel reporting on torture 8220techniques prohibited by law8221 used against Palestinian detainees 8300 Palestinians held as security prisoners the admission that 8220Israeli military courts rarely acquitted Palestinians of security offenses8221 recognition that virtually no resolution to any allegation of wrongdoing by an Israeli whether military or settler has occurred during the year of the report admission that the Israeli Government has destroyed over 6900 acres of Palestinian land to construct the illegal wall and 15000 Palestinians have been made homeless by demolition Each and every one of these abuses cry out for action by the Department of State based on its own declaration that it will 8220hold accountable governments to their obligations under universal human rights and international human rights instruments8221 But there is no action by those who act in our name I would revert back to Shamai Leibowitz8217 admonition 8220Americans should be held accountable for where their money is going8221 But he does not stop there he offers us a legitimate means of curtailing these abuses to human rights endorsed by our Government 8220According to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 22 USC ampamp2304 8216No security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights8221 The State Department can act it can stop all sale of arms and military equipment to Israel It can act in our name it can turn its shameful face from the mirror of deception and confront the American people openly forthrightly and honestly The moral foundation that supports individual action does not reside in the laws of a state such laws can be discriminatory and hence unjust an individual8217s conscience determines obedience to the state dependent on a conscious understanding that all are equal before the law and receive due recognition respect and dignity as individuals Neither states groups or individuals have a right to impose their beliefs on others to achieve their respective ends if those ends incarcerate others express open hatred of others wantonly destroy the property of others physically abuse others even unto death enslave others exploit others or indoctrinate others Abduction of children into youth armies indoctrination of youth to be suicide bombers intentional indoctrination of civilians exploitation of girls into prostitution sanctioning torture all belong in this category States that employ weapons of wanton destruction resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians belong in this category Morality abides no borders drawn by man it recognizes the singleness of the soul that gives rights to every human anywhere The oppressor never willingly withdraws freedom to live with dignity and respect must be demanded by those opposed to oppression Our State Department speaking and acting in our name must oppose oppression not condone it not stand silently in its presence and not become the oppressor Our responsibility is to ensure that it acts in accordance with true morality a morality that applies justice equally to all Recognition of that reality and acceptance of it requires that we deplore the inhumane acts of savagery used by the fanatical elements in Palestine as well as the fanatical elements in Israel Our support for justice must engage the Muslim faithful to constructively confront the fringe groups to cease and desist acts contrary to Islamic teaching and to bring together the powerful moderating voices of the Christian and Jewish faiths to stand against the Zionist zealots in both religions to halt the savagery they inflict on God8217s children 8220If we do not lead by moral force we are by acquiescence the followers of those who fail to act and subjects of those who impose their will8221 William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California His new book Psalms for the 21st Century was published by Mellen Press He can be reached at cookbULVEDU amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Donald Trump&#8217;s habit of slapping down Mexico is feeding nationalist sentiment in the country&#8217;s presidential election campaign, prompting contenders to defy him and strengthening the hand of the frontrunner, who is courting the anti-establishment vote.</p> FILE PHOTO: Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) speaks during the presentation of his shadow cabinet for the July 2018 presidential election, in Mexico City, Mexico December 14, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo <p>In the past week, the three top contenders for the July election have all said Mexico will not pay for the wall the U.S. president wants to build on the U.S. southern border. None has made the point more forcefully than Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a veteran leftist leading the opinion polls.</p> <p>A victory for Lopez Obrador, who was runner-up in 2006 and 2012, could usher in a more distant and confrontational relationship between the two nations as he promises to lessen Mexico&#8217;s economic dependence on foreign powers.</p> <p>That dependence is strongest with the United States: Mexico sends about 80 percent of its exports to its northern neighbor and the United States has traditionally been the source of the bulk of foreign direct investment. Under Trump, however, Mexican views of the United States have soured.</p> <p>&#8220;Without being disrespectful, we&#8217;re going to put him in his place,&#8221; Lopez Obrador said of Trump on Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico port of Veracruz, the scene of a notorious national humiliation when U.S. forces occupied it in 1914.</p> <p>Earlier that day, Trump told his Twitter followers that Mexico was &#8220;rated the number one most dangerous country in the world.&#8221; Although violence is rising in Mexico, its murder rate remains well below that of several Latin American countries, data compiled by the United Nations and the World Bank show.</p> <p>Lopez Obrador, who said earlier this month he would put an end to what he called puppet governments in Mexico taking instructions &#8220;from abroad,&#8221; promised to hit back against Trump&#8217;s barbs and tell the American &#8220;what I think&#8221; on Twitter.</p> <p>A December survey by polling firm Parametria gave Lopez Obrador an 11 percentage point lead, while another last week by Mitofsky gave him a three point advantage, but growing.</p> Ricardo Anaya, presidential pre-candidate for the National Action Party (PAN), who leads a left-right coalition, addresses supporters during a rally in Huixquilucan, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico in Mexico City, Mexico January 20, 2018. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril <p>Since taking office a year ago, Trump has often expressed negative views of Mexico, blaming it for drugs entering the United States, criticizing U.S. companies with operations south of the border, and insisting Mexico will pay for the wall he wants to stop illegal immigration. He has threatened to tie payment to the terms under which the two neighbors trade by reworking or canceling the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).</p> <p>Each time, President Enrique Pena Nieto&#8217;s government has pushed back.</p> <p>This week presidential hopeful Ricardo Anaya of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), who heads a left-right coalition, and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party&#8217;s (PRI) contender, Jose Antonio Meade, also weighed in.</p> <p>&#8220;Mexico will NOT under any circumstances pay for that wall,&#8221; Meade said on Twitter on the day Lopez Obrador was in Veracruz.</p> <p>Few issues unite Mexicans more than dislike of Trump, who kicked off his presidential bid in 2015 by accusing the country of sending rapists and drug runners across the U.S. border.</p> <p>Jorge Buendia of pollster Buendia &amp;amp; Laredo said Trump had made it advantageous for Mexican politicians to criticize him, and that it would be &#8220;very costly&#8221; for the next president to extend the hand of friendship towards his government.</p> <p>&#8220;So it&#8217;s only a matter of time before there are much more critical proposals about Trump and U.S. relations,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The most obvious beneficiary of opposition to Trump, at least initially, would be Lopez Obrador, Buendia said.</p> &#8216;ANGER AMONG MEXICANS&#8217; <p>A study published last week featuring data from the Pew Research Center and Buendia &amp;amp; Laredo showed that since Trump entered presidential politics, the image of the United States has deteriorated sharply in Mexico.</p> FILE PHOTO: Jose Antonio Meade, presidential pre-candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), looks on during a political event in Mexico City, Mexico January 14, 2018. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo <p>In 2015, 66 percent of Mexicans held a favorable view of the United States and 29 percent an unfavorable opinion, it showed. By October 2017, 65 percent of Mexicans had an unfavorable view of the United States and only 30 percent a positive one.</p> <p>Heriberto Galindo, a former PRI congressman and ex-consul general of Mexico in Chicago, said Trump would end up unifying the rhetoric of all the presidential candidates against him.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not saying we&#8217;re heading for war with the United States, because Mexico is pacifist,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But President Donald Trump is causing a lot of anger among Mexicans ... and a negative attitude towards the United States, which is not helpful, beneficial or healthy, least of all with a neighboring country.&#8221;</p> <p>Anti-Trump feeling is only likely to intensify if the president follows through on threats to dump NAFTA, which underpins much of Mexico&#8217;s trade, if it is not reworked to better favor U.S. interests. Negotiators hold another round of talks this week to try to overhaul the deal.</p> <p>Agustin Barrios Gomez, a former federal congressman and head of Fundacion Imagen Mexico, a group dedicated to promoting Mexico&#8217;s image abroad, argued Lopez Obrador does not even need to sharpen his rhetoric to benefit from Trump, because he has no credible rivals to oppose his nationalist arguments.</p> <p>Both Meade and Anaya represent parties that defended closer economic integration and cooperation with the United States and are the only ones to have held power, Barrios Gomez noted.</p> <p>Now Trump&#8217;s hostility has shattered that model, he added.</p> <p>&#8220;The feeling&#8217;s there: you trusted these guys (the United States), and they turned on you like the left have been saying for God knows how long,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And that plays to Andres Manuel&#8217;s strengths because he doesn&#8217;t have to say anything.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Frances Kerry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - The Nasdaq Composite index was sharply lower on Wednesday, dragged down by losses in Amazon and tech heavyweights such as Apple and Intel.</p> A woman passes by the Nasdaq Market Site in Times Square in New York City, U.S., February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Amazon fell more than 5 percent after reports that President Donald Trump was looking to target the company by changing its tax treatment.</p> <p>Apple dropped about 1 percent after Goldman Sachs analyst cut sales estimate for iPhone for March and June quarters, citing weak demand.</p> <p>Intel was down 3.7 percent and weighed the most on the S&amp;amp;P tech index.</p> <p>&#8220;Tech and discretionary stocks have been strong. Those are two sectors that are up year-to-date and what we&#8217;re seeing is profit-taking in the quarter-end,&#8221; said Michael O&#8217;Rourke, Chief Market Strategist, Jonestrading, Greenwich, Connecticut.</p> <p>Facebook&#8217;s shares rose marginally after days of losses that wiped out more than $100 billion in market value.</p> <p>The social network said it was giving users more control over their privacy by making data management easier and redesigning the settings menu, following a global outcry over data privacy issues at the company.</p> <p>At 11:46 a.m. ET (1346 GMT) the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 21.57 points, or 0.09 percent. The S&amp;amp;P 500 was off 1.81 points, or 0.07 percent and the Nasdaq Composite was down 39.67 points, or 0.57 percent.</p> <p>The main indexes were on track to record their worst month since January 2016, hurt by fears of a trade war between the United States and China as well as rising U.S. interest rates.</p> <p>Comments from top officials of the two countries had given a sense that they would negotiate over President Donald Trump&#8217;s move to impose tariffs on Chinese goods.</p> <p>However, China&#8217;s state-run Global Times reported on Wednesday that the country was expected to soon announce a list of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports.</p> <p>Tesla dropped more than 7 percent after the U.S. government said it would investigate a fatal crash and vehicle fire of a Model X in California.</p> <p>Lululemon Athletica surged more than 11 percent after the Canadian athletic apparel maker posted a surprisingly strong fourth-quarter profit and forecast further growth in the first quarter.</p> <p>Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,472 to 1,316. On the Nasdaq, 1,528 issues fell and 1,272 advanced.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 index showed no new 52-week highs and 7 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 13 new highs and 92 new lows.</p> <p>Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - To Wall Street money managers who make bets for a living, U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s aggressive stance against China on trade looks like a high-stakes poker hand - but they believe they can play it for all it&#8217;s worth.</p> FILE PHOTO: A labourer works on coils of steel wire at a steel wholesale market in Beijing, China, January 17, 2012. REUTERS/Soo Hoo Zheyang/File Photo <p>Fears that Trump could set off a trade conflict have roiled Wall Street since March 1, when the president announced plans to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, risking retaliation from major trade partners like China, Europe and neighboring Canada.</p> <p>It&#8217;s been a roller coaster ride, with markets slumping after Trump last Friday moved to impose up to $60 billion in tariffs on some Chinese imports and China declared plans to retaliate with duties of up to $3 billion of U.S. imports even as it urged the United States to &#8220;pull back from the brink.&#8221;</p> <p>China&#8217;s willingness to negotiate spurred a rebound on Monday, though jitters in the tech sector drove markets back down on Tuesday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 26, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Investors remain concerned about a trade war between the world&#8217;s two largest economies, but some big players are sanguine about their prospects to make money even as they try and dissect Trump&#8217;s strategy on trade.</p> <p>The former celebrity businessman on March 2 tweeted, &#8220;trade wars are good, and easy to win,&#8221; shocking economists who cite evidence that trade wars in the past have been destructive to economies involved.</p> <p>&#8220;Other administrations have gone to trading partners like China and asked for a fairer deal, only to get a cigar put out on their forehead,&#8221; said Steve Chiavarone, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors. &#8220;I suspect Trump&#8217;s bucking of norms is absolutely part of his negotiating tactics.&#8221;</p> <p>Chiavarone and others said they remain confident the S&amp;amp;P 500 will rise significantly this year.</p> <p>&#8220;So far you are talking about small amounts of tariffs in niche sectors,&#8221; said Phil Blancato, head of Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management in New York. &#8220;For anyone who is looking for an opportunity to enter the market here at better valuations, this is it.&#8221;</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump, surrounded by business leaders and administration officials, prepares to sign a memorandum on intellectual property tariffs on high-tech goods from China, at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst THE ART OF THE DEAL <p>&#8220;He has shown himself to act aggressively, quickly and unilaterally, and that&#8217;s brought China to the negotiating table,&#8221; said Ben Phillips, chief investment officer of EventShares exchange traded funds. &#8220;I truly think they are worried about him taking unilateral action and harming China&#8217;s economy.&#8221;</p> <p>Fears of a trade war, which could hurt U.S. multinationals and dull the benefits of deep corporate tax cuts enacted this year, have helped push the S&amp;amp;P 500 down nearly 4 percent since the end of February.</p> <p>The Trump administration has demanded that China immediately cut its $375 billion trade surplus with the United States by $100 billion, a position seen by some as an opening tactic in a long negotiation.</p> <p>China could respond to U.S. measures with a range of tariffs aimed at U.S. multinationals, or even farmers in rural regions who helped Trump win the 2016 presidential election.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s bellicose stance with U.S. trade partners reflects a negotiating style outlined in his 1987 book, &#8220;Trump: The Art of the Deal,&#8221; said Oliver Pursche, chief market strategist at Bruderman Asset Management in New York.</p> <p>&#8220;You propose something horrific, and then when you pull back what you want is not as painful as feared,&#8221; Pursche said. &#8220;The problem is the other side isn&#8217;t dumb. Eventually, they&#8217;re going to figure that out.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Noel Randewich, additional reporting by April Joyner and Trevor Hunnicutt in New York; Editing by Alden Bentley</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared conflicted over what to do &#8212; if anything &#8212; to rein in politicians who draw state electoral maps with the aim of entrenching their party in power in a closely watched case from Maryland over the practice known as partisan gerrymandering.</p> <p>The nine justices heard an hour of arguments in a challenge by Republican voters to a U.S. House of Representatives district in Maryland drawn by Democratic state legislators. The voters, who have the backing of Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, are appealing a lower court ruling rejecting their challenge.</p> <p>The justices appeared to struggle to find a way to resolve the issue. Several acknowledged problems with the way Democrats drew the Maryland district.</p> <p>Based on questions they asked, the justices seemed no closer to answering the major question now before them in this case and in a similar one involving Wisconsin &#8212; whether courts should be able to intervene to curb the manipulation of electoral district boundaries purely to favor one party over another.</p> <p>On Oct. 3, the court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority, seemed similarly unsure on how to proceed when it heard arguments in a challenge by Democratic voters to Republican-drawn legislative districts statewide in Wisconsin, and has not yet issued a ruling.</p> <p>Stephen Breyer, one of the four liberal justices, suggested that the court put off deciding the cases and instead hear another round of arguments in its next term, starting in October, along with another case from North Carolina.</p> <p>Partisan gerrymandering, he said, &#8220;seems like a pretty clear violation of the Constitution in some form&#8221; but the problem is finding a &#8220;practical remedy&#8221; that would avoid forcing federal judges to decide a huge number of highly politicized cases.</p> <p>In the Maryland case, there appeared little dispute on the bench that the congressional district&#8217;s lines were indeed drawn with partisan intent.</p> &#8216;TOO MUCH&#8217; <p>Liberal Justice Elena Kagan agreed with Breyer about the problem of deciding how much partisan line-drawing is too much, but, she said: &#8220;This case is too much.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;How much more evidence of partisan intent could we need?&#8221; Kagan added.</p> <p>Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, a potential key vote in the case, raised concerns about a ruling so soon before the 2018 mid-term election in November that would &#8220;upset settled expectation&#8221; but also indicated there was evidence of partisan intent.</p> <p>The rulings in the Maryland and Wisconsin cases, due by the end of June, could alter the U.S. political landscape, either by imposing limits on partisan gerrymandering or by allowing it even in its most extreme forms.</p> <p>The Supreme Court for decades has been willing to invalidate state electoral maps due to racial discrimination but never those created just for partisan advantage.</p> <p>Both parties over the years have engaged in partisan gerrymandering. Democrats have said partisan gerrymandering by Republicans in such states as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania has helped President Donald Trump&#8217;s party maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives and various state legislatures.</p> <p>Republican voters sued Maryland after the Democratic-led legislature in 2011 redrew the boundaries of the state&#8217;s Sixth District in a way that removed Republican-leaning areas and added Democratic-leaning areas. Maryland&#8217;s map led to Democrat John Delaney beating incumbent Republican Roscoe Bartlett to take the district in 2012.</p> People gather on the plaza in front of the Supreme court before oral arguments on Benisek v. Lamone, a redistricting case on whether Democratic lawmakers in Maryland unlawfully drew a congressional district in a way that would prevent a Republican candidate from winning, in Washington, U.S., March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>At the time, Maryland also had a Democratic governor, Martin O&#8217;Malley. Current Governor Hogan&#8217;s election victory in 2014 illustrated Republican strength statewide. But Republicans currently hold just one of Maryland&#8217;s eight congressional seats because of the way the electoral boundaries are drawn.</p> <p>The question before the Supreme Court is whether Maryland&#8217;s electoral map violated the U.S. Constitution&#8217;s First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The novel legal theory pursued by the challengers is that Republican voters were retaliated against by Democrats based on their political views.</p> <p>In a 2004 ruling in another case, Kennedy, who sometimes sides with the liberal justices in major rulings, parted with his conservative colleagues to suggest that if partisan gerrymandering went too far courts might have to step in if a &#8220;workable standard&#8221; could be found.</p> <p>Conservative Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday told the attorney for the Republican plaintiffs he did not think their challenge under the First Amendment was a workable standard. &#8220;I don&#8217;t see how any legislature would ever be able to redistrict,&#8221; Alito said.</p> <p>The Wisconsin challengers presented a different argument, that the Republican-drawn map violated the First Amendment right to freedom of expression and association and the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law because of the extent to which it marginalized Democratic voters.</p> <p>Gerrymandered electoral maps often concentrate voters who tend to favor the minority party into a small number of districts to dilute their statewide clout and distribute the rest of those voters in other districts in numbers too small to be a majority.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>Legislative districts are redrawn nationwide every decade to reflect population changes after the national census. Redistricting in most states is done by the party in power, though some states in the interest of fairness assign the task to independent commissions.</p> <p>Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

'Put Trump in his place': nationalism awakens in Mexican presidential race Nasdaq books losses as Amazon, Apple drag On China trade clash, Wall Street embraces Trump's poker face Supreme Court finds solution elusive in pivotal electoral map case

https://reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election/put-trump-in-his-place-nationalism-awakens-in-mexican-presidential-race-idUSKBN1FB2Q3

2018-01-22

2least

MEXICO CITY Reuters Donald Trump8217s habit of slapping down Mexico is feeding nationalist sentiment in the country8217s presidential election campaign prompting contenders to defy him and strengthening the hand of the frontrunner who is courting the antiestablishment vote FILE PHOTO Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement MORENA speaks during the presentation of his shadow cabinet for the July 2018 presidential election in Mexico City Mexico December 14 2017 REUTERSEdgard GarridoFile Photo In the past week the three top contenders for the July election have all said Mexico will not pay for the wall the US president wants to build on the US southern border None has made the point more forcefully than Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador a veteran leftist leading the opinion polls A victory for Lopez Obrador who was runnerup in 2006 and 2012 could usher in a more distant and confrontational relationship between the two nations as he promises to lessen Mexico8217s economic dependence on foreign powers That dependence is strongest with the United States Mexico sends about 80 percent of its exports to its northern neighbor and the United States has traditionally been the source of the bulk of foreign direct investment Under Trump however Mexican views of the United States have soured 8220Without being disrespectful we8217re going to put him in his place8221 Lopez Obrador said of Trump on Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico port of Veracruz the scene of a notorious national humiliation when US forces occupied it in 1914 Earlier that day Trump told his Twitter followers that Mexico was 8220rated the number one most dangerous country in the world8221 Although violence is rising in Mexico its murder rate remains well below that of several Latin American countries data compiled by the United Nations and the World Bank show Lopez Obrador who said earlier this month he would put an end to what he called puppet governments in Mexico taking instructions 8220from abroad8221 promised to hit back against Trump8217s barbs and tell the American 8220what I think8221 on Twitter A December survey by polling firm Parametria gave Lopez Obrador an 11 percentage point lead while another last week by Mitofsky gave him a three point advantage but growing Ricardo Anaya presidential precandidate for the National Action Party PAN who leads a leftright coalition addresses supporters during a rally in Huixquilucan on the outskirts of Mexico City Mexico in Mexico City Mexico January 20 2018 REUTERSDaniel Becerril Since taking office a year ago Trump has often expressed negative views of Mexico blaming it for drugs entering the United States criticizing US companies with operations south of the border and insisting Mexico will pay for the wall he wants to stop illegal immigration He has threatened to tie payment to the terms under which the two neighbors trade by reworking or canceling the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA Each time President Enrique Pena Nieto8217s government has pushed back This week presidential hopeful Ricardo Anaya of the conservative National Action Party PAN who heads a leftright coalition and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party8217s PRI contender Jose Antonio Meade also weighed in 8220Mexico will NOT under any circumstances pay for that wall8221 Meade said on Twitter on the day Lopez Obrador was in Veracruz Few issues unite Mexicans more than dislike of Trump who kicked off his presidential bid in 2015 by accusing the country of sending rapists and drug runners across the US border Jorge Buendia of pollster Buendia ampamp Laredo said Trump had made it advantageous for Mexican politicians to criticize him and that it would be 8220very costly8221 for the next president to extend the hand of friendship towards his government 8220So it8217s only a matter of time before there are much more critical proposals about Trump and US relations8221 he said The most obvious beneficiary of opposition to Trump at least initially would be Lopez Obrador Buendia said 8216ANGER AMONG MEXICANS8217 A study published last week featuring data from the Pew Research Center and Buendia ampamp Laredo showed that since Trump entered presidential politics the image of the United States has deteriorated sharply in Mexico FILE PHOTO Jose Antonio Meade presidential precandidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party PRI looks on during a political event in Mexico City Mexico January 14 2018 REUTERSDaniel BecerrilFile Photo In 2015 66 percent of Mexicans held a favorable view of the United States and 29 percent an unfavorable opinion it showed By October 2017 65 percent of Mexicans had an unfavorable view of the United States and only 30 percent a positive one Heriberto Galindo a former PRI congressman and exconsul general of Mexico in Chicago said Trump would end up unifying the rhetoric of all the presidential candidates against him 8220I8217m not saying we8217re heading for war with the United States because Mexico is pacifist8221 he said 8220But President Donald Trump is causing a lot of anger among Mexicans and a negative attitude towards the United States which is not helpful beneficial or healthy least of all with a neighboring country8221 AntiTrump feeling is only likely to intensify if the president follows through on threats to dump NAFTA which underpins much of Mexico8217s trade if it is not reworked to better favor US interests Negotiators hold another round of talks this week to try to overhaul the deal Agustin Barrios Gomez a former federal congressman and head of Fundacion Imagen Mexico a group dedicated to promoting Mexico8217s image abroad argued Lopez Obrador does not even need to sharpen his rhetoric to benefit from Trump because he has no credible rivals to oppose his nationalist arguments Both Meade and Anaya represent parties that defended closer economic integration and cooperation with the United States and are the only ones to have held power Barrios Gomez noted Now Trump8217s hostility has shattered that model he added 8220The feeling8217s there you trusted these guys the United States and they turned on you like the left have been saying for God knows how long8221 he said 8220And that plays to Andres Manuel8217s strengths because he doesn8217t have to say anything8221 Reporting by Dave Graham Editing by Frances Kerry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters The Nasdaq Composite index was sharply lower on Wednesday dragged down by losses in Amazon and tech heavyweights such as Apple and Intel A woman passes by the Nasdaq Market Site in Times Square in New York City US February 7 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Amazon fell more than 5 percent after reports that President Donald Trump was looking to target the company by changing its tax treatment Apple dropped about 1 percent after Goldman Sachs analyst cut sales estimate for iPhone for March and June quarters citing weak demand Intel was down 37 percent and weighed the most on the SampampP tech index 8220Tech and discretionary stocks have been strong Those are two sectors that are up yeartodate and what we8217re seeing is profittaking in the quarterend8221 said Michael O8217Rourke Chief Market Strategist Jonestrading Greenwich Connecticut Facebook8217s shares rose marginally after days of losses that wiped out more than 100 billion in market value The social network said it was giving users more control over their privacy by making data management easier and redesigning the settings menu following a global outcry over data privacy issues at the company At 1146 am ET 1346 GMT the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2157 points or 009 percent The SampampP 500 was off 181 points or 007 percent and the Nasdaq Composite was down 3967 points or 057 percent The main indexes were on track to record their worst month since January 2016 hurt by fears of a trade war between the United States and China as well as rising US interest rates Comments from top officials of the two countries had given a sense that they would negotiate over President Donald Trump8217s move to impose tariffs on Chinese goods However China8217s staterun Global Times reported on Wednesday that the country was expected to soon announce a list of retaliatory tariffs on US exports Tesla dropped more than 7 percent after the US government said it would investigate a fatal crash and vehicle fire of a Model X in California Lululemon Athletica surged more than 11 percent after the Canadian athletic apparel maker posted a surprisingly strong fourthquarter profit and forecast further growth in the first quarter Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1472 to 1316 On the Nasdaq 1528 issues fell and 1272 advanced The SampampP 500 index showed no new 52week highs and 7 new lows while the Nasdaq recorded 13 new highs and 92 new lows Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru Editing by Anil DSilva Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCO Reuters To Wall Street money managers who make bets for a living US President Donald Trump8217s aggressive stance against China on trade looks like a highstakes poker hand but they believe they can play it for all it8217s worth FILE PHOTO A labourer works on coils of steel wire at a steel wholesale market in Beijing China January 17 2012 REUTERSSoo Hoo ZheyangFile Photo Fears that Trump could set off a trade conflict have roiled Wall Street since March 1 when the president announced plans to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum risking retaliation from major trade partners like China Europe and neighboring Canada It8217s been a roller coaster ride with markets slumping after Trump last Friday moved to impose up to 60 billion in tariffs on some Chinese imports and China declared plans to retaliate with duties of up to 3 billion of US imports even as it urged the United States to 8220pull back from the brink8221 China8217s willingness to negotiate spurred a rebound on Monday though jitters in the tech sector drove markets back down on Tuesday FILE PHOTO Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US March 26 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Investors remain concerned about a trade war between the world8217s two largest economies but some big players are sanguine about their prospects to make money even as they try and dissect Trump8217s strategy on trade The former celebrity businessman on March 2 tweeted 8220trade wars are good and easy to win8221 shocking economists who cite evidence that trade wars in the past have been destructive to economies involved 8220Other administrations have gone to trading partners like China and asked for a fairer deal only to get a cigar put out on their forehead8221 said Steve Chiavarone a portfolio manager at Federated Investors 8220I suspect Trump8217s bucking of norms is absolutely part of his negotiating tactics8221 Chiavarone and others said they remain confident the SampampP 500 will rise significantly this year 8220So far you are talking about small amounts of tariffs in niche sectors8221 said Phil Blancato head of Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management in New York 8220For anyone who is looking for an opportunity to enter the market here at better valuations this is it8221 FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump surrounded by business leaders and administration officials prepares to sign a memorandum on intellectual property tariffs on hightech goods from China at the White House in Washington US March 22 2018 REUTERSJonathan Ernst THE ART OF THE DEAL 8220He has shown himself to act aggressively quickly and unilaterally and that8217s brought China to the negotiating table8221 said Ben Phillips chief investment officer of EventShares exchange traded funds 8220I truly think they are worried about him taking unilateral action and harming China8217s economy8221 Fears of a trade war which could hurt US multinationals and dull the benefits of deep corporate tax cuts enacted this year have helped push the SampampP 500 down nearly 4 percent since the end of February The Trump administration has demanded that China immediately cut its 375 billion trade surplus with the United States by 100 billion a position seen by some as an opening tactic in a long negotiation China could respond to US measures with a range of tariffs aimed at US multinationals or even farmers in rural regions who helped Trump win the 2016 presidential election Trump8217s bellicose stance with US trade partners reflects a negotiating style outlined in his 1987 book 8220Trump The Art of the Deal8221 said Oliver Pursche chief market strategist at Bruderman Asset Management in New York 8220You propose something horrific and then when you pull back what you want is not as painful as feared8221 Pursche said 8220The problem is the other side isn8217t dumb Eventually they8217re going to figure that out8221 Reporting by Noel Randewich additional reporting by April Joyner and Trevor Hunnicutt in New York Editing by Alden Bentley Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters US Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared conflicted over what to do 8212 if anything 8212 to rein in politicians who draw state electoral maps with the aim of entrenching their party in power in a closely watched case from Maryland over the practice known as partisan gerrymandering The nine justices heard an hour of arguments in a challenge by Republican voters to a US House of Representatives district in Maryland drawn by Democratic state legislators The voters who have the backing of Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan are appealing a lower court ruling rejecting their challenge The justices appeared to struggle to find a way to resolve the issue Several acknowledged problems with the way Democrats drew the Maryland district Based on questions they asked the justices seemed no closer to answering the major question now before them in this case and in a similar one involving Wisconsin 8212 whether courts should be able to intervene to curb the manipulation of electoral district boundaries purely to favor one party over another On Oct 3 the court which has a 54 conservative majority seemed similarly unsure on how to proceed when it heard arguments in a challenge by Democratic voters to Republicandrawn legislative districts statewide in Wisconsin and has not yet issued a ruling Stephen Breyer one of the four liberal justices suggested that the court put off deciding the cases and instead hear another round of arguments in its next term starting in October along with another case from North Carolina Partisan gerrymandering he said 8220seems like a pretty clear violation of the Constitution in some form8221 but the problem is finding a 8220practical remedy8221 that would avoid forcing federal judges to decide a huge number of highly politicized cases In the Maryland case there appeared little dispute on the bench that the congressional district8217s lines were indeed drawn with partisan intent 8216TOO MUCH8217 Liberal Justice Elena Kagan agreed with Breyer about the problem of deciding how much partisan linedrawing is too much but she said 8220This case is too much8221 8220How much more evidence of partisan intent could we need8221 Kagan added Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy a potential key vote in the case raised concerns about a ruling so soon before the 2018 midterm election in November that would 8220upset settled expectation8221 but also indicated there was evidence of partisan intent The rulings in the Maryland and Wisconsin cases due by the end of June could alter the US political landscape either by imposing limits on partisan gerrymandering or by allowing it even in its most extreme forms The Supreme Court for decades has been willing to invalidate state electoral maps due to racial discrimination but never those created just for partisan advantage Both parties over the years have engaged in partisan gerrymandering Democrats have said partisan gerrymandering by Republicans in such states as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania has helped President Donald Trump8217s party maintain control of the US House of Representatives and various state legislatures Republican voters sued Maryland after the Democraticled legislature in 2011 redrew the boundaries of the state8217s Sixth District in a way that removed Republicanleaning areas and added Democraticleaning areas Maryland8217s map led to Democrat John Delaney beating incumbent Republican Roscoe Bartlett to take the district in 2012 People gather on the plaza in front of the Supreme court before oral arguments on Benisek v Lamone a redistricting case on whether Democratic lawmakers in Maryland unlawfully drew a congressional district in a way that would prevent a Republican candidate from winning in Washington US March 28 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts At the time Maryland also had a Democratic governor Martin O8217Malley Current Governor Hogan8217s election victory in 2014 illustrated Republican strength statewide But Republicans currently hold just one of Maryland8217s eight congressional seats because of the way the electoral boundaries are drawn The question before the Supreme Court is whether Maryland8217s electoral map violated the US Constitution8217s First Amendment guarantee of free speech The novel legal theory pursued by the challengers is that Republican voters were retaliated against by Democrats based on their political views In a 2004 ruling in another case Kennedy who sometimes sides with the liberal justices in major rulings parted with his conservative colleagues to suggest that if partisan gerrymandering went too far courts might have to step in if a 8220workable standard8221 could be found Conservative Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday told the attorney for the Republican plaintiffs he did not think their challenge under the First Amendment was a workable standard 8220I don8217t see how any legislature would ever be able to redistrict8221 Alito said The Wisconsin challengers presented a different argument that the Republicandrawn map violated the First Amendment right to freedom of expression and association and the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law because of the extent to which it marginalized Democratic voters Gerrymandered electoral maps often concentrate voters who tend to favor the minority party into a small number of districts to dilute their statewide clout and distribute the rest of those voters in other districts in numbers too small to be a majority Slideshow 6 Images Legislative districts are redrawn nationwide every decade to reflect population changes after the national census Redistricting in most states is done by the party in power though some states in the interest of fairness assign the task to independent commissions Reporting by Lawrence Hurley Additional reporting by Andrew Chung Editing by Will Dunham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; Rookie Lauri Markkanen scored a season-high 33 points, Kris Dunn shook off a nightmarish shooting night to make the tiebreaking basket in the second overtime, and the Chicago Bulls beat the New York Knicks 122-119 on Wednesday night.</p> <p>Dunn had missed 14 of his first 17 shots before banking in a runner with just under a minute left in the second extra period, and Markkanen finished it off by making two free throws with 6.8 seconds remaining.</p> <p>Robin Lopez and Denzel Valentine each scored 20 points for the Bulls in their third narrow victory over the Knicks this season.</p> <p>Michael Beasley 26 points and 12 rebounds off the bench for the Knicks, who lost for the eighth time in 10 games. Kristaps Porzingis finished with 24 points, including a dunk at the buzzer to force the second OT.</p> <p>Jarrett Jack had 16 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists for the Knicks, but threw away a pass after coming up with a steal with the Knicks down two late in the second OT.</p> <p>CLIPPERS 125, WARRIORS 106</p> <p>OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) &#8212; Lou Williams scored 27 of his career-high 50 points in the third quarter and Los Angeles beat Golden State for the first time in more than three years, spoiling a milestone night for Kevin Durant.</p> <p>Williams shot 16 for 27 with a career-best eight 3-pointers and made all 10 of his free throws.</p> <p>Durant became the 44th player in NBA history to score 20,000 career points, finishing with 40 as the Warriors had their five-game winning streak snapped along with a 12-game unbeaten stretch in the Clippers rivalry.</p> <p>The NBA Finals MVP returned from a three-game absence due to a strained right calf and scored 25 points in the first half &#8212; KD's biggest half of the season and the exact number he needed for 20,000.</p> <p>Durant shot 14 for 18, including 6 of 7 from 3-point range. At age 29, he is the second-youngest player behind LeBron James to reach the 20,000 mark.</p> <p>ROCKETS 121, TRAIL BLAZERS 112</p> <p>HOUSTON (AP) &#8212; Chris Paul scored a season-high 37 points, and Eric Gordon added 30 as the Houston Rockets withstood a late run to get a win over the Portland Trail Blazers.</p> <p>The Blazers used a big run to cut a 14-point deficit to three with about three minutes left. Houston responded with a 6-2 run, capped by a 3-pointer from Paul, to make it 111-104 about a minute later. Damian Lillard made a layup on the other end, but Paul cut through three defenders to make an off-balance layup to push the lead to 113-106.</p> <p>The Blazers couldn't get the ball in after a timeout, Houston got the ball back and Clint Capela added two free throws to secure the victory.</p> <p>Lillard scored 29 in his return after missing the last two games with a strained right calf, and C.J. McCollum added 24 points as the Blazers saw a three-game winning streak snapped.</p> <p>The Rockets won their second straight and improved to 3-2 in five games without James Harden, who is out for at least two weeks with a hamstring injury.</p> <p>HEAT 114, PACERS 106</p> <p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) &#8212; Goran Dragic scored 20 points and Wayne Ellington made the decisive 3-pointer with 23.2 seconds left, helping Miami fend off Indiana's late push.</p> <p>It's the sixth straight win for the Heat. Miami also ended a 10-game road losing streak against the Pacers.</p> <p>Victor Oladipo scored 26 points and Lance Stephenson provided a late boost of energy that nearly allowed Indiana to erase a 10-point deficit in the final 9:57. Stephenson wound up with 15 points, eight rebounds and four assists.</p> <p>But when Ellington's 3 bounced in rather than rolling off the rim as it appeared it would, Indiana's comeback hopes were over. Ellington was one of three Miami players with 15 points.</p> <p>Hassan Whiteside had 16 points and 15 rebounds to help snap the Pacers' two-game winning streak.</p> <p>GRIZZLIES 105, PELICANS 102</p> <p>MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) &#8212; Tyreke Evans scored 28 points, including a pair of free throws with 5.9 seconds left that helped the Memphis Grizzlies beat the New Orleans Pelicans.</p> <p>Marc Gasol finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds for Memphis while JaMychal Green contributed 20 points and 14 rebounds.</p> <p>After Evans' foul shots, the Pelicans had a chance for a tie, but E'Twaun Moore's 3-point attempt from the left wing bounced off the front of the rim.</p> <p>DeMarcus Cousins had 29 points and eight rebounds. Moore had 16 points and Rajon Rondo had 14. Cousins was 2 of 10 from the field entering the fourth, but scored 14 points in the final quarter. He hit a trio of 3s as the Pelicans overcame an 11-point deficit.</p> <p>Evans made four free throws in the final 61 seconds.</p> <p>JAZZ 107, WIZARDS 104</p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) &#8212; Ricky Rubio scored 21 points, Donovan Mitchell had 16 and the short-handed Utah Jazz completed a season sweep over the Washington Wizards.</p> <p>Ekpe Udoh scored 16 points and Joe Johnson had 16 off the bench for the Jazz, who had lost 13 of 16 in between meetings with Washington. The Wizards were embarrassed 116-69 in Utah on Dec. 4.</p> <p>Utah played without two starters, and second-leading scorer Rodney Hood was ejected in the second half.</p> <p>John Wall had 35 points and 11 assists for the Wizards, but committed eight of their 23 turnovers. Bradley Beal had 23 points, but missed six of seven shots in the fourth quarter and lost the ball with 2.9 seconds remaining while attempting a game-tying 3-pointer.</p> <p>TIMBERWOLVES 104, THUNDER 88</p> <p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) &#8212; Jimmy Butler scored 26 points, grabbed seven rebounds and had eight assists for the Minnesota Timberwolves in a win against the Oklahoma City Thunder.</p> <p>Andrew Wiggins added 19 points, and Karl-Anthony Towns had 18 points and 12 rebounds as Minnesota pulled away in the second half to win its third game in a row at home and 10th in its last 13 overall.</p> <p>Russell Westbrook had 38 points and 10 rebounds, but Paul George, Carmelo Anthony and the rest of the Thunder had a tough time shooting. Westbrook was 15 of 23 from the field, while his teammates were 17 of 56 (30.3 percent). Anthony scored 15 points on 5-of-19 shooting, while George finished 5 of 14 for 13 points for Oklahoma City, which has lost five of seven.</p> <p>HAWKS 110, NUGGETS 97</p> <p>DENVER (AP) &#8212; Dennis Schroder had 19 points and 10 assists, Taurean Prince scored 16 and Atlanta beat Denver to end a 10-game road losing streak.</p> <p>Kent Bazemore scored 14 points and Ersan Ilyasova had 10 points and nine rebounds for the Hawks, who never trailed after the first quarter.</p> <p>Atlanta (11-30) has the worst record in the NBA and entered the night tied for the fewest road wins. The Hawks posted their fourth road victory this season.</p> <p>Denver had won 11 of 13 home games since early November.</p> <p>Gary Harris had 25 points but was the only Nuggets player to shoot well from the field.</p> <p>MAVERICKS 115, HORNETS 111</p> <p>CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) &#8212; Harrison Barnes had 25 points and 11 rebounds, Yogi Ferrell made seven 3-pointers and scored 22 points and the Dallas Mavericks fended off fatigue to beat a fresh Charlotte Hornets team.</p> <p>Dirk Nowitzki added 19 points for the Mavericks, and Dennis Smith Jr. had 15.</p> <p>The Mavericks were playing their third game in four days, while the Hornets were coming off a four-day layoff. But Dallas showed no signs of wearing down in the fourth quarter, repeatedly thwarting Charlotte's attempts to take the lead.</p> <p>Kemba Walker had 41 points on 16-of-28 shooting for the Hornets. Dwight Howard had 15 points and 12 rebounds for Charlotte, but was an anemic 5 of 18 from the foul line &#8212; which proved costly in a close game.</p> <p>BUCKS 110, MAGIC 103</p> <p>MILWAUKEE (AP) &#8212; Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 26 points, Khris Middleton added 22 and the Milwaukee Bucks turned up their defensive intensity after a porous first quarter to beat the Orlando Magic.</p> <p>John Henson picked up his fifth double-double of the year with 14 points and 10 rebounds for the Bucks, who handed the Magic their sixth straight loss and 15th in their last 16.</p> <p>Leading by 20 to start the fourth quarter, coach Jason Kidd was able to get some rest for Antetokounmpo and Eric Bledsoe (15 points) with the Golden State Warriors visiting Milwaukee on Friday night.</p> <p>Evan Fournier had 21 points to lead Orlando, which cut the deficit to single digits during the closing minutes with reserves on the floor.</p> <p>PISTONS 114, NETS 80</p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; Andre Drummond scored 22 points and grabbed 20 rebounds, Tobias Harris had 22 points, and the Detroit Pistons blew past the Brooklyn Nets.</p> <p>Dwight Buycks added 17 points for the Pistons.</p> <p>Allen Crabbe scored 20 points and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson had 15 points for the Nets, who have lost three in a row.</p> <p>Detroit took a 90-61 lead heading into the fourth quarter and led by as many as 40 points, 104-64, with 8:20 remaining.</p> <p>___</p> <p>More NBA basketball: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball</a></p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; Rookie Lauri Markkanen scored a season-high 33 points, Kris Dunn shook off a nightmarish shooting night to make the tiebreaking basket in the second overtime, and the Chicago Bulls beat the New York Knicks 122-119 on Wednesday night.</p> <p>Dunn had missed 14 of his first 17 shots before banking in a runner with just under a minute left in the second extra period, and Markkanen finished it off by making two free throws with 6.8 seconds remaining.</p> <p>Robin Lopez and Denzel Valentine each scored 20 points for the Bulls in their third narrow victory over the Knicks this season.</p> <p>Michael Beasley 26 points and 12 rebounds off the bench for the Knicks, who lost for the eighth time in 10 games. Kristaps Porzingis finished with 24 points, including a dunk at the buzzer to force the second OT.</p> <p>Jarrett Jack had 16 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists for the Knicks, but threw away a pass after coming up with a steal with the Knicks down two late in the second OT.</p> <p>CLIPPERS 125, WARRIORS 106</p> <p>OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) &#8212; Lou Williams scored 27 of his career-high 50 points in the third quarter and Los Angeles beat Golden State for the first time in more than three years, spoiling a milestone night for Kevin Durant.</p> <p>Williams shot 16 for 27 with a career-best eight 3-pointers and made all 10 of his free throws.</p> <p>Durant became the 44th player in NBA history to score 20,000 career points, finishing with 40 as the Warriors had their five-game winning streak snapped along with a 12-game unbeaten stretch in the Clippers rivalry.</p> <p>The NBA Finals MVP returned from a three-game absence due to a strained right calf and scored 25 points in the first half &#8212; KD's biggest half of the season and the exact number he needed for 20,000.</p> <p>Durant shot 14 for 18, including 6 of 7 from 3-point range. At age 29, he is the second-youngest player behind LeBron James to reach the 20,000 mark.</p> <p>ROCKETS 121, TRAIL BLAZERS 112</p> <p>HOUSTON (AP) &#8212; Chris Paul scored a season-high 37 points, and Eric Gordon added 30 as the Houston Rockets withstood a late run to get a win over the Portland Trail Blazers.</p> <p>The Blazers used a big run to cut a 14-point deficit to three with about three minutes left. Houston responded with a 6-2 run, capped by a 3-pointer from Paul, to make it 111-104 about a minute later. Damian Lillard made a layup on the other end, but Paul cut through three defenders to make an off-balance layup to push the lead to 113-106.</p> <p>The Blazers couldn't get the ball in after a timeout, Houston got the ball back and Clint Capela added two free throws to secure the victory.</p> <p>Lillard scored 29 in his return after missing the last two games with a strained right calf, and C.J. McCollum added 24 points as the Blazers saw a three-game winning streak snapped.</p> <p>The Rockets won their second straight and improved to 3-2 in five games without James Harden, who is out for at least two weeks with a hamstring injury.</p> <p>HEAT 114, PACERS 106</p> <p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) &#8212; Goran Dragic scored 20 points and Wayne Ellington made the decisive 3-pointer with 23.2 seconds left, helping Miami fend off Indiana's late push.</p> <p>It's the sixth straight win for the Heat. Miami also ended a 10-game road losing streak against the Pacers.</p> <p>Victor Oladipo scored 26 points and Lance Stephenson provided a late boost of energy that nearly allowed Indiana to erase a 10-point deficit in the final 9:57. Stephenson wound up with 15 points, eight rebounds and four assists.</p> <p>But when Ellington's 3 bounced in rather than rolling off the rim as it appeared it would, Indiana's comeback hopes were over. Ellington was one of three Miami players with 15 points.</p> <p>Hassan Whiteside had 16 points and 15 rebounds to help snap the Pacers' two-game winning streak.</p> <p>GRIZZLIES 105, PELICANS 102</p> <p>MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) &#8212; Tyreke Evans scored 28 points, including a pair of free throws with 5.9 seconds left that helped the Memphis Grizzlies beat the New Orleans Pelicans.</p> <p>Marc Gasol finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds for Memphis while JaMychal Green contributed 20 points and 14 rebounds.</p> <p>After Evans' foul shots, the Pelicans had a chance for a tie, but E'Twaun Moore's 3-point attempt from the left wing bounced off the front of the rim.</p> <p>DeMarcus Cousins had 29 points and eight rebounds. Moore had 16 points and Rajon Rondo had 14. Cousins was 2 of 10 from the field entering the fourth, but scored 14 points in the final quarter. He hit a trio of 3s as the Pelicans overcame an 11-point deficit.</p> <p>Evans made four free throws in the final 61 seconds.</p> <p>JAZZ 107, WIZARDS 104</p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) &#8212; Ricky Rubio scored 21 points, Donovan Mitchell had 16 and the short-handed Utah Jazz completed a season sweep over the Washington Wizards.</p> <p>Ekpe Udoh scored 16 points and Joe Johnson had 16 off the bench for the Jazz, who had lost 13 of 16 in between meetings with Washington. The Wizards were embarrassed 116-69 in Utah on Dec. 4.</p> <p>Utah played without two starters, and second-leading scorer Rodney Hood was ejected in the second half.</p> <p>John Wall had 35 points and 11 assists for the Wizards, but committed eight of their 23 turnovers. Bradley Beal had 23 points, but missed six of seven shots in the fourth quarter and lost the ball with 2.9 seconds remaining while attempting a game-tying 3-pointer.</p> <p>TIMBERWOLVES 104, THUNDER 88</p> <p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) &#8212; Jimmy Butler scored 26 points, grabbed seven rebounds and had eight assists for the Minnesota Timberwolves in a win against the Oklahoma City Thunder.</p> <p>Andrew Wiggins added 19 points, and Karl-Anthony Towns had 18 points and 12 rebounds as Minnesota pulled away in the second half to win its third game in a row at home and 10th in its last 13 overall.</p> <p>Russell Westbrook had 38 points and 10 rebounds, but Paul George, Carmelo Anthony and the rest of the Thunder had a tough time shooting. Westbrook was 15 of 23 from the field, while his teammates were 17 of 56 (30.3 percent). Anthony scored 15 points on 5-of-19 shooting, while George finished 5 of 14 for 13 points for Oklahoma City, which has lost five of seven.</p> <p>HAWKS 110, NUGGETS 97</p> <p>DENVER (AP) &#8212; Dennis Schroder had 19 points and 10 assists, Taurean Prince scored 16 and Atlanta beat Denver to end a 10-game road losing streak.</p> <p>Kent Bazemore scored 14 points and Ersan Ilyasova had 10 points and nine rebounds for the Hawks, who never trailed after the first quarter.</p> <p>Atlanta (11-30) has the worst record in the NBA and entered the night tied for the fewest road wins. The Hawks posted their fourth road victory this season.</p> <p>Denver had won 11 of 13 home games since early November.</p> <p>Gary Harris had 25 points but was the only Nuggets player to shoot well from the field.</p> <p>MAVERICKS 115, HORNETS 111</p> <p>CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) &#8212; Harrison Barnes had 25 points and 11 rebounds, Yogi Ferrell made seven 3-pointers and scored 22 points and the Dallas Mavericks fended off fatigue to beat a fresh Charlotte Hornets team.</p> <p>Dirk Nowitzki added 19 points for the Mavericks, and Dennis Smith Jr. had 15.</p> <p>The Mavericks were playing their third game in four days, while the Hornets were coming off a four-day layoff. But Dallas showed no signs of wearing down in the fourth quarter, repeatedly thwarting Charlotte's attempts to take the lead.</p> <p>Kemba Walker had 41 points on 16-of-28 shooting for the Hornets. Dwight Howard had 15 points and 12 rebounds for Charlotte, but was an anemic 5 of 18 from the foul line &#8212; which proved costly in a close game.</p> <p>BUCKS 110, MAGIC 103</p> <p>MILWAUKEE (AP) &#8212; Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 26 points, Khris Middleton added 22 and the Milwaukee Bucks turned up their defensive intensity after a porous first quarter to beat the Orlando Magic.</p> <p>John Henson picked up his fifth double-double of the year with 14 points and 10 rebounds for the Bucks, who handed the Magic their sixth straight loss and 15th in their last 16.</p> <p>Leading by 20 to start the fourth quarter, coach Jason Kidd was able to get some rest for Antetokounmpo and Eric Bledsoe (15 points) with the Golden State Warriors visiting Milwaukee on Friday night.</p> <p>Evan Fournier had 21 points to lead Orlando, which cut the deficit to single digits during the closing minutes with reserves on the floor.</p> <p>PISTONS 114, NETS 80</p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; Andre Drummond scored 22 points and grabbed 20 rebounds, Tobias Harris had 22 points, and the Detroit Pistons blew past the Brooklyn Nets.</p> <p>Dwight Buycks added 17 points for the Pistons.</p> <p>Allen Crabbe scored 20 points and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson had 15 points for the Nets, who have lost three in a row.</p> <p>Detroit took a 90-61 lead heading into the fourth quarter and led by as many as 40 points, 104-64, with 8:20 remaining.</p> <p>___</p> <p>More NBA basketball: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball</a></p>

Markkanen, Dunn help Bulls outlast Knicks 122-119 in 2 OTs

https://apnews.com/amp/31635af778b848ed9b2382db6c663162

2018-01-11

2least

NEW YORK AP 8212 Rookie Lauri Markkanen scored a seasonhigh 33 points Kris Dunn shook off a nightmarish shooting night to make the tiebreaking basket in the second overtime and the Chicago Bulls beat the New York Knicks 122119 on Wednesday night Dunn had missed 14 of his first 17 shots before banking in a runner with just under a minute left in the second extra period and Markkanen finished it off by making two free throws with 68 seconds remaining Robin Lopez and Denzel Valentine each scored 20 points for the Bulls in their third narrow victory over the Knicks this season Michael Beasley 26 points and 12 rebounds off the bench for the Knicks who lost for the eighth time in 10 games Kristaps Porzingis finished with 24 points including a dunk at the buzzer to force the second OT Jarrett Jack had 16 points 10 rebounds and 10 assists for the Knicks but threw away a pass after coming up with a steal with the Knicks down two late in the second OT CLIPPERS 125 WARRIORS 106 OAKLAND Calif AP 8212 Lou Williams scored 27 of his careerhigh 50 points in the third quarter and Los Angeles beat Golden State for the first time in more than three years spoiling a milestone night for Kevin Durant Williams shot 16 for 27 with a careerbest eight 3pointers and made all 10 of his free throws Durant became the 44th player in NBA history to score 20000 career points finishing with 40 as the Warriors had their fivegame winning streak snapped along with a 12game unbeaten stretch in the Clippers rivalry The NBA Finals MVP returned from a threegame absence due to a strained right calf and scored 25 points in the first half 8212 KDs biggest half of the season and the exact number he needed for 20000 Durant shot 14 for 18 including 6 of 7 from 3point range At age 29 he is the secondyoungest player behind LeBron James to reach the 20000 mark ROCKETS 121 TRAIL BLAZERS 112 HOUSTON AP 8212 Chris Paul scored a seasonhigh 37 points and Eric Gordon added 30 as the Houston Rockets withstood a late run to get a win over the Portland Trail Blazers The Blazers used a big run to cut a 14point deficit to three with about three minutes left Houston responded with a 62 run capped by a 3pointer from Paul to make it 111104 about a minute later Damian Lillard made a layup on the other end but Paul cut through three defenders to make an offbalance layup to push the lead to 113106 The Blazers couldnt get the ball in after a timeout Houston got the ball back and Clint Capela added two free throws to secure the victory Lillard scored 29 in his return after missing the last two games with a strained right calf and CJ McCollum added 24 points as the Blazers saw a threegame winning streak snapped The Rockets won their second straight and improved to 32 in five games without James Harden who is out for at least two weeks with a hamstring injury HEAT 114 PACERS 106 INDIANAPOLIS AP 8212 Goran Dragic scored 20 points and Wayne Ellington made the decisive 3pointer with 232 seconds left helping Miami fend off Indianas late push Its the sixth straight win for the Heat Miami also ended a 10game road losing streak against the Pacers Victor Oladipo scored 26 points and Lance Stephenson provided a late boost of energy that nearly allowed Indiana to erase a 10point deficit in the final 957 Stephenson wound up with 15 points eight rebounds and four assists But when Ellingtons 3 bounced in rather than rolling off the rim as it appeared it would Indianas comeback hopes were over Ellington was one of three Miami players with 15 points Hassan Whiteside had 16 points and 15 rebounds to help snap the Pacers twogame winning streak GRIZZLIES 105 PELICANS 102 MEMPHIS Tenn AP 8212 Tyreke Evans scored 28 points including a pair of free throws with 59 seconds left that helped the Memphis Grizzlies beat the New Orleans Pelicans Marc Gasol finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds for Memphis while JaMychal Green contributed 20 points and 14 rebounds After Evans foul shots the Pelicans had a chance for a tie but ETwaun Moores 3point attempt from the left wing bounced off the front of the rim DeMarcus Cousins had 29 points and eight rebounds Moore had 16 points and Rajon Rondo had 14 Cousins was 2 of 10 from the field entering the fourth but scored 14 points in the final quarter He hit a trio of 3s as the Pelicans overcame an 11point deficit Evans made four free throws in the final 61 seconds JAZZ 107 WIZARDS 104 WASHINGTON AP 8212 Ricky Rubio scored 21 points Donovan Mitchell had 16 and the shorthanded Utah Jazz completed a season sweep over the Washington Wizards Ekpe Udoh scored 16 points and Joe Johnson had 16 off the bench for the Jazz who had lost 13 of 16 in between meetings with Washington The Wizards were embarrassed 11669 in Utah on Dec 4 Utah played without two starters and secondleading scorer Rodney Hood was ejected in the second half John Wall had 35 points and 11 assists for the Wizards but committed eight of their 23 turnovers Bradley Beal had 23 points but missed six of seven shots in the fourth quarter and lost the ball with 29 seconds remaining while attempting a gametying 3pointer TIMBERWOLVES 104 THUNDER 88 MINNEAPOLIS AP 8212 Jimmy Butler scored 26 points grabbed seven rebounds and had eight assists for the Minnesota Timberwolves in a win against the Oklahoma City Thunder Andrew Wiggins added 19 points and KarlAnthony Towns had 18 points and 12 rebounds as Minnesota pulled away in the second half to win its third game in a row at home and 10th in its last 13 overall Russell Westbrook had 38 points and 10 rebounds but Paul George Carmelo Anthony and the rest of the Thunder had a tough time shooting Westbrook was 15 of 23 from the field while his teammates were 17 of 56 303 percent Anthony scored 15 points on 5of19 shooting while George finished 5 of 14 for 13 points for Oklahoma City which has lost five of seven HAWKS 110 NUGGETS 97 DENVER AP 8212 Dennis Schroder had 19 points and 10 assists Taurean Prince scored 16 and Atlanta beat Denver to end a 10game road losing streak Kent Bazemore scored 14 points and Ersan Ilyasova had 10 points and nine rebounds for the Hawks who never trailed after the first quarter Atlanta 1130 has the worst record in the NBA and entered the night tied for the fewest road wins The Hawks posted their fourth road victory this season Denver had won 11 of 13 home games since early November Gary Harris had 25 points but was the only Nuggets player to shoot well from the field MAVERICKS 115 HORNETS 111 CHARLOTTE NC AP 8212 Harrison Barnes had 25 points and 11 rebounds Yogi Ferrell made seven 3pointers and scored 22 points and the Dallas Mavericks fended off fatigue to beat a fresh Charlotte Hornets team Dirk Nowitzki added 19 points for the Mavericks and Dennis Smith Jr had 15 The Mavericks were playing their third game in four days while the Hornets were coming off a fourday layoff But Dallas showed no signs of wearing down in the fourth quarter repeatedly thwarting Charlottes attempts to take the lead Kemba Walker had 41 points on 16of28 shooting for the Hornets Dwight Howard had 15 points and 12 rebounds for Charlotte but was an anemic 5 of 18 from the foul line 8212 which proved costly in a close game BUCKS 110 MAGIC 103 MILWAUKEE AP 8212 Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 26 points Khris Middleton added 22 and the Milwaukee Bucks turned up their defensive intensity after a porous first quarter to beat the Orlando Magic John Henson picked up his fifth doubledouble of the year with 14 points and 10 rebounds for the Bucks who handed the Magic their sixth straight loss and 15th in their last 16 Leading by 20 to start the fourth quarter coach Jason Kidd was able to get some rest for Antetokounmpo and Eric Bledsoe 15 points with the Golden State Warriors visiting Milwaukee on Friday night Evan Fournier had 21 points to lead Orlando which cut the deficit to single digits during the closing minutes with reserves on the floor PISTONS 114 NETS 80 NEW YORK AP 8212 Andre Drummond scored 22 points and grabbed 20 rebounds Tobias Harris had 22 points and the Detroit Pistons blew past the Brooklyn Nets Dwight Buycks added 17 points for the Pistons Allen Crabbe scored 20 points and Rondae HollisJefferson had 15 points for the Nets who have lost three in a row Detroit took a 9061 lead heading into the fourth quarter and led by as many as 40 points 10464 with 820 remaining ___ More NBA basketball httpsapnewscomtagNBAbasketball NEW YORK AP 8212 Rookie Lauri Markkanen scored a seasonhigh 33 points Kris Dunn shook off a nightmarish shooting night to make the tiebreaking basket in the second overtime and the Chicago Bulls beat the New York Knicks 122119 on Wednesday night Dunn had missed 14 of his first 17 shots before banking in a runner with just under a minute left in the second extra period and Markkanen finished it off by making two free throws with 68 seconds remaining Robin Lopez and Denzel Valentine each scored 20 points for the Bulls in their third narrow victory over the Knicks this season Michael Beasley 26 points and 12 rebounds off the bench for the Knicks who lost for the eighth time in 10 games Kristaps Porzingis finished with 24 points including a dunk at the buzzer to force the second OT Jarrett Jack had 16 points 10 rebounds and 10 assists for the Knicks but threw away a pass after coming up with a steal with the Knicks down two late in the second OT CLIPPERS 125 WARRIORS 106 OAKLAND Calif AP 8212 Lou Williams scored 27 of his careerhigh 50 points in the third quarter and Los Angeles beat Golden State for the first time in more than three years spoiling a milestone night for Kevin Durant Williams shot 16 for 27 with a careerbest eight 3pointers and made all 10 of his free throws Durant became the 44th player in NBA history to score 20000 career points finishing with 40 as the Warriors had their fivegame winning streak snapped along with a 12game unbeaten stretch in the Clippers rivalry The NBA Finals MVP returned from a threegame absence due to a strained right calf and scored 25 points in the first half 8212 KDs biggest half of the season and the exact number he needed for 20000 Durant shot 14 for 18 including 6 of 7 from 3point range At age 29 he is the secondyoungest player behind LeBron James to reach the 20000 mark ROCKETS 121 TRAIL BLAZERS 112 HOUSTON AP 8212 Chris Paul scored a seasonhigh 37 points and Eric Gordon added 30 as the Houston Rockets withstood a late run to get a win over the Portland Trail Blazers The Blazers used a big run to cut a 14point deficit to three with about three minutes left Houston responded with a 62 run capped by a 3pointer from Paul to make it 111104 about a minute later Damian Lillard made a layup on the other end but Paul cut through three defenders to make an offbalance layup to push the lead to 113106 The Blazers couldnt get the ball in after a timeout Houston got the ball back and Clint Capela added two free throws to secure the victory Lillard scored 29 in his return after missing the last two games with a strained right calf and CJ McCollum added 24 points as the Blazers saw a threegame winning streak snapped The Rockets won their second straight and improved to 32 in five games without James Harden who is out for at least two weeks with a hamstring injury HEAT 114 PACERS 106 INDIANAPOLIS AP 8212 Goran Dragic scored 20 points and Wayne Ellington made the decisive 3pointer with 232 seconds left helping Miami fend off Indianas late push Its the sixth straight win for the Heat Miami also ended a 10game road losing streak against the Pacers Victor Oladipo scored 26 points and Lance Stephenson provided a late boost of energy that nearly allowed Indiana to erase a 10point deficit in the final 957 Stephenson wound up with 15 points eight rebounds and four assists But when Ellingtons 3 bounced in rather than rolling off the rim as it appeared it would Indianas comeback hopes were over Ellington was one of three Miami players with 15 points Hassan Whiteside had 16 points and 15 rebounds to help snap the Pacers twogame winning streak GRIZZLIES 105 PELICANS 102 MEMPHIS Tenn AP 8212 Tyreke Evans scored 28 points including a pair of free throws with 59 seconds left that helped the Memphis Grizzlies beat the New Orleans Pelicans Marc Gasol finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds for Memphis while JaMychal Green contributed 20 points and 14 rebounds After Evans foul shots the Pelicans had a chance for a tie but ETwaun Moores 3point attempt from the left wing bounced off the front of the rim DeMarcus Cousins had 29 points and eight rebounds Moore had 16 points and Rajon Rondo had 14 Cousins was 2 of 10 from the field entering the fourth but scored 14 points in the final quarter He hit a trio of 3s as the Pelicans overcame an 11point deficit Evans made four free throws in the final 61 seconds JAZZ 107 WIZARDS 104 WASHINGTON AP 8212 Ricky Rubio scored 21 points Donovan Mitchell had 16 and the shorthanded Utah Jazz completed a season sweep over the Washington Wizards Ekpe Udoh scored 16 points and Joe Johnson had 16 off the bench for the Jazz who had lost 13 of 16 in between meetings with Washington The Wizards were embarrassed 11669 in Utah on Dec 4 Utah played without two starters and secondleading scorer Rodney Hood was ejected in the second half John Wall had 35 points and 11 assists for the Wizards but committed eight of their 23 turnovers Bradley Beal had 23 points but missed six of seven shots in the fourth quarter and lost the ball with 29 seconds remaining while attempting a gametying 3pointer TIMBERWOLVES 104 THUNDER 88 MINNEAPOLIS AP 8212 Jimmy Butler scored 26 points grabbed seven rebounds and had eight assists for the Minnesota Timberwolves in a win against the Oklahoma City Thunder Andrew Wiggins added 19 points and KarlAnthony Towns had 18 points and 12 rebounds as Minnesota pulled away in the second half to win its third game in a row at home and 10th in its last 13 overall Russell Westbrook had 38 points and 10 rebounds but Paul George Carmelo Anthony and the rest of the Thunder had a tough time shooting Westbrook was 15 of 23 from the field while his teammates were 17 of 56 303 percent Anthony scored 15 points on 5of19 shooting while George finished 5 of 14 for 13 points for Oklahoma City which has lost five of seven HAWKS 110 NUGGETS 97 DENVER AP 8212 Dennis Schroder had 19 points and 10 assists Taurean Prince scored 16 and Atlanta beat Denver to end a 10game road losing streak Kent Bazemore scored 14 points and Ersan Ilyasova had 10 points and nine rebounds for the Hawks who never trailed after the first quarter Atlanta 1130 has the worst record in the NBA and entered the night tied for the fewest road wins The Hawks posted their fourth road victory this season Denver had won 11 of 13 home games since early November Gary Harris had 25 points but was the only Nuggets player to shoot well from the field MAVERICKS 115 HORNETS 111 CHARLOTTE NC AP 8212 Harrison Barnes had 25 points and 11 rebounds Yogi Ferrell made seven 3pointers and scored 22 points and the Dallas Mavericks fended off fatigue to beat a fresh Charlotte Hornets team Dirk Nowitzki added 19 points for the Mavericks and Dennis Smith Jr had 15 The Mavericks were playing their third game in four days while the Hornets were coming off a fourday layoff But Dallas showed no signs of wearing down in the fourth quarter repeatedly thwarting Charlottes attempts to take the lead Kemba Walker had 41 points on 16of28 shooting for the Hornets Dwight Howard had 15 points and 12 rebounds for Charlotte but was an anemic 5 of 18 from the foul line 8212 which proved costly in a close game BUCKS 110 MAGIC 103 MILWAUKEE AP 8212 Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 26 points Khris Middleton added 22 and the Milwaukee Bucks turned up their defensive intensity after a porous first quarter to beat the Orlando Magic John Henson picked up his fifth doubledouble of the year with 14 points and 10 rebounds for the Bucks who handed the Magic their sixth straight loss and 15th in their last 16 Leading by 20 to start the fourth quarter coach Jason Kidd was able to get some rest for Antetokounmpo and Eric Bledsoe 15 points with the Golden State Warriors visiting Milwaukee on Friday night Evan Fournier had 21 points to lead Orlando which cut the deficit to single digits during the closing minutes with reserves on the floor PISTONS 114 NETS 80 NEW YORK AP 8212 Andre Drummond scored 22 points and grabbed 20 rebounds Tobias Harris had 22 points and the Detroit Pistons blew past the Brooklyn Nets Dwight Buycks added 17 points for the Pistons Allen Crabbe scored 20 points and Rondae HollisJefferson had 15 points for the Nets who have lost three in a row Detroit took a 9061 lead heading into the fourth quarter and led by as many as 40 points 10464 with 820 remaining ___ More NBA basketball httpsapnewscomtagNBAbasketball

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<p>Photo by Blandine Le Cain | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p> <p>A ghost of the past was the real winner of the French presidential election.&amp;#160; Emmanuel Macron won only because a majority felt they had to vote against the ghost of &#8220;fascism&#8221; allegedly embodied by his opponent, Marine Le Pen.&amp;#160; Whether out of panic or out of the need to feel respectable, the French voted two to one in favor of a man whose program most of them either ignored or disliked.&amp;#160; Now they are stuck with him for five years.</p> <p>If people had voted on the issues, the majority would never have elected a man representing the trans-Atlantic elite totally committed to &#8220;globalization&#8221;, using whatever is left of the power of national governments to weaken them still further, turning over decision-making to &#8220;the markets&#8221; &#8211; that is, to international capital, managed by the major banks and financial institutions, notably those located in the United States, such as Goldman-Sachs.</p> <p>The significance of this election is so widely misrepresented that clarification requires a fairly thorough explanation, not only of the Macron project, but also of what the (impossible) election of Marine Le Pen would have meant.</p> <p>From a Two Party to a Single Party System</p> <p>Despite the multiparty nature of French elections, for the past generation France has been essentially ruled by a two-party system, with government power alternating between the Socialist Party, roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Democratic Party, and a party inherited from the Gaullist tradition which has gone through various name changes before recently settling on calling itself Les R&#233;publicains (LR), in obvious imitation of the United States. &amp;#160;For decades, there has been nothing &#8220;socialist&#8221; about the Socialist Party and nothing Gaullist about The Republicans.&amp;#160; In reality, both have adopted neoliberal economic policies, or more precisely, they have followed European Union directives requiring member states to adopt neoliberal economic policies. Especially since the adoption of the common currency, the euro, a little over fifteen years ago, those economic policies have become tangibly harmful to France, hastening its deindustrialization, the ruin of its farmers and the growing indebtedness of the State to private banks.</p> <p>This has had inevitable political repercussions. &amp;#160;The simplest reaction has been widespread reaction against both parties for continuing to pursue the same unpopular policies. The most thoughtful reaction has been to start realizing that it is the European Union itself that imposes this unpopular economic conformism.</p> <p>To quell growing criticism of the European Union, the well-oiled Macron machine, labeled &#8220;En Marche!&#8221; has exploited the popular reaction against both governing parties.&amp;#160; It has broken and absorbed large parts of both, in an obvious move to turn En Marche! into a single catch-all party loyal to Macron.</p> <p>The destruction of the Socialist Party was easy.&amp;#160; Since the &#8220;Socialist&#8221; government was so unpopular that it could not hope to win, it was easy to lure prominent members of that party to jump the sinking ship and rally to Macron, who had been economics minister in that unpopular government, but who was advertised by all the media as &#8220;new&#8221; and &#8220;anti-system&#8221;.</p> <p>Weakening the Republicans was trickier.&amp;#160; Thanks to the deep unpopularity of the outgoing Socialist government, the Republican candidate, Fran&#231;ois Fillon, looked like a shoo-in.&amp;#160; But despite his pro-business economic policies, Fillon still cared about preserving France, and favored an independent foreign policy including good <a href="" type="internal" />relations with Russia.&amp;#160; It is unknown who dug into old records to come up with information about the allegedly fake jobs Fillon gave to his wife and children in past years, and how they were passed on the weekly Canard Enchain&#233; to be revealed at a critical moment in the campaign. The uproar drowned out the issues. To an electorate already wary of &#8220;establishment politicians&#8221;, these revelations were fatal.&amp;#160; The impression that &#8220;politicians are all corrupt&#8221; played into the hands of Emmanuel Macron, too young to have done anything worse than make a few quick millions during his passage through the Rothschild Bank, and there&#8217;s nothing illegal about that.</p> <p>In France, the presidential election is followed by parliamentary elections, which normally give a majority to the party of the newly elected president. But Macron had no party, so he is creating one for the occasion, made up of defectors from the major defeated parties as well as his own innovation, candidates from &#8220;civil society&#8221;, with no political experience, but loyal to him personally.&amp;#160; These &#8220;civil society&#8221; newcomers tend to be successful individuals, winners in the game of globalized competition, who will have no trouble voting for anti-labor measures. Macron is thus confirming Marine Le Pen&#8217;s longstanding assertion that the two main parties were really one big single party, whose rhetorical differences masked their political convergence.</p> <p>The Macron victory demoralized Republicans. Weakening them further, Macron named a Republican, Edouard Philippe, as his Prime Minister, in a government with four Socialist and two Republican, alongside his own selections from &#8220;civil society&#8221;.</p> <p>Transforming France</p> <p>Macron won in part because older voters in particular were frightened by his opponents&#8217; hints at leaving the European Union, which they have been indoctrinated to consider necessary to prevent renewal of Europe&#8217;s old wars.&amp;#160; But only the hysterical anti-fascist scare can explain why self-styled leftist &#8220;revolutionaries&#8221; such as Fran&#231;ois Ruffin, known for his successful anti-capitalist movie &#8220;Merci Patron&#8221;, could join the stampede to vote for Macron &#8211; promising to &#8220;oppose him later&#8221;. But how?</p> <p>Later, after five years of Macron, opposition may be harder than ever.&amp;#160; In recent decades, as manufacturing moves to low wage countries, including EU members such as Poland and Rumania, France has lost 40% of its industry.&amp;#160; Loss of industry means loss of jobs and fewer workers.&amp;#160; When industry is no longer essential, workers have lost their key power: striking to shut down industry.&amp;#160; Currently the desperate workers in a failing auto-works factory in central France are threatening to blow it up unless the government takes measures to save their jobs.&amp;#160; But violence is powerless when it has no price tag.</p> <p>Emmanuel Macron has said that he wants to spend only a short time in political life, before getting back to business. He has a mission, and he is in a hurry.&amp;#160; If he gains an absolute majority in the June parliamentary elections, he has a free hand to govern for five years.&amp;#160; He means to use this period not to &#8220;reform&#8221; the country, as his predecessors put it, but to &#8220;transform&#8221; France into a different sort of country.&amp;#160; If he has his way, in five years France will no longer be a sovereign nation, but a reliable region in a federalized European Union, following a rigorous economic policy made in Germany by bankers and a bellicose foreign policy made in Washington by neocons.</p> <p>As usual, the newly elected French president&#8217;s first move was to rush to Berlin to assert loyalty to the increasingly lopsided &#8220;Franco-German partnership&#8221;.&amp;#160; He was most warmly welcomed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, thanks to his clear determination to force through the austerity measures demanded by the Frankfurt budget masters.&amp;#160; Macron hopes that his fiscal obedience will be rewarded by German consent to a European investment fund for stimulating economic growth, but this implies a degree of federalism that the pfennig-pinching Germans show little sign of accepting.</p> <p>First of all, he has promised to complete the dismantling of the French labor code, which offers various protections to workers. This should save money for employers and the government. For Macron, the ruin of French industry and French farming seem to be welcome steps toward an economy of individual initiative, symbolized by startups.</p> <p>The Macron program amounts to a profound ideological transformation of the French ideal of &#233;galit&#233;, equality, from a horizontal concept, meaning equal benefits for all, to the vertical ideal of &#8220;equality of opportunity&#8221;, meaning the theoretical chance of every individual to rise above the others.&amp;#160; This is an ideal easily accepted in the United States with its longstanding myth of the self-made man.&amp;#160; The French have traditionally been logical enough to understand that everyone can&#8217;t rise above the others.</p> <p>Horizontal equality in France has primarily meant institutional redistribution of wealth via universal access to benefits such as health care, pensions, communications and transportation facilities, allocations for families raising children, unemployment insurance, free education at all levels.&amp;#160; These are the benefits that are under threat from the European Union in various ways.&amp;#160; One way is the imposition of &#8220;competition&#8221; rules that impose privatization and favor foreign takeovers that transform public services into profit-seekers.&amp;#160; Another is the imposition of public budget restrictions, along with the obligation of the State to seek private loans, increasing its debt, and the loss of tax revenue that all end up up making the State too poor to continue providing such services.</p> <p>Very few French people would want to give up such horizontal equality for the privilege of hoping to become a billionaire.</p> <p>Macron is sufficiently Americanized, or, to be more precise, globalized, to have declared that &#8220;there is no such thing as French culture&#8221;.&amp;#160; From this viewpoint, France is just a place open to diverse cultures, as well as to immigrants and of course foreign capital.&amp;#160; He has clearly signaled his rejection of French independence in the foreign policy field.&amp;#160; Unlike his leading rivals, who all called for improved relations with Russia, Macron echoes the Russophobic line of the neocons.&amp;#160; He broke tradition on his inauguration by riding down the Champs-Elys&#233;es in a military vehicle. A change of tone is indicated by his cabinet nominations.&amp;#160; The title of the new foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who served as defense minister in the Hollande government, is &#8220;Minister of Europe and of Foreign Affairs&#8221;, clearly giving Europe preference in the matter. Sylvie Goulard, an ardent Europeist who has remarked that &#8220;she does not feel French&#8221;, has been named Minister of Armies and Minister of Defense. Clearly national defense is an afterthought, when the main idea is to deploy the armed forces in various joint Western interventions.</p> <p>The Divided Opposition</p> <p>Unless the June parliamentary elections produce stunning surprises, the opposition to Macron&#8217;s catch-all governance party appears weak and fatally divided.&amp;#160; The Socialist Party is almost wiped out.&amp;#160; The Republicans are profoundly destabilized. &amp;#160;Genuine opposition to the Macron regime can only be based on defense of French interests against EU economic dictates, starting with the euro, which prevents the country from pursuing an independent economic and foreign policy. In short, the genuine opposition must be &#8220;souverainiste&#8221;, concerned with preserving French sovereignty.</p> <p>Two strong personalities emerged from the presidential election as potential leaders of that opposition: Jean-Luc M&#233;lenchon and Marine Le Pen. But they are drastically divided.</p> <p>M&#233;lenchon ran a spectacularly popular campaign, leaving the Socialist Party far behind (the party he personally left behind years ago).&amp;#160; Initially, as he seemed to be taking votes away from Le Pen as well as from the Socialists, he got friendly media coverage, but as he came closer to making it to the decisive second round, the tone started to change.&amp;#160; Just as Le Pen was finally knocked out as a &#8220;fascist&#8221;, there is little doubt that had M&#233;lenchon been Macron&#8217;s challenger, he would have been increasingly denounced as &#8220;communist&#8221;.</p> <p>M&#233;lenchon is intelligent enough to have realized that the social policies he advocates cannot be achieved unless France recovers control of its currency.&amp;#160; He therefore took a stand against both NATO and the euro.&amp;#160; So did Marine Le Pen. M&#233;lenchon was embarrassed by the resemblance between their two programs, and contrary to other eliminated candidates, refrained from endorsing Macron, instead calling on his movement, La France Insoumise, to choose between Macron and abstention.&amp;#160; Finally, 25% of M&#233;lenchon voters abstained in the second round, but 62% voted for Macron &#8211; almost exclusively motivated by the alleged need to &#8220;stop fascism&#8221;.&amp;#160; That compares with the final total results of 66% for Macron and 34 % for Le Pen.</p> <p>That vote confirmed the impossibility of forming a unified souverainiste opposition and allows Marine Le Pen to strengthen her claim to be the leader of a genuine opposition to Macron. She has admitted her own mistakes in the campaign, particularly in her debate with Macron, who beat her hands down with his arrogant performance as the economic expert.&amp;#160; But despite her mere 34%, she retains the most loyal base of supporters in a changing scene.&amp;#160; The problem for M&#233;lenchon is that his electorate is more versatile.</p> <p>Despite his loud appeal to &#8220;youth&#8221;, Macron was elected by France&#8217;s huge population of old people.&amp;#160; Among voters over 65, he won 80% against 20% for Le Pen.&amp;#160; Marine Le Pen did best with the youngest age group, 18 to 24, winning 44% against Macron&#8217;s 56% <a href="#_edn1" type="external">[1]</a>.</p> <p>The differences were also significant between socio-professional categories.&amp;#160; Macron won a whopping 83% of the votes coming from the &#8220;superior socio-professional categories&#8221; &#8211; categories where the &#8220;winners&#8221; in competitive society are largely ensconced.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; But in what are described as &#8220;categories populaires&#8221;, a French term for ordinary folk, with less education, the vote was 53% in favor of Le Pen.&amp;#160; And she confirmed her position as favorite candidate of the working class, winning 63% of workers&#8217; votes.</p> <p>Note that the &#8220;superior socio-professional categories&#8221; are where the significance of these results will be defined.&amp;#160; Individuals from that category &#8211; journalists, commentators and show business personalities &#8211; are all in a position to spread the word that this vote indicates that the workers must be &#8220;racist&#8221;, and therefore that we have narrowly escaped being taken over by &#8220;fascism&#8221;.</p> <p>One of the many odd things about the latest French presidential election is the rejoicing among foreign &#8220;leftists&#8221; over the fact that the candidate of the rich roundly defeated the candidate of the poor.&amp;#160; It used to be the other way around, but that was long ago.&amp;#160; These days, the winners in the competitive game comfort themselves that they morally deserve their success, because they are in favor of diversity and against racism, whereas the less fortunate, the rural people and the working class, don&#8217;t deserve much of anything, because they must be &#8220;racist&#8221; to be wary of globalization.</p> <p>The fact that Paris voted 90% for Macron is natural, considering that real estate prices have pushed the working class out of the capital, whose population is now overwhelmingly what is called &#8220;bobo&#8221; &#8211; the bohemian bourgeoisie, many of whom are employed in various branches of the dominant human rights ideology fabrication business: journalists, professors, teachers, consultants, the entertainment industry.&amp;#160; In these milieux, hardly anyone would even dare speak a positive word about Marine Le Pen.</p> <p>What if Marine Le Pen had won?</p> <p>Since politics is largely fantasy, we may as well try to imagine the unimaginable: what if Marine Le Pen had won the election?&amp;#160; This was never a realistic possibility, but it is worth imagining.</p> <p>It could have had one, perhaps only one, extremely positive result: it could have freed France from its paralyzing obsession with the nonexistent &#8220;fascist threat&#8221;.&amp;#160; The ghost would be exorcised. If the word has any meaning, &#8220;fascism&#8221; implies single party rule, whereas Marine Le Pen made clear her desire to govern by coalition, and selected the leader of a small Gaullist party, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, as her prospective prime minister. Poof! No fascism. That would have been an immeasurable benefit for political debate in France.&amp;#160; At last genuine issues might matter. Real threats could be confronted.</p> <p>Another advantage would have been the demise of the National Front.&amp;#160; Since Marine Le Pen took over the notorious party founded by her reactionary father, it has kept a precarious balance between two opposing wings. There is the right wing in the southeast, along the Riviera, the bastion of the party&#8217;s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a region represented in the outgoing parliament by his conservative granddaughter Marion Mar&#233;chal Le Pen.&amp;#160; In the old industrial northeast region, between Arras and Lille, Marine Le Pen has built her own bastion, as champion of ordinary working people, where she won a majority of votes in the presidential election.</p> <p>This is not the only time in history when an heiress has gone away with the heritage to join someone of whom her father disapproves. All those who want to cling to their comforting hatred of the left&#8217;s official Satan have trouble believing that Marine Le Pen broke with her reactionary father to go her own way (just as U.S. hawks couldn&#8217;t believe in Gorbachev).&amp;#160; This change owes everything to her encounter with Florian Philippot, an intellectual who gave up on the ability of the Socialists to face the real issues.&amp;#160; Marine has the personal qualities of a leader, and Philippot provided the intellectual substance she needed.&amp;#160; Marine has decisively chosen Philippot as her advisor and co-leader, despite grumblings by Jean-Marie that she has been led astray by a gay Marxist. &amp;#160;Had Marine won, her left wing would have been strengthened enough to enable her and Philippot to scrap the National Front and found a new &#8220;Patriot Party&#8221;.&amp;#160; However, by scoring below 40%, she has weakened her authority and must try to hold the troublesome party together in order to win seats in the new parliament &#8211; which will not be easy.</p> <p>Marine Le Pen would have tried to enact measures to save French industry and the jobs it provides, provide various benefits for low-income people, withdraw from NATO, and even promote a peaceful world, starting with friendly relations with Russia. She would even have begun to prepare her compatriots for escape from the euro.</p> <p>But not to worry, none of this &#8220;fascist&#8221; program would ever have come to pass. If she had won, bands of protesting &#8220;antifascists&#8221; would have invaded the streets, smashing windows and attacking police. The outgoing Socialist government was preparing to use the resulting chaos as a pretext to stay in power long enough to manage the parliamentary elections <a href="#_edn2" type="external">[2]</a>, ensuring that President Marine Le Pen would be held in check. &amp;#160;A &#8220;color revolution&#8221; was ready to be stirred up. The deep state is vigilant in NATOland.</p> <p>Diana Johnstone is co-author of &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning</a>&#8221;, by Paul H. Johnstone, her father.&amp;#160;She&amp;#160;can be reached at <a href="mailto:diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr" type="external">diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr</a></p> <p>Notes.</p> <p><a href="#_ednref1" type="external">[1]</a> According to poll of 7,752 representative voters by <a href="" type="internal">Le Figaro/LCI</a>,</p> <p><a href="#_ednref2" type="external">[2]</a> &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">Si Le Pen avait &#233;t&#233; &#233;lue&#8230; le plan secret pour &#8216;prot&#233;ger la R&#233;publique&#8217;</a>&#8221;, Le Nouvel Observateur, May 17, 2017</p>

All Power to the Banks! The Winners-Take-All Regime of Emmanuel Macron

https://counterpunch.org/2017/05/22/all-power-to-the-banks-the-winners-take-all-regime-of-emmanuel-macron/

2017-05-22

4left

Photo by Blandine Le Cain CC BY 20 A ghost of the past was the real winner of the French presidential electionamp160 Emmanuel Macron won only because a majority felt they had to vote against the ghost of 8220fascism8221 allegedly embodied by his opponent Marine Le Penamp160 Whether out of panic or out of the need to feel respectable the French voted two to one in favor of a man whose program most of them either ignored or dislikedamp160 Now they are stuck with him for five years If people had voted on the issues the majority would never have elected a man representing the transAtlantic elite totally committed to 8220globalization8221 using whatever is left of the power of national governments to weaken them still further turning over decisionmaking to 8220the markets8221 8211 that is to international capital managed by the major banks and financial institutions notably those located in the United States such as GoldmanSachs The significance of this election is so widely misrepresented that clarification requires a fairly thorough explanation not only of the Macron project but also of what the impossible election of Marine Le Pen would have meant From a Two Party to a Single Party System Despite the multiparty nature of French elections for the past generation France has been essentially ruled by a twoparty system with government power alternating between the Socialist Party roughly the equivalent of the US Democratic Party and a party inherited from the Gaullist tradition which has gone through various name changes before recently settling on calling itself Les R233publicains LR in obvious imitation of the United States amp160For decades there has been nothing 8220socialist8221 about the Socialist Party and nothing Gaullist about The Republicansamp160 In reality both have adopted neoliberal economic policies or more precisely they have followed European Union directives requiring member states to adopt neoliberal economic policies Especially since the adoption of the common currency the euro a little over fifteen years ago those economic policies have become tangibly harmful to France hastening its deindustrialization the ruin of its farmers and the growing indebtedness of the State to private banks This has had inevitable political repercussions amp160The simplest reaction has been widespread reaction against both parties for continuing to pursue the same unpopular policies The most thoughtful reaction has been to start realizing that it is the European Union itself that imposes this unpopular economic conformism To quell growing criticism of the European Union the welloiled Macron machine labeled 8220En Marche8221 has exploited the popular reaction against both governing partiesamp160 It has broken and absorbed large parts of both in an obvious move to turn En Marche into a single catchall party loyal to Macron The destruction of the Socialist Party was easyamp160 Since the 8220Socialist8221 government was so unpopular that it could not hope to win it was easy to lure prominent members of that party to jump the sinking ship and rally to Macron who had been economics minister in that unpopular government but who was advertised by all the media as 8220new8221 and 8220antisystem8221 Weakening the Republicans was trickieramp160 Thanks to the deep unpopularity of the outgoing Socialist government the Republican candidate Fran231ois Fillon looked like a shooinamp160 But despite his probusiness economic policies Fillon still cared about preserving France and favored an independent foreign policy including good relations with Russiaamp160 It is unknown who dug into old records to come up with information about the allegedly fake jobs Fillon gave to his wife and children in past years and how they were passed on the weekly Canard Enchain233 to be revealed at a critical moment in the campaign The uproar drowned out the issues To an electorate already wary of 8220establishment politicians8221 these revelations were fatalamp160 The impression that 8220politicians are all corrupt8221 played into the hands of Emmanuel Macron too young to have done anything worse than make a few quick millions during his passage through the Rothschild Bank and there8217s nothing illegal about that In France the presidential election is followed by parliamentary elections which normally give a majority to the party of the newly elected president But Macron had no party so he is creating one for the occasion made up of defectors from the major defeated parties as well as his own innovation candidates from 8220civil society8221 with no political experience but loyal to him personallyamp160 These 8220civil society8221 newcomers tend to be successful individuals winners in the game of globalized competition who will have no trouble voting for antilabor measures Macron is thus confirming Marine Le Pen8217s longstanding assertion that the two main parties were really one big single party whose rhetorical differences masked their political convergence The Macron victory demoralized Republicans Weakening them further Macron named a Republican Edouard Philippe as his Prime Minister in a government with four Socialist and two Republican alongside his own selections from 8220civil society8221 Transforming France Macron won in part because older voters in particular were frightened by his opponents8217 hints at leaving the European Union which they have been indoctrinated to consider necessary to prevent renewal of Europe8217s old warsamp160 But only the hysterical antifascist scare can explain why selfstyled leftist 8220revolutionaries8221 such as Fran231ois Ruffin known for his successful anticapitalist movie 8220Merci Patron8221 could join the stampede to vote for Macron 8211 promising to 8220oppose him later8221 But how Later after five years of Macron opposition may be harder than everamp160 In recent decades as manufacturing moves to low wage countries including EU members such as Poland and Rumania France has lost 40 of its industryamp160 Loss of industry means loss of jobs and fewer workersamp160 When industry is no longer essential workers have lost their key power striking to shut down industryamp160 Currently the desperate workers in a failing autoworks factory in central France are threatening to blow it up unless the government takes measures to save their jobsamp160 But violence is powerless when it has no price tag Emmanuel Macron has said that he wants to spend only a short time in political life before getting back to business He has a mission and he is in a hurryamp160 If he gains an absolute majority in the June parliamentary elections he has a free hand to govern for five yearsamp160 He means to use this period not to 8220reform8221 the country as his predecessors put it but to 8220transform8221 France into a different sort of countryamp160 If he has his way in five years France will no longer be a sovereign nation but a reliable region in a federalized European Union following a rigorous economic policy made in Germany by bankers and a bellicose foreign policy made in Washington by neocons As usual the newly elected French president8217s first move was to rush to Berlin to assert loyalty to the increasingly lopsided 8220FrancoGerman partnership8221amp160 He was most warmly welcomed by Chancellor Angela Merkel thanks to his clear determination to force through the austerity measures demanded by the Frankfurt budget mastersamp160 Macron hopes that his fiscal obedience will be rewarded by German consent to a European investment fund for stimulating economic growth but this implies a degree of federalism that the pfennigpinching Germans show little sign of accepting First of all he has promised to complete the dismantling of the French labor code which offers various protections to workers This should save money for employers and the government For Macron the ruin of French industry and French farming seem to be welcome steps toward an economy of individual initiative symbolized by startups The Macron program amounts to a profound ideological transformation of the French ideal of 233galit233 equality from a horizontal concept meaning equal benefits for all to the vertical ideal of 8220equality of opportunity8221 meaning the theoretical chance of every individual to rise above the othersamp160 This is an ideal easily accepted in the United States with its longstanding myth of the selfmade manamp160 The French have traditionally been logical enough to understand that everyone can8217t rise above the others Horizontal equality in France has primarily meant institutional redistribution of wealth via universal access to benefits such as health care pensions communications and transportation facilities allocations for families raising children unemployment insurance free education at all levelsamp160 These are the benefits that are under threat from the European Union in various waysamp160 One way is the imposition of 8220competition8221 rules that impose privatization and favor foreign takeovers that transform public services into profitseekersamp160 Another is the imposition of public budget restrictions along with the obligation of the State to seek private loans increasing its debt and the loss of tax revenue that all end up up making the State too poor to continue providing such services Very few French people would want to give up such horizontal equality for the privilege of hoping to become a billionaire Macron is sufficiently Americanized or to be more precise globalized to have declared that 8220there is no such thing as French culture8221amp160 From this viewpoint France is just a place open to diverse cultures as well as to immigrants and of course foreign capitalamp160 He has clearly signaled his rejection of French independence in the foreign policy fieldamp160 Unlike his leading rivals who all called for improved relations with Russia Macron echoes the Russophobic line of the neoconsamp160 He broke tradition on his inauguration by riding down the ChampsElys233es in a military vehicle A change of tone is indicated by his cabinet nominationsamp160 The title of the new foreign minister JeanYves Le Drian who served as defense minister in the Hollande government is 8220Minister of Europe and of Foreign Affairs8221 clearly giving Europe preference in the matter Sylvie Goulard an ardent Europeist who has remarked that 8220she does not feel French8221 has been named Minister of Armies and Minister of Defense Clearly national defense is an afterthought when the main idea is to deploy the armed forces in various joint Western interventions The Divided Opposition Unless the June parliamentary elections produce stunning surprises the opposition to Macron8217s catchall governance party appears weak and fatally dividedamp160 The Socialist Party is almost wiped outamp160 The Republicans are profoundly destabilized amp160Genuine opposition to the Macron regime can only be based on defense of French interests against EU economic dictates starting with the euro which prevents the country from pursuing an independent economic and foreign policy In short the genuine opposition must be 8220souverainiste8221 concerned with preserving French sovereignty Two strong personalities emerged from the presidential election as potential leaders of that opposition JeanLuc M233lenchon and Marine Le Pen But they are drastically divided M233lenchon ran a spectacularly popular campaign leaving the Socialist Party far behind the party he personally left behind years agoamp160 Initially as he seemed to be taking votes away from Le Pen as well as from the Socialists he got friendly media coverage but as he came closer to making it to the decisive second round the tone started to changeamp160 Just as Le Pen was finally knocked out as a 8220fascist8221 there is little doubt that had M233lenchon been Macron8217s challenger he would have been increasingly denounced as 8220communist8221 M233lenchon is intelligent enough to have realized that the social policies he advocates cannot be achieved unless France recovers control of its currencyamp160 He therefore took a stand against both NATO and the euroamp160 So did Marine Le Pen M233lenchon was embarrassed by the resemblance between their two programs and contrary to other eliminated candidates refrained from endorsing Macron instead calling on his movement La France Insoumise to choose between Macron and abstentionamp160 Finally 25 of M233lenchon voters abstained in the second round but 62 voted for Macron 8211 almost exclusively motivated by the alleged need to 8220stop fascism8221amp160 That compares with the final total results of 66 for Macron and 34 for Le Pen That vote confirmed the impossibility of forming a unified souverainiste opposition and allows Marine Le Pen to strengthen her claim to be the leader of a genuine opposition to Macron She has admitted her own mistakes in the campaign particularly in her debate with Macron who beat her hands down with his arrogant performance as the economic expertamp160 But despite her mere 34 she retains the most loyal base of supporters in a changing sceneamp160 The problem for M233lenchon is that his electorate is more versatile Despite his loud appeal to 8220youth8221 Macron was elected by France8217s huge population of old peopleamp160 Among voters over 65 he won 80 against 20 for Le Penamp160 Marine Le Pen did best with the youngest age group 18 to 24 winning 44 against Macron8217s 56 1 The differences were also significant between socioprofessional categoriesamp160 Macron won a whopping 83 of the votes coming from the 8220superior socioprofessional categories8221 8211 categories where the 8220winners8221 in competitive society are largely ensconcedamp160amp160 But in what are described as 8220categories populaires8221 a French term for ordinary folk with less education the vote was 53 in favor of Le Penamp160 And she confirmed her position as favorite candidate of the working class winning 63 of workers8217 votes Note that the 8220superior socioprofessional categories8221 are where the significance of these results will be definedamp160 Individuals from that category 8211 journalists commentators and show business personalities 8211 are all in a position to spread the word that this vote indicates that the workers must be 8220racist8221 and therefore that we have narrowly escaped being taken over by 8220fascism8221 One of the many odd things about the latest French presidential election is the rejoicing among foreign 8220leftists8221 over the fact that the candidate of the rich roundly defeated the candidate of the pooramp160 It used to be the other way around but that was long agoamp160 These days the winners in the competitive game comfort themselves that they morally deserve their success because they are in favor of diversity and against racism whereas the less fortunate the rural people and the working class don8217t deserve much of anything because they must be 8220racist8221 to be wary of globalization The fact that Paris voted 90 for Macron is natural considering that real estate prices have pushed the working class out of the capital whose population is now overwhelmingly what is called 8220bobo8221 8211 the bohemian bourgeoisie many of whom are employed in various branches of the dominant human rights ideology fabrication business journalists professors teachers consultants the entertainment industryamp160 In these milieux hardly anyone would even dare speak a positive word about Marine Le Pen What if Marine Le Pen had won Since politics is largely fantasy we may as well try to imagine the unimaginable what if Marine Le Pen had won the electionamp160 This was never a realistic possibility but it is worth imagining It could have had one perhaps only one extremely positive result it could have freed France from its paralyzing obsession with the nonexistent 8220fascist threat8221amp160 The ghost would be exorcised If the word has any meaning 8220fascism8221 implies single party rule whereas Marine Le Pen made clear her desire to govern by coalition and selected the leader of a small Gaullist party Nicolas DupontAignan as her prospective prime minister Poof No fascism That would have been an immeasurable benefit for political debate in Franceamp160 At last genuine issues might matter Real threats could be confronted Another advantage would have been the demise of the National Frontamp160 Since Marine Le Pen took over the notorious party founded by her reactionary father it has kept a precarious balance between two opposing wings There is the right wing in the southeast along the Riviera the bastion of the party8217s founder JeanMarie Le Pen a region represented in the outgoing parliament by his conservative granddaughter Marion Mar233chal Le Penamp160 In the old industrial northeast region between Arras and Lille Marine Le Pen has built her own bastion as champion of ordinary working people where she won a majority of votes in the presidential election This is not the only time in history when an heiress has gone away with the heritage to join someone of whom her father disapproves All those who want to cling to their comforting hatred of the left8217s official Satan have trouble believing that Marine Le Pen broke with her reactionary father to go her own way just as US hawks couldn8217t believe in Gorbachevamp160 This change owes everything to her encounter with Florian Philippot an intellectual who gave up on the ability of the Socialists to face the real issuesamp160 Marine has the personal qualities of a leader and Philippot provided the intellectual substance she neededamp160 Marine has decisively chosen Philippot as her advisor and coleader despite grumblings by JeanMarie that she has been led astray by a gay Marxist amp160Had Marine won her left wing would have been strengthened enough to enable her and Philippot to scrap the National Front and found a new 8220Patriot Party8221amp160 However by scoring below 40 she has weakened her authority and must try to hold the troublesome party together in order to win seats in the new parliament 8211 which will not be easy Marine Le Pen would have tried to enact measures to save French industry and the jobs it provides provide various benefits for lowincome people withdraw from NATO and even promote a peaceful world starting with friendly relations with Russia She would even have begun to prepare her compatriots for escape from the euro But not to worry none of this 8220fascist8221 program would ever have come to pass If she had won bands of protesting 8220antifascists8221 would have invaded the streets smashing windows and attacking police The outgoing Socialist government was preparing to use the resulting chaos as a pretext to stay in power long enough to manage the parliamentary elections 2 ensuring that President Marine Le Pen would be held in check amp160A 8220color revolution8221 was ready to be stirred up The deep state is vigilant in NATOland Diana Johnstone is coauthor of 8220 From MAD to Madness Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning8221 by Paul H Johnstone her fatheramp160Sheamp160can be reached at dianajohnstonewanadoofr Notes 1 According to poll of 7752 representative voters by Le FigaroLCI 2 8220 Si Le Pen avait 233t233 233lue8230 le plan secret pour 8216prot233ger la R233publique82178221 Le Nouvel Observateur May 17 2017

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<p>By Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatchThis piece first appeared at TomDispatch. Read Tom Engelhardt&#8217;s introduction <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175704/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_the_eternal_war/#more" type="external">here</a>.</p> <p>For well over a decade now the United States has been &#8220;a nation at war.&#8221; Does that war have a name?</p> <p>It did at the outset.&amp;#160; After 9/11, George W. Bush&#8217;s administration wasted no time in announcing that the U.S. was engaged in a&amp;#160;Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT.&amp;#160; With few dissenters, the media quickly embraced the term. The GWOT promised to be a gargantuan, transformative enterprise. The conflict begun on 9/11 would define the age. In neoconservative circles, it was known as&amp;#160;World War IV.</p> <p>Upon succeeding to the presidency in 2009, however, Barack Obama without fanfare junked Bush&#8217;s formulation (as he did again in a speech at the National Defense University last week).&amp;#160; Yet if the appellation went away, the conflict itself, shorn of identifying marks, continued.</p> <p /> <p>Does it matter that ours has become and remains a nameless war? Very much so.</p> <p>Names bestow meaning.&amp;#160; When it comes to war, a name attached to a date can shape our understanding of what the conflict was all about.&amp;#160; To specify when a war began and when it ended is to privilege certain explanations of its significance while discrediting others. Let me provide a few illustrations.</p> <p>With rare exceptions, Americans today characterize the horrendous fraternal bloodletting of 1861-1865 as the Civil War.&amp;#160; Yet not many decades ago, diehard supporters of the Lost Cause insisted on referring to that conflict as the War Between the States or the War for Southern Independence (or even the War of Northern Aggression).&amp;#160; The South may have gone down in defeat, but the purposes for which Southerners had fought &#8212; preserving a distinctive way of life and the principle of states&#8217; rights &#8212; had been worthy, even noble.&amp;#160; So at least they professed to believe, with their preferred names for the war reflecting that belief.</p> <p>Schoolbooks tell us that the Spanish-American War began in April 1898 and ended in August of that same year.&amp;#160; The name and dates fit nicely with a widespread inclination from President William McKinley&#8217;s day to our own to frame U.S. intervention in Cuba as an altruistic effort to liberate that island from Spanish oppression.</p> <p>Yet the Cubans were not exactly bystanders in that drama.&amp;#160; By 1898, they had been fighting for years to oust their colonial overlords.&amp;#160; And although hostilities in Cuba itself ended on August 12th, they dragged on in the Philippines, another Spanish colony that the United States had seized for reasons only remotely related to liberating Cubans.&amp;#160; Notably, U.S. troops occupying the Philippines waged a brutal war not against Spaniards but against Filipino nationalists no more inclined to accept colonial rule by Washington than by Madrid.&amp;#160; So widen the aperture to include this Cuban prelude and the Filipino postlude and you end up with something like this:&amp;#160; The Spanish-American-Cuban-Philippines War of 1895-1902.&amp;#160; Too clunky?&amp;#160; How about the War for the American Empire?&amp;#160; This much is for sure: rather than illuminating, the commonplace textbook descriptor serves chiefly to conceal.</p> <p>Strange as it may seem, Europeans once referred to the calamitous events of 1914-1918 as the Great War.&amp;#160; When Woodrow Wilson decided in 1917 to send an army of doughboys to fight alongside the Allies, he went beyond Great.&amp;#160; According to the president, the Great War was going to be the War To End All Wars.&amp;#160; Alas, things did not pan out as he expected.&amp;#160; Perhaps anticipating the demise of his vision of permanent peace, War Department General Order 115, issued on October 7, 1919, formally declared that, at least as far as the United States was concerned, the recently concluded hostilities would be known simply as the World War.</p> <p>In September 1939 &#8212; presto chango! &#8212; the World War suddenly became the First World War, the Nazi invasion of Poland having inaugurated a Second World War, also known as World War II or more cryptically WWII.&amp;#160; To be sure, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin preferred the Great Patriotic War.&amp;#160; Although this found instant &#8212; almost unanimous &#8212; favor among Soviet citizens, it did not catch on elsewhere.</p> <p>Does World War II accurately capture the events it purports to encompass?&amp;#160; With the crusade against the Axis now ranking alongside the crusade against slavery as a myth-enshrouded chapter in U.S. history to which all must pay homage, Americans are no more inclined to consider that question than to consider why a playoff to determine the professional baseball championship of North America constitutes a &#8220;World Series.&#8221;</p> <p>In fact, however convenient and familiar, World War II is misleading and not especially useful.&amp;#160; The period in question saw at least two wars, each only tenuously connected to the other, each having distinctive origins, each yielding a different outcome.&amp;#160; To separate them is to transform the historical landscape.</p> <p>On the one hand, there was the Pacific War, pitting the United States against Japan.&amp;#160; Formally initiated by the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, it had in fact begun a decade earlier when Japan embarked upon a policy of armed conquest in Manchuria.&amp;#160; At stake was the question of who would dominate East Asia.&amp;#160; Japan&#8217;s crushing defeat at the hands of the United States, sealed by two atomic bombs in 1945, answered that question (at least for a time).</p> <p>Then there was the European War, pitting Nazi Germany first against Great Britain and France, but ultimately against a grand alliance led by the United States, the Soviet Union, and a fast fading British Empire.&amp;#160; At stake was the question of who would dominate Europe.&amp;#160; Germany&#8217;s defeat resolved that issue (at least for a time): no one would.&amp;#160; To prevent any single power from controlling Europe, two outside powers divided it.</p> <p>This division served as the basis for the ensuing Cold War, which wasn&#8217;t actually cold, but also (thankfully) wasn&#8217;t World War III, the retrospective insistence of bellicose neoconservatives notwithstanding.&amp;#160; But when did the Cold War begin?&amp;#160; Was it in early 1947, when President Harry Truman decided that Stalin&#8217;s Russia posed a looming threat and committed the United States to a strategy of containment?&amp;#160; Or was it in 1919, when Vladimir Lenin decided that Winston Churchill&#8217;s vow to &#8220;strangle Bolshevism in its cradle&#8221; posed a looming threat to the Russian Revolution, with an ongoing Anglo-American military intervention evincing a determination to make good on that vow?</p> <p>Separating the war against Nazi Germany from the war against Imperial Japan opens up another interpretive possibility.&amp;#160; If you incorporate the European conflict of 1914-1918 and the European conflict of 1939-1945 into a single narrative, you get a Second Thirty Years War (the first having occurred from 1618-1648) &#8212; not so much a contest of good against evil, as a mindless exercise in self-destruction that represented the ultimate expression of European folly.</p> <p>So, yes, it matters what we choose to call the military enterprise we&#8217;ve been waging not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in any number of other countries scattered hither and yon across the Islamic world.&amp;#160; Although the Obama administration appears no more interested than the Bush administration in saying when that enterprise will actually end, the date we choose as its starting point also matters.</p> <p>Although Washington seems in no hurry to name its nameless war &#8212; and will no doubt settle on something self-serving or anodyne if it ever finally addresses the issue &#8212; perhaps we should jump-start the process.&amp;#160; Let&#8217;s consider some possible options, names that might actually explain what&#8217;s going on.</p> <p>The Long War: Coined not long after 9/11 by senior officers in the Pentagon, this formulation never gained traction with either civilian officials or the general public. &amp;#160;Yet the Long War deserves consideration, even though &#8212; or perhaps because &#8212; it has lost its luster with the passage of time.</p> <p>At the outset, it connoted grand ambitions buoyed by extreme confidence in the efficacy of American military might.&amp;#160; This was going to be one for the ages, a multi-generational conflict yielding sweeping results.</p> <p>The Long War did begin on a hopeful note.&amp;#160; The initial entry into Afghanistan and then into Iraq seemed to herald &#8220;home by Christmas&#8221; triumphal parades.&amp;#160; Yet this soon proved an illusion as victory slipped from Washington&#8217;s grasp.&amp;#160; By 2005 at the latest, events in the field had dashed the neo-Wilsonian expectations nurtured back home.</p> <p>With the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan dragging on, &#8220;long&#8221; lost its original connotation.&amp;#160; Instead of &#8220;really important,&#8221; it became a synonym for &#8220;interminable.&#8221; &amp;#160;Today, the Long War does succinctly capture the experience of American soldiers who have endured multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.</p> <p>For Long War combatants, the object of the exercise has become to persist.&amp;#160; As for winning, it&#8217;s not in the cards. The Long War just might conclude by the end of 2014 if President Obama keeps his pledge to end the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan and if he avoids getting sucked into Syria&#8217;s civil war.&amp;#160; So the troops may hope.</p> <p>The War Against Al-Qaeda: It began in August 1996 when Osama bin Laden issued a &#8220;Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,&#8221; i.e., Saudi Arabia.&amp;#160; In February 1998, a second bin Laden manifesto announced that killing Americans, military and civilian alike, had become &#8220;an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.&#8221;</p> <p>Although President Bill Clinton took notice, the U.S. response to bin Laden&#8217;s provocations was limited and ineffectual.&amp;#160; Only after 9/11 did Washington take this threat seriously.&amp;#160; Since then, apart from a pointless excursion into Iraq (where, in Saddam Hussein&#8217;s day, al-Qaeda did not exist), U.S. attention has been focused on Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have waged the longest war in American history, and on Pakistan&#8217;s tribal borderlands, where a CIA drone campaign is ongoing.&amp;#160; By the end of President Obama&#8217;s first term, U.S. intelligence agencies were reporting that a combined CIA/military campaign had largely destroyed bin Laden&#8217;s organization.&amp;#160; Bin Laden himself, of course, was dead.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Could the United States have declared victory in its unnamed war at this point?&amp;#160; Perhaps, but it gave little thought to doing so.&amp;#160; Instead, the national security apparatus had already trained its sights on various al-Qaeda &#8220;franchises&#8221; and wannabes, militant groups claiming the bin Laden brand and waging their own version of jihad.&amp;#160; These offshoots emerged in the Maghreb, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and &#8212; wouldn&#8217;t you know it &#8212; post-Saddam Iraq, among other places.&amp;#160; The question as to whether they actually posed a danger to the United States got, at best, passing attention &#8212; the label &#8220;al-Qaeda&#8221; eliciting the same sort of Pavlovian response that the word &#8220;communist&#8221; once did.</p> <p>Americans should not expect this war to end anytime soon.&amp;#160; Indeed, the Pentagon&#8217;s impresario of special operations recently speculated &#8212; by no means unhappily &#8212; that it would continue globally for &#8220;at least 10 to 20 years.&#8221; &amp;#160;&amp;#160;Freely translated, his statement undoubtedly means: &#8220;No one really knows, but we&#8217;re planning to keep at it for one helluva long time.&#8221;</p> <p>The War For/Against/About Israel: It began in 1948.&amp;#160; For many Jews, the founding of the state of Israel signified an ancient hope fulfilled.&amp;#160; For many Christians, conscious of the sin of anti-Semitism that had culminated in the Holocaust, it offered a way to ease guilty consciences, albeit mostly at others&#8217; expense.&amp;#160; For many Muslims, especially Arabs, and most acutely Arabs who had been living in Palestine, the founding of the Jewish state represented a grave injustice.&amp;#160; It was yet another unwelcome intrusion engineered by the West &#8212; colonialism by another name.</p> <p>Recounting the ensuing struggle without appearing to take sides is almost impossible.&amp;#160; Yet one thing seems clear: in terms of military involvement, the United States attempted in the late 1940s and 1950s to keep its distance.&amp;#160; Over the course of the 1960s, this changed.&amp;#160; The U.S. became Israel&#8217;s principal patron, committed to maintaining (and indeed increasing) its military superiority over its neighbors.</p> <p>In the decades that followed, the two countries forged a multifaceted &#8220;strategic relationship.&#8221;&amp;#160; A compliant Congress provided Israel with weapons and other assistance worth many billions of dollars, testifying to what has become an unambiguous and irrevocable U.S. commitment to the safety and well-being of the Jewish state.&amp;#160; The two countries share technology and intelligence.&amp;#160; Meanwhile, just as Israel had disregarded U.S. concerns when it came to developing nuclear weapons, it ignored persistent U.S. requests that it refrain from colonizing territory that it has conquered.</p> <p>When it comes to identifying the minimal essential requirements of Israeli security and the terms that will define any Palestinian-Israeli peace deal, the United States defers to Israel.&amp;#160; That may qualify as an overstatement, but only slightly.&amp;#160; Given the Israeli perspective on those requirements and those terms &#8212; permanent military supremacy and a permanently demilitarized Palestine allowed limited sovereignty &#8212; the War For/Against/About Israel is unlikely to end anytime soon either.&amp;#160; Whether the United States benefits from the perpetuation of this war is difficult to say, but we are in it for the long haul.</p> <p>The War for the Greater Middle East: I confess that this is the name I would choose for Washington&#8217;s unnamed war and is, in fact, the title of a course I teach.&amp;#160; (A tempting alternative is the Second Hundred Years War, the &#8220;first&#8221; having begun in 1337 and ended in 1453.)</p> <p>This war is about to hit the century mark, its opening chapter coinciding with the onset of World War I. &amp;#160;Not long after the fighting on the Western Front in Europe had settled into a stalemate, the British government, looking for ways to gain the upper hand, set out to dismantle the Ottoman Empire whose rulers had foolishly thrown in their lot with the German Reich against the Allies.</p> <p>By the time the war ended with Germany and the Turks on the losing side, Great Britain had already begun to draw up new boundaries, invent states, and install rulers to suit its predilections, while also issuing mutually contradictory promises to groups inhabiting these new precincts of its empire.&amp;#160; Toward what end?&amp;#160; Simply put, the British were intent on calling the shots from Egypt to India, whether by governing through intermediaries or ruling directly.&amp;#160; The result was a new Middle East and a total mess.</p> <p>London presided over this mess, albeit with considerable difficulty, until the end of World War II.&amp;#160; At this point, by abandoning efforts to keep Arabs and Zionists from one another&#8217;s throats in Palestine and by accepting the partition of India, they signaled their intention to throw in the towel. Alas, Washington proved more than willing to assume Britain&#8217;s role.&amp;#160; The lure of oil was strong.&amp;#160; So too were the fears, however overwrought, of the Soviets extending their influence into the region.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Unfortunately, the Americans enjoyed no more success in promoting long-term, pro-Western stability than had the British.&amp;#160; In some respects, they only made things worse, with the joint CIA-MI6 overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953 offering a prime example of a &#8220;success&#8221; that, to this day, has never stopped breeding disaster.</p> <p>Only after 1980 did things get really interesting, however.&amp;#160; The Carter Doctrine promulgated that year designated the Persian Gulf a vital national security interest and opened the door to greatly increased U.S. military activity not just in the Gulf, but also throughout the Greater Middle East (GME). &amp;#160;Between 1945 and 1980, considerable numbers of American soldiers lost their lives fighting in Asia and elsewhere.&amp;#160; During that period, virtually none were killed fighting in the GME.&amp;#160; Since 1990, in contrast, virtually none have been killed fighting anywhere except in the GME.</p> <p>What does the United States hope to achieve in its inherited and unending War for the Greater Middle East?&amp;#160; To pacify the region?&amp;#160; To remake it in our image?&amp;#160; To drain its stocks of petroleum?&amp;#160; Or just keeping the lid on?&amp;#160; However you define the war&#8217;s aims, things have not gone well, which once again suggests that, in some form, it will continue for some time to come. &amp;#160;If there&#8217;s any good news here, it&#8217;s the prospect of having ever more material for my seminar, which may soon expand into a two-semester course.</p> <p>The War Against Islam: This war began nearly 1,000 years ago and continued for centuries, a storied collision between Christendom and the Muslim ummah.&amp;#160; For a couple of hundred years, periodic eruptions of large-scale violence occurred until the conflict finally petered out with the last crusade sometime in the fourteenth century.</p> <p>In those days, many people had deemed religion something worth fighting for, a proposition to which the more sophisticated present-day inhabitants of Christendom no longer subscribe.&amp;#160; Yet could that religious war have resumed in our own day?&amp;#160; Professor Samuel Huntington thought so, although he styled the conflict a &#8220;clash of civilizations.&#8221;&amp;#160; Some militant radical Islamists agree with Professor Huntington, citing as evidence the unwelcome meddling of &#8220;infidels,&#8221; mostly wearing American uniforms, in various parts of the Muslim world.&amp;#160; Some militant evangelical Christians endorse this proposition, even if they take a more favorable view of U.S. troops occupying and drones targeting Muslim countries.</p> <p>In explaining the position of the United States government, religious scholars like George W. Bush and Barack (Hussein!) Obama have consistently expressed a contrary view.&amp;#160; Islam is a religion of peace, they declare, part of the great Abrahamic triad.&amp;#160; That the other elements of that triad are likewise committed to peace is a proposition that Bush, Obama, and most Americans take for granted, evidence not required.&amp;#160; There should be no reason why Christians, Jews, and Muslims can&#8217;t live together in harmony.</p> <p>Still, remember back in 2001 when, in an unscripted moment, President Bush described the war barely begun as a &#8220;crusade&#8221;?&amp;#160; That was just a slip of the tongue, right?&amp;#160; If not, we just might end up calling this one the Eternal War.</p> <p>Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175597/andrew_bacevich_boykinism" type="external">TomDispatch regular</a>. His next book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805082964/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country</a>, will appear in September.</p> <p>Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch" type="external">Facebook</a> or <a href="http://tomdispatch.tumblr.com/" type="external">Tumblr</a>. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Changing-Face-Empire-Cyberwarfare/dp/1608463109/" type="external">The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare.</a></p> <p>Copyright 2013 Andrew J. Bacevich</p>

Naming Our Nameless War

https://truthdig.com/articles/naming-our-nameless-war/

2013-05-28

4left

By Andrew J Bacevich TomDispatchThis piece first appeared at TomDispatch Read Tom Engelhardt8217s introduction here For well over a decade now the United States has been 8220a nation at war8221 Does that war have a name It did at the outsetamp160 After 911 George W Bush8217s administration wasted no time in announcing that the US was engaged in aamp160Global War on Terrorism or GWOTamp160 With few dissenters the media quickly embraced the term The GWOT promised to be a gargantuan transformative enterprise The conflict begun on 911 would define the age In neoconservative circles it was known asamp160World War IV Upon succeeding to the presidency in 2009 however Barack Obama without fanfare junked Bush8217s formulation as he did again in a speech at the National Defense University last weekamp160 Yet if the appellation went away the conflict itself shorn of identifying marks continued Does it matter that ours has become and remains a nameless war Very much so Names bestow meaningamp160 When it comes to war a name attached to a date can shape our understanding of what the conflict was all aboutamp160 To specify when a war began and when it ended is to privilege certain explanations of its significance while discrediting others Let me provide a few illustrations With rare exceptions Americans today characterize the horrendous fraternal bloodletting of 18611865 as the Civil Waramp160 Yet not many decades ago diehard supporters of the Lost Cause insisted on referring to that conflict as the War Between the States or the War for Southern Independence or even the War of Northern Aggressionamp160 The South may have gone down in defeat but the purposes for which Southerners had fought 8212 preserving a distinctive way of life and the principle of states8217 rights 8212 had been worthy even nobleamp160 So at least they professed to believe with their preferred names for the war reflecting that belief Schoolbooks tell us that the SpanishAmerican War began in April 1898 and ended in August of that same yearamp160 The name and dates fit nicely with a widespread inclination from President William McKinley8217s day to our own to frame US intervention in Cuba as an altruistic effort to liberate that island from Spanish oppression Yet the Cubans were not exactly bystanders in that dramaamp160 By 1898 they had been fighting for years to oust their colonial overlordsamp160 And although hostilities in Cuba itself ended on August 12th they dragged on in the Philippines another Spanish colony that the United States had seized for reasons only remotely related to liberating Cubansamp160 Notably US troops occupying the Philippines waged a brutal war not against Spaniards but against Filipino nationalists no more inclined to accept colonial rule by Washington than by Madridamp160 So widen the aperture to include this Cuban prelude and the Filipino postlude and you end up with something like thisamp160 The SpanishAmericanCubanPhilippines War of 18951902amp160 Too clunkyamp160 How about the War for the American Empireamp160 This much is for sure rather than illuminating the commonplace textbook descriptor serves chiefly to conceal Strange as it may seem Europeans once referred to the calamitous events of 19141918 as the Great Waramp160 When Woodrow Wilson decided in 1917 to send an army of doughboys to fight alongside the Allies he went beyond Greatamp160 According to the president the Great War was going to be the War To End All Warsamp160 Alas things did not pan out as he expectedamp160 Perhaps anticipating the demise of his vision of permanent peace War Department General Order 115 issued on October 7 1919 formally declared that at least as far as the United States was concerned the recently concluded hostilities would be known simply as the World War In September 1939 8212 presto chango 8212 the World War suddenly became the First World War the Nazi invasion of Poland having inaugurated a Second World War also known as World War II or more cryptically WWIIamp160 To be sure Soviet dictator Josef Stalin preferred the Great Patriotic Waramp160 Although this found instant 8212 almost unanimous 8212 favor among Soviet citizens it did not catch on elsewhere Does World War II accurately capture the events it purports to encompassamp160 With the crusade against the Axis now ranking alongside the crusade against slavery as a mythenshrouded chapter in US history to which all must pay homage Americans are no more inclined to consider that question than to consider why a playoff to determine the professional baseball championship of North America constitutes a 8220World Series8221 In fact however convenient and familiar World War II is misleading and not especially usefulamp160 The period in question saw at least two wars each only tenuously connected to the other each having distinctive origins each yielding a different outcomeamp160 To separate them is to transform the historical landscape On the one hand there was the Pacific War pitting the United States against Japanamp160 Formally initiated by the December 7 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor it had in fact begun a decade earlier when Japan embarked upon a policy of armed conquest in Manchuriaamp160 At stake was the question of who would dominate East Asiaamp160 Japan8217s crushing defeat at the hands of the United States sealed by two atomic bombs in 1945 answered that question at least for a time Then there was the European War pitting Nazi Germany first against Great Britain and France but ultimately against a grand alliance led by the United States the Soviet Union and a fast fading British Empireamp160 At stake was the question of who would dominate Europeamp160 Germany8217s defeat resolved that issue at least for a time no one wouldamp160 To prevent any single power from controlling Europe two outside powers divided it This division served as the basis for the ensuing Cold War which wasn8217t actually cold but also thankfully wasn8217t World War III the retrospective insistence of bellicose neoconservatives notwithstandingamp160 But when did the Cold War beginamp160 Was it in early 1947 when President Harry Truman decided that Stalin8217s Russia posed a looming threat and committed the United States to a strategy of containmentamp160 Or was it in 1919 when Vladimir Lenin decided that Winston Churchill8217s vow to 8220strangle Bolshevism in its cradle8221 posed a looming threat to the Russian Revolution with an ongoing AngloAmerican military intervention evincing a determination to make good on that vow Separating the war against Nazi Germany from the war against Imperial Japan opens up another interpretive possibilityamp160 If you incorporate the European conflict of 19141918 and the European conflict of 19391945 into a single narrative you get a Second Thirty Years War the first having occurred from 16181648 8212 not so much a contest of good against evil as a mindless exercise in selfdestruction that represented the ultimate expression of European folly So yes it matters what we choose to call the military enterprise we8217ve been waging not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in any number of other countries scattered hither and yon across the Islamic worldamp160 Although the Obama administration appears no more interested than the Bush administration in saying when that enterprise will actually end the date we choose as its starting point also matters Although Washington seems in no hurry to name its nameless war 8212 and will no doubt settle on something selfserving or anodyne if it ever finally addresses the issue 8212 perhaps we should jumpstart the processamp160 Let8217s consider some possible options names that might actually explain what8217s going on The Long War Coined not long after 911 by senior officers in the Pentagon this formulation never gained traction with either civilian officials or the general public amp160Yet the Long War deserves consideration even though 8212 or perhaps because 8212 it has lost its luster with the passage of time At the outset it connoted grand ambitions buoyed by extreme confidence in the efficacy of American military mightamp160 This was going to be one for the ages a multigenerational conflict yielding sweeping results The Long War did begin on a hopeful noteamp160 The initial entry into Afghanistan and then into Iraq seemed to herald 8220home by Christmas8221 triumphal paradesamp160 Yet this soon proved an illusion as victory slipped from Washington8217s graspamp160 By 2005 at the latest events in the field had dashed the neoWilsonian expectations nurtured back home With the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan dragging on 8220long8221 lost its original connotationamp160 Instead of 8220really important8221 it became a synonym for 8220interminable8221 amp160Today the Long War does succinctly capture the experience of American soldiers who have endured multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan For Long War combatants the object of the exercise has become to persistamp160 As for winning it8217s not in the cards The Long War just might conclude by the end of 2014 if President Obama keeps his pledge to end the US combat role in Afghanistan and if he avoids getting sucked into Syria8217s civil waramp160 So the troops may hope The War Against AlQaeda It began in August 1996 when Osama bin Laden issued a 8220Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places8221 ie Saudi Arabiaamp160 In February 1998 a second bin Laden manifesto announced that killing Americans military and civilian alike had become 8220an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it8221 Although President Bill Clinton took notice the US response to bin Laden8217s provocations was limited and ineffectualamp160 Only after 911 did Washington take this threat seriouslyamp160 Since then apart from a pointless excursion into Iraq where in Saddam Hussein8217s day alQaeda did not exist US attention has been focused on Afghanistan where US troops have waged the longest war in American history and on Pakistan8217s tribal borderlands where a CIA drone campaign is ongoingamp160 By the end of President Obama8217s first term US intelligence agencies were reporting that a combined CIAmilitary campaign had largely destroyed bin Laden8217s organizationamp160 Bin Laden himself of course was deadamp160 Could the United States have declared victory in its unnamed war at this pointamp160 Perhaps but it gave little thought to doing soamp160 Instead the national security apparatus had already trained its sights on various alQaeda 8220franchises8221 and wannabes militant groups claiming the bin Laden brand and waging their own version of jihadamp160 These offshoots emerged in the Maghreb Yemen Somalia Nigeria and 8212 wouldn8217t you know it 8212 postSaddam Iraq among other placesamp160 The question as to whether they actually posed a danger to the United States got at best passing attention 8212 the label 8220alQaeda8221 eliciting the same sort of Pavlovian response that the word 8220communist8221 once did Americans should not expect this war to end anytime soonamp160 Indeed the Pentagon8217s impresario of special operations recently speculated 8212 by no means unhappily 8212 that it would continue globally for 8220at least 10 to 20 years8221 amp160amp160Freely translated his statement undoubtedly means 8220No one really knows but we8217re planning to keep at it for one helluva long time8221 The War ForAgainstAbout Israel It began in 1948amp160 For many Jews the founding of the state of Israel signified an ancient hope fulfilledamp160 For many Christians conscious of the sin of antiSemitism that had culminated in the Holocaust it offered a way to ease guilty consciences albeit mostly at others8217 expenseamp160 For many Muslims especially Arabs and most acutely Arabs who had been living in Palestine the founding of the Jewish state represented a grave injusticeamp160 It was yet another unwelcome intrusion engineered by the West 8212 colonialism by another name Recounting the ensuing struggle without appearing to take sides is almost impossibleamp160 Yet one thing seems clear in terms of military involvement the United States attempted in the late 1940s and 1950s to keep its distanceamp160 Over the course of the 1960s this changedamp160 The US became Israel8217s principal patron committed to maintaining and indeed increasing its military superiority over its neighbors In the decades that followed the two countries forged a multifaceted 8220strategic relationship8221amp160 A compliant Congress provided Israel with weapons and other assistance worth many billions of dollars testifying to what has become an unambiguous and irrevocable US commitment to the safety and wellbeing of the Jewish stateamp160 The two countries share technology and intelligenceamp160 Meanwhile just as Israel had disregarded US concerns when it came to developing nuclear weapons it ignored persistent US requests that it refrain from colonizing territory that it has conquered When it comes to identifying the minimal essential requirements of Israeli security and the terms that will define any PalestinianIsraeli peace deal the United States defers to Israelamp160 That may qualify as an overstatement but only slightlyamp160 Given the Israeli perspective on those requirements and those terms 8212 permanent military supremacy and a permanently demilitarized Palestine allowed limited sovereignty 8212 the War ForAgainstAbout Israel is unlikely to end anytime soon eitheramp160 Whether the United States benefits from the perpetuation of this war is difficult to say but we are in it for the long haul The War for the Greater Middle East I confess that this is the name I would choose for Washington8217s unnamed war and is in fact the title of a course I teachamp160 A tempting alternative is the Second Hundred Years War the 8220first8221 having begun in 1337 and ended in 1453 This war is about to hit the century mark its opening chapter coinciding with the onset of World War I amp160Not long after the fighting on the Western Front in Europe had settled into a stalemate the British government looking for ways to gain the upper hand set out to dismantle the Ottoman Empire whose rulers had foolishly thrown in their lot with the German Reich against the Allies By the time the war ended with Germany and the Turks on the losing side Great Britain had already begun to draw up new boundaries invent states and install rulers to suit its predilections while also issuing mutually contradictory promises to groups inhabiting these new precincts of its empireamp160 Toward what endamp160 Simply put the British were intent on calling the shots from Egypt to India whether by governing through intermediaries or ruling directlyamp160 The result was a new Middle East and a total mess London presided over this mess albeit with considerable difficulty until the end of World War IIamp160 At this point by abandoning efforts to keep Arabs and Zionists from one another8217s throats in Palestine and by accepting the partition of India they signaled their intention to throw in the towel Alas Washington proved more than willing to assume Britain8217s roleamp160 The lure of oil was strongamp160 So too were the fears however overwrought of the Soviets extending their influence into the regionamp160 Unfortunately the Americans enjoyed no more success in promoting longterm proWestern stability than had the Britishamp160 In some respects they only made things worse with the joint CIAMI6 overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953 offering a prime example of a 8220success8221 that to this day has never stopped breeding disaster Only after 1980 did things get really interesting howeveramp160 The Carter Doctrine promulgated that year designated the Persian Gulf a vital national security interest and opened the door to greatly increased US military activity not just in the Gulf but also throughout the Greater Middle East GME amp160Between 1945 and 1980 considerable numbers of American soldiers lost their lives fighting in Asia and elsewhereamp160 During that period virtually none were killed fighting in the GMEamp160 Since 1990 in contrast virtually none have been killed fighting anywhere except in the GME What does the United States hope to achieve in its inherited and unending War for the Greater Middle Eastamp160 To pacify the regionamp160 To remake it in our imageamp160 To drain its stocks of petroleumamp160 Or just keeping the lid onamp160 However you define the war8217s aims things have not gone well which once again suggests that in some form it will continue for some time to come amp160If there8217s any good news here it8217s the prospect of having ever more material for my seminar which may soon expand into a twosemester course The War Against Islam This war began nearly 1000 years ago and continued for centuries a storied collision between Christendom and the Muslim ummahamp160 For a couple of hundred years periodic eruptions of largescale violence occurred until the conflict finally petered out with the last crusade sometime in the fourteenth century In those days many people had deemed religion something worth fighting for a proposition to which the more sophisticated presentday inhabitants of Christendom no longer subscribeamp160 Yet could that religious war have resumed in our own dayamp160 Professor Samuel Huntington thought so although he styled the conflict a 8220clash of civilizations8221amp160 Some militant radical Islamists agree with Professor Huntington citing as evidence the unwelcome meddling of 8220infidels8221 mostly wearing American uniforms in various parts of the Muslim worldamp160 Some militant evangelical Christians endorse this proposition even if they take a more favorable view of US troops occupying and drones targeting Muslim countries In explaining the position of the United States government religious scholars like George W Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have consistently expressed a contrary viewamp160 Islam is a religion of peace they declare part of the great Abrahamic triadamp160 That the other elements of that triad are likewise committed to peace is a proposition that Bush Obama and most Americans take for granted evidence not requiredamp160 There should be no reason why Christians Jews and Muslims can8217t live together in harmony Still remember back in 2001 when in an unscripted moment President Bush described the war barely begun as a 8220crusade8221amp160 That was just a slip of the tongue rightamp160 If not we just might end up calling this one the Eternal War Andrew J Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a TomDispatch regular His next book Breach of Trust How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country will appear in September Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr Check out the newest Dispatch book Nick Turse8217s The Changing Face of Empire Special Ops Drones Proxy Fighters Secret Bases and Cyberwarfare Copyright 2013 Andrew J Bacevich

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<p>&#8220;Does anyone need another million dollar movie? Does anyone need another million dollar star?&#8221;</p> <p>-Lou Reed, &#8220;Straw Man&#8221;</p> <p>Journalist (and crip) John Hockenberry recently wrote that the same critics heaping praise on Clint Eastwood and &#8220;Million Dollar Baby&#8221; have &#8220;failed millions of Americans with disabilities by accepting as utterly plausible the plot-twist that a quadriplegic would sputter into medical agony in a matter of months and embrace suicide as her only option in a nation where millions of people with spinal cord injuries lead full long lives.&#8221; Thus, as the Oscars threatened to become a lovefest for Dirty Harry, I posed some questions to Mary Johnson, editor of <a href="http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/" type="external">The Ragged Edge</a>.</p> <p>&#8220;I started a little publication back in 1980 in Louisville called The Disability Rag because one of the big problems locally was you couldn&#8217;t get crips in one place to do consciousness-raising,&#8221; Johnson recalls. The Rag became The Ragged Edge because of a successful anthology by that name and is now totally digital and online only.</p> <p>A self-described &#8220;garden-variety non-disabled person,&#8221; Johnson got involved in disability issues in the 70s. &#8220;I got hooked,&#8221; she says. &#8220;What I&#8217;ve learned and seen over the years reporting on this stuff has convinced me that disability rights issues are the quintessential rights issues for this nation. We all face disability issues sooner or later. Hiding our heads in the sand just leads us to the sad conclusion Hunter Thompson drew. Tragic to have that kind of fear.&#8221;</p> <p>Mary replied without hesitation to my questions&#8230;but did make one agreeable request: &#8220;Let us not bring up Christopher Reeve in this article, okay? I am really tired of him being brought up as the sine qua non of cripdom.&#8221;</p> <p>MICKEY Z.: The response of some to the recent suicide of Hunter S. Thompson got me thinking: How is it that the 67-year-old Thompson (or anyone non-disabled who exercises their right to die) can be seen as having &#8220;so much to live for&#8221; but it&#8217;s so readily accepted by critics and audiences alike that the character of Maggie (half HST&#8217;s age) in the film, &#8220;Million Dollar Baby,&#8221; had nothing to live for?</p> <p>Mary Johnson: George Tobia Jr., the lawyer who has represented Thompson for the past 15 years, told the Boston Globe that Thompson&#8217;s suicide was &#8220;definitely not spur of the moment&#8230;. He arranged to have things dealt with, and he wanted his family close by, but he didn&#8217;t want anyone to know. He didn&#8217;t want anyone to try to stop him&#8230;.The best explanation, perhaps, is that in recent months Thompson had chronic pain from back surgery and an artificial hip. He also broke his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii and was limping, which made it difficult for him to travel. He didn&#8217;t want to waste away. He did not want to exist as an invalid or as someone who needed constant care. It wouldn&#8217;t suit his sense of self.&#8221;</p> <p>The Not Dead Yet folks say: when someone who&#8217;s not disabled wants to die, or actually commits suicide, everyone thinks it&#8217;s such a tragedy-but when a quad does it then it&#8217;s &#8220;understandable&#8221; and the death is &#8220;a blessing&#8221; rather than &#8220;a tragedy.&#8221; No one ever stops to think what this might be saying to the crips who don&#8217;t decide to off themselves, do they? What it says is that non-disabled people, who control the standards in society, think unequivocally that life with a severe disability is a fate worse than death, i.e. death is preferable. And it also is at the root of all those &#8220;brave&#8221; and &#8220;courageous&#8221; monikers that routinely get applied to crips who don&#8217;t kill themselves, who just keep plodding on.</p> <p>MZ: What&#8217;s really going on in all this?</p> <p>MJ: Cripdom is the big bogeyman in our society today. We non-disabled folks are projecting our own fears about disability onto the people who actually have the severe disabilities. And we can&#8217;t hear what they say because our heads are full of what we WOULD say/think/do if we were in that &#8220;condition.&#8221; I believe the fear of living with severe disability is far worse than the actual doing of it-as countless quad friends I&#8217;ve had over the years have convinced me. But you sure can&#8217;t convince the public. If a quad says, &#8220;my life is really OK&#8221; they&#8217;re just discounted as being brave or courageous and what they say isn&#8217;t believed. Talk about dissing someone! To me it&#8217;s the ultimate form of dissing, and it goes on all the time in regard to disability issues in this country. Non-disabled people always set the terms of the debate. And we must not forget that many, many people who acquire disabilities like Maggie&#8217;s are simply non-disabled people in paralyzed bodies-they feel the same way about it they did before they&#8217;d become paralyzed. It takes a while to sort things out. One of the best recent statements of this fact was written by Canadian Ed Smith for CBC News and it&#8217;s online at: <a href="" type="internal">http://www.cbc.ca/</a></p> <p>MZ: When I criticized Eastwood&#8217;s snuff film in a recent article, I was accused of not supporting the &#8220;right to die.&#8221; Your thoughts?</p> <p>MJ: People believe it&#8217;s about autonomy. In my article, &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">The Scribes Who Mistook The Crips for The Right</a>&#8220;, I wrote: &#8220;The &#8216;right to die&#8217; may sound egalitarian; it may sound as though it&#8217;s about nothing more than choice. In application, though, it applies only to people who are living disabled lives. And the disability rights movement continually returns to this central truth. &#8220;Since virtually all people who request hastened death have old or new disabilities, we&#8217;re essential to the debate,&#8221; wrote the late Barry Corbet, longtime editor of New Mobility. Right to die, and death with dignity laws, Corbet wrote, &#8220;are about us.&#8221;</p> <p>Attorney Diane Coleman, founder of Not Dead Yet says: &#8220;Many of our allies in the civil rights and health care movements have found this hard to understand. Isn&#8217;t this about individual autonomy and rights, they ask? No, we say, it&#8217;s about disability discrimination, a profit-oriented health care system, and a legal system that does not guarantee the equal protection of the law.&#8221;</p> <p>Or, as a sticker for sale from Mouth Magazine says, &#8220;I support the right to die. You go first.&#8221;</p> <p>MZ: What about the concept of &#8220;assisted suicide&#8221;?</p> <p>MJ: Actively helping someone end their life is illegal in every state. But laws permitting a doctor to provide lethal medication are being contemplated in California, Vermont, Hawaii and Arizona (such a law is in force only in Oregon.) Proponents insist safeguards exist. But those safeguards, says Harriet McBryde Johnson, whose articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, &#8220;are about defining a class whose desire to die may be presumed rational, because of illness or disability so &#8216;bad&#8217; that no &#8216;reasonable&#8217; person would want to endure it.&#8221; Right to die laws, says Johnson, have &#8220;the power to validate and structure prejudice &#8212; to tell suicidal newbies that yes, it really is as bad as it feels, and don&#8217;t expect it ever to get better. They tell the larger society that disability and illness equal misery, so there&#8217;s no need to bother about making our lives good. There&#8217;s an easy way out.&#8221;</p> <p>MZ: Tell us more about Clint Eastwood&#8217;s history, vis-&#224;-vis disability rights?</p> <p>MJ: The disability rights movement has never forgiven Clint Eastwood for his celeb blitz against the ADA in the spring of 2000. His campaign was heralded by a May 9 article on page 1 of The Wall Street Journal by reporter Jim Vandehei (&#8220;Clint Eastwood Saddles Up For Disability-Act Showdown&#8221;): &#8220;These &#8216;sleazebag lawyers,&#8217; the veteran actor says, his voice constricting, messed with the wrong guy when they &#8216;frivolously&#8217; sued him and hundreds of other small-business owners for failing to comply quickly enough with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Mr. Eastwood&#8230;is striking back with a Washington lobbying campaign for new legislation to modify the law. &#8216;I figure I won&#8217;t back down because of all these people&#8230;who can&#8217;t defend themselves.&#8217; &#8221;</p> <p>Eastwood had been called in by Rep. Mark Foley who was pushing a bill called the ADA Notification Act, which would require crips who were suing access violators to give the violator 90 days&#8217; notice before suing them (no matter that the business had had since 1992 to correct the violations). The disability rights movement unilaterally opposed the bill, and ultimately succeeded in keeping it from moving out of committee that year-but the bill keeps re-surfacing in every session of Congress and I&#8217;m sure a version will be re-introduced again soon. California has just had a state version introduced.</p> <p>In the week between the May 9 WSJ article and the May 18 hearing, Eastwood took part in a media blitz against the law. One sound bite got picked up a lot: &#8220;What happens is these lawyers, they come along and they end up driving off in a big Mercedes, and the disabled person ends up driving off in a wheelchair.&#8221; It was designed to sound as though he wasn&#8217;t against the disabled (nobody is ever openly against the disabled-note Clint&#8217;s current remarks in the &#8220;Million Dollar Baby&#8221; flap) but the &#8220;money-grubbing lawyers.&#8221; So the real story never did get out. The May 18 hearing had reporters there in droves to listen to Eastwood&#8217;s statement. Their jam of microphones and cameras had forced many disability rights advocates to remain out in the hall-but as soon as he&#8217;d finished, they all left. Naturally, he got to speak first, being a celebrity whose time was valuable. His complaint to the committee was, naturally, about the attorneys: &#8220;In my opinion they are perverting the law by going around and filing these broadside, sand-bagging type suits where they hit you broadside from nowhere, with absolutely no warning. &#8220;I was hit by one in an old hotel I was trying to restore&#8221; &#8212; he was referring to his Mission Ranch resort &#8212; &#8220;just on an allegation that somebody was there, and a year earlier they had been denied access. They waited a whole year to file this suit. They claimed that some employee told them that we did not have handicapped bathrooms. Well, the truth is we did have handicapped bathrooms. But once they file a suit on you, they keep adding everything. Every time they come back they keep upping the ante, adding many more problems to be solved which they can collect fees on. And it is really not very fair.&#8221;</p> <p>MZ: What happened after Eastwood and the media left?</p> <p>MJ: The real story began to emerge. Ragged Edge reported on it in 2000 and you can read some very good comments from disability activists about why a &#8220;Notification Act&#8221; was such a terrible idea at: <a href="" type="internal">http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/</a></p> <p>The real clincher was the testimony of Fred Shotz, an ADA consultant. Shotz testified: &#8220;I reviewed photos of Mr. Eastwood&#8217;s Mission Ranch, andwas able to read the entire inspection report by the plaintiff&#8217;s consultant in that lawsuit. All it said are the violations; not violations of an old building that people want removed, but the new steps that got built so that people in wheelchairs could not get up, because with the steps came no ramp; the restroom removed from the building to enlarge the public space, or the restrooms being placed over 200 feet away from that building. If you are not disabled, restrooms are just around the corner.&#8221;</p> <p>Eastwood was forced to admit that he was being sued under California&#8217;s access law as well as the federal law, and it was the California law that allowed plaintiffs to sue for damages. None of this got reported either. There&#8217;s a neat Quicktime tape on our website of these snatches of the hearing (it&#8217;s about 10 minutes). It&#8217;s linked from: <a href="" type="internal">http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/</a>.</p> <p>That fall, the trial Eastwood alluded to occurred in San Francisco. At its end, the jury noted that Eastwood&#8217;s Mission Ranch had indeed broken the law. There was no ramp to the registration office. An &#8220;accessible&#8221; guest room wasn&#8217;t. No signs pointed to the accessible public restroom. All were violations of the ADA and California law. However, Eastwood, standing before the cameras outside the courtroom, declared victory. The lack of access was a mere technicality: those &#8220;improvements&#8221; were already in the works. It is true that the jurors did not award the plaintiff the money that California&#8217;s Unruh Civil Rights Act would have granted someone who had suffered as a result of access denial. It was the state law, not the ADA that allowed for damages anyway. So Eastwood crowed to reporters that he had &#8220;won.&#8221; He made light of the fact that it was the lawsuit that had impelled him to finally provide the access. He also failed to say that in making his choice to fight the charges, rather than simply comply, he had paid out tens of thousand of dollars to his own attorneys (which, evidently, were not &#8220;unscrupulous&#8221; ones). &#8220;If you&#8217;re right, you&#8217;ve got to hold your ground,&#8221; Eastwood told the San Francisco Chronicle. &#8220;I also fought for the businessmen and businesswomen who own small businesses who are trying to get by and they get worked over by those people.&#8221;</p> <p>It is a sad but typical note that the federal courtroom in which the Eastwood trial took place was not accessible, either. People in wheelchairs had to be brought in through an exit door. Neither the witness stand nor the jury box was accessible. &#8220;Court officials had to remove a bench to allow room for observers in wheelchairs,&#8221; said the Chronicle.</p> <p>MZ: Why have progressives/radicals been so hesitant and/or resistant to aligning with the disability rights movement? It seems like a natural fit.</p> <p>MJ: This is a theme I seem to return to over and over, for it is very painful for me-and for most of the disability activists I know-to realize that progressives are rarely any better on our issues than conservatives, and sometimes actually much worse. The concepts of individual rights and an egalitarian society, concepts that drive disability rights thinking, are borrowed from liberal ideology, and most of the activists in the movement today come from backgrounds in the civil rights, women&#8217;s rights, anti-war movements of the 60s and 70s. Yet, get any group of disability activists together for more than a few minutes and you&#8217;ll start hearing the familiar griping about how liberals don&#8217;t &#8220;get&#8221; disability rights.</p> <p>In my book, &#8220;Make Them Go Away,&#8221; I keep coming back to this theme. I wrote that free-market conservatives were against disability rights, but that could have been expected; but that what was not expected was that almost no liberal groups spoke out in support of disability rights.</p> <p>Most liberals and progressives believed that the problems racial minorities, women, and gays faced were the result of animus, the work of a discriminatory society. When it came to disabled people, though, liberals&#8217; views were similar to those of the anti&#8217;s. They believed disabled people faced essentially private, medical problems rather than problems of discrimination. What a disabled person needed, they felt, was medical intervention-a cure. Lacking that, they should be given help, through private charity or government benefits programs. Almost everyone instinctively felt that &#8220;rights&#8221; was simply the wrong lens through which to view the disability situation.</p> <p>This concept-that disability belongs to the realm of the private, not the political-was noted originally by disability scholar and historian Paul Longmore. I think he&#8217;s right on the money. But equally important is the belief that &#8220;no one is against the handicapped&#8221;-that no animus is involved. Completely inaccurate, but people cling to this belief, even crips. It&#8217;s probably the biggest obstacle to organizing. At least when you&#8217;re gay, you know folks hate you. That&#8217;s empowering, actually, within your own community. Crips have &#8220;no enemies&#8221; thus no reason to form community-this is the most pernicious thing going for the crip nation (which doesn&#8217;t exist, and this is why).</p> <p>MZ: What is the biggest myth you&#8217;d like to dispel about disability rights?</p> <p>MJ: That the problems disabled people face are primarily caused by their disabilities, and that nobody is against the handicapped (I know, that&#8217;s two). The truth is that the real problems a disabled person faces are caused by a society that refuses to see the condition of disabled people as being a result of bigotry, discrimination, and flawed social policies emanating from the belief that nothing can really be done for a disabled person if they can&#8217;t be cured or made &#8220;better&#8221; physically. In fact the struggles that most disabled people face that make life unbearable have to do with not being able to hire decent attendants (no money; no program to pay decent wages) housing you can&#8217;t even get out of, buses you still can&#8217;t ride, employers who still don&#8217;t want to hire you. If you don&#8217;t read any other link I&#8217;ve provided, do read this one: <a href="" type="internal">http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2004-04-08/news_story5.php</a>. It&#8217;s an article by a crip who writes for Toronto Now alternative paper, about the problems he&#8217;s had with having someone come in and help him bathe and dress. These kinds of things, happening daily, over and over, to quads everywhere, are the real reasons people get discouraged sometimes and think of suicide-but as one should be able to tell from Shupak&#8217;s article, the problem here isn&#8217;t being disabled, per se, but the conditions under which society forces crips to live. A fine distinction, but a vital one. Why do we keep missing this?</p> <p>These kinds of things are easily within society&#8217;s power to change. Unlike The Cure, which is elusive (and people rarely take time to realize that the cure for spinal cord injury isn&#8217;t going to help me if I have ALS; that the cure for ALS isn&#8217;t going to help me if I have osteogenesis imperfecta), providing decent in-home services is very much within the power of society to do. If only the political will were there. But rather than take up this issue, liberals would rather worry about guaranteeing the Right To Die. Funny, eh? It would be if it weren&#8217;t so tragic.</p> <p>For more on Mary Johnson, please visit: <a href="http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/" type="external">http://www.raggededgemagazine.com</a></p> <p>MICKEY Z. is the author of four books, most recently: &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">The Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda</a>&#8221; (Common Courage Press). He can be found on the Web at <a href="http://www.mickeyz.net/" type="external">http://www.mickeyz.net</a>.</p>

Talking to Mary Johnson about Clint Eastwood, Hunter Thompson and the "Right to Die"

https://counterpunch.org/2005/02/28/talking-to-mary-johnson-about-clint-eastwood-hunter-thompson-and-the-quot-right-to-die-quot/

2005-02-28

4left

8220Does anyone need another million dollar movie Does anyone need another million dollar star8221 Lou Reed 8220Straw Man8221 Journalist and crip John Hockenberry recently wrote that the same critics heaping praise on Clint Eastwood and 8220Million Dollar Baby8221 have 8220failed millions of Americans with disabilities by accepting as utterly plausible the plottwist that a quadriplegic would sputter into medical agony in a matter of months and embrace suicide as her only option in a nation where millions of people with spinal cord injuries lead full long lives8221 Thus as the Oscars threatened to become a lovefest for Dirty Harry I posed some questions to Mary Johnson editor of The Ragged Edge 8220I started a little publication back in 1980 in Louisville called The Disability Rag because one of the big problems locally was you couldn8217t get crips in one place to do consciousnessraising8221 Johnson recalls The Rag became The Ragged Edge because of a successful anthology by that name and is now totally digital and online only A selfdescribed 8220gardenvariety nondisabled person8221 Johnson got involved in disability issues in the 70s 8220I got hooked8221 she says 8220What I8217ve learned and seen over the years reporting on this stuff has convinced me that disability rights issues are the quintessential rights issues for this nation We all face disability issues sooner or later Hiding our heads in the sand just leads us to the sad conclusion Hunter Thompson drew Tragic to have that kind of fear8221 Mary replied without hesitation to my questions8230but did make one agreeable request 8220Let us not bring up Christopher Reeve in this article okay I am really tired of him being brought up as the sine qua non of cripdom8221 MICKEY Z The response of some to the recent suicide of Hunter S Thompson got me thinking How is it that the 67yearold Thompson or anyone nondisabled who exercises their right to die can be seen as having 8220so much to live for8221 but it8217s so readily accepted by critics and audiences alike that the character of Maggie half HST8217s age in the film 8220Million Dollar Baby8221 had nothing to live for Mary Johnson George Tobia Jr the lawyer who has represented Thompson for the past 15 years told the Boston Globe that Thompson8217s suicide was 8220definitely not spur of the moment8230 He arranged to have things dealt with and he wanted his family close by but he didn8217t want anyone to know He didn8217t want anyone to try to stop him8230The best explanation perhaps is that in recent months Thompson had chronic pain from back surgery and an artificial hip He also broke his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii and was limping which made it difficult for him to travel He didn8217t want to waste away He did not want to exist as an invalid or as someone who needed constant care It wouldn8217t suit his sense of self8221 The Not Dead Yet folks say when someone who8217s not disabled wants to die or actually commits suicide everyone thinks it8217s such a tragedybut when a quad does it then it8217s 8220understandable8221 and the death is 8220a blessing8221 rather than 8220a tragedy8221 No one ever stops to think what this might be saying to the crips who don8217t decide to off themselves do they What it says is that nondisabled people who control the standards in society think unequivocally that life with a severe disability is a fate worse than death ie death is preferable And it also is at the root of all those 8220brave8221 and 8220courageous8221 monikers that routinely get applied to crips who don8217t kill themselves who just keep plodding on MZ What8217s really going on in all this MJ Cripdom is the big bogeyman in our society today We nondisabled folks are projecting our own fears about disability onto the people who actually have the severe disabilities And we can8217t hear what they say because our heads are full of what we WOULD saythinkdo if we were in that 8220condition8221 I believe the fear of living with severe disability is far worse than the actual doing of itas countless quad friends I8217ve had over the years have convinced me But you sure can8217t convince the public If a quad says 8220my life is really OK8221 they8217re just discounted as being brave or courageous and what they say isn8217t believed Talk about dissing someone To me it8217s the ultimate form of dissing and it goes on all the time in regard to disability issues in this country Nondisabled people always set the terms of the debate And we must not forget that many many people who acquire disabilities like Maggie8217s are simply nondisabled people in paralyzed bodiesthey feel the same way about it they did before they8217d become paralyzed It takes a while to sort things out One of the best recent statements of this fact was written by Canadian Ed Smith for CBC News and it8217s online at httpwwwcbcca MZ When I criticized Eastwood8217s snuff film in a recent article I was accused of not supporting the 8220right to die8221 Your thoughts MJ People believe it8217s about autonomy In my article 8220 The Scribes Who Mistook The Crips for The Right8220 I wrote 8220The 8216right to die8217 may sound egalitarian it may sound as though it8217s about nothing more than choice In application though it applies only to people who are living disabled lives And the disability rights movement continually returns to this central truth 8220Since virtually all people who request hastened death have old or new disabilities we8217re essential to the debate8221 wrote the late Barry Corbet longtime editor of New Mobility Right to die and death with dignity laws Corbet wrote 8220are about us8221 Attorney Diane Coleman founder of Not Dead Yet says 8220Many of our allies in the civil rights and health care movements have found this hard to understand Isn8217t this about individual autonomy and rights they ask No we say it8217s about disability discrimination a profitoriented health care system and a legal system that does not guarantee the equal protection of the law8221 Or as a sticker for sale from Mouth Magazine says 8220I support the right to die You go first8221 MZ What about the concept of 8220assisted suicide8221 MJ Actively helping someone end their life is illegal in every state But laws permitting a doctor to provide lethal medication are being contemplated in California Vermont Hawaii and Arizona such a law is in force only in Oregon Proponents insist safeguards exist But those safeguards says Harriet McBryde Johnson whose articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine 8220are about defining a class whose desire to die may be presumed rational because of illness or disability so 8216bad8217 that no 8216reasonable8217 person would want to endure it8221 Right to die laws says Johnson have 8220the power to validate and structure prejudice 8212 to tell suicidal newbies that yes it really is as bad as it feels and don8217t expect it ever to get better They tell the larger society that disability and illness equal misery so there8217s no need to bother about making our lives good There8217s an easy way out8221 MZ Tell us more about Clint Eastwood8217s history vis224vis disability rights MJ The disability rights movement has never forgiven Clint Eastwood for his celeb blitz against the ADA in the spring of 2000 His campaign was heralded by a May 9 article on page 1 of The Wall Street Journal by reporter Jim Vandehei 8220Clint Eastwood Saddles Up For DisabilityAct Showdown8221 8220These 8216sleazebag lawyers8217 the veteran actor says his voice constricting messed with the wrong guy when they 8216frivolously8217 sued him and hundreds of other smallbusiness owners for failing to comply quickly enough with the Americans with Disabilities Act Mr Eastwood8230is striking back with a Washington lobbying campaign for new legislation to modify the law 8216I figure I won8217t back down because of all these people8230who can8217t defend themselves8217 8221 Eastwood had been called in by Rep Mark Foley who was pushing a bill called the ADA Notification Act which would require crips who were suing access violators to give the violator 90 days8217 notice before suing them no matter that the business had had since 1992 to correct the violations The disability rights movement unilaterally opposed the bill and ultimately succeeded in keeping it from moving out of committee that yearbut the bill keeps resurfacing in every session of Congress and I8217m sure a version will be reintroduced again soon California has just had a state version introduced In the week between the May 9 WSJ article and the May 18 hearing Eastwood took part in a media blitz against the law One sound bite got picked up a lot 8220What happens is these lawyers they come along and they end up driving off in a big Mercedes and the disabled person ends up driving off in a wheelchair8221 It was designed to sound as though he wasn8217t against the disabled nobody is ever openly against the disablednote Clint8217s current remarks in the 8220Million Dollar Baby8221 flap but the 8220moneygrubbing lawyers8221 So the real story never did get out The May 18 hearing had reporters there in droves to listen to Eastwood8217s statement Their jam of microphones and cameras had forced many disability rights advocates to remain out in the hallbut as soon as he8217d finished they all left Naturally he got to speak first being a celebrity whose time was valuable His complaint to the committee was naturally about the attorneys 8220In my opinion they are perverting the law by going around and filing these broadside sandbagging type suits where they hit you broadside from nowhere with absolutely no warning 8220I was hit by one in an old hotel I was trying to restore8221 8212 he was referring to his Mission Ranch resort 8212 8220just on an allegation that somebody was there and a year earlier they had been denied access They waited a whole year to file this suit They claimed that some employee told them that we did not have handicapped bathrooms Well the truth is we did have handicapped bathrooms But once they file a suit on you they keep adding everything Every time they come back they keep upping the ante adding many more problems to be solved which they can collect fees on And it is really not very fair8221 MZ What happened after Eastwood and the media left MJ The real story began to emerge Ragged Edge reported on it in 2000 and you can read some very good comments from disability activists about why a 8220Notification Act8221 was such a terrible idea at httpwwwraggededgemagazinecom The real clincher was the testimony of Fred Shotz an ADA consultant Shotz testified 8220I reviewed photos of Mr Eastwood8217s Mission Ranch andwas able to read the entire inspection report by the plaintiff8217s consultant in that lawsuit All it said are the violations not violations of an old building that people want removed but the new steps that got built so that people in wheelchairs could not get up because with the steps came no ramp the restroom removed from the building to enlarge the public space or the restrooms being placed over 200 feet away from that building If you are not disabled restrooms are just around the corner8221 Eastwood was forced to admit that he was being sued under California8217s access law as well as the federal law and it was the California law that allowed plaintiffs to sue for damages None of this got reported either There8217s a neat Quicktime tape on our website of these snatches of the hearing it8217s about 10 minutes It8217s linked from httpwwwraggededgemagazinecom That fall the trial Eastwood alluded to occurred in San Francisco At its end the jury noted that Eastwood8217s Mission Ranch had indeed broken the law There was no ramp to the registration office An 8220accessible8221 guest room wasn8217t No signs pointed to the accessible public restroom All were violations of the ADA and California law However Eastwood standing before the cameras outside the courtroom declared victory The lack of access was a mere technicality those 8220improvements8221 were already in the works It is true that the jurors did not award the plaintiff the money that California8217s Unruh Civil Rights Act would have granted someone who had suffered as a result of access denial It was the state law not the ADA that allowed for damages anyway So Eastwood crowed to reporters that he had 8220won8221 He made light of the fact that it was the lawsuit that had impelled him to finally provide the access He also failed to say that in making his choice to fight the charges rather than simply comply he had paid out tens of thousand of dollars to his own attorneys which evidently were not 8220unscrupulous8221 ones 8220If you8217re right you8217ve got to hold your ground8221 Eastwood told the San Francisco Chronicle 8220I also fought for the businessmen and businesswomen who own small businesses who are trying to get by and they get worked over by those people8221 It is a sad but typical note that the federal courtroom in which the Eastwood trial took place was not accessible either People in wheelchairs had to be brought in through an exit door Neither the witness stand nor the jury box was accessible 8220Court officials had to remove a bench to allow room for observers in wheelchairs8221 said the Chronicle MZ Why have progressivesradicals been so hesitant andor resistant to aligning with the disability rights movement It seems like a natural fit MJ This is a theme I seem to return to over and over for it is very painful for meand for most of the disability activists I knowto realize that progressives are rarely any better on our issues than conservatives and sometimes actually much worse The concepts of individual rights and an egalitarian society concepts that drive disability rights thinking are borrowed from liberal ideology and most of the activists in the movement today come from backgrounds in the civil rights women8217s rights antiwar movements of the 60s and 70s Yet get any group of disability activists together for more than a few minutes and you8217ll start hearing the familiar griping about how liberals don8217t 8220get8221 disability rights In my book 8220Make Them Go Away8221 I keep coming back to this theme I wrote that freemarket conservatives were against disability rights but that could have been expected but that what was not expected was that almost no liberal groups spoke out in support of disability rights Most liberals and progressives believed that the problems racial minorities women and gays faced were the result of animus the work of a discriminatory society When it came to disabled people though liberals8217 views were similar to those of the anti8217s They believed disabled people faced essentially private medical problems rather than problems of discrimination What a disabled person needed they felt was medical interventiona cure Lacking that they should be given help through private charity or government benefits programs Almost everyone instinctively felt that 8220rights8221 was simply the wrong lens through which to view the disability situation This conceptthat disability belongs to the realm of the private not the politicalwas noted originally by disability scholar and historian Paul Longmore I think he8217s right on the money But equally important is the belief that 8220no one is against the handicapped8221that no animus is involved Completely inaccurate but people cling to this belief even crips It8217s probably the biggest obstacle to organizing At least when you8217re gay you know folks hate you That8217s empowering actually within your own community Crips have 8220no enemies8221 thus no reason to form communitythis is the most pernicious thing going for the crip nation which doesn8217t exist and this is why MZ What is the biggest myth you8217d like to dispel about disability rights MJ That the problems disabled people face are primarily caused by their disabilities and that nobody is against the handicapped I know that8217s two The truth is that the real problems a disabled person faces are caused by a society that refuses to see the condition of disabled people as being a result of bigotry discrimination and flawed social policies emanating from the belief that nothing can really be done for a disabled person if they can8217t be cured or made 8220better8221 physically In fact the struggles that most disabled people face that make life unbearable have to do with not being able to hire decent attendants no money no program to pay decent wages housing you can8217t even get out of buses you still can8217t ride employers who still don8217t want to hire you If you don8217t read any other link I8217ve provided do read this one httpwwwnowtorontocomissues20040408news_story5php It8217s an article by a crip who writes for Toronto Now alternative paper about the problems he8217s had with having someone come in and help him bathe and dress These kinds of things happening daily over and over to quads everywhere are the real reasons people get discouraged sometimes and think of suicidebut as one should be able to tell from Shupak8217s article the problem here isn8217t being disabled per se but the conditions under which society forces crips to live A fine distinction but a vital one Why do we keep missing this These kinds of things are easily within society8217s power to change Unlike The Cure which is elusive and people rarely take time to realize that the cure for spinal cord injury isn8217t going to help me if I have ALS that the cure for ALS isn8217t going to help me if I have osteogenesis imperfecta providing decent inhome services is very much within the power of society to do If only the political will were there But rather than take up this issue liberals would rather worry about guaranteeing the Right To Die Funny eh It would be if it weren8217t so tragic For more on Mary Johnson please visit httpwwwraggededgemagazinecom MICKEY Z is the author of four books most recently 8220 The Seven Deadly Spins Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda8221 Common Courage Press He can be found on the Web at httpwwwmickeyznet

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<p>(Updates to reflect afternoon trading)</p> <p>JOHANNESBURG, Jan 23 (Reuters) - South Africa&#8217;s rand drifted lower on Tuesday as investors waited for more clues from the new leader of the ruling African National Congress on how he plans to rejuvenate the economy and when President Jacob Zuma might step down.</p> <p>At 1620 GMT, the rand was down 0.2 percent at 12.0800 per dollar, eating into gains of around one percent a day earlier after the ANC confirmed it was discussing whether to push for Zuma&#8217;s removal as head of state.</p> <p>The South African currency has surged since Cyril Ramaphosa won the race to succeed Zuma as ANC leader last month, putting him in pole position to become the country&#8217;s next president.</p> <p>Ramaphosa, currently deputy president, is leading South Africa&#8217;s delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos this week and has pledged to fight corruption and woo foreign investment.</p> <p>His allies in the ANC are pushing for him to take over from Zuma as state president in the coming weeks.</p> <p>A currency trader at Rand Merchant Bank said the rand was likely to trade in tight ranges until Zuma&#8217;s fate became clearer. But a break below 12.00 to the dollar could trigger further rand gains, he said.</p> <p>On the equities market, South Africa&#8217;s main stock index closed up 0.68 percent at a new record-high on Tuesday and the blue-chip JSE Top-40 index ended up 0.66 percent.</p> <p>Lewis Group topped gainers, rising 17.70 percent to 28.60 rand after the budget furniture retailer reported a 13.3 percent rise in same-store quarterly sales.</p> <p>Government bonds were little changed, with the yield for the benchmark 2026 instrument at 8.35 percent.</p> <p>Reporting by Alexander Winning and Tiisetso Motsoeneng, Editing by William Maclean</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - France was in mourning on Saturday for a French security officer who died from gunshot wounds after voluntarily taking the place of a female hostage during a supermarket siege by an Islamist militant.</p> <p>Arnaud Beltrame, 44, a gendarme who once served in Iraq, had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after being shot by the gunman during the siege at the Super U store in the southwestern town of Trebes near the Pyrenees mountains.</p> <p>His actions were described as heroic by politicians across the political spectrum and calls for a national tribute increased on social media networks.</p> <p>&#8220;He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist,&#8221; President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, not far from Trebes, the tranquil town of about 5,000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon.</p> <p>Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.</p> <p>The attacker, whose rampage began when he fired on a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole, killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday, according to a government readout.</p> <p>Beltrame&#8217;s death took the number killed to four.</p> <p>He was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene. Most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit.</p> <p>He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding, whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table, line open. When shots rang out, elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant. Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times.</p> <p>Politicians from the left and right called Beltrame a &#8220;hero&#8221; on Twitter, including opposition leader Laurent Wauquiez, far-right National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen and Olivier Faure, set to become the next Socialist party head.</p> <p>#ArnaudBeltrame was a trending topic on the social network where people expressed their respect and gratitude for the officer, and thoughts for his wife. Several cities, the National Assembly and police stations lowered their flags in his honor.</p> <p>The Grand Mosque of Paris, the largest in the country, said the Muslim community joined in mourning for a man who had &#8220;fallen heroically under the bullets of the terrorist Redouane Lakdim in the exercise of his mission.&#8221;</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed Beltrame&#8217;s courage and sacrifice on Twitter, saying they would never be forgotten.</p> Flowers and messages in tribute to victim are seen in front of the Gendarmerie of Carcassonne, the day after a hostage situation in Trebes, France March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau ARRESTS <p>Police arrested two people as part of the investigation into the attack, one of them a woman connected to Lakdim, on Friday and a 17-year-old man said to be one of his friends overnight, judicial sources said.</p> <p>Searches at the attacker&#8217;s home showed notes referring to Islamic State that appeared to be a will, as well as a phone and a computer, judicial sources said.</p> <p>Investigators also found three improvised explosive devices, a 7.65 millimeter handgun and a hunting knife in the supermarket, the source said.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>The Islamic State (IS) militant group claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron said security services were checking the claim.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump condemned &#8220;the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;We are with you @EmmanuelMacron!&#8221; he added on Twitter.</p> <p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the ultra-hardline group.</p> <p>France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria, where in recent months IS has lost much of a self-proclaimed &#8220;caliphate&#8221; of territory it seized in 2014.</p> <p>One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015 while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice in July 2016.</p> <p>Beltrame was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005. He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris, Macron said.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s assault was the first deadly Islamist attack in France since October 2017, when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him.</p> <p>Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations.</p> <p>The news of Beltrame&#8217;s death was first announced by France&#8217;s interior minister, who said in a Twitter post: &#8220;Dead for his country. France will never forget his heroism, bravery and sacrifice.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Helen Popper</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Americans gathered across the country on Saturday at March For Our Lives rallies to demand tighter gun laws, led by survivors of last month&#8217;s Florida school massacre which reignited public anger over mass shootings.</p> <p>Students from the Parkland, Florida, high school where 17 people were killed on Feb. 14 were set to speak at the biggest event, in Washington, where organizers said as many as 500,000 people were expected to demonstrate near the Capitol and call on Congress to fight gun violence.</p> <p>The protests aim to break a legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings at schools and colleges have become a frighteningly frequent occurrence.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want any child to be seen as another statistic,&#8221; said Ashley Schlaeger, an 18-year-old freshman at Ohio State University who drove to the Washington rally with friends.</p> <p>In the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Parkland, thousands of people passed through police checkpoints to assemble in a park for a rally and march. Many held signs with slogans including &#8220;Am I Next?&#8221; &#8220;A Call To Arms For the Safety of Our Sons and Daughters&#8221; and &#8220;Congress = Killers.&#8221;</p> <p>Adam Buchwald, who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, told the crowd he and his friends would stay focused on getting new legislation passed.</p> <p>&#8220;Sadly, this could be repeated in your city or town. This stops now!&#8221; he said to loud cheers.</p> <p>At a rally in New York, a moment of silence was held for the Parkland victims. The accused gunman, 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, faces the death penalty if convicted.</p> RALLIES WORLDWIDE <p>More than 800 demonstrations were set to take place in U.S. cities from Los Angeles to New York and in countries around the world, according to coordinators.</p> Participants hold up signs as students and gun control advocates hold the "March for Our Lives" event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington, U.S., March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis <p>In Sydney, Australia, rally organizer Jennifer Smith told a crowd of about 300 people, many of them Americans, that she could &#8220;breathe easy&#8221; about sending her children to school in Australia with its tough gun laws.</p> <p>&#8220;I never have to worry about them having to do active shooter drills,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Organizers of the U.S. marches retweeted photos from sister demonstrations as far afield as Northern Ireland, Mauritius, and Stockholm.</p> Slideshow (30 Images) <p>Organizers want the U.S. Congress, many of whose members are up for re-election this year, to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers. On the other side of the debate, gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms.</p> <p>The teenage U.S. organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities, with singer Ariana Grande and &#8220;Hamilton&#8221; creator Lin-Manuel Miranda among those performing in Washington.</p> <p>&#8220;Trainwreck&#8221; star Amy Schumer is set to appear at the Los Angeles rally. Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife, Amal, have donated $500,000 and said they would be at the Washington rally.</p> <p>On Friday, Republican President Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>Democrats and nonpartisan groups hope to register at least 25,000 first-time voters at the rallies, potentially a boost for Democrats, who generally favor stricter gun controls.</p> <p>White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded &#8220;the many courageous young Americans&#8221; exercising their free-speech rights on Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president&#8217;s,&#8221; said Walters, noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban &#8220;bump stock&#8221; devices that let semi-automatic weapons fire like a machine gun.</p> <p>Reporting by Ian Simpson and Zachary Fagenson; Additional reporting by Katanga Johnson in Washington and Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach; Editing by Daniel Wallis and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army on Saturday paused its bombardment of Douma, the last rebel bastion near Damascus, a war monitor said, as insurgents prepared to leave the rest of their former enclave of eastern Ghouta.</p> Syrian army soldiers fire tracer bullets into the air to celebrate their victory outside Harasta in eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki <p>Buses that will carry thousands of fighters, along with their families and other civilians, into exile in northwestern Syria began entering the southern part of eastern Ghouta.</p> <p>It follows the departure of thousands of others on Friday from the town of Harasta in a similar deal for insurgents to depart with light weapons in return for surrendering their territory.</p> <p>The buses queued at a crossing point before moving into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades, debris and unexploded ordnance.</p> <p>Some captives held by the insurgents were released and state television showed them leaving in a minibus.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-ghouta-civilians/russia-says-over-105000-civilians-have-left-syrias-eastern-ghouta-ria-idUSKBN1H00BQ" type="external">Russia says over 105,000 civilians have left Syria's Eastern Ghouta: RIA</a> <p>The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit, state television said. It broadcast pictures of the massive trenches and other fortifications the rebels were leaving behind.</p> <p>It means only Douma is left of the opposition&#8217;s eastern Ghouta enclave which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400,000 people and constituted the rebels&#8217; main stronghold near Damascus.</p> <p>The army offensive to capture it, heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the seven-year conflict with warplanes, helicopters and artillery, has killed more than 1,600 people, said the war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.</p> <p>Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminately - inaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires.</p> <p>Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally Russia, which has helped his air campaign, have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians.</p> Buses are seen entering into rebels Harasta area in eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria March 23, 2018. REUTERS/ Omar Sanadiki EVACUATION <p>About 7,000 fighters, along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad&#8217;s rule, were to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday, rebels and state media said.</p> <p>They will go to Idlib province in the northwest - the destination for many such &#8220;evacuations&#8221; after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years.</p> <p>It will not mean an end to their experience of war. Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week, killing dozens of people.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups. On Saturday, an explosion at a headquarters for al Qaeda&#8217;s former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others.</p> <p>The Britain-based Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish al-Islam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners.</p> <p>Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted, rebels said on Friday. However, rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting.</p> <p>Wael Alwan, spokesman for the Failaq al-Rahman group that was dominant in Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar, was quoted by al-Hadath television on Saturday as saying he did not trust Russia&#8217;s guarantees.</p> <p>A Russian military webcam at the al-Wafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory on Saturday, carrying children and sacks of belongings.</p> <p>Russia&#8217;s military said on Saturday more than 105,000 people had left eastern Ghouta, including over 700 on Saturday.</p> <p>Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters already too full to take them.</p> <p>Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dale Hudson</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - It might be called Cappuccino Catholicism.</p> Casey Kretsch, 20, from Minnesota, a pilgrim attending the World Meeting of Families, signs a poster drawing of Pope Francis, by artist Mark Gaines, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 23, 2015. REUTERS/Mark Makela <p>Young Catholics told their Church elders on Saturday that the faith should be spread in the places where they like to hang out, such as coffee bars.</p> <p>&#8220;We would like the Church to meet us in the various places in which she currently has little or no presence,&#8221; reads part of a 12-page document written by some 300 young Catholic delegates from around the world, who met for a week at the Vatican.</p> <p>&#8220;The Church should try to find creative new ways to encounter people where they are comfortable and where they naturally socialize: bars, coffee shops, parks, gyms, stadiums and any other popular cultural centers,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>The delegates met in Rome to share their ideas and concerns with Vatican officials ahead of a synod, or meeting of bishops, in October, on the theme of &#8220;Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment&#8221;.</p> <p>At a news conference presenting the paper, which will feed into a larger working document to be used by the bishops, participants said they wanted their Church to be more open and transparent and less severe.</p> <p>The document called for a greater role for women in the Church, which bars them from the priesthood.</p> FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis uses a tablet to register for Panama 2019 World Youth Day during the Angelus prayer in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, Feb. 11, 2018. REUTERS/Max Rossi/File Photo <p>&#8220;What are the places where women can flourish within the Church and society? The Church can approach these problems with real discussion and open-mindedness to different ideas and experiences,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>&#8220;If it is difficult for young people to feel a sense of belonging and leadership in the Church, it is much more so for young women,&#8221; the document said.</p> FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis is greeted by youth as he arrives to lead his Wednesday General Audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, Feb. 14, 2018. REUTERS/Alberto Lingria/File Photo <p>They said they wanted to &#8220;encourage the Church to deepen its understanding of the role of women and to empower</p> <p>young women ...&#8221;</p> <p>Earlier this month, Catholic women led by former Irish president Mary McAleese, demanded a greater decision-making role for women in the Church, urging the pope to tear down its &#8220;walls of misogyny&#8221;.</p> <p>The document said the 1.2 billion-member Church &#8220;oftentimes appears as too severe and is often associated with excessive moralism&#8221;. It called for a Church that is &#8220;welcoming and merciful ... and which loves everyone, even those who are not</p> <p>following the perceived standards&#8221;.</p> <p>Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Andrew Bolton</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

UPDATE 1-South African rand drifts lower; stocks at record high France mourns 'hero' officer who took place of hostage in attack Massive crowds rally across U.S. to urge tighter gun controls As Syrian rebels quit Ghouta, Douma stands alone The Catholic Church - coming to a Starbucks near you?

https://reuters.com/article/safrica-markets/update-1-south-african-rand-drifts-lower-stocks-at-record-high-idUSL8N1PI5JY

2018-01-23

2least

Updates to reflect afternoon trading JOHANNESBURG Jan 23 Reuters South Africa8217s rand drifted lower on Tuesday as investors waited for more clues from the new leader of the ruling African National Congress on how he plans to rejuvenate the economy and when President Jacob Zuma might step down At 1620 GMT the rand was down 02 percent at 120800 per dollar eating into gains of around one percent a day earlier after the ANC confirmed it was discussing whether to push for Zuma8217s removal as head of state The South African currency has surged since Cyril Ramaphosa won the race to succeed Zuma as ANC leader last month putting him in pole position to become the country8217s next president Ramaphosa currently deputy president is leading South Africa8217s delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos this week and has pledged to fight corruption and woo foreign investment His allies in the ANC are pushing for him to take over from Zuma as state president in the coming weeks A currency trader at Rand Merchant Bank said the rand was likely to trade in tight ranges until Zuma8217s fate became clearer But a break below 1200 to the dollar could trigger further rand gains he said On the equities market South Africa8217s main stock index closed up 068 percent at a new recordhigh on Tuesday and the bluechip JSE Top40 index ended up 066 percent Lewis Group topped gainers rising 1770 percent to 2860 rand after the budget furniture retailer reported a 133 percent rise in samestore quarterly sales Government bonds were little changed with the yield for the benchmark 2026 instrument at 835 percent Reporting by Alexander Winning and Tiisetso Motsoeneng Editing by William Maclean Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters France was in mourning on Saturday for a French security officer who died from gunshot wounds after voluntarily taking the place of a female hostage during a supermarket siege by an Islamist militant Arnaud Beltrame 44 a gendarme who once served in Iraq had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after being shot by the gunman during the siege at the Super U store in the southwestern town of Trebes near the Pyrenees mountains His actions were described as heroic by politicians across the political spectrum and calls for a national tribute increased on social media networks 8220He fell as a hero giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist8221 President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday Friday8217s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim a 25yearold Moroccanborn French national from the city of Carcassonne not far from Trebes the tranquil town of about 5000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon Lakdim was known to authorities for drugdealing and other petty crimes but had also been under surveillance by security services in 20162017 for links to the radical Salafist movement Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday The attacker whose rampage began when he fired on a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday according to a government readout Beltrame8217s death took the number killed to four He was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene Most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table line open When shots rang out elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times Politicians from the left and right called Beltrame a 8220hero8221 on Twitter including opposition leader Laurent Wauquiez farright National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen and Olivier Faure set to become the next Socialist party head ArnaudBeltrame was a trending topic on the social network where people expressed their respect and gratitude for the officer and thoughts for his wife Several cities the National Assembly and police stations lowered their flags in his honor The Grand Mosque of Paris the largest in the country said the Muslim community joined in mourning for a man who had 8220fallen heroically under the bullets of the terrorist Redouane Lakdim in the exercise of his mission8221 British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed Beltrame8217s courage and sacrifice on Twitter saying they would never be forgotten Flowers and messages in tribute to victim are seen in front of the Gendarmerie of Carcassonne the day after a hostage situation in Trebes France March 24 2018 REUTERSRegis Duvignau ARRESTS Police arrested two people as part of the investigation into the attack one of them a woman connected to Lakdim on Friday and a 17yearold man said to be one of his friends overnight judicial sources said Searches at the attacker8217s home showed notes referring to Islamic State that appeared to be a will as well as a phone and a computer judicial sources said Investigators also found three improvised explosive devices a 765 millimeter handgun and a hunting knife in the supermarket the source said Slideshow 6 Images The Islamic State IS militant group claimed responsibility for the attack Macron said security services were checking the claim US President Donald Trump condemned 8220the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support8221 8220We are with you EmmanuelMacron8221 he added on Twitter More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the ultrahardline group France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria where in recent months IS has lost much of a selfproclaimed 8220caliphate8221 of territory it seized in 2014 One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015 while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice in July 2016 Beltrame was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005 He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris Macron said Friday8217s assault was the first deadly Islamist attack in France since October 2017 when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations The news of Beltrame8217s death was first announced by France8217s interior minister who said in a Twitter post 8220Dead for his country France will never forget his heroism bravery and sacrifice8221 Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry Editing by Mark Heinrich and Helen Popper Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONPARKLAND Fla Reuters Tens of thousands of Americans gathered across the country on Saturday at March For Our Lives rallies to demand tighter gun laws led by survivors of last month8217s Florida school massacre which reignited public anger over mass shootings Students from the Parkland Florida high school where 17 people were killed on Feb 14 were set to speak at the biggest event in Washington where organizers said as many as 500000 people were expected to demonstrate near the Capitol and call on Congress to fight gun violence The protests aim to break a legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings at schools and colleges have become a frighteningly frequent occurrence 8220I don8217t want any child to be seen as another statistic8221 said Ashley Schlaeger an 18yearold freshman at Ohio State University who drove to the Washington rally with friends In the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Parkland thousands of people passed through police checkpoints to assemble in a park for a rally and march Many held signs with slogans including 8220Am I Next8221 8220A Call To Arms For the Safety of Our Sons and Daughters8221 and 8220Congress Killers8221 Adam Buchwald who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School told the crowd he and his friends would stay focused on getting new legislation passed 8220Sadly this could be repeated in your city or town This stops now8221 he said to loud cheers At a rally in New York a moment of silence was held for the Parkland victims The accused gunman 19yearold former student Nikolas Cruz faces the death penalty if convicted RALLIES WORLDWIDE More than 800 demonstrations were set to take place in US cities from Los Angeles to New York and in countries around the world according to coordinators Participants hold up signs as students and gun control advocates hold the March for Our Lives event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington US March 24 2018 REUTERSLeah Millis In Sydney Australia rally organizer Jennifer Smith told a crowd of about 300 people many of them Americans that she could 8220breathe easy8221 about sending her children to school in Australia with its tough gun laws 8220I never have to worry about them having to do active shooter drills8221 she said Organizers of the US marches retweeted photos from sister demonstrations as far afield as Northern Ireland Mauritius and Stockholm Slideshow 30 Images Organizers want the US Congress many of whose members are up for reelection this year to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers On the other side of the debate gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms The teenage US organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities with singer Ariana Grande and 8220Hamilton8221 creator LinManuel Miranda among those performing in Washington 8220Trainwreck8221 star Amy Schumer is set to appear at the Los Angeles rally Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife Amal have donated 500000 and said they would be at the Washington rally On Friday Republican President Donald Trump signed a 13 trillion spending bill that includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence Democrats and nonpartisan groups hope to register at least 25000 firsttime voters at the rallies potentially a boost for Democrats who generally favor stricter gun controls White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded 8220the many courageous young Americans8221 exercising their freespeech rights on Saturday 8220Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president8217s8221 said Walters noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban 8220bump stock8221 devices that let semiautomatic weapons fire like a machine gun Reporting by Ian Simpson and Zachary Fagenson Additional reporting by Katanga Johnson in Washington and Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach Editing by Daniel Wallis and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIRUT Reuters The Syrian army on Saturday paused its bombardment of Douma the last rebel bastion near Damascus a war monitor said as insurgents prepared to leave the rest of their former enclave of eastern Ghouta Syrian army soldiers fire tracer bullets into the air to celebrate their victory outside Harasta in eastern Ghouta in Damascus Syria March 23 2018 REUTERSOmar Sanadiki Buses that will carry thousands of fighters along with their families and other civilians into exile in northwestern Syria began entering the southern part of eastern Ghouta It follows the departure of thousands of others on Friday from the town of Harasta in a similar deal for insurgents to depart with light weapons in return for surrendering their territory The buses queued at a crossing point before moving into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades debris and unexploded ordnance Some captives held by the insurgents were released and state television showed them leaving in a minibus Related Coverage Russia says over 105000 civilians have left Syrias Eastern Ghouta RIA The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit state television said It broadcast pictures of the massive trenches and other fortifications the rebels were leaving behind It means only Douma is left of the opposition8217s eastern Ghouta enclave which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400000 people and constituted the rebels8217 main stronghold near Damascus The army offensive to capture it heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the sevenyear conflict with warplanes helicopters and artillery has killed more than 1600 people said the war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminately inaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires Syrian President Bashar alAssad and his close ally Russia which has helped his air campaign have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians Buses are seen entering into rebels Harasta area in eastern Ghouta in Damascus Syria March 23 2018 REUTERS Omar Sanadiki EVACUATION About 7000 fighters along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad8217s rule were to leave the towns of Zamalka Arbin Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday rebels and state media said They will go to Idlib province in the northwest the destination for many such 8220evacuations8221 after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years It will not mean an end to their experience of war Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week killing dozens of people Slideshow 2 Images Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups On Saturday an explosion at a headquarters for al Qaeda8217s former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others The Britainbased Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish alIslam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted rebels said on Friday However rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting Wael Alwan spokesman for the Failaq alRahman group that was dominant in Zamalka Arbin Ein Terma and Jobar was quoted by alHadath television on Saturday as saying he did not trust Russia8217s guarantees A Russian military webcam at the alWafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory on Saturday carrying children and sacks of belongings Russia8217s military said on Saturday more than 105000 people had left eastern Ghouta including over 700 on Saturday Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters already too full to take them Reporting by Angus McDowall Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dale Hudson Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles VATICAN CITY Reuters It might be called Cappuccino Catholicism Casey Kretsch 20 from Minnesota a pilgrim attending the World Meeting of Families signs a poster drawing of Pope Francis by artist Mark Gaines in Philadelphia Pennsylvania September 23 2015 REUTERSMark Makela Young Catholics told their Church elders on Saturday that the faith should be spread in the places where they like to hang out such as coffee bars 8220We would like the Church to meet us in the various places in which she currently has little or no presence8221 reads part of a 12page document written by some 300 young Catholic delegates from around the world who met for a week at the Vatican 8220The Church should try to find creative new ways to encounter people where they are comfortable and where they naturally socialize bars coffee shops parks gyms stadiums and any other popular cultural centers8221 it said The delegates met in Rome to share their ideas and concerns with Vatican officials ahead of a synod or meeting of bishops in October on the theme of 8220Young People the Faith and Vocational Discernment8221 At a news conference presenting the paper which will feed into a larger working document to be used by the bishops participants said they wanted their Church to be more open and transparent and less severe The document called for a greater role for women in the Church which bars them from the priesthood FILE PHOTO Pope Francis uses a tablet to register for Panama 2019 World Youth Day during the Angelus prayer in Saint Peters Square at the Vatican Feb 11 2018 REUTERSMax RossiFile Photo 8220What are the places where women can flourish within the Church and society The Church can approach these problems with real discussion and openmindedness to different ideas and experiences8221 it said 8220If it is difficult for young people to feel a sense of belonging and leadership in the Church it is much more so for young women8221 the document said FILE PHOTO Pope Francis is greeted by youth as he arrives to lead his Wednesday General Audience in Saint Peters Square at the Vatican Feb 14 2018 REUTERSAlberto LingriaFile Photo They said they wanted to 8220encourage the Church to deepen its understanding of the role of women and to empower young women 8221 Earlier this month Catholic women led by former Irish president Mary McAleese demanded a greater decisionmaking role for women in the Church urging the pope to tear down its 8220walls of misogyny8221 The document said the 12 billionmember Church 8220oftentimes appears as too severe and is often associated with excessive moralism8221 It called for a Church that is 8220welcoming and merciful and which loves everyone even those who are not following the perceived standards8221 Reporting By Philip Pullella Editing by Andrew Bolton Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Janine Jackson interviewed Heidi Beirich on white supremacy for the <a href="" type="internal">March 4, 2016, CounterSpin</a>. This is a lightly edited transcript.</p> <p>Heidi Beirich on white supremacy: &#8220;With the Trump/Klan controversy, these various incidents at Trump rallies&#8230;you realize that this is still a potent, driving factor in United States politics and society.&#8221; (image: SPLC)</p> <p>*******</p> <p /> <p><a href="" type="internal">MP3 Link</a></p> <p>Janine Jackson: White supremacy in its various strains is among the most significant, least discussed phenomena in US media discourse. A news report may note that a pundit stated that black people are lazier and more violent than other people, and urged public policies premised on that idea, or that a candidate&#8217;s followers singled out African-Americans or Latinos to harass or assault, and that these things are concerning.</p> <p>What we don&#8217;t often hear is that these ideas and actions are associated with a particular worldview that has a history that we can talk about. So while ample evidence of white supremacist thinking and behavior exists, anyone using the term still somehow sounds outlandish or doctrinaire. We don&#8217;t have white supremacists; we just have some angry people with a few bad ideas.</p> <p>Well, for decades the Southern Poverty Law Center has been documenting the reality that some seem to think we can ignore into nonexistence. They monitor the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists, including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement and others. Heidi Beirich is director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She joins us now by phone from Montgomery, Alabama. Welcome to CounterSpin, Heidi Beirich.</p> <p>Heidi Beirich: &#8220;If you aren&#8217;t talking about white supremacy, you&#8217;re ignoring one of the main facets of American society.&#8221;</p> <p>Heidi Beirich: Thanks for having me.</p> <p>JJ: Let&#8217;s talk a little bit about the landscape that your work maps. Hearing reports of things like white high school basketball fans chanting &#8220;Trump, Trump,&#8221; at their largely Latino opponents is giving some people the idea that white supremacy is either increasing or more visible. But I believe I&#8217;ve heard it said that there&#8217;s actually been a decrease in organized hate groups per se. Is that so, and if so, what&#8217;s taking their place? Because it sure feels like hate is in the air.</p> <p>HB: Sure. Well, there&#8217;s a couple things going on at once. One, the number of hate groups in the United States today is definitely higher than it was, for example, in 2000. We have more like almost a thousand groups today, back then about 600. So organized white supremacy is growing.</p> <p>But then there&#8217;s the activity on the internet of extremists, which has become particularly visible in this campaign season, where people who are emboldened, in particular by the Trump candidacy, have started making racist statements and engaging in racist activities in a much more forward way than prior to when this campaign really started heating up. So you have these two things going on: more internet activity with racists, more hate groups, and more visible hate group activity.</p> <p>JJ: We want media to take white supremacy seriously. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s smart or good journalism to dismiss people as humorous or negligible or just a series of individual cranks. But at the same time, we&#8217;re wary of seeing certain ideas countenanced, seeing them entertained as though they were just what some people think, like preferring apples to oranges. There has to be a way to thread that needle, and for media to talk seriously about these ideas and their impact on society. What do you make of the amount and the quality of coverage that these issues get?</p> <p>HB: Oftentimes when I talk to journalists, they have this inclination to not want to write about hate groups, hate ideology, either because they think it&#8217;s going to draw attention to these groups that&#8217;s undeserved, make them seem perhaps larger than they are, have more impact. You know, in general I reject that way of thinking. I think that we actually have to talk about these organizations and these beliefs seriously, and whenever they come up. And the reason is this: The United States has a horrific history of white supremacy, white violence, domestic terrorism, predicated on these beliefs. I mean, people seem to forget that it&#8217;s only in the mid &#8217;60s that black folks in the United States were accorded the same rights as white people.</p> <p>And so if you aren&#8217;t talking about white supremacy, you&#8217;re ignoring one of the main facets of American society. And I have to say that over the last few weeks, with the Trump/Klan controversy, these various incidents at Trump rallies&#8212;I mean, you realize that this is still a potent, driving factor in United States politics and society. It needs to be talked about, and talked about often.</p> <p>JJ: When FAIR was doing work about a kind of hate radio host named <a href="" type="internal">Bob Grant</a> here in New York, who referred repeatedly to African-Americans as &#8220;subhuman,&#8221; as &#8220;savages,&#8221; part of the problem was that we couldn&#8217;t get media to use actual quotes from him. They would just describe him as a curmudgeon, you know, or as cranky. And it was almost as though including his actual quotes was too inflammatory. It seems as though&#8212;and you&#8217;re getting at this&#8212;we don&#8217;t want to identify these ideas, because somehow that seems to be giving them oxygen, as though if we ignored them they would go away.</p> <p>HB: Yeah. Well, look, they don&#8217;t go away. I mean, we are seeing controversies today that people probably thought were to put bed when the Dixiecrats disappeared from the scene, and segregation. So they don&#8217;t go away; they have to be addressed, they have to be explained, they have to be condemned. The media shouldn&#8217;t think that talking about these issues is giving them oxygen. It&#8217;s not; it&#8217;s confronting the horrors of this thinking. And making clear that people understand what this is about, that America has this kind of a history, and that these ideas have to be effectively channeled and explained for what they are.</p> <p>JJ: Right. Well, we don&#8217;t want to police speech, of course. And I wonder how you think we might go about balancing our civil liberties concerns with, at the same time, a recognition that, for example, there can be a website that&#8217;s saying, you know, &#8220;If you as a white person take your survival and your heritage seriously, well, there are certain people who it would be better if they didn&#8217;t exist.&#8221; You know, we want to see those connections between ideas and actions made, but at the same time, we want to champion the free flow of information. How do you walk that line?</p> <p>HB: Sure. And this is an issue that comes up a lot in our work. Look, you know, we are not about violating anybody&#8217;s First Amendment rights. Our role at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and I think really for all good citizens, is to counter hate speech with speech. In other words, use our First Amendment rights, just as a hate group might be exercising it by putting out an idea of white genocide or something like that. But to use our First Amendment rights to point out what&#8217;s wrong about that thinking, where that kind of thinking can lead, and once again, point out what the history of racial violence has been like in this country. That&#8217;s what needs to happen. So I encourage people to speak out about these ideas, to counter these ideas. That is very, very important to reducing their power.</p> <p>JJ: I try not to do media criticism by counterfactual, but I do believe that if a young black man had gone into a white church and murdered nine people and said that it was because they were white and that he hoped to spark a race war, I sort of believe that we would still be talking about the ideas that that killer had pointed to as his motivation, and how we should address those ideas as a society. I wonder, do you think that we missed, socially, an opportunity that the Charleston murders offered? What happened there?</p> <p>HB: Yeah. Look, I think that there is a form of white privilege when it comes to killers like Dylann Roof, right, the white shooter in Charleston. I would say this is definitely the case with the militia folks who occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Right? It doesn&#8217;t seem like their crimes are treated with the severity or level that they would if we were to say that those folks that were holed up in Burns, Oregon, for example, were Muslim. Right? Or African-American. We would be having a much different conversation.</p> <p>There are other small things related to white supremacist killers and other radical right killers that are odd as well. We had the Planned Parenthood shooting, Robert Dear, and the Dylann Roof case, where law enforcement didn&#8217;t drag those people out in handcuffs or shoot into these places. What they did is in both cases, they took the two of them out for hamburgers after the crimes. I just don&#8217;t think that would happen if it was a person of color.</p> <p>JJ: And it&#8217;s hard for people to see those disparities and not want to, minimally, have a conversation that names them, that doesn&#8217;t sort of take each incident as a new occurrence and unique and special, but that says we can recognize a pattern of actions here.</p> <p>Well, let me move you, in a way, from media. At an <a href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?328731-1/assistant-attorney-general-john-carlin-domestic-terrorism-threat" type="external">event</a> last fall that I saw on C-SPAN, you were very patiently and persistently trying to ask an assistant attorney general for National Security how the government was preparing to address the expected increase in white supremacist violence along with 2040 and whites becoming a statistical minority. His responses kept seeming to go back to examples about Islamic extremists. We know that media focus much more on Islamist violence than domestic right-wing violence. But I wonder if, in general, you feel that the government&#8217;s anti-terrorism mechanisms&#8212;are they pointed in the right direction, no pun intended?</p> <p>HB: Sure. Well, the fact of the matter is that just about as many people, tragically, have been killed in the United States&#8212;actually, it&#8217;s slightly more&#8212;by white supremacists or anti-government-motivated people, right, domestic terrorists, as by Islamic extremists. And we have been hypercritical of both the Bush administration and then the Obama administration for only focusing on Islamic terrorism. And we&#8217;ve been basically on a campaign since 2009 to pressure the federal government to take both types of terrorism seriously. Right? It&#8217;s not an issue of do one or the other, it&#8217;s an issue of &#8220;and,&#8221; and that&#8217;s kind of what I was saying to Assistant Attorney John Carlin in that event that you&#8217;re talking about.</p> <p>The federal government has gotten much better about the distribution of resources to both types of terrorism, but it took a long time to make them right that ship, and it&#8217;s kind of astounding. And I would say, once again, it&#8217;s kind of a weird form of white privilege, or perhaps denial on the [part of the] majority. It&#8217;s like it&#8217;s much easier to think, oh, that terrible person from a foreign land came here and did something. Right? It&#8217;s not native [to] America, we didn&#8217;t create it. And then this reluctance to admit that white supremacy is part of our history, it is native to us, and it creates massive violence. And it seems to be very hard for people to accept that, both in the federal government and in general. Media coverage sometimes reflects this, I think.</p> <p>JJ: The work of the Southern Poverty Law Center is being featured now in a series called Hate in America, which debuted February 29 on Investigation Discovery. And folks can see, I think, whole episodes at some point online at <a href="http://www.investigationdiscovery.com/tv-shows/hate-in-america/" type="external">InvestigationDiscovery.com</a>. Tell us about that series, and what you hope folks may take away from it.</p> <p>HB: Sure. Discovery has done three hour-long segments looking at the issues basically around hate in America, its nature, its relationship to domestic terrorism, the issue of severe hate crimes. They&#8217;re using the Southern Poverty Law Center as a guide to some of that work, and they talk to victims of this kind of violence and the just horrific pain that they go through, whether the shooting was April 2014 at a Jewish community center in Kansas or it was Charleston this past summer.</p> <p>And the point that they&#8217;re trying to make, and I think they do a very nice job of it, is we have got to get real about the fact that hate crimes, hate violence, hate-motivated terrorism, is a serious problem in this country, and we need to talk about it. And it&#8217;s something that in general we&#8217;ve been shying away from, even though these incidents keep coming and coming and coming. You know, our research shows that we&#8217;ve had a lone-wolf terrorist attack every 34 days in the United States for the last few years. That&#8217;s serious.</p> <p>JJ: Well, one of the cases that is referred to in the series has been referred to as &#8220;the last lynching in America,&#8221; and I would be very interested to hear people guess what year they think the last lynching in America took place. I think even when media talk about this, there is an insistence that these strains of thought, these ideas, are relics, that they are historical, and we don&#8217;t want to bring them into the present day.</p> <p>The last lynching, of course, was 1981, you can tell us about that, but also just tell us about the importance of what&#8217;s the difference between talking about white supremacy in our history and talking about white supremacy in our present?</p> <p>HB: Well, that&#8217;s right. Michael Donald was lynched in Mobile in &#8216;81, on a public street by Klansmen. Right? Most people would think that the last lynching maybe happened in the &#8216;60s or something. They would have no idea&#8212;or maybe even further back in history.</p> <p>But the fact of the matter is that the kinds of hate crimes that occurred like the one in Charleston this summer, that did not involve a noose. Right? But it&#8217;s the same as a lynching. The people who were praying in that church were killed simply because they were black, by someone who was an avid reader of white supremacist websites, and came to believe that propaganda, propaganda that is ancient in our country, in particular about the idea that somehow black men are more criminal than whites, and sucking those ideas in led to that violence. So although a gun was used by Dylann Roof in Charleston, that kind of violence, just like the horror that Michael Donald went through, is happening all the time, and we&#8217;ve got to address it.</p> <p>JJ: Let me just ask you, finally: Part of the reason that we see reticence, I think, on the part of media to explore the connections and to take white supremacy seriously as a body of ideas, as an ideology that has influence, has to do with how far up it goes and how deep the tendrils of it go.</p> <p>In particular, in the case of Dylann Roof in Charleston, Dylann Roof acknowledged that he had had his life changed by discovering the website of something called the Council of Conservative Citizens. And their statement in the wake of the Charleston killings I thought was very eerie, and it always struck me that media did not do very much with it. The Council of Conservative Citizens, who Roof had cited as kind of a motivational force, said that while they unequivocally condemned his actions, &#8220;they do not detract in the slightest from the legitimacy of some of the positions he has expressed. Ignoring legitimate grievances is dangerous.&#8221; That seems to me something to be taken extremely seriously.</p> <p>HB: Absolutely. Well, first of all, it was enough for their propaganda to radicalize Dylann Roof. Secondly, the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is a hate group today, exists today, had politicians attending their meetings on a regular basis well into the 2000s. So there&#8217;s that. I mean, this is not like some disconnected little group.</p> <p>And perhaps more importantly, when we&#8217;re talking about the history of the United States, the Council of Conservative Citizens was built on the mailing lists of the White Citizens Councils, the segregationist organizations that existed all across the South during the &#8216;60s and the &#8216;50s.</p> <p>So we&#8217;ve got a direct link to our past. We have a killer who&#8217;s motivated by propaganda that is ancient, actually, in American history, and constantly pushed by white supremacists. And that killing happened this past summer. So you see that this throughline of domestic terrorism related to white supremacist thinking is one that is still alive and well in the United States.</p> <p>JJ: But while we&#8217;re calling on media and everyone to take it seriously, that doesn&#8217;t mean to lack hope about it. And I understand that through this Hate in America series, but also through the work you do, I mean, you couldn&#8217;t do it if you didn&#8217;t see it as something that was fighting toward the light. Right?</p> <p>HB: Absolutely. I mean, look, American history also shows us that the world has in general become less racist, by a large amount, since the 1960s. Right? We still have a lot of racial issues to deal with, but 40 million white Americans voted for an African-American for president, for example.</p> <p>What these people fundamentally represent is a backlash to a future that will be multicultural, multiethnic, diverse and so on. So in general, I think of this as, you kind of have to fight back the backlash, and terrible things can come from that, but for the most part, the United States is probably in the best place it&#8217;s ever been in terms of racial relationships.</p> <p>JJ: We&#8217;ve been speaking with Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center. You can find their work online at <a href="http://splcenter.org" type="external">SPLCenter.org</a>, and you can check out Hate in America at <a href="http://www.investigationdiscovery.com/tv-shows/hate-in-america/" type="external">InvestigationDiscovery.com</a>. Heidi Beirich, thank you very much for joining us today on CounterSpin.</p> <p>HB: Thanks for having me.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>******</p> <p>Subscribe: <a href="" type="internal">Android</a> | <a href="" type="internal">RSS</a></p>

‘Hate-Motivated Terrorism Is a Serious Problem in This Country’

http://fair.org/home/hate-motivated-terrorism-is-a-serious-problem-in-this-country/

2016-03-07

4left

Janine Jackson interviewed Heidi Beirich on white supremacy for the March 4 2016 CounterSpin This is a lightly edited transcript Heidi Beirich on white supremacy 8220With the TrumpKlan controversy these various incidents at Trump rallies8230you realize that this is still a potent driving factor in United States politics and society8221 image SPLC MP3 Link Janine Jackson White supremacy in its various strains is among the most significant least discussed phenomena in US media discourse A news report may note that a pundit stated that black people are lazier and more violent than other people and urged public policies premised on that idea or that a candidate8217s followers singled out AfricanAmericans or Latinos to harass or assault and that these things are concerning What we don8217t often hear is that these ideas and actions are associated with a particular worldview that has a history that we can talk about So while ample evidence of white supremacist thinking and behavior exists anyone using the term still somehow sounds outlandish or doctrinaire We don8217t have white supremacists we just have some angry people with a few bad ideas Well for decades the Southern Poverty Law Center has been documenting the reality that some seem to think we can ignore into nonexistence They monitor the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists including the Ku Klux Klan the neoNazi movement and others Heidi Beirich is director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center She joins us now by phone from Montgomery Alabama Welcome to CounterSpin Heidi Beirich Heidi Beirich 8220If you aren8217t talking about white supremacy you8217re ignoring one of the main facets of American society8221 Heidi Beirich Thanks for having me JJ Let8217s talk a little bit about the landscape that your work maps Hearing reports of things like white high school basketball fans chanting 8220Trump Trump8221 at their largely Latino opponents is giving some people the idea that white supremacy is either increasing or more visible But I believe I8217ve heard it said that there8217s actually been a decrease in organized hate groups per se Is that so and if so what8217s taking their place Because it sure feels like hate is in the air HB Sure Well there8217s a couple things going on at once One the number of hate groups in the United States today is definitely higher than it was for example in 2000 We have more like almost a thousand groups today back then about 600 So organized white supremacy is growing But then there8217s the activity on the internet of extremists which has become particularly visible in this campaign season where people who are emboldened in particular by the Trump candidacy have started making racist statements and engaging in racist activities in a much more forward way than prior to when this campaign really started heating up So you have these two things going on more internet activity with racists more hate groups and more visible hate group activity JJ We want media to take white supremacy seriously I don8217t think it8217s smart or good journalism to dismiss people as humorous or negligible or just a series of individual cranks But at the same time we8217re wary of seeing certain ideas countenanced seeing them entertained as though they were just what some people think like preferring apples to oranges There has to be a way to thread that needle and for media to talk seriously about these ideas and their impact on society What do you make of the amount and the quality of coverage that these issues get HB Oftentimes when I talk to journalists they have this inclination to not want to write about hate groups hate ideology either because they think it8217s going to draw attention to these groups that8217s undeserved make them seem perhaps larger than they are have more impact You know in general I reject that way of thinking I think that we actually have to talk about these organizations and these beliefs seriously and whenever they come up And the reason is this The United States has a horrific history of white supremacy white violence domestic terrorism predicated on these beliefs I mean people seem to forget that it8217s only in the mid 821760s that black folks in the United States were accorded the same rights as white people And so if you aren8217t talking about white supremacy you8217re ignoring one of the main facets of American society And I have to say that over the last few weeks with the TrumpKlan controversy these various incidents at Trump rallies8212I mean you realize that this is still a potent driving factor in United States politics and society It needs to be talked about and talked about often JJ When FAIR was doing work about a kind of hate radio host named Bob Grant here in New York who referred repeatedly to AfricanAmericans as 8220subhuman8221 as 8220savages8221 part of the problem was that we couldn8217t get media to use actual quotes from him They would just describe him as a curmudgeon you know or as cranky And it was almost as though including his actual quotes was too inflammatory It seems as though8212and you8217re getting at this8212we don8217t want to identify these ideas because somehow that seems to be giving them oxygen as though if we ignored them they would go away HB Yeah Well look they don8217t go away I mean we are seeing controversies today that people probably thought were to put bed when the Dixiecrats disappeared from the scene and segregation So they don8217t go away they have to be addressed they have to be explained they have to be condemned The media shouldn8217t think that talking about these issues is giving them oxygen It8217s not it8217s confronting the horrors of this thinking And making clear that people understand what this is about that America has this kind of a history and that these ideas have to be effectively channeled and explained for what they are JJ Right Well we don8217t want to police speech of course And I wonder how you think we might go about balancing our civil liberties concerns with at the same time a recognition that for example there can be a website that8217s saying you know 8220If you as a white person take your survival and your heritage seriously well there are certain people who it would be better if they didn8217t exist8221 You know we want to see those connections between ideas and actions made but at the same time we want to champion the free flow of information How do you walk that line HB Sure And this is an issue that comes up a lot in our work Look you know we are not about violating anybody8217s First Amendment rights Our role at the Southern Poverty Law Center and I think really for all good citizens is to counter hate speech with speech In other words use our First Amendment rights just as a hate group might be exercising it by putting out an idea of white genocide or something like that But to use our First Amendment rights to point out what8217s wrong about that thinking where that kind of thinking can lead and once again point out what the history of racial violence has been like in this country That8217s what needs to happen So I encourage people to speak out about these ideas to counter these ideas That is very very important to reducing their power JJ I try not to do media criticism by counterfactual but I do believe that if a young black man had gone into a white church and murdered nine people and said that it was because they were white and that he hoped to spark a race war I sort of believe that we would still be talking about the ideas that that killer had pointed to as his motivation and how we should address those ideas as a society I wonder do you think that we missed socially an opportunity that the Charleston murders offered What happened there HB Yeah Look I think that there is a form of white privilege when it comes to killers like Dylann Roof right the white shooter in Charleston I would say this is definitely the case with the militia folks who occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon Right It doesn8217t seem like their crimes are treated with the severity or level that they would if we were to say that those folks that were holed up in Burns Oregon for example were Muslim Right Or AfricanAmerican We would be having a much different conversation There are other small things related to white supremacist killers and other radical right killers that are odd as well We had the Planned Parenthood shooting Robert Dear and the Dylann Roof case where law enforcement didn8217t drag those people out in handcuffs or shoot into these places What they did is in both cases they took the two of them out for hamburgers after the crimes I just don8217t think that would happen if it was a person of color JJ And it8217s hard for people to see those disparities and not want to minimally have a conversation that names them that doesn8217t sort of take each incident as a new occurrence and unique and special but that says we can recognize a pattern of actions here Well let me move you in a way from media At an event last fall that I saw on CSPAN you were very patiently and persistently trying to ask an assistant attorney general for National Security how the government was preparing to address the expected increase in white supremacist violence along with 2040 and whites becoming a statistical minority His responses kept seeming to go back to examples about Islamic extremists We know that media focus much more on Islamist violence than domestic rightwing violence But I wonder if in general you feel that the government8217s antiterrorism mechanisms8212are they pointed in the right direction no pun intended HB Sure Well the fact of the matter is that just about as many people tragically have been killed in the United States8212actually it8217s slightly more8212by white supremacists or antigovernmentmotivated people right domestic terrorists as by Islamic extremists And we have been hypercritical of both the Bush administration and then the Obama administration for only focusing on Islamic terrorism And we8217ve been basically on a campaign since 2009 to pressure the federal government to take both types of terrorism seriously Right It8217s not an issue of do one or the other it8217s an issue of 8220and8221 and that8217s kind of what I was saying to Assistant Attorney John Carlin in that event that you8217re talking about The federal government has gotten much better about the distribution of resources to both types of terrorism but it took a long time to make them right that ship and it8217s kind of astounding And I would say once again it8217s kind of a weird form of white privilege or perhaps denial on the part of the majority It8217s like it8217s much easier to think oh that terrible person from a foreign land came here and did something Right It8217s not native to America we didn8217t create it And then this reluctance to admit that white supremacy is part of our history it is native to us and it creates massive violence And it seems to be very hard for people to accept that both in the federal government and in general Media coverage sometimes reflects this I think JJ The work of the Southern Poverty Law Center is being featured now in a series called Hate in America which debuted February 29 on Investigation Discovery And folks can see I think whole episodes at some point online at InvestigationDiscoverycom Tell us about that series and what you hope folks may take away from it HB Sure Discovery has done three hourlong segments looking at the issues basically around hate in America its nature its relationship to domestic terrorism the issue of severe hate crimes They8217re using the Southern Poverty Law Center as a guide to some of that work and they talk to victims of this kind of violence and the just horrific pain that they go through whether the shooting was April 2014 at a Jewish community center in Kansas or it was Charleston this past summer And the point that they8217re trying to make and I think they do a very nice job of it is we have got to get real about the fact that hate crimes hate violence hatemotivated terrorism is a serious problem in this country and we need to talk about it And it8217s something that in general we8217ve been shying away from even though these incidents keep coming and coming and coming You know our research shows that we8217ve had a lonewolf terrorist attack every 34 days in the United States for the last few years That8217s serious JJ Well one of the cases that is referred to in the series has been referred to as 8220the last lynching in America8221 and I would be very interested to hear people guess what year they think the last lynching in America took place I think even when media talk about this there is an insistence that these strains of thought these ideas are relics that they are historical and we don8217t want to bring them into the present day The last lynching of course was 1981 you can tell us about that but also just tell us about the importance of what8217s the difference between talking about white supremacy in our history and talking about white supremacy in our present HB Well that8217s right Michael Donald was lynched in Mobile in 821681 on a public street by Klansmen Right Most people would think that the last lynching maybe happened in the 821660s or something They would have no idea8212or maybe even further back in history But the fact of the matter is that the kinds of hate crimes that occurred like the one in Charleston this summer that did not involve a noose Right But it8217s the same as a lynching The people who were praying in that church were killed simply because they were black by someone who was an avid reader of white supremacist websites and came to believe that propaganda propaganda that is ancient in our country in particular about the idea that somehow black men are more criminal than whites and sucking those ideas in led to that violence So although a gun was used by Dylann Roof in Charleston that kind of violence just like the horror that Michael Donald went through is happening all the time and we8217ve got to address it JJ Let me just ask you finally Part of the reason that we see reticence I think on the part of media to explore the connections and to take white supremacy seriously as a body of ideas as an ideology that has influence has to do with how far up it goes and how deep the tendrils of it go In particular in the case of Dylann Roof in Charleston Dylann Roof acknowledged that he had had his life changed by discovering the website of something called the Council of Conservative Citizens And their statement in the wake of the Charleston killings I thought was very eerie and it always struck me that media did not do very much with it The Council of Conservative Citizens who Roof had cited as kind of a motivational force said that while they unequivocally condemned his actions 8220they do not detract in the slightest from the legitimacy of some of the positions he has expressed Ignoring legitimate grievances is dangerous8221 That seems to me something to be taken extremely seriously HB Absolutely Well first of all it was enough for their propaganda to radicalize Dylann Roof Secondly the Council of Conservative Citizens which is a hate group today exists today had politicians attending their meetings on a regular basis well into the 2000s So there8217s that I mean this is not like some disconnected little group And perhaps more importantly when we8217re talking about the history of the United States the Council of Conservative Citizens was built on the mailing lists of the White Citizens Councils the segregationist organizations that existed all across the South during the 821660s and the 821650s So we8217ve got a direct link to our past We have a killer who8217s motivated by propaganda that is ancient actually in American history and constantly pushed by white supremacists And that killing happened this past summer So you see that this throughline of domestic terrorism related to white supremacist thinking is one that is still alive and well in the United States JJ But while we8217re calling on media and everyone to take it seriously that doesn8217t mean to lack hope about it And I understand that through this Hate in America series but also through the work you do I mean you couldn8217t do it if you didn8217t see it as something that was fighting toward the light Right HB Absolutely I mean look American history also shows us that the world has in general become less racist by a large amount since the 1960s Right We still have a lot of racial issues to deal with but 40 million white Americans voted for an AfricanAmerican for president for example What these people fundamentally represent is a backlash to a future that will be multicultural multiethnic diverse and so on So in general I think of this as you kind of have to fight back the backlash and terrible things can come from that but for the most part the United States is probably in the best place it8217s ever been in terms of racial relationships JJ We8217ve been speaking with Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center You can find their work online at SPLCenterorg and you can check out Hate in America at InvestigationDiscoverycom Heidi Beirich thank you very much for joining us today on CounterSpin HB Thanks for having me amp160 Subscribe Android RSS

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<p>In a tale of two biotechs,Novavax(NASDAQ: NVAX) andSarepta Therapeutics(NASDAQ: SRPT) shares couldn't have taken more divergent paths recently. Asbillions of dollars in projected sales evaporated because of a key trial failure at Novavax, optimism for sales growthskyrocketedbecause of anearly approval at Sarepta Therapeutics.</p> <p>In this week's episode of The Motley Fool's Industry Focus: Healthcare podcast, analyst Kristine Harjes and contributor Todd Campbell dive into these twostories to helpinvestors decide what to do next.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>A full transcript follows the video.</p> <p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;amp;ftm_pit=2518&amp;amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> <p>This podcast was recorded on Sept. 21, 2016.</p> <p>Kristine Harjes: Welcome to Industry Focus, the podcast the dives into a different sector of the stock market every day. It'sSept. 21. I'm your Healthcare show host, Kristine Harjes, andjoining me viaphone is Todd Campbell, one ofThe Motley Fool'spremier healthcare writers. Todd, how are you today?</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Todd Campbell: Hi, Kristine!I'm excited to talk today abouta lot of interesting things.</p> <p>Harjes: Me, too. Today's show is a tale of two cities, or, rather, a tale of two stocks which metvery different fatesin the past week. One of them,Novavax, lost 84% of its market cap last Friday. The other,Sarepta Therapeutics, gained 74%on Monday. Let's startwith Novavax.</p> <p>Campbell: Novavax was anintriguing -- well,it's still intriguing, but it's much less intriguing after they reported phase 3 data froma study that was evaluating a vaccinetargeting something called RSV, a very common viral infection that can bedangerous in elderly patientsand very young patients. So,patients that you could argue are immunocompromised.</p> <p>Harjes: Right. RSVis actually the second leading cause of deathin children under 1 year old. It affects about 4 to 5 million children just in the U.S. alone. There are about 2.4 million adults over 65 that are affected. Novavax was looking to make a vaccine for thisvery common virus. You would think, if it was that prevalent,it was probably going to make a lot of money. So people were veryexcited about Novavax,and ultimately really disappointed, as we mentioned. They were down 84%when it was reported that,pretty much, the vaccine does not work.</p> <p>Campbell: Yeah. Investors were very hopeful. Developing vaccines is hard and expensive. It involves trials that include thousands of patients, and multiple years. So people had really a lot at stake for this company, and they had bid the market cap on this company up into themultiple billions of dollars, with the view that basically, they were doing a study thattheoretically would allow for vaccinations of every elderlyperson over the age of 70. There are 76 million baby boomers out there. Novavax was estimating that if this study had panned out, its vaccine could be used in up to 100 million seniors per year. That's an astounding figure. They were throwing around numbers as high as $6 billion per year in peak annual sales.So the fact that this trial failed,obviously, was a devastating blow to the company.</p> <p>Harjes: I think it's also a pretty good reminder about the statistics that happenin the background behind these studies. If you look at their initial smaller trial, it was 1,600 people, and half of them got the vaccine, half of them got a placebo, and the results werejust barely statistically significant. So they reported that there was a P value of 0.041. What that means is there is a 4.1% chance that thedifference between the two groups of patientsoccurred just by chance, and there's not actuallysomething meaningful going onwith the vaccine. It turns out,that was the case. When you get to the bigger trial,you have pretty much even resultsbetween people whoshowed signs of infectionwho had been taking the vaccine,and those who just got the placebo. It's a good reminder for investorsthat when you see studies that are justbarely passing the mark ofstatistical significance, that's a little bitof a reason to be nervous.</p> <p>Campbell: Right, andit's also a good reminder to investors to look at -- last August, this company'smanagement came out and said, "Hey,look what we've done in phase 2, the 1,600-person study. We'vesuccessfully met our endpoint." Andwithout doing the due diligenceand digging a little bit deeper like you're suggesting,people were taking that at face valueand thinking, "OK, great! Youexpand this out to more patients andprove that this thing works in more patients. It's a no-brainer. Get this thing on the market,and let's make some money." You need to take smaller phase 1 and phase 2 trial results with a verybig grain of salt,recognizing that phase 3 trialsstill have a very high failure rate. I think I've seen in the paststudies showing that failure rates in phase 3 can run from 30% to 40%. That's asignificant failure rate. So you may have succeeded in phase 1 andsucceeded in phase 2,but that does not guarantee you will succeed in phase 3.</p> <p>Harjes: Exactly. Now, Novavax,looking forward, they're trying thevaccine in healthy pregnant women toprevent the virus in the infants that are then born. They also have a fluvaccine and an Ebola vaccine that are both very early stage. There's reallynot much left with this stock.</p> <p>Campbell: The value, potentially, in this stock now,in my view,is that study that's being donein pregnant women. But I think the completion data on clinicaltrials.gov for that trail is something like 2020.I don't know if we get interim results before then,but theoretically, we're talking a whilebefore we know whether or notthis vaccine can be savedand still have an applicationthat's worthwhile. Even though the stock is trading at only $1-something per share,investors have to realize that it still has a $444 million market cap. This is not a company that is valued at $50 million or something. It'sstill carrying a $444 million market cap, and it doesn't have a drug that'slikely to make it out to market now forat least a couple more years.</p> <p>Harjes: Yeah. Neither of us istrying to catch this falling knife. Before we move on to the tale ofSarepta Therapeutics,I mentioned a few months ago some options resources that the Fool hasavailable, and a bunch of you wrote insaying you were interested. So I figuredI should mention that the Fool just released our Ultimate Income Report, which is written byone of the lead advisors for our Options newsletter service. The report itself istotally free. If you're interestedin learning about some of our best options strategies, shoot me an email at <a href="http://mailto:IndustryFocus@Fool.com" type="external">industryfocus@fool.com Opens a New Window.</a>,and I can send you some more informationabout how to get that report.</p> <p>So if Novavaxinvestors were going throughthe worst of times, then Sarepta investors went through the best of times earlier this week. Listeners will remember this company name from our May 4 episode. This is the company that wasdeveloping a treatment for a rare butdevastating disease known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, or DMD. OnMonday, we found out that they gotapproval from the FDA for their drug, which was known as Eteplirsen, and will now go by the trade name Exondys 51.</p> <p>Campbell: What anamazing and intriguing storyfor investors and for those who likesoap-opera back stories. There wasso much involved in the review of this drugleading up to the application. You almost have to look at it and say there's two stories here. There's the story of, "Wow,this is the first FDA-approved drug thatactually targets the cause of DMD." And then,there's the second story, which is, "Did the FDA stretch the bar too far,lower the bar too low, in approving this drug?"</p> <p>Harjes: Right. Thestory involves a pretty heated internal conflictin the FDA. You had some peoplein the agency reallypushing for approval of this drug, saying, "Look atthe stories that the patients who are taking this can tell. Lookhow amazing this is, that this drug must be working." And thenyou had people on the other side, saying, "Wait a second,that's not what we're here to do. We're not hereto be pulled by emotions. We're here to look at the clinical evidence, which was,admittedly, a little bit lacking."</p> <p>Campbell: Right. How much do you weight the science at the FDA, versus the unmet need of DMD patients? I think that was a core debate within the agency. On the one hand,in support of this drug,you had the head of drug evaluation, Dr. Janet Woodcock. Andon the other side, you had the head of the group within the FDA that was tasked withreviewing the data on this drug. The director of that group was a Dr. Unger. The two, Woodcock and Unger, had very different views onthe subject of the science versusthe unmet-need issue.</p> <p>Harjes: Exactly. So what they were really disagreeing about was whether anincrease in this protein known as dystrophin, which was asurrogate endpoint in the trial, whether thatnecessarily implied clinical benefit. Dr. Woodcock said, "Yes, it does. If we can show that they haveincreased levels ofdystrophin, then there is a very good chance that the patients will have a clinical benefit." Whereas Dr. Unger worried about this, and aside from the worry over the data not being there, he also worried about whetherapproving this drugjust based on this limited data set would be a bad signal, wouldsend a message that the FDA can be pressured by things like politics and intimidation, as opposed to strict science.</p> <p>Campbell: Yeah. Let'sgo back in time fora second. Maybe we should spend a little bit of timetalking about DMD, and whatdystrophin is. DMD is amuscle-wasting disease. What ends up happening is, inpatients that can't produceadequate levels of functionaldystrophin, which is a protein used toproduce and maintain muscle fiber, over time, their muscles weaken,and they lose the ability to walkby the time the reach their teens, and sadly, they lose heart muscle function typically when they get into their 20s.Unfortunately, they tend to succumb to their disease some time between their 30s and 40s. So this is an extremely progressive, life-shortening disease. And up until now, there has beennothing other than corticosteroidsthat have been approved by the FDA to try and offer some hope to this patient population.</p> <p>Because of that, andbecause of the history with muscular dystrophyfundraising and awareness,there was advocacy forthe approval of this drug on a levelthat is unprecedented. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. You hadpeople within the FDA sayingthey were receiving communications from Congress, letters and communications from patient advocates, from patients, from other interested parties. Andsometimes those letters weren't so nice.</p> <p>Harjes: Right. There was anadvisory-committee meeting --howthese approvals work with the FDA is that first, you have anadvisory committee that convenes,and they review the evidence and make a recommendation foror against approval. When the team was consideringthe evidence, they heard testimonial from patients.I thinkwas actually one of the longest everpatient testimonial periods, where these young boys that are suffering from this disease, and their parents, and their caregivers, wereessentially pleading with the people from the FDA, "Please,approve this drug, there's no other optionfor these boys." As rare as the disease is, when you're looking it in the face, that pulls at you. I can understand that.</p> <p>Campbell: Yeah. So, investors and everybody who's interested to know,what ended up happening is that Woodcock hadwanted to approve the drug all along. Unger and some of the other people on the review committee were not convinced that the drugprovidedenough of a boost indystrophin production todetermine that it would produce a clinical benefit. Eventually, they went to an appeals board. One of the things that'sinteresting about this story is that in May,the FDA was supposed to issueits final determination, go or no go. Theadvisory committee meeting, after hearing all of thattestimony, still concluded on a 7-to-6 votenot to recommendearly approval. Yet, walking outof that meeting, Woodcock, within days, was already saying, "I'mgoing to approve this drug." So Unger went to an appeals board. The appeals process went through and looked at the science,evaluated the stories from both ends, andeventually submitted a memo on this entire subject to the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. So this went all the way up to the top.</p> <p>Throughout the entire process, Unger maintains, and Woodcock doesn't dispute the fact that she was involved very heavily, right from the get-go. And that process included various meetings withpatients and advocates during a period of time where thecommittee was reviewing the science. So all along, there was this push and pull between the science and the very big unmet need. And I think what Woodcock was arguing was, "Listen,we can't just operate only on the science, because there's nothing that can be done to help these patients and prolong their lives as it stands today. If we havesomething that even offers them minimal chanceof offering a benefit, that's safe and in trials," that was the one thing thateveryone agreed on, this drug was safe, "then we should approve it." And I think others at theagency took a different view,worrying that if they approved a drugthat wasn't scientifically proven to have the clinical benefit, what kind ofrecommendations would they have to givein the future?</p> <p>Harjes: Exactly. Itdefinitely did show that the FDA has moreflexibility than maybe you would have thought. One thing that Woodcock had mentioned thatI definitely can't get behind is,apparently she was talking about Sarepta's need forcapitalization. She noted that their stock price has reacted to different FDA actions. That,this is my own opinion here,I would say definitively should notbe consideredwhen you look at something like this. I mean, she's right, if Sarepta didn't get approval,they probably would have run out of money and wouldn't be able to deliver this drug. But that can't be considered. And indeed, an FDA spokeswoman did say that the FDA did not consider those factors in their final decision. But I think that does highlight that Woodcock was willing to go to someunprecedented levels to push for this drug's approval.</p> <p>Campbell: Yeah. Kristine,I believe those comments were actually made during the review-board hearings. I don't think those comments were made during theevaluation of the science behind this drug.I think the point that Woodcock was trying to make, in fairness, was that we have to recognize that Sarepta is working on all sorts ofother medicines that can treat these diseasesthat could work better,and if they were to go out of business,what would that mean for that science? It could end that science, and basicallyprohibitthe development of a second-generation drug thatconceivably works better.</p> <p>If we just look at it fromwhat could have gone differently,obviously, the drug could have worked better. If it was a slam-dunk approval, none of this would havehappened. But the reality is, you had a 12-person trial that had all sorts of gaps in it as far as thevalidity of the trial results.</p> <p>Harjes: For example, there was no control group.</p> <p>Campbell: Yeah. Both Woodcock and Ungerbasically looked at it and said, "We don't know what we can trust out of this data." That's why, this past summer,they requested additional information from Sarepta,intro analysis of another trial that'sgoing on right now and took a look at another 12 boys,trying to determine just how muchdystrophin is being produced by taking this drug. They determined, after doing their own analysis, that is was a 0.3% improvement indystrophinproduction. By any measures, that's tiny.I think the argument from Woodcock was, "Yeah, but it's an improvement." And the argument from Unger was, "We don't know without a shadow of a doubt that that level ofimprovement would result in a clinical benefit."</p> <p>Harjes: Exactly. So,technically, what happened to youwas an accelerated approval. What that means is that Sarepta isnot off the hook just yet. They did get their green light, but they'llstill have to provide more proof of efficacyas it becomes available. I would say that's a pretty good middle ground. They're not getting a go-ahead with no strings attached. But yet, this drug will become available, which is really important.</p> <p>Campbell: Yeah. This is a very small treatment population. We're talking about 1 in 3,500 male births. I did the math on that, DMD therefore isoccurring about 580 timesnew patients diagnosed per year. And of that,this drug only works in about 13% of them. So,every year, we're talking about 60 or so kids that this drug might be able to benefit. It's great that they'regoing to continue their research and the study. But as we just talked about previously,once you open these studies upto more and more patients,that does not necessarily meanthat you're going to get the outcome you want.</p> <p>Harjes: Exactly. So it'sdefinitely still a case to watch going forward. Interestingly, Sarepta's other drugs couldpotentially work on a much broader portion of the DMD population. We're talking about up to 80% of these patients. So hopefully, for the sake of the patients and their families, Sarepta cancontinue to prove that their drugs do work, and validate their entire platform.</p> <p>So I want to wrap up today's episode with a Tale of Two Cities quote. It is the one you're thinking of,but you might be surprised to learn the lines that come right after it. From Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness."</p> <p>As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. For Todd Campbell, I'm Kristine Harjes. Thanks for listening, and Fool on!</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFAnchor/info.aspx" type="external">Kristine Harjes Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/EBCapitalMarkets/info.aspx" type="external">Todd Campbell Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>

One Biotech Crashes, the Other Skyrockets -- Here's Why

http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/29/one-biotech-crashes-other-skyrockets-here-why.html

2016-09-29

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In a tale of two biotechsNovavaxNASDAQ NVAX andSarepta TherapeuticsNASDAQ SRPT shares couldnt have taken more divergent paths recently Asbillions of dollars in projected sales evaporated because of a key trial failure at Novavax optimism for sales growthskyrocketedbecause of anearly approval at Sarepta Therapeutics In this weeks episode of The Motley Fools Industry Focus Healthcare podcast analyst Kristine Harjes and contributor Todd Campbell dive into these twostories to helpinvestors decide what to do next Continue Reading Below A full transcript follows the video A secret billiondollar stock opportunity The worlds biggest tech company forgot to show you something but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didnt miss a beat Theres a small company thats powering their brandnew gadgets and the coming revolution in technology And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early intheknow investors To be one of them just click here Opens a New Window This podcast was recorded on Sept 21 2016 Kristine Harjes Welcome to Industry Focus the podcast the dives into a different sector of the stock market every day ItsSept 21 Im your Healthcare show host Kristine Harjes andjoining me viaphone is Todd Campbell one ofThe Motley Foolspremier healthcare writers Todd how are you today Advertisement Todd Campbell Hi KristineIm excited to talk today abouta lot of interesting things Harjes Me too Todays show is a tale of two cities or rather a tale of two stocks which metvery different fatesin the past week One of themNovavax lost 84 of its market cap last Friday The otherSarepta Therapeutics gained 74on Monday Lets startwith Novavax Campbell Novavax was anintriguing wellits still intriguing but its much less intriguing after they reported phase 3 data froma study that was evaluating a vaccinetargeting something called RSV a very common viral infection that can bedangerous in elderly patientsand very young patients Sopatients that you could argue are immunocompromised Harjes Right RSVis actually the second leading cause of deathin children under 1 year old It affects about 4 to 5 million children just in the US alone There are about 24 million adults over 65 that are affected Novavax was looking to make a vaccine for thisvery common virus You would think if it was that prevalentit was probably going to make a lot of money So people were veryexcited about Novavaxand ultimately really disappointed as we mentioned They were down 84when it was reported thatpretty much the vaccine does not work Campbell Yeah Investors were very hopeful Developing vaccines is hard and expensive It involves trials that include thousands of patients and multiple years So people had really a lot at stake for this company and they had bid the market cap on this company up into themultiple billions of dollars with the view that basically they were doing a study thattheoretically would allow for vaccinations of every elderlyperson over the age of 70 There are 76 million baby boomers out there Novavax was estimating that if this study had panned out its vaccine could be used in up to 100 million seniors per year Thats an astounding figure They were throwing around numbers as high as 6 billion per year in peak annual salesSo the fact that this trial failedobviously was a devastating blow to the company Harjes I think its also a pretty good reminder about the statistics that happenin the background behind these studies If you look at their initial smaller trial it was 1600 people and half of them got the vaccine half of them got a placebo and the results werejust barely statistically significant So they reported that there was a P value of 0041 What that means is there is a 41 chance that thedifference between the two groups of patientsoccurred just by chance and theres not actuallysomething meaningful going onwith the vaccine It turns outthat was the case When you get to the bigger trialyou have pretty much even resultsbetween people whoshowed signs of infectionwho had been taking the vaccineand those who just got the placebo Its a good reminder for investorsthat when you see studies that are justbarely passing the mark ofstatistical significance thats a little bitof a reason to be nervous Campbell Right andits also a good reminder to investors to look at last August this companysmanagement came out and said Heylook what weve done in phase 2 the 1600person study Wevesuccessfully met our endpoint Andwithout doing the due diligenceand digging a little bit deeper like youre suggestingpeople were taking that at face valueand thinking OK great Youexpand this out to more patients andprove that this thing works in more patients Its a nobrainer Get this thing on the marketand lets make some money You need to take smaller phase 1 and phase 2 trial results with a verybig grain of saltrecognizing that phase 3 trialsstill have a very high failure rate I think Ive seen in the paststudies showing that failure rates in phase 3 can run from 30 to 40 Thats asignificant failure rate So you may have succeeded in phase 1 andsucceeded in phase 2but that does not guarantee you will succeed in phase 3 Harjes Exactly Now Novavaxlooking forward theyre trying thevaccine in healthy pregnant women toprevent the virus in the infants that are then born They also have a fluvaccine and an Ebola vaccine that are both very early stage Theres reallynot much left with this stock Campbell The value potentially in this stock nowin my viewis that study thats being donein pregnant women But I think the completion data on clinicaltrialsgov for that trail is something like 2020I dont know if we get interim results before thenbut theoretically were talking a whilebefore we know whether or notthis vaccine can be savedand still have an applicationthats worthwhile Even though the stock is trading at only 1something per shareinvestors have to realize that it still has a 444 million market cap This is not a company that is valued at 50 million or something Itsstill carrying a 444 million market cap and it doesnt have a drug thatslikely to make it out to market now forat least a couple more years Harjes Yeah Neither of us istrying to catch this falling knife Before we move on to the tale ofSarepta TherapeuticsI mentioned a few months ago some options resources that the Fool hasavailable and a bunch of you wrote insaying you were interested So I figuredI should mention that the Fool just released our Ultimate Income Report which is written byone of the lead advisors for our Options newsletter service The report itself istotally free If youre interestedin learning about some of our best options strategies shoot me an email at industryfocusfoolcom Opens a New Windowand I can send you some more informationabout how to get that report So if Novavaxinvestors were going throughthe worst of times then Sarepta investors went through the best of times earlier this week Listeners will remember this company name from our May 4 episode This is the company that wasdeveloping a treatment for a rare butdevastating disease known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy or DMD OnMonday we found out that they gotapproval from the FDA for their drug which was known as Eteplirsen and will now go by the trade name Exondys 51 Campbell What anamazing and intriguing storyfor investors and for those who likesoapopera back stories There wasso much involved in the review of this drugleading up to the application You almost have to look at it and say theres two stories here Theres the story of Wowthis is the first FDAapproved drug thatactually targets the cause of DMD And thentheres the second story which is Did the FDA stretch the bar too farlower the bar too low in approving this drug Harjes Right Thestory involves a pretty heated internal conflictin the FDA You had some peoplein the agency reallypushing for approval of this drug saying Look atthe stories that the patients who are taking this can tell Lookhow amazing this is that this drug must be working And thenyou had people on the other side saying Wait a secondthats not what were here to do Were not hereto be pulled by emotions Were here to look at the clinical evidence which wasadmittedly a little bit lacking Campbell Right How much do you weight the science at the FDA versus the unmet need of DMD patients I think that was a core debate within the agency On the one handin support of this drugyou had the head of drug evaluation Dr Janet Woodcock Andon the other side you had the head of the group within the FDA that was tasked withreviewing the data on this drug The director of that group was a Dr Unger The two Woodcock and Unger had very different views onthe subject of the science versusthe unmetneed issue Harjes Exactly So what they were really disagreeing about was whether anincrease in this protein known as dystrophin which was asurrogate endpoint in the trial whether thatnecessarily implied clinical benefit Dr Woodcock said Yes it does If we can show that they haveincreased levels ofdystrophin then there is a very good chance that the patients will have a clinical benefit Whereas Dr Unger worried about this and aside from the worry over the data not being there he also worried about whetherapproving this drugjust based on this limited data set would be a bad signal wouldsend a message that the FDA can be pressured by things like politics and intimidation as opposed to strict science Campbell Yeah Letsgo back in time fora second Maybe we should spend a little bit of timetalking about DMD and whatdystrophin is DMD is amusclewasting disease What ends up happening is inpatients that cant produceadequate levels of functionaldystrophin which is a protein used toproduce and maintain muscle fiber over time their muscles weakenand they lose the ability to walkby the time the reach their teens and sadly they lose heart muscle function typically when they get into their 20sUnfortunately they tend to succumb to their disease some time between their 30s and 40s So this is an extremely progressive lifeshortening disease And up until now there has beennothing other than corticosteroidsthat have been approved by the FDA to try and offer some hope to this patient population Because of that andbecause of the history with muscular dystrophyfundraising and awarenessthere was advocacy forthe approval of this drug on a levelthat is unprecedented I dont think Ive ever seen anything like this You hadpeople within the FDA sayingthey were receiving communications from Congress letters and communications from patient advocates from patients from other interested parties Andsometimes those letters werent so nice Harjes Right There was anadvisorycommittee meeting howthese approvals work with the FDA is that first you have anadvisory committee that convenesand they review the evidence and make a recommendation foror against approval When the team was consideringthe evidence they heard testimonial from patientsI thinkwas actually one of the longest everpatient testimonial periods where these young boys that are suffering from this disease and their parents and their caregivers wereessentially pleading with the people from the FDA Pleaseapprove this drug theres no other optionfor these boys As rare as the disease is when youre looking it in the face that pulls at you I can understand that Campbell Yeah So investors and everybody whos interested to knowwhat ended up happening is that Woodcock hadwanted to approve the drug all along Unger and some of the other people on the review committee were not convinced that the drugprovidedenough of a boost indystrophin production todetermine that it would produce a clinical benefit Eventually they went to an appeals board One of the things thatsinteresting about this story is that in Maythe FDA was supposed to issueits final determination go or no go Theadvisory committee meeting after hearing all of thattestimony still concluded on a 7to6 votenot to recommendearly approval Yet walking outof that meeting Woodcock within days was already saying Imgoing to approve this drug So Unger went to an appeals board The appeals process went through and looked at the scienceevaluated the stories from both ends andeventually submitted a memo on this entire subject to the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration So this went all the way up to the top Throughout the entire process Unger maintains and Woodcock doesnt dispute the fact that she was involved very heavily right from the getgo And that process included various meetings withpatients and advocates during a period of time where thecommittee was reviewing the science So all along there was this push and pull between the science and the very big unmet need And I think what Woodcock was arguing was Listenwe cant just operate only on the science because theres nothing that can be done to help these patients and prolong their lives as it stands today If we havesomething that even offers them minimal chanceof offering a benefit thats safe and in trials that was the one thing thateveryone agreed on this drug was safe then we should approve it And I think others at theagency took a different viewworrying that if they approved a drugthat wasnt scientifically proven to have the clinical benefit what kind ofrecommendations would they have to givein the future Harjes Exactly Itdefinitely did show that the FDA has moreflexibility than maybe you would have thought One thing that Woodcock had mentioned thatI definitely cant get behind isapparently she was talking about Sareptas need forcapitalization She noted that their stock price has reacted to different FDA actions Thatthis is my own opinion hereI would say definitively should notbe consideredwhen you look at something like this I mean shes right if Sarepta didnt get approvalthey probably would have run out of money and wouldnt be able to deliver this drug But that cant be considered And indeed an FDA spokeswoman did say that the FDA did not consider those factors in their final decision But I think that does highlight that Woodcock was willing to go to someunprecedented levels to push for this drugs approval Campbell Yeah KristineI believe those comments were actually made during the reviewboard hearings I dont think those comments were made during theevaluation of the science behind this drugI think the point that Woodcock was trying to make in fairness was that we have to recognize that Sarepta is working on all sorts ofother medicines that can treat these diseasesthat could work betterand if they were to go out of businesswhat would that mean for that science It could end that science and basicallyprohibitthe development of a secondgeneration drug thatconceivably works better If we just look at it fromwhat could have gone differentlyobviously the drug could have worked better If it was a slamdunk approval none of this would havehappened But the reality is you had a 12person trial that had all sorts of gaps in it as far as thevalidity of the trial results Harjes For example there was no control group Campbell Yeah Both Woodcock and Ungerbasically looked at it and said We dont know what we can trust out of this data Thats why this past summerthey requested additional information from Sareptaintro analysis of another trial thatsgoing on right now and took a look at another 12 boystrying to determine just how muchdystrophin is being produced by taking this drug They determined after doing their own analysis that is was a 03 improvement indystrophinproduction By any measures thats tinyI think the argument from Woodcock was Yeah but its an improvement And the argument from Unger was We dont know without a shadow of a doubt that that level ofimprovement would result in a clinical benefit Harjes Exactly Sotechnically what happened to youwas an accelerated approval What that means is that Sarepta isnot off the hook just yet They did get their green light but theyllstill have to provide more proof of efficacyas it becomes available I would say thats a pretty good middle ground Theyre not getting a goahead with no strings attached But yet this drug will become available which is really important Campbell Yeah This is a very small treatment population Were talking about 1 in 3500 male births I did the math on that DMD therefore isoccurring about 580 timesnew patients diagnosed per year And of thatthis drug only works in about 13 of them Soevery year were talking about 60 or so kids that this drug might be able to benefit Its great that theyregoing to continue their research and the study But as we just talked about previouslyonce you open these studies upto more and more patientsthat does not necessarily meanthat youre going to get the outcome you want Harjes Exactly So itsdefinitely still a case to watch going forward Interestingly Sareptas other drugs couldpotentially work on a much broader portion of the DMD population Were talking about up to 80 of these patients So hopefully for the sake of the patients and their families Sarepta cancontinue to prove that their drugs do work and validate their entire platform So I want to wrap up todays episode with a Tale of Two Cities quote It is the one youre thinking ofbut you might be surprised to learn the lines that come right after it From Dickens It was the best of times it was the worst of times It was the age of wisdom it was the age of foolishness As always people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against so dont buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear For Todd Campbell Im Kristine Harjes Thanks for listening and Fool on Kristine Harjes Opens a New Window has no position in any stocks mentioned Todd Campbell Opens a New Window has no position in any stocks mentioned The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days Opens a New Window We Fools may not all hold the same opinions but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window makes us better investors The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy Opens a New Window

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<p>Too much public education only gets working people riled up and full of backsass.</p> <p>Virginia Sen. Harry Flood Byrd</p> <p>My home town is one of those slowly rotting East Coast burgs that makes passers-through think to themselves: &#8220;What the hell is this? Mayberry USA on crack?&#8221; The town&#8217;s 250-year old core is a blighted clot of ramshackle houses carved into apartments and cheesy businesses. Its outer rim of slurb is the typical ugly gash of commercial hell, an assortment of mindlessly jammed-together tire dealers, grim asphalt, slurp and burps, and car dealerships of the type that make the U.S. one of the ugliest nations on earth. A sign in the median strip of this gash proclaims Winchester an official U.S. &#8220;All-American Town.&#8221; To its credit however, the town does have that special kind of seediness found only in the U.S. South. It might even be considered weirdly colorful in an America studies sort of way, with its hard-faced characters straight out of Grapes of Wrath and spooky and well-scrubbed Bible thumpers. Beauty being in the eye of the beholder, our local Chamber of Commerce calls it &#8220;Historic Winchester, Virginia.&#8221; But many of us who grew up here call it Dickville; if you were born and raised here you were probably dicked from the beginning.</p> <p>Faced with life in such a town, there is only one solution. Beer. So I sit here at Burt&#8217;s Westside Tavern (The name is changed on the slight chance some local will find this on the internet, then convince Burt he can sue me for libel). Burt&#8217;s Westside is a lunch and after-work beer dump, the lair of the rightwing working class, along with the regular line-up of small town loser boozers and a couple of militia types. In the end booth sits a fat guy wearing a tee shirt that reads: &#8220;One million battered women in this country and I&#8217;ve been eating mine plain!&#8221; That this is not considered especially offensive at Burt&#8217;s says all one needs to know about the cultural and gender sensitivity of the clientele. And the fact that this fellow*who I have known since high school and whose name is Pooty*votes, is probably something I would be afraid to contemplate, were not cheap American beer such a palliative for anxious thought tonight.</p> <p>Every customer at Burt&#8217;s loves George Bush. Worships George Bush. One reason is because George Bush doesn&#8217;t give a shit. When his detractors point out the complete fraud of WMDs, he doesn&#8217;t give a shit. When newspapers worldwide suggest Bush may be the biggest international threat today, Bush does not give a shit. This gives him street cred among these people who for better or worse, I must call my own. Why should they give a shit about international opinion? After all, as presented by the media, the world outside is altogether nasty terrain*a news hour nether region from whence child suicide bombers swarm toward us in a tide that will only be stopped by a good old goddam American pounding with the biggest ball busting bombs we can muster. So Bush &#8220;sounds right&#8221; when he says, &#8220;We will not cut and run.&#8221; And when George Bush sneers &#8220;Bring&#8217;em on!&#8221; he sounds even more right. Sounding right is everything when you don&#8217;t know shit from Shinola. Here is their political universe, which I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve heard before but it&#8217;s always best to keep horsecrap in one pile:</p> <p>*Muslims are out to kill us all. So we need to kill them all first.</p> <p>*Democrats, a party of liberal queers supported by ghetto blacks, Commie college professors and Mafia-backed unions, let 9/11 happen.</p> <p>*The world hates us because we are rich.</p> <p>*The snail-eating, wine-besotted French are a bunch of spiteful pussies, ungrateful that we saved their asses in World War II.</p> <p>And that&#8217;s it. That is the common wisdom. If it appears too common to be believable, then you have never lived in the American South.</p> <p>Such ignorance may is funny to observe, but if you think about it, it is the kind of viral stuff that has eaten away much of the American polity&#8217;s very ability to think and its ability to do more than merely react to propaganda, or to the price of gas or misrepresentations that sound right. And if you are a liberal, you are going to square off with these people at the polls in November. There are a lot of them, not all as ornery as the crowd at Burt&#8217;s to be sure, but never the less a huge number of the same political and economic stripe.</p> <p>These are the skilled and semi-skilled workers, people without a college degree, (in this town, nearly two fifths of working adults without even a high school degree) some thoughtful and self-educating, others not. They represent 55% of all voters. Many are the inexplicable self-screwing working folks who voted neo-conservative Republican in 2000. Never mind that Bush economic policies are why so many of them are drinking short beers tonight, or that his tax plan made them poorer and the rich much richer. They approved of it simply because it was called a tax &#8220;cut,&#8221; and because many of them needed their $200 rebate scrap of that federal hog to pay off last winter&#8217;s heating bill. By any realistic assessment, nearly everyone in Burt&#8217;s is working poor. They would never admit it. Nor do government guidelines acknowledge them as such. But so long as the current administration infers that people like them are heroes (they identify heavily with the firemen, policemen of 911 and the soldiers in Iraq) they don&#8217;t need no steenking economic justice. According to a recent Roper poll, 49% of Americans in this economic class will vote for George Bush in &#8217;04. Here in Burt&#8217;s it is probably 100%. Obviously, I am making no pretense at liberal humility or sensitivity. So if you are not willing to call dumb dumb when you see it, you might want to quit reading right about here.</p> <p>What these folks really need is for someone to say out loud: &#8220;Now lookee here dammit! You are dumber than a sack of hammers and should&#8217;a got an education so you would have half a notion of what&#8217;s going on.&#8221; Someone once told me that and, along with the advice never to mix Mad Dog 20-20 with whiskey, it is the best I ever received. But no one in America is about to say such a thing out loud because it sounds elitist. It sounds un-American and undemocratic. It also might get your nose broken in certain venues. In an ersatz democracy maintaining the popular national fiction that everyone is equal, it is impermissible to say that, although we may all have equal constitutional rights, we are not equal. It takes at least some effort toward self-improvement just to get to the starting line of socioeconomic equality, plus an ongoing effort at being informed, if you want to function in America nowadays.</p> <p>So why are my people so impervious to information? Hell, thanks to their kids, most of them I know even have the Internet. Well, I can say the Internet&#8217;s vast realms are available to all, including the presently uninformed. I can also say that a tater bug can drag a bale of cotton from my house to yours. But that doesn&#8217;t make it true about the Internet or the tater bug. My faith in the Internet&#8217;s information democracy wilted when I once suggested to a friend facing eviction that we Google up renter&#8217;s rights to learn his options, and watched him type in &#8220;rinters kicked out.&#8221; Then too, when we bumped into the banner on a site reading: JENNIFER LICKS THE HUGE MAN&#8217;S SWORD,&#8221; we both got kind of sidetracked. Yet two weeks later he had found Newsmax and learned how to bookmark it. Sometimes I think the GOP emits a special pheromone that attracts fools and money.</p> <p>Pooty, how did we git so dumb?</p> <p>Despite how it appears, our mama&#8217;s did not drop us on their heads. What I watch in Burt&#8217;s with such mixed feelings of humor and outrage is America&#8217;s unacknowledged class system at work. Saying that our system and its GOP helmsmen skin the poor and working classes out of all opportunity is like saying a $40 hooker will nearly always steal your wallet on the way out of the motel room. Everybody knows that. However, no one but the so-called &#8220;far left&#8221; ever talks about the extremely localized and not so nice ways in which small and middle-sized towns such as Dickville are important to American capitalism&#8217;s machinery. They are where the first rip-offs are pulled, where the first muggings take place. Where the first dollars and opportunities are wrung from the basic needs of the machines human components, otherwise known as working stiffs. Southern towns like Dickville are perfect for observing it clearly because here it manifests itself in high definition, spittle flecked, living color. This pig wears no lipstick.</p> <p>The lives and intellectual cultures of the hardest working people in these towns are not just stunted by the smallness of the society into which they were born. They are purposefully held in bondage by a local network of moneyed families, bankers, developers, lawyers, and business people in whose interests it is to a have cheap, unquestioning and compliant labor force. They invest in developing such a force by not investing (how&#8217;s that for making money out of thin air!) in the education and quality of life for anyone but their own. These places are, as they say, &#8220;investment paradise.&#8221; That means low taxes, few or no local regulations, no unions, and a Chamber of Commerce tricked out like a gaggle of hookers, welcoming the new nonunion, air poisoning battery acid factory. &#8220;To hell with pollution. We gonna sell some propity, move some real&#8217;state today fellas!&#8221; Big contractors, realtors, lawyers, everybody gets a slice, except the poorly educated nonunion mooks who will be employed at the acid plant at discount rates.</p> <p>At the same time, and more importantly, this business cartel*and you have to call it that*controls most elected offices and municipal boards. Incidentally, it makes for some ridiculous civic scenarios: When our town&#8217;s educators decided to hold a conference on the future employment needs of our youth, the keynote speaker was the CEO of a local rendering plant a vast, stinking facility that cooks down roadkills and expended deep fryer fats into the goop they put in animal feeds. He got a standing ovation from the school board and all the downtown main pickle vendors. Not a soul in that Best Western events room thought it was ironic. If you think I am insinuating that the pecker-in-the-dirt ignorance of folks like those at Burt&#8217;s has been institutionalized and cultivated, you are right.</p> <p>A bootstrap is just another strap</p> <p>Anyone who actually believes that all these poor working puds can beat this system, lift themselves up by their bootstraps, is either a neo-con ideologue or the child of advantage. Most readers of this article probably have a college education. Because only 25% of Americans get a college degree, we are the children of advantage, even if we got it the hard way. It may not feel like having one up on the majority, but if we get off the Internet for a while and spend just one day driving around the unpleasant towns and neighborhoods we avoid, those where the check cashing businesses and the pawn shops flourish, it becomes obvious. And I am not talking about ghettoes either. I&#8217;m talking about the heartland of America where it&#8217;s supposed to be all lightning bug summers and hotdogs on the grill.</p> <p>Admittedly, in many places a true blue collar middle class still exists*just as unions still exist. But both have had the snot substantially kicked out of them by repeated Republican (and not a few Democratic) assaults. Both are on the ropes like some old boxing pug taking the facial cuts and popping eye capillaries with no referee to come in and stop the carnage. The American bootstrap myth is just another strap that makes the working poor privately conclude that they must in some way be inferior, given that they cannot seem to apply it to their lives. Hell Homer, if the friggin immigrant gooks can put together successful business of their own, why can&#8217;t you keep up with your truck payments? (Answer: Because he ain&#8217;t got no damned health insurance, and his family&#8217;s medicine keeps him broke.) Right now, even by the government&#8217;s spruced-up numbers, one third of working Americans make less than $9 an hour. Looking a decade ahead, five of the ten fastest-growing jobs will be menial, dead-end jokes on the next generation*mainly retail clerks, cashiers, and janitors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p> <p>Some of us were born sons of a toiling god, with the full understanding that life was never meant to be easy. But at least we could always believe that our kids had a chance for a better life. These days, it&#8217;s harder to believe that. Allow me this simple observation from my own life: I am quite certain that if I were trying to get into college today with the mediocre grades I made, and no family &#8220;college fund,&#8221; or family home to second mortgage, I would not have made it as far as I have. There were college scholarships, loans, and programs out the yin yang, and a high school education more or less prepared one for college. That is not to say the class divide was not a steep and ugly ditch back then. It was. But it is an absolute canyon now and growing deeper. All one has to do is look around at the un-funded No Child Left Behind program or the scam of &#8220;teacher-based accountability.&#8221; When it became obvious that Johnny is now so damned dumb he can&#8217;t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the bottom*assuming he could even read the instructions*the current regime was quick to get up a posse to lynch the school marm, then resume the theft of education funds on behalf of the rich. Neo-conservative leaders understand quite well that education has a liberalizing effect on a society. Presently they are devising methods to smuggle resources to those American madrasses, the Christian fundamentalist schools, a sure way to make the masses even more stupid if ever there was one. Is it any wonder the Gallup Poll tells us that 48 percent of Americans believe that God spit on his beefy paws and made the universe in seven days? Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution. It is no accident that number corresponds roughly to the number with college degrees. So intelligent liberals are advised to save their depression and the good booze for later, when things get worse.</p> <p>Some final commie screed</p> <p>In case the blunt hammer with which I have been beating to death this issue of education-as-the-ultimate-solution still has not left its mark, allow me one more observation. Many people reading this financed their children&#8217;s educations with second mortgages. The working poor do not have that option. (Although college may be moot anyway if your kids graduate from neglected public high schools thinking that h2o is a cable channel.) They rent until they die, with no option of passing along accumulated wealth in the form of equity in a home*which is the way most families do it in this country*to their children. So over the generations they stay stuck or lose ground. And stay dumb and drink beer at Burt&#8217;s and vote Republican because no real liberal voice, the kind that speaks the rock bottom, undeniable truth, ever enters their lives. But it can. I have on occasion at Burt&#8217;s found an agreeing ear to all of the very arguments above.</p> <p>When the current administration is finished looting the commonweal it will make the Reagan era rip-job look like a charity ball. That is a given. We will have to swallow it whole. Then it will be up to real liberals, and I am NOT talking about the Democratic Party kind, to repair the damage for decades to come. Assuming we can unelect George Bush again, and assuming we can make it stick this time. We cannot count on another Clinton decade of free market slight of hand. Nor can we settle for Democratic Party concocted federal programs that give disenfranchised citizens a flush of money, then sends them forth with no more education than god gave a soggy animal cracker so they can be suckered into buying the newest four-wheel drive GM hog or die in the oil wars that are surely coming. Everyone will have to be smarter, if there is to be any kind of future for anyone but the rich, who will by then have managed to escape to Aspen, or the desert, or Southern France, or wherever it is that thievery&#8217;s princes always escape to. They have their choice of places, but we will be stuck here. Together.</p> <p>One of the few good things about growing older is that one can remember what otherwise appears to have been purposefully erased from the national memory. Forty years ago all men of goodwill agreed that every citizen had the right to a free and credible education. Manifestation of one&#8217;s fullest potential was considered a national goal. Now these have come to be labeled as unworkable ideas. (Maybe even downright com&#8217;nist, Pooty.) But in the long term, those are the only things which will save us all, because if labor hath no brother, then doth no man. These are the only things that will realign us with that notion of good yeoman liberty to which we have always at least paid lip service, and toward which we should grope even in, and perhaps especially in, such darkening times. No, it will not stop the present jingoistic warmongering of our rogue nation. Nothing but millions taking to the streets can do that. But it will go a long, long way toward ensuring that it never happens again.</p> <p>JOE BAGEANT is a hillbilly &#8220;leftneck&#8221; who writes from Winchester, Virginia. He may be contacted at <a href="mailto:bageantjb@netscape.net." type="external">bageantjb@netscape.net.</a></p> <p>Copyright 2004, JOE BAGEANT.</p>

Getting Down and Dumb at Burt’s Tavern

https://counterpunch.org/2004/07/03/getting-down-and-dumb-at-burt-s-tavern/

2004-07-03

4left

Too much public education only gets working people riled up and full of backsass Virginia Sen Harry Flood Byrd My home town is one of those slowly rotting East Coast burgs that makes passersthrough think to themselves 8220What the hell is this Mayberry USA on crack8221 The town8217s 250year old core is a blighted clot of ramshackle houses carved into apartments and cheesy businesses Its outer rim of slurb is the typical ugly gash of commercial hell an assortment of mindlessly jammedtogether tire dealers grim asphalt slurp and burps and car dealerships of the type that make the US one of the ugliest nations on earth A sign in the median strip of this gash proclaims Winchester an official US 8220AllAmerican Town8221 To its credit however the town does have that special kind of seediness found only in the US South It might even be considered weirdly colorful in an America studies sort of way with its hardfaced characters straight out of Grapes of Wrath and spooky and wellscrubbed Bible thumpers Beauty being in the eye of the beholder our local Chamber of Commerce calls it 8220Historic Winchester Virginia8221 But many of us who grew up here call it Dickville if you were born and raised here you were probably dicked from the beginning Faced with life in such a town there is only one solution Beer So I sit here at Burt8217s Westside Tavern The name is changed on the slight chance some local will find this on the internet then convince Burt he can sue me for libel Burt8217s Westside is a lunch and afterwork beer dump the lair of the rightwing working class along with the regular lineup of small town loser boozers and a couple of militia types In the end booth sits a fat guy wearing a tee shirt that reads 8220One million battered women in this country and I8217ve been eating mine plain8221 That this is not considered especially offensive at Burt8217s says all one needs to know about the cultural and gender sensitivity of the clientele And the fact that this fellowwho I have known since high school and whose name is Pootyvotes is probably something I would be afraid to contemplate were not cheap American beer such a palliative for anxious thought tonight Every customer at Burt8217s loves George Bush Worships George Bush One reason is because George Bush doesn8217t give a shit When his detractors point out the complete fraud of WMDs he doesn8217t give a shit When newspapers worldwide suggest Bush may be the biggest international threat today Bush does not give a shit This gives him street cred among these people who for better or worse I must call my own Why should they give a shit about international opinion After all as presented by the media the world outside is altogether nasty terraina news hour nether region from whence child suicide bombers swarm toward us in a tide that will only be stopped by a good old goddam American pounding with the biggest ball busting bombs we can muster So Bush 8220sounds right8221 when he says 8220We will not cut and run8221 And when George Bush sneers 8220Bring8217em on8221 he sounds even more right Sounding right is everything when you don8217t know shit from Shinola Here is their political universe which I8217m sure you8217ve heard before but it8217s always best to keep horsecrap in one pile Muslims are out to kill us all So we need to kill them all first Democrats a party of liberal queers supported by ghetto blacks Commie college professors and Mafiabacked unions let 911 happen The world hates us because we are rich The snaileating winebesotted French are a bunch of spiteful pussies ungrateful that we saved their asses in World War II And that8217s it That is the common wisdom If it appears too common to be believable then you have never lived in the American South Such ignorance may is funny to observe but if you think about it it is the kind of viral stuff that has eaten away much of the American polity8217s very ability to think and its ability to do more than merely react to propaganda or to the price of gas or misrepresentations that sound right And if you are a liberal you are going to square off with these people at the polls in November There are a lot of them not all as ornery as the crowd at Burt8217s to be sure but never the less a huge number of the same political and economic stripe These are the skilled and semiskilled workers people without a college degree in this town nearly two fifths of working adults without even a high school degree some thoughtful and selfeducating others not They represent 55 of all voters Many are the inexplicable selfscrewing working folks who voted neoconservative Republican in 2000 Never mind that Bush economic policies are why so many of them are drinking short beers tonight or that his tax plan made them poorer and the rich much richer They approved of it simply because it was called a tax 8220cut8221 and because many of them needed their 200 rebate scrap of that federal hog to pay off last winter8217s heating bill By any realistic assessment nearly everyone in Burt8217s is working poor They would never admit it Nor do government guidelines acknowledge them as such But so long as the current administration infers that people like them are heroes they identify heavily with the firemen policemen of 911 and the soldiers in Iraq they don8217t need no steenking economic justice According to a recent Roper poll 49 of Americans in this economic class will vote for George Bush in 821704 Here in Burt8217s it is probably 100 Obviously I am making no pretense at liberal humility or sensitivity So if you are not willing to call dumb dumb when you see it you might want to quit reading right about here What these folks really need is for someone to say out loud 8220Now lookee here dammit You are dumber than a sack of hammers and should8217a got an education so you would have half a notion of what8217s going on8221 Someone once told me that and along with the advice never to mix Mad Dog 2020 with whiskey it is the best I ever received But no one in America is about to say such a thing out loud because it sounds elitist It sounds unAmerican and undemocratic It also might get your nose broken in certain venues In an ersatz democracy maintaining the popular national fiction that everyone is equal it is impermissible to say that although we may all have equal constitutional rights we are not equal It takes at least some effort toward selfimprovement just to get to the starting line of socioeconomic equality plus an ongoing effort at being informed if you want to function in America nowadays So why are my people so impervious to information Hell thanks to their kids most of them I know even have the Internet Well I can say the Internet8217s vast realms are available to all including the presently uninformed I can also say that a tater bug can drag a bale of cotton from my house to yours But that doesn8217t make it true about the Internet or the tater bug My faith in the Internet8217s information democracy wilted when I once suggested to a friend facing eviction that we Google up renter8217s rights to learn his options and watched him type in 8220rinters kicked out8221 Then too when we bumped into the banner on a site reading JENNIFER LICKS THE HUGE MAN8217S SWORD8221 we both got kind of sidetracked Yet two weeks later he had found Newsmax and learned how to bookmark it Sometimes I think the GOP emits a special pheromone that attracts fools and money Pooty how did we git so dumb Despite how it appears our mama8217s did not drop us on their heads What I watch in Burt8217s with such mixed feelings of humor and outrage is America8217s unacknowledged class system at work Saying that our system and its GOP helmsmen skin the poor and working classes out of all opportunity is like saying a 40 hooker will nearly always steal your wallet on the way out of the motel room Everybody knows that However no one but the socalled 8220far left8221 ever talks about the extremely localized and not so nice ways in which small and middlesized towns such as Dickville are important to American capitalism8217s machinery They are where the first ripoffs are pulled where the first muggings take place Where the first dollars and opportunities are wrung from the basic needs of the machines human components otherwise known as working stiffs Southern towns like Dickville are perfect for observing it clearly because here it manifests itself in high definition spittle flecked living color This pig wears no lipstick The lives and intellectual cultures of the hardest working people in these towns are not just stunted by the smallness of the society into which they were born They are purposefully held in bondage by a local network of moneyed families bankers developers lawyers and business people in whose interests it is to a have cheap unquestioning and compliant labor force They invest in developing such a force by not investing how8217s that for making money out of thin air in the education and quality of life for anyone but their own These places are as they say 8220investment paradise8221 That means low taxes few or no local regulations no unions and a Chamber of Commerce tricked out like a gaggle of hookers welcoming the new nonunion air poisoning battery acid factory 8220To hell with pollution We gonna sell some propity move some real8217state today fellas8221 Big contractors realtors lawyers everybody gets a slice except the poorly educated nonunion mooks who will be employed at the acid plant at discount rates At the same time and more importantly this business carteland you have to call it thatcontrols most elected offices and municipal boards Incidentally it makes for some ridiculous civic scenarios When our town8217s educators decided to hold a conference on the future employment needs of our youth the keynote speaker was the CEO of a local rendering plant a vast stinking facility that cooks down roadkills and expended deep fryer fats into the goop they put in animal feeds He got a standing ovation from the school board and all the downtown main pickle vendors Not a soul in that Best Western events room thought it was ironic If you think I am insinuating that the peckerinthedirt ignorance of folks like those at Burt8217s has been institutionalized and cultivated you are right A bootstrap is just another strap Anyone who actually believes that all these poor working puds can beat this system lift themselves up by their bootstraps is either a neocon ideologue or the child of advantage Most readers of this article probably have a college education Because only 25 of Americans get a college degree we are the children of advantage even if we got it the hard way It may not feel like having one up on the majority but if we get off the Internet for a while and spend just one day driving around the unpleasant towns and neighborhoods we avoid those where the check cashing businesses and the pawn shops flourish it becomes obvious And I am not talking about ghettoes either I8217m talking about the heartland of America where it8217s supposed to be all lightning bug summers and hotdogs on the grill Admittedly in many places a true blue collar middle class still existsjust as unions still exist But both have had the snot substantially kicked out of them by repeated Republican and not a few Democratic assaults Both are on the ropes like some old boxing pug taking the facial cuts and popping eye capillaries with no referee to come in and stop the carnage The American bootstrap myth is just another strap that makes the working poor privately conclude that they must in some way be inferior given that they cannot seem to apply it to their lives Hell Homer if the friggin immigrant gooks can put together successful business of their own why can8217t you keep up with your truck payments Answer Because he ain8217t got no damned health insurance and his family8217s medicine keeps him broke Right now even by the government8217s sprucedup numbers one third of working Americans make less than 9 an hour Looking a decade ahead five of the ten fastestgrowing jobs will be menial deadend jokes on the next generationmainly retail clerks cashiers and janitors according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Some of us were born sons of a toiling god with the full understanding that life was never meant to be easy But at least we could always believe that our kids had a chance for a better life These days it8217s harder to believe that Allow me this simple observation from my own life I am quite certain that if I were trying to get into college today with the mediocre grades I made and no family 8220college fund8221 or family home to second mortgage I would not have made it as far as I have There were college scholarships loans and programs out the yin yang and a high school education more or less prepared one for college That is not to say the class divide was not a steep and ugly ditch back then It was But it is an absolute canyon now and growing deeper All one has to do is look around at the unfunded No Child Left Behind program or the scam of 8220teacherbased accountability8221 When it became obvious that Johnny is now so damned dumb he can8217t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the bottomassuming he could even read the instructionsthe current regime was quick to get up a posse to lynch the school marm then resume the theft of education funds on behalf of the rich Neoconservative leaders understand quite well that education has a liberalizing effect on a society Presently they are devising methods to smuggle resources to those American madrasses the Christian fundamentalist schools a sure way to make the masses even more stupid if ever there was one Is it any wonder the Gallup Poll tells us that 48 percent of Americans believe that God spit on his beefy paws and made the universe in seven days Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution It is no accident that number corresponds roughly to the number with college degrees So intelligent liberals are advised to save their depression and the good booze for later when things get worse Some final commie screed In case the blunt hammer with which I have been beating to death this issue of educationastheultimatesolution still has not left its mark allow me one more observation Many people reading this financed their children8217s educations with second mortgages The working poor do not have that option Although college may be moot anyway if your kids graduate from neglected public high schools thinking that h2o is a cable channel They rent until they die with no option of passing along accumulated wealth in the form of equity in a homewhich is the way most families do it in this countryto their children So over the generations they stay stuck or lose ground And stay dumb and drink beer at Burt8217s and vote Republican because no real liberal voice the kind that speaks the rock bottom undeniable truth ever enters their lives But it can I have on occasion at Burt8217s found an agreeing ear to all of the very arguments above When the current administration is finished looting the commonweal it will make the Reagan era ripjob look like a charity ball That is a given We will have to swallow it whole Then it will be up to real liberals and I am NOT talking about the Democratic Party kind to repair the damage for decades to come Assuming we can unelect George Bush again and assuming we can make it stick this time We cannot count on another Clinton decade of free market slight of hand Nor can we settle for Democratic Party concocted federal programs that give disenfranchised citizens a flush of money then sends them forth with no more education than god gave a soggy animal cracker so they can be suckered into buying the newest fourwheel drive GM hog or die in the oil wars that are surely coming Everyone will have to be smarter if there is to be any kind of future for anyone but the rich who will by then have managed to escape to Aspen or the desert or Southern France or wherever it is that thievery8217s princes always escape to They have their choice of places but we will be stuck here Together One of the few good things about growing older is that one can remember what otherwise appears to have been purposefully erased from the national memory Forty years ago all men of goodwill agreed that every citizen had the right to a free and credible education Manifestation of one8217s fullest potential was considered a national goal Now these have come to be labeled as unworkable ideas Maybe even downright com8217nist Pooty But in the long term those are the only things which will save us all because if labor hath no brother then doth no man These are the only things that will realign us with that notion of good yeoman liberty to which we have always at least paid lip service and toward which we should grope even in and perhaps especially in such darkening times No it will not stop the present jingoistic warmongering of our rogue nation Nothing but millions taking to the streets can do that But it will go a long long way toward ensuring that it never happens again JOE BAGEANT is a hillbilly 8220leftneck8221 who writes from Winchester Virginia He may be contacted at bageantjbnetscapenet Copyright 2004 JOE BAGEANT

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<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc:</p> <p>* QUALCOMM RECEIVES AUTHORIZATION FROM THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND KOREA FAIR TRADE COMMISSION FOR NXP SEMICONDUCTORS ACQUISITION</p> <p>* QUALCOMM RECEIVES AUTHORIZATION FROM THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND KOREA FAIR TRADE COMMISSION FOR NXP SEMICONDUCTORS ACQUISITION</p> <p>* QUALCOMM - COMMITTED TO KFTC TO EXCLUDE CERTAIN NEAR-FIELD COMMUNICATION PATENTS FROM PROPOSED NXP DEAL</p> <p>* QUALCOMM - WILL CONTINUE TO OFFER LICENSE TO MIFARE ON TERMS COMMENSURATE WITH THOSE OFFERED BY NXP</p> <p>* QUALCOMM INC - ALSO COMMITTED TO KFTC NOT TO ASSERT NFC PATENTS IT WILL ACQUIRE FROM NXP</p> <p>* QUALCOMM -COMMITTED TO KFTC TO MAINTAIN INTEROPERABILITY BETWEEN CO&#8217;S BASEBAND CHIPSETS AND NXP&#8217;S NFC CHIPS AND RIVALS BASEBAND CHIPSETS AND NFC CHIPS&#8203; Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S., British and French forces struck Syria with more than 100 missiles on Saturday in the first coordinated Western strikes against the Damascus government, targetting what they called chemical weapons sites in retaliation for a poison gas attack.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump announced the military action from the White House, saying the three allies had &#8220;marshaled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality&#8221;.</p> <p>As he spoke, explosions rocked Damascus.</p> <p>The bombing represents a major escalation in the West&#8217;s confrontation with Assad&#8217;s superpower ally Russia, but is unlikely to alter the course of a multi-sided war which has killed at least half a million people in the past seven years.</p> <p>That in turn raises the question of where Western countries go from here, after a volley of strikes denounced by Damascus and Moscow as at once both reckless and pointless.</p> <p>By morning, the Western countries said their bombing was over for now. Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of President Bashar al-Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption &#8220;morning of resilience&#8221;.</p> <p>There were no immediate reports of casualties, with Damascus allies saying the buildings hit had been evacuated in advance.</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as &#8220;limited and targeted&#8221;. She said she had authorized British action after intelligence indicated Assad&#8217;s government was to blame for gassing the Damascus suburb of Douma a week ago.</p> <p>In a speech she gave a vivid description of the victims of the chemical strike that killed scores, huddling in basements as gas rained down. She said Russia had thwarted diplomatic efforts to halt Assad&#8217;s use of poison gas, leaving no option but force.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-un/u-n-security-council-to-meet-on-saturday-at-russias-request-diplomats-idUSKBN1HL0S9" type="external">U.N. Security Council to meet on Saturday at Russia's request: diplomats</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-israel/syria-strikes-an-important-signal-to-iran-and-hezbollah-israeli-minister-idUSKBN1HL0A4" type="external">Syria strikes an 'important signal' to Iran and Hezbollah: Israeli minister</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-nato/u-s-france-britain-to-brief-nato-allies-on-syria-on-saturday-idUSKBN1HL0MA" type="external">U.S., France, Britain to brief NATO allies on Syria on Saturday</a> <p>French President Emmanuel Macron said the strikes had been limited so far to Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons facilities. Paris released a dossier which it said showed Damascus was to blame for the poison gas attack on Douma, the last town holding out in a rebel-held swathe of territory near Damascus which government forces have recaptured in this year&#8217;s biggest offensive.</p> <p>Washington described its targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons, a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.</p> <p>U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the strikes a &#8220;one time shot&#8221;, although Trump raised the prospect of further strikes if Assad&#8217;s government again used chemical weapons.</p> <p>&#8220;We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,&#8221; the U.S. president said in a televised address.</p> <p>The Syrian conflict pits a complex myriad of parties against each other, with Russia and Iran giving Assad military help that has largely proven decisive over the past three years, crushing any rebel threat to topple him. Fractured opposition forces have had varying support from the West, Arab states and Turkey.</p> <p>The United States, Britain and France have all bombed Islamic State fighters in Syria for years and had troops on the ground to fight them, but refrained from targetting Assad&#8217;s government apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.</p> <p>Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him.</p> <p>Assad&#8217;s government and allies responded outwardly with fury to Saturday&#8217;s attack, but also made clear that they considered it a one-off, unlikely to harm Assad in any meaningful way.</p> <p>Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied that last week&#8217;s chemical weapons attack took place and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.</p> <p>President Vladimir Putin called for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss what Moscow decried as an unjustified attack on a sovereign state. Syrian state media called the attack a &#8220;flagrant violation of international law.&#8221; An official in Iran&#8217;s Revolutionary Guards said it would cause consequences against U.S. interests.</p> <p>Arab states, generally hostile to Assad and Iran, backed the Western action, including both Saudi Arabi and its rival Qatar.</p> &#8220;ABSORBED THE STRIKE&#8221; <p>But the Western powers were at pains to avert any further escalation, including any unexpected conflict with their superpower rival. French Defense Minister Florence Parly said the Russians &#8220;were warned beforehand&#8221; to avert conflict.</p> <p>A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the Syrian government and its allies had &#8220;absorbed&#8221; the attack. The sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia, the official said.</p> <p>&#8220;If it is finished, and there is no second round, it will be considered limited,&#8221; the official said.</p> <p>At least six loud explosions were heard in Damascus and smoke rose over the city, a Reuters witness said. A second witness said the Barzah district of Damascus was hit.</p> <p>A scientific research facility in Barzah appeared to have been completely destroyed, according to footage broadcast by Syrian state TV station al-Ikhbariya. Smoke rose from piles of rubble and a heavily damaged bus was parked outside.</p> <p>The Western intervention appears to have virtually no chance of altering the military balance of power at a time when Assad is in his strongest position since the war&#8217;s early months.</p> <p>In Douma, site of last week&#8217;s suspected gas attack, the final buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, Syrian state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad&#8217;s government of the entire war.</p> <p>The combined U.S., British and French assault involved more missiles, but appears to have struck more limited targets, than a similar strike Trump ordered a year ago in retaliation for an earlier suspected chemical weapons attack. Last year&#8217;s U.S. strike, which Washington said at the time would cripple Assad&#8217;s air forces and defenses, had effectively no impact on the war.</p> <p>Mattis said the United States conducted Saturday&#8217;s strikes with conclusive evidence that chlorine gas had been used in the April 7 attack in Syria. Evidence that the nerve agent sarin also was used was inconclusive, he said.</p> <p>Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad&#8217;s chlorine use have been frequent during the war, although unlike nerve agents chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week.</p> <p>The global chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, has sent a team to assess last week&#8217;s suspected gas attack. Saturday&#8217;s strikes took place before the inspectors had a chance to gather evidence at the scene.</p> <p>Mattis, who U.S. officials said had earlier warned in internal debates that too large an attack would risk confrontation with Russia, described the strikes as a one-off to dissuade Assad from &#8220;doing this again&#8221;.</p> <p>But a U.S. official familiar with the military planning said there could be more air strikes if the intelligence indicates Assad has not stopped making, importing, storing or using chemical weapons, including chlorine. The official said this could require a more sustained U.S. air and naval presence.</p> A missile is seen crossing over Damascus, Syria April 14, 2018. SANA/Handout via REUTERS EXIT SYRIA? <p>The U.S., British and French leaders all face domestic political issues over the decision to use force in Syria.</p> <p>Trump has been leery of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, and is eager to withdraw roughly 2,000 troops in Syria taking part in the campaign against Islamic State.</p> <p>&#8220;America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria, under no circumstances,&#8221; Trump said in his address. &#8220;The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump has tried to build good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A prosecutor is investigating whether Trump&#8217;s campaign colluded with Moscow in illegal efforts to help him get elected, which Trump calls a witch hunt.</p> <p>&#8220;To Iran and to Russia, I ask, what kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children?&#8221; Trump said in his address.</p> <p>In Britain, May&#8217;s decision to order strikes without consulting parliament overturned an arrangement in place since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Her predecessor David Cameron was damaged politically when he lost a vote in the House of Commons on whether to bomb Syria.</p> <p>Britain has led international condemnation of Russia, persuading more than 20 countries to expel Russian diplomats, over the poisoning with a nerve agent of a former Russian spy in England last month. May made clear that case was part of her calculus in ordering retaliation for chemical weapons in Syria.</p> <p>She argued on Saturday it was necessary to act quickly without waiting for parliament&#8217;s approval. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn accused her of following Trump, hugely unpopular in Britain, into battle without waiting for the evidence.</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>In France, Macron has long threatened to use force against Assad if he uses chemical weapons, and had faced criticism over what opponents described as an empty threat.</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland and Tom Perry,; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Tim Ahmann, Eric Beech, Lesley Wroughton, Lucia Mutikani, Idrees Ali, Patricia Zengerle, Matt Spetalnick and John Walcott in Washington; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam Ellen Francis in Beirut; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Polina Ivanova in Moscow, Writing by Peter Graff, Editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>GAZA (Reuters) - An explosion in the southern Gaza Strip killed four Palestinians on Saturday, the local health ministry said.</p> FILE PHOTO: Palestinian demonstrators shout during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, at the Israel-Gaza border east of Gaza City. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem <p>Medics at the scene in the Rafah area said it was caused by an Israeli tank shell.</p> <p>But an Israeli military spokesman said the army was not involved. &#8220;We have no knowledge of any Israeli strike in the area,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Local residents at the hospital morgue identified the four dead men as members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group. Islamic Jihad did not immediately confirm the men were members.</p> <p>Violence has flared in the Gaza Strip since March 30, when Palestinians began protests along the border area with Israel.</p> <p>Israeli troops have shot dead 31 Gaza Palestinians and wounded hundreds since the protests began, drawing international criticism of their lethal tactics.</p> <p>Protesters have set up tented camps near the frontier as a protest dubbed &#8220;The Great March of Return&#8221; - evoking a longtime call for refugees to regain ancestral homes in what is now Israel - moved into its third week.</p> <p>Israel has declared a no-go zone close to the Gaza border fence.</p> <p>Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinian enclave is ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement, designated by Israel and the West as a terrorist group.</p> <p>Citing security concerns, Israel maintains a naval blockade of the coastal territory, keeping tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and goods across the frontier.</p> <p>Egypt, battling an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Sinai, keeps its border with Gaza largely closed.</p> <p>Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; writing by Maayan Lubell; editing by Jason Neely</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Weapons inspectors will try on Saturday to reach the site of a suspected poison attack in the Syrian town of Douma, hours after Western countries launched air strikes in retaliation over the gassing.</p> <p>The OPCW&#8217;s fact-finding mission &#8220;will continue its deployment to the Syrian Arab Republic to establish facts around the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma&#8221;, the agency said in a statement.</p> <p>The United States, Britain and France fired more than 100 missiles at Syria early on Saturday in the first coordinated Western military intervention against the Damascus government. They say the strikes are punishment for killing dozens of people, many of them women and children, with banned toxic munitions.</p> <p>Damascus and its ally Russia have denounced the Western action, in particular for refusing to wait until the results of the fact-finding mission sent by the OPCW in the wake of the April 7 incident.</p> <p>Rescue workers said scores of people died in that incident. Washington says it has confirmed that chlorine gas was used, and has unconfirmed suspicion that nerve agents may also have been used. Damascus and Moscow deny blame for any such attack.</p> <p>Security permitting, a team from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will deploy briefly on Saturday to the site.</p> <p>The team will work with the United Nations Department of Safety and Security ensure the safety of the team, it said.</p> <p>Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal in 2013 and submit to OPCW inspections. It is meant to have destroyed all of its stockpiles of nerve agents. In the case of chlorine, it is permitted to possess it for civilian use, but not to use it as a weapon.</p> <p>The OPCW will determine whether chemical weapons were used, but will not assign blame.</p> <p>Despite a U.S.-Russian agreement to completely eliminate Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program after hundreds of people were gassed with sarin in Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013, the OPCW had been unable to verify that all manufacturing, storage and research facilities were destroyed.</p> <p>Among the sites reportedly hit overnight Friday was the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, a facility that has played a key role in Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program since the 1970s.</p> <p>OPCW inspectors have raised questions about the SSRC since 2013, when Damascus joined the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to do away with its stockpile to avert threatened strikes under President Barack Obama.</p> <p>Syria has been unable to explain several findings by inspectors, including undeclared research and development sites, the presence of banned chemicals and missing munitions, sources have told Reuters.</p> <p>Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Peter Graff</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PRAGUE (Reuters) - Milos Forman, the Czech-born movie director who found fame in Hollywood with the Oscar-winning classics &#8220;One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#8217;s Nest&#8221; and &#8220;Amadeus,&#8221; has died at the age of 86.</p> FILE PHOTO: Czech director Milos Forman talks after being presented with the 'Giraldillo' award for his life-long career achievements at Sevilla Festival Film in Seville, Spain November 6, 2004. REUTERS/Marcelo Del Pozo/File photo <p>Forman passed away on Friday in the United States, where he lived, after a short illness, his wife, Martina, told Czech news agency CTK on Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;His departure was calm and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Forman was born in the Czech town of Caslav on Feb. 18, 1932. He moved to the United States after the Communist crackdown on the &#8220;Prague Spring&#8221; uprising in 1968 and became a U.S. citizen in the 1970s.</p> FILE PHOTO: Czech director Milos Forman smiles as he addresses a news conference at the 50th Berlin Film Festival, Germany February 18, 2000. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File photo <p>&#8220;One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#8217;s Nest,&#8221; in which a psychiatric institution becomes a microcosm of the contemporary world, and &#8220;Amadeus,&#8221; the life of 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of his rival Antonio Salieri, earned 13 Oscars between them, including those for best director to Forman.</p> <p>His other notable work included the rock musical &#8220;Hair&#8221; in 1979, &#8220;Ragtime&#8221; in 1981 and &#8220;The People vs Larry Flint&#8221; in 1996, which was nominated for an Academy Award that year.</p> <p>Before emigrating, Forman studied at the Prague Film Academy (FAMU) and was a leading figure of the Czechoslovak New Wave film movement, along with directors Ivan Passer, Vera Chytilova and others.</p> <p>He was raised an orphan after both his parents died in concentration camps during World War Two.</p> <p>His films, such as as 1964&#8217;s &#8220;Black Peter&#8221; and the 1967 communist satire &#8220;The Fireman&#8217;s Ball&#8221;, were banned for a time in the former Czechoslovakia.</p> <p>When Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague in August 1968, Forman was in Paris for negotiations on his first American production and was fired by his Czech studio, leading him to emigrate. The film Taking Off - a look at youth protest movements - found critical acclaim but little financial success</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>He remained connected to his birth country, filming Amadeus there.</p> <p>Married three times, Forman met his third wife Martina - a writer three decades his junior - in Prague in the 1990s. He was father to two sets of twin boys, with his second and third wives.</p> <p>Jan Hrebejk, a leading Czech film director and a friend and former classmate of Forman&#8217;s wife Martina, told Reuters the director was a gifted storyteller and a great person.</p> <p>&#8220;In his films you can see the author,&#8221; he said. &#8220;When you watch them it&#8217;s as if that person is speaking to you, as the maker; not many people can do that.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Jason Hovet and Robert Muller; editing by Angus MacSwan and Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Qualcomm Receives Authorization From The European Commission And Korea Fair Trade Commission For NXP Semiconductors Acquisition U.S., UK, France strike Syria in first coordinated action against Assad Four Palestinians dead in Gaza explosion: health ministry Weapons inspectors plan to head to Syria's Douma hours after strikes Forman, Oscar-winning director of 'Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Amadeus', dies at 86

https://reuters.com/article/brief-qualcomm-receives-authorization-fr/brief-qualcomm-receives-authorization-from-the-european-commission-and-korea-fair-trade-commission-for-nxp-semiconductors-acquisition-idUSASB0C1G1

2018-01-18

2least

Jan 18 Reuters Qualcomm Inc QUALCOMM RECEIVES AUTHORIZATION FROM THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND KOREA FAIR TRADE COMMISSION FOR NXP SEMICONDUCTORS ACQUISITION QUALCOMM RECEIVES AUTHORIZATION FROM THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND KOREA FAIR TRADE COMMISSION FOR NXP SEMICONDUCTORS ACQUISITION QUALCOMM COMMITTED TO KFTC TO EXCLUDE CERTAIN NEARFIELD COMMUNICATION PATENTS FROM PROPOSED NXP DEAL QUALCOMM WILL CONTINUE TO OFFER LICENSE TO MIFARE ON TERMS COMMENSURATE WITH THOSE OFFERED BY NXP QUALCOMM INC ALSO COMMITTED TO KFTC NOT TO ASSERT NFC PATENTS IT WILL ACQUIRE FROM NXP QUALCOMM COMMITTED TO KFTC TO MAINTAIN INTEROPERABILITY BETWEEN CO8217S BASEBAND CHIPSETS AND NXP8217S NFC CHIPS AND RIVALS BASEBAND CHIPSETS AND NFC CHIPS8203 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONBEIRUT Reuters US British and French forces struck Syria with more than 100 missiles on Saturday in the first coordinated Western strikes against the Damascus government targetting what they called chemical weapons sites in retaliation for a poison gas attack US President Donald Trump announced the military action from the White House saying the three allies had 8220marshaled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality8221 As he spoke explosions rocked Damascus The bombing represents a major escalation in the West8217s confrontation with Assad8217s superpower ally Russia but is unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war which has killed at least half a million people in the past seven years That in turn raises the question of where Western countries go from here after a volley of strikes denounced by Damascus and Moscow as at once both reckless and pointless By morning the Western countries said their bombing was over for now Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombedout research lab but also of President Bashar alAssad arriving at work as usual with the caption 8220morning of resilience8221 There were no immediate reports of casualties with Damascus allies saying the buildings hit had been evacuated in advance British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as 8220limited and targeted8221 She said she had authorized British action after intelligence indicated Assad8217s government was to blame for gassing the Damascus suburb of Douma a week ago In a speech she gave a vivid description of the victims of the chemical strike that killed scores huddling in basements as gas rained down She said Russia had thwarted diplomatic efforts to halt Assad8217s use of poison gas leaving no option but force Related Coverage UN Security Council to meet on Saturday at Russias request diplomats Syria strikes an important signal to Iran and Hezbollah Israeli minister US France Britain to brief NATO allies on Syria on Saturday French President Emmanuel Macron said the strikes had been limited so far to Syria8217s chemical weapons facilities Paris released a dossier which it said showed Damascus was to blame for the poison gas attack on Douma the last town holding out in a rebelheld swathe of territory near Damascus which government forces have recaptured in this year8217s biggest offensive Washington described its targets as a center near Damascus for the research development production and testing of chemical and biological weapons a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the strikes a 8220one time shot8221 although Trump raised the prospect of further strikes if Assad8217s government again used chemical weapons 8220We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents8221 the US president said in a televised address The Syrian conflict pits a complex myriad of parties against each other with Russia and Iran giving Assad military help that has largely proven decisive over the past three years crushing any rebel threat to topple him Fractured opposition forces have had varying support from the West Arab states and Turkey The United States Britain and France have all bombed Islamic State fighters in Syria for years and had troops on the ground to fight them but refrained from targetting Assad8217s government apart from a volley of US missiles last year Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power they held back in the past from striking his government lacking a wider strategy to defeat him Assad8217s government and allies responded outwardly with fury to Saturday8217s attack but also made clear that they considered it a oneoff unlikely to harm Assad in any meaningful way Russia whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold Warera hostility has denied that last week8217s chemical weapons attack took place and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up antiRussian hysteria President Vladimir Putin called for a meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss what Moscow decried as an unjustified attack on a sovereign state Syrian state media called the attack a 8220flagrant violation of international law8221 An official in Iran8217s Revolutionary Guards said it would cause consequences against US interests Arab states generally hostile to Assad and Iran backed the Western action including both Saudi Arabi and its rival Qatar 8220ABSORBED THE STRIKE8221 But the Western powers were at pains to avert any further escalation including any unexpected conflict with their superpower rival French Defense Minister Florence Parly said the Russians 8220were warned beforehand8221 to avert conflict A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the Syrian government and its allies had 8220absorbed8221 the attack The sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia the official said 8220If it is finished and there is no second round it will be considered limited8221 the official said At least six loud explosions were heard in Damascus and smoke rose over the city a Reuters witness said A second witness said the Barzah district of Damascus was hit A scientific research facility in Barzah appeared to have been completely destroyed according to footage broadcast by Syrian state TV station alIkhbariya Smoke rose from piles of rubble and a heavily damaged bus was parked outside The Western intervention appears to have virtually no chance of altering the military balance of power at a time when Assad is in his strongest position since the war8217s early months In Douma site of last week8217s suspected gas attack the final buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town Syrian state TV reported That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta marking one of the biggest victories for Assad8217s government of the entire war The combined US British and French assault involved more missiles but appears to have struck more limited targets than a similar strike Trump ordered a year ago in retaliation for an earlier suspected chemical weapons attack Last year8217s US strike which Washington said at the time would cripple Assad8217s air forces and defenses had effectively no impact on the war Mattis said the United States conducted Saturday8217s strikes with conclusive evidence that chlorine gas had been used in the April 7 attack in Syria Evidence that the nerve agent sarin also was used was inconclusive he said Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use although its use as a weapon is banned Allegations of Assad8217s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although unlike nerve agents chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week The global chemical weapons watchdog the OPCW has sent a team to assess last week8217s suspected gas attack Saturday8217s strikes took place before the inspectors had a chance to gather evidence at the scene Mattis who US officials said had earlier warned in internal debates that too large an attack would risk confrontation with Russia described the strikes as a oneoff to dissuade Assad from 8220doing this again8221 But a US official familiar with the military planning said there could be more air strikes if the intelligence indicates Assad has not stopped making importing storing or using chemical weapons including chlorine The official said this could require a more sustained US air and naval presence A missile is seen crossing over Damascus Syria April 14 2018 SANAHandout via REUTERS EXIT SYRIA The US British and French leaders all face domestic political issues over the decision to use force in Syria Trump has been leery of US military involvement in the Middle East and is eager to withdraw roughly 2000 troops in Syria taking part in the campaign against Islamic State 8220America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria under no circumstances8221 Trump said in his address 8220The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production spread and use of chemical weapons8221 Trump has tried to build good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin A prosecutor is investigating whether Trump8217s campaign colluded with Moscow in illegal efforts to help him get elected which Trump calls a witch hunt 8220To Iran and to Russia I ask what kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men women and children8221 Trump said in his address In Britain May8217s decision to order strikes without consulting parliament overturned an arrangement in place since the 2003 invasion of Iraq Her predecessor David Cameron was damaged politically when he lost a vote in the House of Commons on whether to bomb Syria Britain has led international condemnation of Russia persuading more than 20 countries to expel Russian diplomats over the poisoning with a nerve agent of a former Russian spy in England last month May made clear that case was part of her calculus in ordering retaliation for chemical weapons in Syria She argued on Saturday it was necessary to act quickly without waiting for parliament8217s approval Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn accused her of following Trump hugely unpopular in Britain into battle without waiting for the evidence Slideshow 11 Images In France Macron has long threatened to use force against Assad if he uses chemical weapons and had faced criticism over what opponents described as an empty threat Reporting by Steve Holland and Tom Perry Additional reporting by Phil Stewart Tim Ahmann Eric Beech Lesley Wroughton Lucia Mutikani Idrees Ali Patricia Zengerle Matt Spetalnick and John Walcott in Washington Samia Nakhoul Tom Perry Laila Bassam Ellen Francis in Beirut Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London and JeanBaptiste Vey Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris Polina Ivanova in Moscow Writing by Peter Graff Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles GAZA Reuters An explosion in the southern Gaza Strip killed four Palestinians on Saturday the local health ministry said FILE PHOTO Palestinian demonstrators shout during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland at the IsraelGaza border east of Gaza City REUTERSMohammed Salem Medics at the scene in the Rafah area said it was caused by an Israeli tank shell But an Israeli military spokesman said the army was not involved 8220We have no knowledge of any Israeli strike in the area8221 he said Local residents at the hospital morgue identified the four dead men as members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group Islamic Jihad did not immediately confirm the men were members Violence has flared in the Gaza Strip since March 30 when Palestinians began protests along the border area with Israel Israeli troops have shot dead 31 Gaza Palestinians and wounded hundreds since the protests began drawing international criticism of their lethal tactics Protesters have set up tented camps near the frontier as a protest dubbed 8220The Great March of Return8221 evoking a longtime call for refugees to regain ancestral homes in what is now Israel moved into its third week Israel has declared a nogo zone close to the Gaza border fence Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 The Palestinian enclave is ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement designated by Israel and the West as a terrorist group Citing security concerns Israel maintains a naval blockade of the coastal territory keeping tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and goods across the frontier Egypt battling an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Sinai keeps its border with Gaza largely closed Reporting by Nidal alMughrabi writing by Maayan Lubell editing by Jason Neely Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AMSTERDAM Reuters Weapons inspectors will try on Saturday to reach the site of a suspected poison attack in the Syrian town of Douma hours after Western countries launched air strikes in retaliation over the gassing The OPCW8217s factfinding mission 8220will continue its deployment to the Syrian Arab Republic to establish facts around the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma8221 the agency said in a statement The United States Britain and France fired more than 100 missiles at Syria early on Saturday in the first coordinated Western military intervention against the Damascus government They say the strikes are punishment for killing dozens of people many of them women and children with banned toxic munitions Damascus and its ally Russia have denounced the Western action in particular for refusing to wait until the results of the factfinding mission sent by the OPCW in the wake of the April 7 incident Rescue workers said scores of people died in that incident Washington says it has confirmed that chlorine gas was used and has unconfirmed suspicion that nerve agents may also have been used Damascus and Moscow deny blame for any such attack Security permitting a team from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will deploy briefly on Saturday to the site The team will work with the United Nations Department of Safety and Security ensure the safety of the team it said Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal in 2013 and submit to OPCW inspections It is meant to have destroyed all of its stockpiles of nerve agents In the case of chlorine it is permitted to possess it for civilian use but not to use it as a weapon The OPCW will determine whether chemical weapons were used but will not assign blame Despite a USRussian agreement to completely eliminate Syria8217s chemical weapons program after hundreds of people were gassed with sarin in Ghouta on Aug 21 2013 the OPCW had been unable to verify that all manufacturing storage and research facilities were destroyed Among the sites reportedly hit overnight Friday was the Scientific Studies and Research Centre a facility that has played a key role in Syria8217s chemical weapons program since the 1970s OPCW inspectors have raised questions about the SSRC since 2013 when Damascus joined the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to do away with its stockpile to avert threatened strikes under President Barack Obama Syria has been unable to explain several findings by inspectors including undeclared research and development sites the presence of banned chemicals and missing munitions sources have told Reuters Reporting by Anthony Deutsch Editing by Peter Graff Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PRAGUE Reuters Milos Forman the Czechborn movie director who found fame in Hollywood with the Oscarwinning classics 8220One Flew Over the Cuckoo8217s Nest8221 and 8220Amadeus8221 has died at the age of 86 FILE PHOTO Czech director Milos Forman talks after being presented with the Giraldillo award for his lifelong career achievements at Sevilla Festival Film in Seville Spain November 6 2004 REUTERSMarcelo Del PozoFile photo Forman passed away on Friday in the United States where he lived after a short illness his wife Martina told Czech news agency CTK on Saturday 8220His departure was calm and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends8221 she said Forman was born in the Czech town of Caslav on Feb 18 1932 He moved to the United States after the Communist crackdown on the 8220Prague Spring8221 uprising in 1968 and became a US citizen in the 1970s FILE PHOTO Czech director Milos Forman smiles as he addresses a news conference at the 50th Berlin Film Festival Germany February 18 2000 REUTERSArnd WiegmannFile photo 8220One Flew Over the Cuckoo8217s Nest8221 in which a psychiatric institution becomes a microcosm of the contemporary world and 8220Amadeus8221 the life of 18thcentury composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of his rival Antonio Salieri earned 13 Oscars between them including those for best director to Forman His other notable work included the rock musical 8220Hair8221 in 1979 8220Ragtime8221 in 1981 and 8220The People vs Larry Flint8221 in 1996 which was nominated for an Academy Award that year Before emigrating Forman studied at the Prague Film Academy FAMU and was a leading figure of the Czechoslovak New Wave film movement along with directors Ivan Passer Vera Chytilova and others He was raised an orphan after both his parents died in concentration camps during World War Two His films such as as 19648217s 8220Black Peter8221 and the 1967 communist satire 8220The Fireman8217s Ball8221 were banned for a time in the former Czechoslovakia When Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague in August 1968 Forman was in Paris for negotiations on his first American production and was fired by his Czech studio leading him to emigrate The film Taking Off a look at youth protest movements found critical acclaim but little financial success Slideshow 3 Images He remained connected to his birth country filming Amadeus there Married three times Forman met his third wife Martina a writer three decades his junior in Prague in the 1990s He was father to two sets of twin boys with his second and third wives Jan Hrebejk a leading Czech film director and a friend and former classmate of Forman8217s wife Martina told Reuters the director was a gifted storyteller and a great person 8220In his films you can see the author8221 he said 8220When you watch them it8217s as if that person is speaking to you as the maker not many people can do that8221 Reporting by Jason Hovet and Robert Muller editing by Angus MacSwan and Richard Pullin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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told/VERB Reuters/PROPN the/DET director/NOUN was/AUX a/DET gifted/ADJ storyteller/NOUN and/CCONJ a/DET great/ADJ person/NOUN 8220In/NUM his/PRON films/NOUN you/PRON can/AUX see/VERB the/DET author8221/NOUN he/PRON said/VERB 8220When/NUM you/PRON watch/VERB them/PRON it8217s/NOUN as/SCONJ if/SCONJ that/DET person/NOUN is/AUX speaking/VERB to/ADP you/PRON as/ADP the/DET maker/NOUN not/PART many/ADJ people/NOUN can/AUX do/VERB that8221/NOUN Reporting/VERB by/ADP Jason/PROPN Hovet/PROPN and/CCONJ Robert/PROPN Muller/PROPN editing/NOUN by/ADP Angus/PROPN MacSwan/PROPN and/CCONJ Richard/PROPN Pullin/PROPN Our/PRON Standards/PROPN The/DET Thomson/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Trust/PROPN Principles/PROPN

<p /> <p><a href="" type="internal">Art Babych</a>&amp;#160;|&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">Shutterstock.com</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>Canadians who hoped the federal election last October 19 would usher in change to the aggressive, foreign policy of the defeated Conservative government are wondering what happened to their wishes. The transition in imperialist foreign policy from the Harper Conservatives to the Justin Trudeau-led Liberals has been utterly seamless, if not predictable.</p> <p>In the Middle East, Canada&#8217;s support to &#8216;regime change&#8217; in Syria stands. The Liberals stirred controversy during the election when they promised to end Canada&#8217;s participation in the U.S.-led military intervention in northern Iraq. But surprise: while the Liberals did carry out a promised withdrawal of the six fighter jets that weren&#8217;t doing much anyway in the skies over Syria and Iraq, they ended up tripling the presence of Canadian soldiers on the ground in Iraq, to approximately 200.</p> <p>And the new government made unpleasant waves when it upheld the export permit approval by the Conservatives for the U.S. arms manufacturer General Dynamics to sell $15 billion worth of the armoured personnel transport vehicles it manufactures in London, Ontario to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.</p> <p>Sabre rattling by the new-same-old government in Ottawa has been expressed most fully during and after the NATO summit meeting held in Warsaw, Poland on July 8 and 9.</p> <p>Canada and the NATO war summit meeting in Warsaw, Poland</p> <p>The NATO summit approved a <a href="http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_133169.htm" type="external">final communiqu&#233;</a> which places the military alliance on a collision course with Russia. The communiqu&#233; voices NATO&#8217;s determination to escalate its threats against Russia, using the pretexts of an alleged &#8220;annexation&#8221; of Crimea by Russia and military intervention by it in eastern Ukraine.[1]</p> <p>Clause five of the 138 clauses in the communiqu&#233; reads:</p> <p>Russia&#8217;s aggressive actions, including provocative military activities in the periphery of NATO territory and its demonstrated willingness to attain political goals by the threat and use of force, are a source of regional instability, fundamentally challenge the Alliance, have damaged Euro-Atlantic security, and threaten our long-standing goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace.</p> <p>Clause ten details the alleged transgressions of Russia:</p> <p>Russia&#8217;s destabilising actions and policies include: the ongoing illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, which we do not and will not recognise and which we call on Russia to reverse; the violation of sovereign borders by force; the deliberate destabilisation of eastern Ukraine; large-scale snap exercises contrary to the spirit of the Vienna Document, and provocative military activities near NATO borders, including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean; its irresponsible and aggressive nuclear rhetoric, military concept and underlying posture; and its repeated violations of NATO Allied airspace.&amp;#160;In addition, Russia&#8217;s military intervention, significant military presence and support for the regime in Syria, and its use of its military presence in the Black Sea to project power into the Eastern Mediterranean have posed further risks and challenges for the security of Allies and others.[2]</p> <p>Ottawa announced at the summit it will send hundreds of additional soldiers to eastern Europe to join the latest NATO provocation: it will lead one of the four, new, proto-combat brigades being established by NATO in countries bordering Russia. Canada will land some 450 troops in Latvia.</p> <p>Ottawa is also re-equipping its entire army, including its soon-to-be Latvia force on the Russian border, with <a href="https://newcoldwar.org/canadian-army-pulls-anti-tank-missiles-storage-tensions-increase-russia/" type="external">anti-tank missiles</a>.</p> <p>Canada&#8217;s voice has been one of the loudest amidst NATO&#8217;s anti-Russia rhetoric as first the Conservatives, now the Liberals pander to the extremist minority among the estimated 1.2 million Canadians of Ukrainian origin. That pandering was on full display in Ukraine when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid a visit to the country immediately following the NATO summit.</p> <p>Ongoing intervention in Ukraine</p> <p>The Latvia intervention adds to Canada&#8217;s existing military presence in Ukraine. Since last year, Canadian, British and U.S. soldiers began an intervention into the country consisting, in the first instance, of training the Ukrainian army and extremist paramilitaries at the so-called International Peacekeeping and Security Center in western Ukraine. Canada has 200 troops in the country.</p> <p>The military training is designed to improve Ukraine&#8217;s capacity to wage the civil war it launched against the populations of the Donbass region in the east of the country in April 2014. There, the large majority of the population rejected a violent seizure of power by a right-wing coalition of conservatives, extreme-rightists and neo-Nazis in February 2014. When the new regime in Kyiv sent soldiers and extremist paramilitaries to eastern Ukraine to quash civil resistance against the &#8216;Maidan coup&#8217;, self-defense forces were hastily thrown up and military conflict ensued.</p> <p>Prime Minister Trudeau visited the military training center on July 11. His media entourage reported a disturbing insight into what the foreign soldiers are up to there. A July 13 article by the Canadian Press&#8216; Lee Berthiaume wrote:</p> <p>Trudeau flew into Lviv in western Ukraine before driving to a nearby military base for a first-hand look at the work of 200 Canadian soldiers who have been training the Ukrainian army since last summer.</p> <p>From a distance, Trudeau, his son Xavier and defence chief Gen. Jonathan Vance watched through binoculars as a Soviet-era armoured personnel carrier led a group of Canadian and Ukrainian soldiers toward a wooden building. The air shook as the vehicle&#8217;s cannon fired several bursts in quick succession.</p> <p>The troops then moved away from the vehicle and spread out in a line facing the building. Four Canadians followed close behind as the eight Ukrainians slowly closed on the building while firing their rifles before placing an explosive inside and setting it off.</p> <p>The exercise was the type of attack those Ukrainian soldiers could soon be conducting on their own in the east of their country, where the army has been fighting Russian-backed separatists for more than two years.</p> <p>Trudeau&#8217;s son Xavier is nine years old. It&#8217;s not known what the &#8220;building&#8221; in the training exercise represents in real life. Ukraine&#8217;s &#8216;Anti-Terrorist Operation&#8217; in the east heavily targets residential neighbourhoods. In addition to houses and apartment buildings, schools, daycare centers and even medical centers have been struck by Ukrainian tank and other artillery shelling. The ongoing reports of the Donetsk International News Agency document the havoc. (Latest report, dated July 11, <a href="" type="internal">is here</a>).</p> <p>Effective anti-aircraft defense on the rebel side is the only reason why Ukraine has not employed fighter aircraft against its nominal citizens, as NATO-member Turkey is doing in its civil war against the Kurdish population in the east of that country.</p> <p>Earlier the same day, Trudeau addressed Canadian soldiers about their work in Ukraine. He said, &#8220;It has been a long time since Canada had to defend our valour and defend our territory. But we need to continue to work with those who are fighting for democracy and their territorial integrity.&#8221;</p> <p>Trudeau voiced the usual NATO stories about Russia&#8217;s actions in the region since the Maidan coup. &#8220;Russia has not been a positive partner,&#8221; he told his hosts in Ukraine, speaking of the situation in eastern Ukraine. &#8220;It has not been moving appropriately on things like ceasefires and international observers.&#8221;</p> <p>While in Ukraine, Trudeau also signed a &#8220;free trade&#8221; agreement with Ukraine. The agreement is unlikely to change much in the small amount of trade between the two countries. According to the Canadian government, Canada exported some $210 million in goods to Ukraine in 2015, including pharmaceuticals, fish and seafood and coking coal. Ukraine sent to Canada some $67 million the same year, including fertilizers, iron and steel and anthracite coal.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister St&#233;phane Dion trundled off to Latvia following the Warsaw summit to voice his own harsh language. He <a href="http://www.lsm.lv/en/article/societ/society/canada-will-defend-every-inch-of-baltic-states.a191522/?utm_source=rss&amp;amp;utm_campaign=rss&amp;amp;utm_medium=links" type="external">told a press conference</a> in Riga, &#8220;A neighboring country [Russia] chooses to throw its weight around and cause trouble and international instability. Latvia and Canada, together with our NATO allies, answer the call both for strong deterrence and strong dialogue [sic].</p> <p>&#8220;We will stay strong as long as the relationship has not been changed for something positive &#8211; as long as Russia is a troublemaker in the region we need to be strong together and Canada will be part of it.&#8221;</p> <p>Dion said Ukraine, too, has been &#8220;confronted directly with aggression from our shared neighbour.&#8221;</p> <p>What about the Minsk-2 ceasefire?</p> <p>As with its NATO partners, Canada&#8217;s government tells lies when it comes to the ongoing violations by Kyiv of the ceasefire agreement for eastern Ukraine that was signed in Belarus on February 12, 2015.</p> <p>Ukraine has failed to live up to all of the 13 clauses of Minsk-2. This was noted (though understated) in the aforementioned Canadian Press report when it said, &#8220;[Trudeau] called Russia&#8217;s recent actions in the region &#8220;illegitimate&#8221; and &#8220;illegal&#8221;, and voiced strong support for NATO members in Eastern Europe as well as Ukraine, despite rampant corruption in Ukraine and its failure to implement parts [sic] of a peace deal with Russia and the rebels.&#8221;</p> <p>Ukraine continues its military attacks against Donetsk and Lugansk (the two former provinces of Ukraine which make up the historic region called Donbass). It does not recognize the elected authorities of the people&#8217;s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and so no progress has been made on a political settlement, including a regional election. Prisoner exchanges have been very partial. And so on. ( <a href="https://newcoldwar.org/text-of-the-minsk-2-ceasefire-agreement/" type="external">Text of Minsk-2 ceasefire here</a>.)</p> <p>Canada, the U.S. and the rest of NATO have nothing to say about Ukraine&#8217;s dereliction of duty with the ceasefire. On the contrary, they accuse Russia of failing to live up to the agreement, even though Russia, with France and Germany, is but a guarantor, not a signator, of the agreement. As the Russian government has patiently explained for the past 18 months, only the Ukrainian government and the rebel side against which it is fighting can and should decide what happens on Ukrainian soil.</p> <p>The criticism of Russia by Canada is carefully orchestrated to shield the true state of affairs. In 2014, following the Maidan coup, Russia stood by the people in Crimea and then in Donbass who rose up to oppose the coup. This is what has infuriated the NATO countries. According to their script, Russia is supposed to act like the other countries of the region and meekly accept NATO diktats. In this case, Russia was supposed to stand aside and allow an illegal, right-wing regime in Kyiv to wage a violent campaign against civil dissent opposing the new regime&#8217;s pro-Europe, anti-Russia and pro-austerity course to proceed. Oh, and Russia was supposed to meekly give up its historic, centuries old naval base in Crimea and turn the keys over to NATO.</p> <p>The NATO powers are not used to defiance. They don&#8217;t like the &#8220;bad&#8221; example that Russia&#8217;s defiance sets for people or countries in Europe who may wish to battle EU-dictated austerity and violations of national sovereignty, as, for example, the people in Greece and, more recently, in Britain are trying to do.</p> <p>The other large, longstanding factor at play in eastern Europe is the historic, U.S.-led drive by NATO to weaken and dismantle first the Soviet Union and now the Russia Federation. Events in Ukraine and Crimea have given the U.S., its allies and pliant media new propaganda ammunition to bamboozle world opinion and renew the post-WW2, not-so-cold-anymore war.</p> <p>Media and Parliamentary opposition in Canada join the pro-war chorus</p> <p>The obfuscation over Minsk-2 and the dangerous, &#8216;new cold war&#8217; backdrop rely on a compliant mainstream media to dissuade questioning if not opposition by ordinary citizens. As in the U.S. and Europe, mainstream media in Canada does little or nothing to accurately inform the public of the true state of affairs in Ukraine and Crimea and the broader region. Instead, it is increasingly parroting whatever line emanates from NATO country capitals while adding its own unique stamp to the mix.</p> <p>The national daily Globe and Mail editorialized on July 13 in favour of the Liberal&#8217;s latest moves. It wrote, &#8221; The risk of a new cold war, let alone a third world war in Eastern Europe, is small, but Russia&#8217;s illegal annexation of Crimea, and its thinly disguised subversion of order in eastern Ukraine, shows how willing President Vladimir Putin is to make serious mischief&#8230;</p> <p>&#8220;The risk of leaving a whole set of countries [the Baltic region] virtually undefended would be most unacceptable.&#8221;[3]</p> <p>The same compliance goes for Canadian Parliamentarians. A case in point is an <a href="" type="internal">op-ed commentary</a> by Thomas Mulcair published on July 12 in the Toronto Star, Canada&#8217;s largest-circulation daily newspaper.</p> <p>Mulcair is the leader of Canada&#8217;s social democratic party, the New Democratic Party, the third largest party in Parliament. He writes in the Star, &#8220;There can be no doubt Russia poses a significant threat to the people of Eastern Europe. In March, the United Nations estimated that at least 9,160 civilians have died in Ukraine since Russia&#8217;s annexation of Crimea in 2014.&#8221; Note the writer&#8217;s named starting date of the tragic deaths of thousands in eastern Ukraine: not the launching of Ukraine&#8217;s civil war (&#8216;Anti-Terrorist Operation&#8217;) in April-May 2014 but the Crimea referendum in March.</p> <p>Mulcair writes further, &#8220;Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown himself to be a volatile leader, not above searching for any pretext to escalate into violence.&#8221;</p> <p>The op-ed expresses some unease with the decision of Canada to join and head up one of NATO&#8217;s projected combat brigades. Parliament has not been consulted, Mulcair complains. And he worries, &#8220;If military buildup becomes our only way of communicating with Russians, there is a real risk that falling into a permanent deterrence mode will lead to escalation and the re-emergence of a dangerous Cold War-style deadlock.&#8221;</p> <p>But the headline to the commentary summarizes the essence. It reads, &#8216;Military-only response to Russia is dangerous&#8217;. In other words, a military posture against Russia is needed, yes, and so are additional measures. To wit, Mulcair says Canada should extend its sanctions against Russia&#8217;s economy. He urges adoption of a version of the &#8216;Magnitsky Act&#8217; which was adopted in the United States in 2012 and which extended the freezing of assets and banning of travel by Russian political and business leaders. The law is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant working in the financial industry who died while in prison in Russia in 2009.</p> <p>Evidently, Mulcair has not viewed <a href="" type="internal">the new documentary film</a> exposing the propaganda campaign behind the U.S. law. The film is titled &#8216;The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes&#8217;. The Russian filmmaker began his documentary quest by presenting the accepted story of Magnitsky as a fighter against endemic corruption and favouritism in the Russian government. But along the way, he discovered a very different view of events in which the Russian government happened to be battling, not coddling, corruption, in this case by going after a set of foreign and Russian businessmen who had hired Magnitsky to manage their books.</p> <p>Mulcair concludes his commentary with a repeat that it is &#8220;the Russian threat&#8221; which is at fault for escalating tensions in eastern Europe and that more than military means alone are needed to meet the &#8220;threat&#8221;.</p> <p>Such is the state of official political opposition in Canada today on the Ukraine file, where &#8216;opposition member of Parliament&#8217; means &#8216;compliant member of Parliament&#8217;.</p> <p>Oppose war and militarism</p> <p>Since last year&#8217;s election in Canada, the language coming out of Ottawa with respect to Russia has shifted ever so slightly. St&#233;phane Dion has been speaking of the need for &#8220;dialogue&#8221; with Russia. But nothing with respect to policy has changed. Canada is stepping up its military intervention in Ukraine and eastern Europe. It maintains the U.S. and EU-led sanctions targeting Russia&#8217;s political leaders and business men and women. It still calls Crimea&#8217;s referendum vote in 2014 to rejoin the Russia Federation a Russian &#8220;annexation&#8221;. It still accuses Russia of conducting a military intervention into eastern Ukraine.</p> <p>The larger danger in all of NATO&#8217;s war posturing is the threat of nuclear war. Three of the countries ganging up against Russia are nuclear powers&#8211;the United States, France and Britain. Each of them are busily renewing and improving their nuclear arsenals, led by the estimated <a href="https://newcoldwar.org/trillion-nukes-obama-embraces-bomb/" type="external">trillion dollars</a> which the U.S. is slated to spend on new nuclear arms technologies, which it hopes might provide it with a cherished, first-strike nuclear capacity.</p> <p>Progressive social and political forces in Canada that should be opposing the war posturing in eastern Europe have been largely silent. That&#8217;s because they have dug themselves into a hole during the past two and a half years by ignoring events in and around the Maidan coup in Ukraine or, worse, by buying into the NATO rhetoric of &#8216;aggressive Russia&#8217; and &#8216;imperialist Russia&#8217;. Ignorance and prejudice about Russia, rather than factual analysis, rules the day.</p> <p>As Canadians begin to rebuild an antiwar movement out of the ashes of the old, three key demands should come to the fore. One is to end the sanctions, threats and outright attacks by NATO and Ukraine against Russia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Two is to demand the government in Kyiv implement the terms of the ceasefire agreement it signed in Minsk in February 2015.</p> <p>Thirdly and fourthly, it is high time to renew two historic demands of the peace and antiwar movements over the decades which, sadly, have a new urgency: Abolish nuclear weapons!</p> <p>Canada out of the NATO alliance!</p> <p>Notes:</p> <p>[1] On March 16, 2014, the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation. The vote was conducted by the elected, autonomous assembly of Crimea. The March 2014 referendum was prompted by the violent overthrow one month earlier of the elected president of Ukraine. Victor Yanukovych had received the large majority of votes in Crimea in Ukraine&#8217;s 2010 presidential election.</p> <p>Crimea was annexed to then-Soviet Ukraine in 1954 by a decision of the government of the USSR in order to facilitate post-WW2 reconstruction. But the Crimean people were given no vote on the matter.</p> <p>[2] Clause ten of the NATO communiqu&#233; introduces a novel concept into international diplomacy: not only do nation states and countries (or parts thereof) have &#8220;borders&#8221;; apparently, self-proclaimed military alliances have borders, too. Clause ten of the NATO communiqu&#233; refers to &#8220;NATO borders [sic], including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean&#8221;.</p> <p>[3] With one exception&#8211;the Toronto Star&#8211;the entirety of Canada&#8217;s print mainstream media supported the re-election of Stephen Harper&#8217;s Conservatives in the October 19, 2015 election.</p>

Canada’s Liberal Gov’t Joins NATO’s War Escalation

https://counterpunch.org/2016/07/15/canadas-liberal-govt-joins-natos-war-escalation/

2016-07-15

4left

Art Babychamp160amp160 Shutterstockcom amp160 Canadians who hoped the federal election last October 19 would usher in change to the aggressive foreign policy of the defeated Conservative government are wondering what happened to their wishes The transition in imperialist foreign policy from the Harper Conservatives to the Justin Trudeauled Liberals has been utterly seamless if not predictable In the Middle East Canada8217s support to 8216regime change8217 in Syria stands The Liberals stirred controversy during the election when they promised to end Canada8217s participation in the USled military intervention in northern Iraq But surprise while the Liberals did carry out a promised withdrawal of the six fighter jets that weren8217t doing much anyway in the skies over Syria and Iraq they ended up tripling the presence of Canadian soldiers on the ground in Iraq to approximately 200 And the new government made unpleasant waves when it upheld the export permit approval by the Conservatives for the US arms manufacturer General Dynamics to sell 15 billion worth of the armoured personnel transport vehicles it manufactures in London Ontario to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia Sabre rattling by the newsameold government in Ottawa has been expressed most fully during and after the NATO summit meeting held in Warsaw Poland on July 8 and 9 Canada and the NATO war summit meeting in Warsaw Poland The NATO summit approved a final communiqu233 which places the military alliance on a collision course with Russia The communiqu233 voices NATO8217s determination to escalate its threats against Russia using the pretexts of an alleged 8220annexation8221 of Crimea by Russia and military intervention by it in eastern Ukraine1 Clause five of the 138 clauses in the communiqu233 reads Russia8217s aggressive actions including provocative military activities in the periphery of NATO territory and its demonstrated willingness to attain political goals by the threat and use of force are a source of regional instability fundamentally challenge the Alliance have damaged EuroAtlantic security and threaten our longstanding goal of a Europe whole free and at peace Clause ten details the alleged transgressions of Russia Russia8217s destabilising actions and policies include the ongoing illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea which we do not and will not recognise and which we call on Russia to reverse the violation of sovereign borders by force the deliberate destabilisation of eastern Ukraine largescale snap exercises contrary to the spirit of the Vienna Document and provocative military activities near NATO borders including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean its irresponsible and aggressive nuclear rhetoric military concept and underlying posture and its repeated violations of NATO Allied airspaceamp160In addition Russia8217s military intervention significant military presence and support for the regime in Syria and its use of its military presence in the Black Sea to project power into the Eastern Mediterranean have posed further risks and challenges for the security of Allies and others2 Ottawa announced at the summit it will send hundreds of additional soldiers to eastern Europe to join the latest NATO provocation it will lead one of the four new protocombat brigades being established by NATO in countries bordering Russia Canada will land some 450 troops in Latvia Ottawa is also reequipping its entire army including its soontobe Latvia force on the Russian border with antitank missiles Canada8217s voice has been one of the loudest amidst NATO8217s antiRussia rhetoric as first the Conservatives now the Liberals pander to the extremist minority among the estimated 12 million Canadians of Ukrainian origin That pandering was on full display in Ukraine when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid a visit to the country immediately following the NATO summit Ongoing intervention in Ukraine The Latvia intervention adds to Canada8217s existing military presence in Ukraine Since last year Canadian British and US soldiers began an intervention into the country consisting in the first instance of training the Ukrainian army and extremist paramilitaries at the socalled International Peacekeeping and Security Center in western Ukraine Canada has 200 troops in the country The military training is designed to improve Ukraine8217s capacity to wage the civil war it launched against the populations of the Donbass region in the east of the country in April 2014 There the large majority of the population rejected a violent seizure of power by a rightwing coalition of conservatives extremerightists and neoNazis in February 2014 When the new regime in Kyiv sent soldiers and extremist paramilitaries to eastern Ukraine to quash civil resistance against the 8216Maidan coup8217 selfdefense forces were hastily thrown up and military conflict ensued Prime Minister Trudeau visited the military training center on July 11 His media entourage reported a disturbing insight into what the foreign soldiers are up to there A July 13 article by the Canadian Press8216 Lee Berthiaume wrote Trudeau flew into Lviv in western Ukraine before driving to a nearby military base for a firsthand look at the work of 200 Canadian soldiers who have been training the Ukrainian army since last summer From a distance Trudeau his son Xavier and defence chief Gen Jonathan Vance watched through binoculars as a Sovietera armoured personnel carrier led a group of Canadian and Ukrainian soldiers toward a wooden building The air shook as the vehicle8217s cannon fired several bursts in quick succession The troops then moved away from the vehicle and spread out in a line facing the building Four Canadians followed close behind as the eight Ukrainians slowly closed on the building while firing their rifles before placing an explosive inside and setting it off The exercise was the type of attack those Ukrainian soldiers could soon be conducting on their own in the east of their country where the army has been fighting Russianbacked separatists for more than two years Trudeau8217s son Xavier is nine years old It8217s not known what the 8220building8221 in the training exercise represents in real life Ukraine8217s 8216AntiTerrorist Operation8217 in the east heavily targets residential neighbourhoods In addition to houses and apartment buildings schools daycare centers and even medical centers have been struck by Ukrainian tank and other artillery shelling The ongoing reports of the Donetsk International News Agency document the havoc Latest report dated July 11 is here Effective antiaircraft defense on the rebel side is the only reason why Ukraine has not employed fighter aircraft against its nominal citizens as NATOmember Turkey is doing in its civil war against the Kurdish population in the east of that country Earlier the same day Trudeau addressed Canadian soldiers about their work in Ukraine He said 8220It has been a long time since Canada had to defend our valour and defend our territory But we need to continue to work with those who are fighting for democracy and their territorial integrity8221 Trudeau voiced the usual NATO stories about Russia8217s actions in the region since the Maidan coup 8220Russia has not been a positive partner8221 he told his hosts in Ukraine speaking of the situation in eastern Ukraine 8220It has not been moving appropriately on things like ceasefires and international observers8221 While in Ukraine Trudeau also signed a 8220free trade8221 agreement with Ukraine The agreement is unlikely to change much in the small amount of trade between the two countries According to the Canadian government Canada exported some 210 million in goods to Ukraine in 2015 including pharmaceuticals fish and seafood and coking coal Ukraine sent to Canada some 67 million the same year including fertilizers iron and steel and anthracite coal Meanwhile Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister St233phane Dion trundled off to Latvia following the Warsaw summit to voice his own harsh language He told a press conference in Riga 8220A neighboring country Russia chooses to throw its weight around and cause trouble and international instability Latvia and Canada together with our NATO allies answer the call both for strong deterrence and strong dialogue sic 8220We will stay strong as long as the relationship has not been changed for something positive 8211 as long as Russia is a troublemaker in the region we need to be strong together and Canada will be part of it8221 Dion said Ukraine too has been 8220confronted directly with aggression from our shared neighbour8221 What about the Minsk2 ceasefire As with its NATO partners Canada8217s government tells lies when it comes to the ongoing violations by Kyiv of the ceasefire agreement for eastern Ukraine that was signed in Belarus on February 12 2015 Ukraine has failed to live up to all of the 13 clauses of Minsk2 This was noted though understated in the aforementioned Canadian Press report when it said 8220Trudeau called Russia8217s recent actions in the region 8220illegitimate8221 and 8220illegal8221 and voiced strong support for NATO members in Eastern Europe as well as Ukraine despite rampant corruption in Ukraine and its failure to implement parts sic of a peace deal with Russia and the rebels8221 Ukraine continues its military attacks against Donetsk and Lugansk the two former provinces of Ukraine which make up the historic region called Donbass It does not recognize the elected authorities of the people8217s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and so no progress has been made on a political settlement including a regional election Prisoner exchanges have been very partial And so on Text of Minsk2 ceasefire here Canada the US and the rest of NATO have nothing to say about Ukraine8217s dereliction of duty with the ceasefire On the contrary they accuse Russia of failing to live up to the agreement even though Russia with France and Germany is but a guarantor not a signator of the agreement As the Russian government has patiently explained for the past 18 months only the Ukrainian government and the rebel side against which it is fighting can and should decide what happens on Ukrainian soil The criticism of Russia by Canada is carefully orchestrated to shield the true state of affairs In 2014 following the Maidan coup Russia stood by the people in Crimea and then in Donbass who rose up to oppose the coup This is what has infuriated the NATO countries According to their script Russia is supposed to act like the other countries of the region and meekly accept NATO diktats In this case Russia was supposed to stand aside and allow an illegal rightwing regime in Kyiv to wage a violent campaign against civil dissent opposing the new regime8217s proEurope antiRussia and proausterity course to proceed Oh and Russia was supposed to meekly give up its historic centuries old naval base in Crimea and turn the keys over to NATO The NATO powers are not used to defiance They don8217t like the 8220bad8221 example that Russia8217s defiance sets for people or countries in Europe who may wish to battle EUdictated austerity and violations of national sovereignty as for example the people in Greece and more recently in Britain are trying to do The other large longstanding factor at play in eastern Europe is the historic USled drive by NATO to weaken and dismantle first the Soviet Union and now the Russia Federation Events in Ukraine and Crimea have given the US its allies and pliant media new propaganda ammunition to bamboozle world opinion and renew the postWW2 notsocoldanymore war Media and Parliamentary opposition in Canada join the prowar chorus The obfuscation over Minsk2 and the dangerous 8216new cold war8217 backdrop rely on a compliant mainstream media to dissuade questioning if not opposition by ordinary citizens As in the US and Europe mainstream media in Canada does little or nothing to accurately inform the public of the true state of affairs in Ukraine and Crimea and the broader region Instead it is increasingly parroting whatever line emanates from NATO country capitals while adding its own unique stamp to the mix The national daily Globe and Mail editorialized on July 13 in favour of the Liberal8217s latest moves It wrote 8221 The risk of a new cold war let alone a third world war in Eastern Europe is small but Russia8217s illegal annexation of Crimea and its thinly disguised subversion of order in eastern Ukraine shows how willing President Vladimir Putin is to make serious mischief8230 8220The risk of leaving a whole set of countries the Baltic region virtually undefended would be most unacceptable82213 The same compliance goes for Canadian Parliamentarians A case in point is an oped commentary by Thomas Mulcair published on July 12 in the Toronto Star Canada8217s largestcirculation daily newspaper Mulcair is the leader of Canada8217s social democratic party the New Democratic Party the third largest party in Parliament He writes in the Star 8220There can be no doubt Russia poses a significant threat to the people of Eastern Europe In March the United Nations estimated that at least 9160 civilians have died in Ukraine since Russia8217s annexation of Crimea in 20148221 Note the writer8217s named starting date of the tragic deaths of thousands in eastern Ukraine not the launching of Ukraine8217s civil war 8216AntiTerrorist Operation8217 in AprilMay 2014 but the Crimea referendum in March Mulcair writes further 8220Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown himself to be a volatile leader not above searching for any pretext to escalate into violence8221 The oped expresses some unease with the decision of Canada to join and head up one of NATO8217s projected combat brigades Parliament has not been consulted Mulcair complains And he worries 8220If military buildup becomes our only way of communicating with Russians there is a real risk that falling into a permanent deterrence mode will lead to escalation and the reemergence of a dangerous Cold Warstyle deadlock8221 But the headline to the commentary summarizes the essence It reads 8216Militaryonly response to Russia is dangerous8217 In other words a military posture against Russia is needed yes and so are additional measures To wit Mulcair says Canada should extend its sanctions against Russia8217s economy He urges adoption of a version of the 8216Magnitsky Act8217 which was adopted in the United States in 2012 and which extended the freezing of assets and banning of travel by Russian political and business leaders The law is named after Sergei Magnitsky a Russian accountant working in the financial industry who died while in prison in Russia in 2009 Evidently Mulcair has not viewed the new documentary film exposing the propaganda campaign behind the US law The film is titled 8216The Magnitsky Act Behind the Scenes8217 The Russian filmmaker began his documentary quest by presenting the accepted story of Magnitsky as a fighter against endemic corruption and favouritism in the Russian government But along the way he discovered a very different view of events in which the Russian government happened to be battling not coddling corruption in this case by going after a set of foreign and Russian businessmen who had hired Magnitsky to manage their books Mulcair concludes his commentary with a repeat that it is 8220the Russian threat8221 which is at fault for escalating tensions in eastern Europe and that more than military means alone are needed to meet the 8220threat8221 Such is the state of official political opposition in Canada today on the Ukraine file where 8216opposition member of Parliament8217 means 8216compliant member of Parliament8217 Oppose war and militarism Since last year8217s election in Canada the language coming out of Ottawa with respect to Russia has shifted ever so slightly St233phane Dion has been speaking of the need for 8220dialogue8221 with Russia But nothing with respect to policy has changed Canada is stepping up its military intervention in Ukraine and eastern Europe It maintains the US and EUled sanctions targeting Russia8217s political leaders and business men and women It still calls Crimea8217s referendum vote in 2014 to rejoin the Russia Federation a Russian 8220annexation8221 It still accuses Russia of conducting a military intervention into eastern Ukraine The larger danger in all of NATO8217s war posturing is the threat of nuclear war Three of the countries ganging up against Russia are nuclear powers8211the United States France and Britain Each of them are busily renewing and improving their nuclear arsenals led by the estimated trillion dollars which the US is slated to spend on new nuclear arms technologies which it hopes might provide it with a cherished firststrike nuclear capacity Progressive social and political forces in Canada that should be opposing the war posturing in eastern Europe have been largely silent That8217s because they have dug themselves into a hole during the past two and a half years by ignoring events in and around the Maidan coup in Ukraine or worse by buying into the NATO rhetoric of 8216aggressive Russia8217 and 8216imperialist Russia8217 Ignorance and prejudice about Russia rather than factual analysis rules the day As Canadians begin to rebuild an antiwar movement out of the ashes of the old three key demands should come to the fore One is to end the sanctions threats and outright attacks by NATO and Ukraine against Russia Crimea and eastern Ukraine Two is to demand the government in Kyiv implement the terms of the ceasefire agreement it signed in Minsk in February 2015 Thirdly and fourthly it is high time to renew two historic demands of the peace and antiwar movements over the decades which sadly have a new urgency Abolish nuclear weapons Canada out of the NATO alliance Notes 1 On March 16 2014 the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation The vote was conducted by the elected autonomous assembly of Crimea The March 2014 referendum was prompted by the violent overthrow one month earlier of the elected president of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych had received the large majority of votes in Crimea in Ukraine8217s 2010 presidential election Crimea was annexed to thenSoviet Ukraine in 1954 by a decision of the government of the USSR in order to facilitate postWW2 reconstruction But the Crimean people were given no vote on the matter 2 Clause ten of the NATO communiqu233 introduces a novel concept into international diplomacy not only do nation states and countries or parts thereof have 8220borders8221 apparently selfproclaimed military alliances have borders too Clause ten of the NATO communiqu233 refers to 8220NATO borders sic including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean8221 3 With one exception8211the Toronto Star8211the entirety of Canada8217s print mainstream media supported the reelection of Stephen Harper8217s Conservatives in the October 19 2015 election

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<p>Remember when the two Chinese American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, &amp;#160;were first convicted earlier this year and given 12-year prison terms in one of North Korea&#8217;s&amp;#160; labor camps? Working for a tv channel owned by former vice president Al Gore, the two&amp;#160;had crossed North Korea&#8217;s border with China, intent on investigating the alleged trafficking of North Korean women as sex slaves in the People&#8217;s Republic.</p> <p>There were wall-to-wall headlines, screams on all the talk shows. Was there ever a failed state as barbaric as North Korea? Not only is this rogue nation endangering the security of the planet in its efforts to elbow its way into the exclusive&amp;#160;club of nuclear powers, but&amp;#160;now it had dispatched two Chinese-American journalists to camps notorious for their brutality and appalling conditions.</p> <p>It was always obvious that the harsh sentences faced by&amp;#160;Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were&amp;#160;tied up in the evolution of relations between North Korea and the new Obama government and this judgement&amp;#160; has been vindicated by the speed with which they were sprung, once Bill Clinton paid a visit.</p> <p>So now let us let&#8217;s try and achieve some sense of balance on the charge of barbarism.</p> <p>Let&#8217;s suppose a country has endured half a century of continuous attack by assailants based in the United States, with nearly 4,000 dead and 2,000 wounded. Let&#8217;s further suppose that when this country, trying to expand its tourist industry, listens to widely broadcast plans by these assailants to sabotage these plans by attacking the tourists &#8211; which they duly do, killing one. Now let us suppose that this country sends investigators to infiltrate the assailants, and hands the results of their probe to the FBI and&#8230;</p> <p>I&#8217;m talking about the Cuban Five &#8211; courageous men who went to southern Florida, and penetrated the Cuban gusano gangs, specifically Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue.</p> <p>In 1998, after Fidel Castro dispatched Gabriel Garcia Marquez as an emissary to the Clinton White House, the United States sent an FBI team to Havana to discuss the attacks. Cuba handed over 64 files on 31 different terrorist acts and plans against&amp;#160;the island in the decade of the &#8217;90s. After this effort to enlist the U.S. government in stopping terrorist acts (abetted and maybe initiated by the U.S. government), Cuba expected the FBI to start arresting the terrorists. Nt for the first time, Fidel Castro gravely underestimated the good faith of the US government. The Cubans&amp;#160; had underestimated President Bill Clinton&#8217;s and Al Gore&#8217;s over-riding desire to service the Cuban right in Florida. On &amp;#160;September 12, 1998, the Bureau arrested the very investigators&amp;#160;who had come to Miami to probe the activities of the Miami terrorists. Gerardo Hernandez received a double life sentence, and Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Laba&#241;ino received life sentences. The remaining two, Fernando Gonzalez and Ren&#233; Gonzalez, received 19 and 15 years respectively.</p> <p>It&#8217;s true that the Five weren&#8217;t sent to a labor camp akin to those in the North Korean gulag. Where they were sent was described in CounterPunch earlier this year by Hernandez who was interviewed by the filmmaker Saul Landau, who is making a documentary about the Cuban 5.</p> <p>Hernandez: They took us to the prison, the Center of Federal Detention in Miami and put us in &#8220;the hole.&#8221;</p> <p>SL: For how long?</p> <p>GH: 17 months.</p> <p>SL: Describe &#8220;the hole?&#8221;</p> <p>GH: It&#8217;s an area that every prison has, where they put prisoners for disciplinary or for protective purposes, if they can&#8217;t be with the rest of the population. In those first 6 months in &#8220;solitary confinement,&#8221; we had a shower inside the cell so you can bathe whenever you want.&amp;#160;But you get everything in the cell wet when you take a shower. You&#8217;re in the cell 23 hours a day.&amp;#160;And one hour a day of recreation where they take you to another place.&amp;#160;In Miami, it was a bit bigger and with this grid through which you could see a little piece of the sky.&amp;#160;You could tell if it was day or night, and a bit of fresh air would come through.&amp;#160;The regimen was strict.&amp;#160;They used to punish prisoners who commit a serious indiscipline. There we were 23, some times 24 hours a day, inside those 4 small walls, with nothing to do.&amp;#160;It&#8217;s very difficult from a humane point of view.&amp;#160; And many people couldn&#8217;t take it. You could see them start to lose their minds, start screaming.</p> <p>SL: Did you do something bad?</p> <p>GH: No, we were sent there from the beginning.&amp;#160;They told us it was to protect us from the general population. But, in my opinion, it had more to do with their attempt to get us to turn.&amp;#160;After fear and intimidation didn&#8217;t work, they thought: &#8216;Well, let&#8217;s put them in solitary for a few months and see if they change their minds.&#8217;</p> <p>Then, after the sentencing, the Cubans were sent to different penitentiaries. Hernandez was sent to Lompoc in 2003, and into &#8220;the box.&#8221; That happened to the Five in all 5 prisons on the same day. It still isn&#8217;t clear why, or who gave the order. Lompoc is a very old prison, apart from &#8220;the hole,&#8221; which is where they send people who attack guards or set fire to mattresses; for the incorrigible, &#8220;the box,&#8221; a basement below &#8220;the hole&#8221; &#8212; 10 double-doored cells.</p> <p>They put me down there, in my underwear, barefoot for a month. I didn&#8217;t know if it was day or night, because you&#8217;re inside for 24 hours. There&#8217;s no hour of recreation or anything. A leak dripped from the cell above. Whenever that person flushed the toilet, dirty water would run down my cell&#8217;s walls.</p> <p>I complained about health dangers. But they had planned to keep us there for one year for &#8220;special administrative measures.&#8221; They had warned me I wouldn&#8217;t have any contacts, no visits, no nothing. To communicate with my lawyer, I had to submit a letter. I had to make an envelope out of a piece of paper, and seal it with toothpaste. Nothing to read, nothing to write with, nothing! That was quite a difficult month. They [prison authorities] told us we&#8217;d be there for a year, and at the end of that year they&#8217;d review our cases; we could be there indefinitely. When the guards planned to take me for a bath 3 or 4 guards would handcuff me. The other cells had their exterior doors open. The interior door was like a closed fence, but the iron exterior door that isolated you completely, was left open, so people wouldn&#8217;t go crazy. But mine was always closed. When they&#8217;d take me to shower, they&#8217;d close the other doors so no one would even see me &#8212; because one of the rules was that I could have contact with no one. I was there for a month, not knowing if it was day or night, dirty water running down my walls, barefoot, with the light on 24 hours a day; hearing screams of people around me, some of whom gone crazy. One day, a Thursday, they brought me papers to sign, saying I would be there for one year. The following Tuesday, without explanation, just as they&#8217;d brought me there without knowing anything, they took me out. We found out that lots of people had protested outside the prison. Members of Congress had inquired about us.</p> <p>Having set North Korea barbarity in a larger perspective, let us turn to the dangers its testing program and intermittent detonations pose to world security. On May 25, North Korea conducted its second&amp;#160;underground nuclear test, two and a half&amp;#160; years after its first. Obama promptly denounced it as &#8220;a grave threat to the peace and stability of the world.&#8221; He added that North Korea&#8217;s actions had &#8220;flown in the face of United Nations resolutions&#8221; and were inviting deeper international isolation.</p> <p>Almost four months earlier, Obama had nothing to say when, on February 3 or 4, two nuclear-powered submarines, one British, one French, each carrying at nuclear missiles, collided in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Unlike the North Koreans, who immediately reported their test to the world, Britain and France said nothing. Neither did the United States. All three clearly hoped that this indubitable threat to world safety would remain a secret.</p> <p>On February 16, the British, Murdoch-owned Sun was the first to disclose the crash. Then, and only then an anonymous British official said the Vanguard&#8217;s &#8220;deterrent capability remained unaffected and there was no compromise to nuclear safety.&#8221; No members of the crew were injured. France&#8217;s Defense Ministry said in a brief statement Feb. 6 that the Le Triomphant had struck &#8220;a submerged object (probably a container)&#8221; during a return from a patrol, damaging the sonar dome on the front of the submarine.&#8221; The French ministry did not confirm the date of the collision, and didn&#8217;t mention the British sub. The Vanguard limped back to homeport, seen by observers to be considerably dented. The French sub, Le Triomphant, blind because of the damage to its sonar dome, was escorted by a frigate back to its base on France&#8217;s west coast. There is no reason to believe a single word of either the British or French governments on the incident.</p> <p>Given Obama&#8217;s silence on this manifest threat to world security, I invite CounterPunchers to prepare appropriately sarcastic statement to be read out by North Korea&#8217;s president or his latest designated successor, perhaps beginning with the statement by one British navy man that&amp;#160; &#8220;it was a millions-to-one unlucky chance&#8221; both subs were in the same patch of sea.&#8217; That&#8217;s how the world could end, not with a bang, but a millions-to-one unlucky chance. Rogue nation?</p> <p>What&#8217;s the lesson for Iran in this story? It pays to have a nuke. You get some respect, even a visit from Bill Clinton.</p> <p>Progressive Illusions: From our first black president to &#8220;Our First Black President&#8221;</p> <p>In retrospect we can see what a lucky fellow Barack Obama was to have had, during his run for the presidency last year, a radical black pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as his opponent in an argument about race and racism in America. Obama scored big with whites for his measured put-down of Wright as the embittered voice from an angry past, now being thankfully overtaken by a mellower and more sensible age of racial reason. And in an added irony, the most supportive black voice for this hopeful posture was that of the Harvard prof, Henry Louis Gates, who shot into the headlines last month after being arrested by a white Cambridge cop,</p> <p>Sergeant James Crowley, for allegedly abusing Crowley for racist conduct. In an amazing lapse in his usual steely self control, Obama said in a press conference that he thought the cops had acted &#8220;stupidly&#8221; in this incident which began when a neighbor called the police saying two men were trying to break into the house. Actually this was Gates and his driver trying to recoup from that familiar misfortune, the missing front door key of Gates&#8217; own home.</p> <p>The irony stems from the fact, as Ishmael Reed, author of two marvelously acrid and funny pieces on the <a href="" type="internal">Gates affair on this site</a>, points out that Gates had become the darling of white liberals for putting down blacks in exactly the same manner as Obama had adopted with Wright. In the New Yorker and kindred outlets Gates would serve up anodyne pottage about race being &#8220;a social construct&#8221; and would whack deadbeat black dads, cuing Obama to the same sort of grandstanding, all of which fell like music upon the ears of white opinion-formers always receptive to black people prepared to utter &#8220;difficult truths&#8221; &#8211; viz., that blacks &#8211; African Americans &#8211; had and have only themselves to blame for most if not all of their problems. The presiding deity over this nonsense for many years was the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who won hundreds of admiring editorials in the New York Times for his supposed courage and intellectual integrity in serving up &#8220;difficult truths&#8221; to white Americans eager for scholarly reassurance that they had nothing to apologize for.</p> <p>Then suddenly here were Gates and Obama both catching a torrent of abuse from whites for shouting at white cops and calling them racists and stupid. We can safely stipulate here that a very large number of white cops are violence-prone racists, both by upbringing and by assigned role, since they are the whites&#8217; first line of defense, furnished with awesome firepower, complicit prosecutors, indulgent forensic laboratories, mostly-white juries and a mostly-white press in the endless battle to keep the dangerous classes generally and the blacks specifically in their place. If the job requires you to be &#8220;stupid&#8221; &#8211; by over-reacting to the level of shooting an elderly black woman holding a cellphone on the grounds you thought she was armed and about to shoot to kill &#8211; then so be it.</p> <p>Crowley became the overnight darling of the right-wing Talk Radio and Roundtable TV hosts, just as Joe the Plumber did last fall. Obama&#8217;s senior aides, aghast at the uproar which took the big battle over health insurance off the front pages, successfully urged Obama to say that Gates might have acted unreasonably and to recapture the high ground by inviting Gates and Crowley to the White House for a manly beer and constructive chat, duly hailed in its aftermath last Wednesday by the President as &#8220;friendly, thoughtful and positive.&#8221; It would have required Gates and Crowley to be carried out on stretchers after bloody combat for Obama to have said anything else.</p> <p>The entire event was positive only for Crowley. Cops are notorious liars in the accounts they give to prosecutors, juries or the press of their conduct as guardians of the peace, and Crowley&#8217;s account of what happened chez Gates had plenty of improbabilities in it, such as his claim that Gates uttered a slur about his, Crowley&#8217;s, mother. Boston and Cambridge has been suffused with acrid racist divisions for decades, and the cops there have ugly reputations, as vividly evoked by the Boston cop, Justin Barrett, who was fired by the city&#8217;s mayor for calling prof Gates &#8220;a banana eating jungle bunny&#8221;. Barrett and his lawyer are suing the city and the mayor for damages for causing him &#8220;pain and suffering, mental anguish, emotional distress, post-traumatic stress, sleeplessness, indignities and embarrassment, degradation, injusry to reputation and restriction on his personal freedom.&#8221; Barrett&#8217;s lawyer says &#8220;banana-eating jungle bunny&#8221; were terms used by his client to evoke Gates&#8217; words, not his African American essence. Barrett told Larry King he doesn&#8217;t know what made him say that.</p> <p>White America is never more vividly and comically racist than when trying to excuse impromptu racist utterance or deny the racism of American society , which is manifest in every number, every graph and scatterplot in the annual Statistical Abstract of the United States. It was a former governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, regarded as an impeccable progressive in matters of race, who denied any racist motive for launching his final presidential drive in 1988 by appearing at the Neshoba county fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in the 1960s and where Reagan wooed the white south in 1980.The great and courageous black attorney, J.L. Chestnut, one of two black people in the huge audience, recalled Reagan crying that &#8220; &#8216; the South will rise again and this time remain master of everybody and everything within its dominion.&#8217; The square came to life, the Klu Kluxers were shouting, jeering and in obvious ecstasy. God bless America.&#8221; So eight years later Dukakis visited the Fair, to give the white voters a tacit message. It didn&#8217;t do him any good. His campaign blew up amid race-baiting first by his Democratic rival Al Gore, who denounced Dukakis for giving a weekend furlough from prison to a black criminal called Willie Horton. George Bush Sr soundly whacked Dukakis using the same charges.</p> <p>White progressives have been cheering Obama&#8217;s &#8220;tough love&#8221; homilies to delinquent black dads, content that he spared white or Spanish dads any such reproof. Maybe the support for Sergeant Crowley and the vilification Obama and Gates will come as a wake-up call, though I doubt it. Bill Clinton was probably the most disastrous president for blacks in postwar history, in terms of criminal justice policies, removal of social safety nets and systematic vilification of young black mothers for having babies (at an optimal time for the babies&#8217; care and survival ). Yet if you call Bill worse as an effective racist than Reagan they&#8217;ll quack with incredulous raillery and remind you that it was a black writer, Toni Morrison, who called Clinton our first black president. So? It was Gen. Colin Powell who stepped up to criticize Gates and thus endorse Crowley. Can we hope Gates has learned a lesson? Nope. He&#8217;s back at his crowd-pleasing antics, pledging more beers with Crowley and seeing he&#8217;ll see what he can do about getting his kids into Harvard. Ishmael Reed asked caustically here, &#8220;Maybe the officer who killed a black man in Oakland the other night should send in her children&#8217;s application to Gates. Is Gates a candidate for the Stockholm Syndrome?&#8221; Scarcely a candidate, Ishmael. Stockholm Syndrome captured Prof Gates long, long ago and did his career no end of good.</p> <p>New York Times Director Probed for &#8220;Breach of Trust&#8221;</p> <p>To the Sulzberger family that controls the New York Times he has been the ultimate Good German. High-flying Thomas Middelhof took New York by storm, buying Random House for Bertelsmann, invited onto the NYT board, a member of its compensation committee. Read Eamonn Fingleton&#8217;s exclusive on how Middelhof&amp;#160; has crashed to earth and how the NYT has buried the story. Amid New York&#8217;s savage fiscal crisis, guess what? The city ponies up $50 million for a nice new park for rich people in Manhattan. Read Carl Ginsburg on the High Line. PLUS Elyssa Pachico on how rural revolution in Colombia has gone digital. PLUS co-editor Cockburn on how, in Obama Time, the Israel lobby is carrying all before it. What a surprise.</p> <p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Subscribe today!</a></p> <p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN can be reached at <a href="mailto:alexandercockburn@asis.com" type="external">alexandercockburn@asis.com</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

It Pays to Have a Nuke

https://counterpunch.org/2009/08/07/it-pays-to-have-a-nuke/

2009-08-07

4left

Remember when the two Chinese American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee amp160were first convicted earlier this year and given 12year prison terms in one of North Korea8217samp160 labor camps Working for a tv channel owned by former vice president Al Gore the twoamp160had crossed North Korea8217s border with China intent on investigating the alleged trafficking of North Korean women as sex slaves in the People8217s Republic There were walltowall headlines screams on all the talk shows Was there ever a failed state as barbaric as North Korea Not only is this rogue nation endangering the security of the planet in its efforts to elbow its way into the exclusiveamp160club of nuclear powers butamp160now it had dispatched two ChineseAmerican journalists to camps notorious for their brutality and appalling conditions It was always obvious that the harsh sentences faced byamp160Ms Ling and Ms Lee wereamp160tied up in the evolution of relations between North Korea and the new Obama government and this judgementamp160 has been vindicated by the speed with which they were sprung once Bill Clinton paid a visit So now let us let8217s try and achieve some sense of balance on the charge of barbarism Let8217s suppose a country has endured half a century of continuous attack by assailants based in the United States with nearly 4000 dead and 2000 wounded Let8217s further suppose that when this country trying to expand its tourist industry listens to widely broadcast plans by these assailants to sabotage these plans by attacking the tourists 8211 which they duly do killing one Now let us suppose that this country sends investigators to infiltrate the assailants and hands the results of their probe to the FBI and8230 I8217m talking about the Cuban Five 8211 courageous men who went to southern Florida and penetrated the Cuban gusano gangs specifically Alpha 66 the F4 Commandos the Cuban American National Foundation and Brothers to the Rescue In 1998 after Fidel Castro dispatched Gabriel Garcia Marquez as an emissary to the Clinton White House the United States sent an FBI team to Havana to discuss the attacks Cuba handed over 64 files on 31 different terrorist acts and plans againstamp160the island in the decade of the 821790s After this effort to enlist the US government in stopping terrorist acts abetted and maybe initiated by the US government Cuba expected the FBI to start arresting the terrorists Nt for the first time Fidel Castro gravely underestimated the good faith of the US government The Cubansamp160 had underestimated President Bill Clinton8217s and Al Gore8217s overriding desire to service the Cuban right in Florida On amp160September 12 1998 the Bureau arrested the very investigatorsamp160who had come to Miami to probe the activities of the Miami terrorists Gerardo Hernandez received a double life sentence and Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Laba241ino received life sentences The remaining two Fernando Gonzalez and Ren233 Gonzalez received 19 and 15 years respectively It8217s true that the Five weren8217t sent to a labor camp akin to those in the North Korean gulag Where they were sent was described in CounterPunch earlier this year by Hernandez who was interviewed by the filmmaker Saul Landau who is making a documentary about the Cuban 5 Hernandez They took us to the prison the Center of Federal Detention in Miami and put us in 8220the hole8221 SL For how long GH 17 months SL Describe 8220the hole8221 GH It8217s an area that every prison has where they put prisoners for disciplinary or for protective purposes if they can8217t be with the rest of the population In those first 6 months in 8220solitary confinement8221 we had a shower inside the cell so you can bathe whenever you wantamp160But you get everything in the cell wet when you take a shower You8217re in the cell 23 hours a dayamp160And one hour a day of recreation where they take you to another placeamp160In Miami it was a bit bigger and with this grid through which you could see a little piece of the skyamp160You could tell if it was day or night and a bit of fresh air would come throughamp160The regimen was strictamp160They used to punish prisoners who commit a serious indiscipline There we were 23 some times 24 hours a day inside those 4 small walls with nothing to doamp160It8217s very difficult from a humane point of viewamp160 And many people couldn8217t take it You could see them start to lose their minds start screaming SL Did you do something bad GH No we were sent there from the beginningamp160They told us it was to protect us from the general population But in my opinion it had more to do with their attempt to get us to turnamp160After fear and intimidation didn8217t work they thought 8216Well let8217s put them in solitary for a few months and see if they change their minds8217 Then after the sentencing the Cubans were sent to different penitentiaries Hernandez was sent to Lompoc in 2003 and into 8220the box8221 That happened to the Five in all 5 prisons on the same day It still isn8217t clear why or who gave the order Lompoc is a very old prison apart from 8220the hole8221 which is where they send people who attack guards or set fire to mattresses for the incorrigible 8220the box8221 a basement below 8220the hole8221 8212 10 doubledoored cells They put me down there in my underwear barefoot for a month I didn8217t know if it was day or night because you8217re inside for 24 hours There8217s no hour of recreation or anything A leak dripped from the cell above Whenever that person flushed the toilet dirty water would run down my cell8217s walls I complained about health dangers But they had planned to keep us there for one year for 8220special administrative measures8221 They had warned me I wouldn8217t have any contacts no visits no nothing To communicate with my lawyer I had to submit a letter I had to make an envelope out of a piece of paper and seal it with toothpaste Nothing to read nothing to write with nothing That was quite a difficult month They prison authorities told us we8217d be there for a year and at the end of that year they8217d review our cases we could be there indefinitely When the guards planned to take me for a bath 3 or 4 guards would handcuff me The other cells had their exterior doors open The interior door was like a closed fence but the iron exterior door that isolated you completely was left open so people wouldn8217t go crazy But mine was always closed When they8217d take me to shower they8217d close the other doors so no one would even see me 8212 because one of the rules was that I could have contact with no one I was there for a month not knowing if it was day or night dirty water running down my walls barefoot with the light on 24 hours a day hearing screams of people around me some of whom gone crazy One day a Thursday they brought me papers to sign saying I would be there for one year The following Tuesday without explanation just as they8217d brought me there without knowing anything they took me out We found out that lots of people had protested outside the prison Members of Congress had inquired about us Having set North Korea barbarity in a larger perspective let us turn to the dangers its testing program and intermittent detonations pose to world security On May 25 North Korea conducted its secondamp160underground nuclear test two and a halfamp160 years after its first Obama promptly denounced it as 8220a grave threat to the peace and stability of the world8221 He added that North Korea8217s actions had 8220flown in the face of United Nations resolutions8221 and were inviting deeper international isolation Almost four months earlier Obama had nothing to say when on February 3 or 4 two nuclearpowered submarines one British one French each carrying at nuclear missiles collided in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean Unlike the North Koreans who immediately reported their test to the world Britain and France said nothing Neither did the United States All three clearly hoped that this indubitable threat to world safety would remain a secret On February 16 the British Murdochowned Sun was the first to disclose the crash Then and only then an anonymous British official said the Vanguard8217s 8220deterrent capability remained unaffected and there was no compromise to nuclear safety8221 No members of the crew were injured France8217s Defense Ministry said in a brief statement Feb 6 that the Le Triomphant had struck 8220a submerged object probably a container8221 during a return from a patrol damaging the sonar dome on the front of the submarine8221 The French ministry did not confirm the date of the collision and didn8217t mention the British sub The Vanguard limped back to homeport seen by observers to be considerably dented The French sub Le Triomphant blind because of the damage to its sonar dome was escorted by a frigate back to its base on France8217s west coast There is no reason to believe a single word of either the British or French governments on the incident Given Obama8217s silence on this manifest threat to world security I invite CounterPunchers to prepare appropriately sarcastic statement to be read out by North Korea8217s president or his latest designated successor perhaps beginning with the statement by one British navy man thatamp160 8220it was a millionstoone unlucky chance8221 both subs were in the same patch of sea8217 That8217s how the world could end not with a bang but a millionstoone unlucky chance Rogue nation What8217s the lesson for Iran in this story It pays to have a nuke You get some respect even a visit from Bill Clinton Progressive Illusions From our first black president to 8220Our First Black President8221 In retrospect we can see what a lucky fellow Barack Obama was to have had during his run for the presidency last year a radical black pastor the Rev Jeremiah Wright as his opponent in an argument about race and racism in America Obama scored big with whites for his measured putdown of Wright as the embittered voice from an angry past now being thankfully overtaken by a mellower and more sensible age of racial reason And in an added irony the most supportive black voice for this hopeful posture was that of the Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates who shot into the headlines last month after being arrested by a white Cambridge cop Sergeant James Crowley for allegedly abusing Crowley for racist conduct In an amazing lapse in his usual steely self control Obama said in a press conference that he thought the cops had acted 8220stupidly8221 in this incident which began when a neighbor called the police saying two men were trying to break into the house Actually this was Gates and his driver trying to recoup from that familiar misfortune the missing front door key of Gates8217 own home The irony stems from the fact as Ishmael Reed author of two marvelously acrid and funny pieces on the Gates affair on this site points out that Gates had become the darling of white liberals for putting down blacks in exactly the same manner as Obama had adopted with Wright In the New Yorker and kindred outlets Gates would serve up anodyne pottage about race being 8220a social construct8221 and would whack deadbeat black dads cuing Obama to the same sort of grandstanding all of which fell like music upon the ears of white opinionformers always receptive to black people prepared to utter 8220difficult truths8221 8211 viz that blacks 8211 African Americans 8211 had and have only themselves to blame for most if not all of their problems The presiding deity over this nonsense for many years was the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who won hundreds of admiring editorials in the New York Times for his supposed courage and intellectual integrity in serving up 8220difficult truths8221 to white Americans eager for scholarly reassurance that they had nothing to apologize for Then suddenly here were Gates and Obama both catching a torrent of abuse from whites for shouting at white cops and calling them racists and stupid We can safely stipulate here that a very large number of white cops are violenceprone racists both by upbringing and by assigned role since they are the whites8217 first line of defense furnished with awesome firepower complicit prosecutors indulgent forensic laboratories mostlywhite juries and a mostlywhite press in the endless battle to keep the dangerous classes generally and the blacks specifically in their place If the job requires you to be 8220stupid8221 8211 by overreacting to the level of shooting an elderly black woman holding a cellphone on the grounds you thought she was armed and about to shoot to kill 8211 then so be it Crowley became the overnight darling of the rightwing Talk Radio and Roundtable TV hosts just as Joe the Plumber did last fall Obama8217s senior aides aghast at the uproar which took the big battle over health insurance off the front pages successfully urged Obama to say that Gates might have acted unreasonably and to recapture the high ground by inviting Gates and Crowley to the White House for a manly beer and constructive chat duly hailed in its aftermath last Wednesday by the President as 8220friendly thoughtful and positive8221 It would have required Gates and Crowley to be carried out on stretchers after bloody combat for Obama to have said anything else The entire event was positive only for Crowley Cops are notorious liars in the accounts they give to prosecutors juries or the press of their conduct as guardians of the peace and Crowley8217s account of what happened chez Gates had plenty of improbabilities in it such as his claim that Gates uttered a slur about his Crowley8217s mother Boston and Cambridge has been suffused with acrid racist divisions for decades and the cops there have ugly reputations as vividly evoked by the Boston cop Justin Barrett who was fired by the city8217s mayor for calling prof Gates 8220a banana eating jungle bunny8221 Barrett and his lawyer are suing the city and the mayor for damages for causing him 8220pain and suffering mental anguish emotional distress posttraumatic stress sleeplessness indignities and embarrassment degradation injusry to reputation and restriction on his personal freedom8221 Barrett8217s lawyer says 8220bananaeating jungle bunny8221 were terms used by his client to evoke Gates8217 words not his African American essence Barrett told Larry King he doesn8217t know what made him say that White America is never more vividly and comically racist than when trying to excuse impromptu racist utterance or deny the racism of American society which is manifest in every number every graph and scatterplot in the annual Statistical Abstract of the United States It was a former governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis regarded as an impeccable progressive in matters of race who denied any racist motive for launching his final presidential drive in 1988 by appearing at the Neshoba county fair in Philadelphia Mississippi where three civil rights workers were murdered in the 1960s and where Reagan wooed the white south in 1980The great and courageous black attorney JL Chestnut one of two black people in the huge audience recalled Reagan crying that 8220 8216 the South will rise again and this time remain master of everybody and everything within its dominion8217 The square came to life the Klu Kluxers were shouting jeering and in obvious ecstasy God bless America8221 So eight years later Dukakis visited the Fair to give the white voters a tacit message It didn8217t do him any good His campaign blew up amid racebaiting first by his Democratic rival Al Gore who denounced Dukakis for giving a weekend furlough from prison to a black criminal called Willie Horton George Bush Sr soundly whacked Dukakis using the same charges White progressives have been cheering Obama8217s 8220tough love8221 homilies to delinquent black dads content that he spared white or Spanish dads any such reproof Maybe the support for Sergeant Crowley and the vilification Obama and Gates will come as a wakeup call though I doubt it Bill Clinton was probably the most disastrous president for blacks in postwar history in terms of criminal justice policies removal of social safety nets and systematic vilification of young black mothers for having babies at an optimal time for the babies8217 care and survival Yet if you call Bill worse as an effective racist than Reagan they8217ll quack with incredulous raillery and remind you that it was a black writer Toni Morrison who called Clinton our first black president So It was Gen Colin Powell who stepped up to criticize Gates and thus endorse Crowley Can we hope Gates has learned a lesson Nope He8217s back at his crowdpleasing antics pledging more beers with Crowley and seeing he8217ll see what he can do about getting his kids into Harvard Ishmael Reed asked caustically here 8220Maybe the officer who killed a black man in Oakland the other night should send in her children8217s application to Gates Is Gates a candidate for the Stockholm Syndrome8221 Scarcely a candidate Ishmael Stockholm Syndrome captured Prof Gates long long ago and did his career no end of good New York Times Director Probed for 8220Breach of Trust8221 To the Sulzberger family that controls the New York Times he has been the ultimate Good German Highflying Thomas Middelhof took New York by storm buying Random House for Bertelsmann invited onto the NYT board a member of its compensation committee Read Eamonn Fingleton8217s exclusive on how Middelhofamp160 has crashed to earth and how the NYT has buried the story Amid New York8217s savage fiscal crisis guess what The city ponies up 50 million for a nice new park for rich people in Manhattan Read Carl Ginsburg on the High Line PLUS Elyssa Pachico on how rural revolution in Colombia has gone digital PLUS coeditor Cockburn on how in Obama Time the Israel lobby is carrying all before it What a surprise Subscribe today ALEXANDER COCKBURN can be reached at alexandercockburnasiscom amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>By Sarah Jaffe / <a href="http://billmoyers.com/story/standing-firm-standing-rock-pipeline-protesters-will-not-moved/" type="external">Moyers &amp;amp; Company</a></p> <p>A &#8220;speak-out&#8221; on the road to the Dakota Access pipeline construction site earlier in September. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>The first sign that not everything is normal as you drive down Highway 1806 toward the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota is a checkpoint manned by camouflage-clad National Guard troops. The inspection on Sept. 13 was perfunctory; they simply asked if we knew &#8220;what was going on down the road&#8221; and then waved us through, even though the car we rode in had &#8220;#NoDAPL&#8221; chalked on its rear windshield.</p> <p /> <p>&#8220;What is going on down the road&#8221; is a massive camp-in led by the Standing Rock nation, aimed at blocking the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (the DAPL in question), which would carry oil from the Bakken shale in North Dakota across several states and under the Missouri River. What began with a small beachhead last April on the banks of the Cannonball River on land belonging to LaDonna Brave Bull Allard has expanded to both banks of the river and up the road, to multiple camps that have housed as many as 7,000 people from all over the world. Because of them, first the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20092016/dakota-access-pipeline-fight-standoff-standing-rock-sioux-obama-administration" type="external">Obama administration and then a federal court</a>stepped in to temporarily halt construction of the pipeline near the campsite. Still, the people of Standing Rock and their thousands of supporters aren&#8217;t declaring victory and folding their tents just yet.</p> <p>Horseback riders march from the Oceti Sakowin Camp to the construction site. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>The legal struggles for a permanent shutdown of the pipeline construction continue: the people of Standing Rock have filed a lawsuit to halt construction, as has one of the South Dakota Native American nations and landowners in Iowa as well. As the lawsuits proceed, other members of the camp have been involved in nonviolent direct actions, locking their arms around construction machinery to prevent digging. Dozens have been arrested as part of those actions, including 22 people on Sept. 12, the day I arrived at the camp. That was days after the Obama administration&#8217;s call for a temporary halt to construction on the pipeline, and a stark reminder that the struggle was not over.</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">READ: Dakota Pipeline Would Make Water the New Oil, Devastating All but the Rich</a></p> <p>In addition to the legal battles and the direct actions, though, the people of the Oceti Sakowin and Sacred Stone camps were preparing for another challenge: a North Dakota winter. Already at night, the temperature drops to 40 degrees Fahrenheit; deliveries of blankets and warm clothing were constant, as was the chopping of wood for fires and discussion of what kinds of structures would allow the camps to stay in place through the bitter cold months ahead.</p> <p>Oceti Sakowin camp. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re already winterizing in all aspects of the camp, young people working with the elders to find, whether it&#8217;s longhouses, whether it&#8217;s yurts, whether it&#8217;s any kind of structures that would keep us warm for the winter,&#8221; said Lay Ha, who traveled to North Dakota from the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in late August and became part of the camp&#8217;s youth council.</p> <p>They&#8217;re staying partly out of suspicion: A temporary halt is, of course, just temporary. &#8220;As far as I can see, it&#8217;s just another way to lull us to sleep, make us go to sleep so we leave and then they&#8217;ll start again,&#8221; said Ista Hmi, an elder from Wanblee, South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation and a member of the Seven Council Fires. &#8220;The Missouri [River] here, it was poisoned already from the pesticides and all that but we were still able to clean it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But those are just topical compared to this oil. The oil, if it gets in here, it will start destroying the ecosystem underneath; it&#8217;ll be dead water.&#8221;</p> <p>Flags at Oceti Sakowin camp. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re protecting the water, we&#8217;re not protesters,&#8221; explained Lay Ha. To him, as to many others in the camp, that the action is led by Native people, that it is built around their belief in nonviolence and in the spirit of prayer, is vital. It is, to them, much more than a protest.</p> <p>Ha is Arapaho and Lakota on his father&#8217;s side and Eastern Shoshone on his mother&#8217;s; he is part of what has become the largest coming together of Native people in, many said, more than 100 years. The flags that flap overhead represent something more than a fight for clean water &#8212; they are a powerful statement of solidarity, a declaration of common interest.The first camp you pass once through the checkpoint is a small one on the side of the road overlooking the construction site. Further along, signs, flags and banners hang from the barbed-wire fence along the road. A massive banner declares &#8220;No DAPL!&#8221; Spray-painted on a concrete barrier are the words &#8220;Children Don&#8217;t Drink Oil.&#8221; Then emerges the breathtaking sight of what is now called the Oceti Sakowin camp: Flags from well over 200 Native nations and international supporters line the driveway into the camp, flapping in the high plains wind. People ride through the camp on horseback. At the entrance, when you drive in, you are greeted by security and a man with burning sage to smudge your car. Just beyond, at the main fire, a microphone is set up for speakers and performers: When we arrived, Joan Baez sat by the fire, singing &#8220;Blowin&#8217; in the Wind.&#8221;</p> <p>Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network was wearing a &#8220;No Fracking&#8221; T-shirt when I met her at the media tent, doing an interview alongside a delegation from Ecuador of indigenous people who have also fought the oil companies there. She is from northwestern North Dakota, the Fort Berthold reservation, and the oil that would travel through the Dakota Access Pipeline is extracted from her community. She came to Standing Rock for the formation of the original camp, known as the Sacred Stone camp, on LaDonna Allard&#8217;s land. At first, she remembered, the camp had anywhere from five to 30 people. Then, when Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the pipeline, put out notification that it was going to begin construction, the camp swelled to 200, then 700. It spilled over the river, into what was at first simply called the overflow camp. But as that camp grew, the campers began to feel it deserved its own name. Oceti Sakowin is the name for the Seven Council Fires, the political structure of what is known as the Great Sioux Nation. &#8220;We had for the first time in 200 years or more, the Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation coming together in one place to meet again,&#8221; Mossett said.</p> <p>An &#8220;updated&#8221; road sign. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>Faith Spotted Eagle is also part of the Seven Council Fires, from the Ihanktonwan or Yankton band. She too was there on what she remembered as a wintry, blowing day in April when the Sacred Stone camp first opened. An elder and grandmother, she had also been part of the successful fight against the Keystone XL Pipeline, and pointed out that the networks activated by that fight were coming together again in North Dakota. In 2013, she said, a dream of her grandmother sent her to look at the 1863 treaty between her people and the Pawnee. On the 150th anniversary of that treaty, Jan. 25, 2013, those nations, along with the Oglala and Ponca, signed the <a href="http://www.ienearth.org/international-treaty-to-protect-the-sacred-from-tar-sands-projects/" type="external">International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands Projects</a>. &#8220;In that treaty, we declared that forevermore we would be allies to stop this extractive move to destroy Mother Earth from the Boreal forest down to the Gulf,&#8221; she said. Since that time, other nations have joined, and the treaty was renewed with prayers and a donation to the Sacred Stone camp.</p> <p>&#8220;A lot of those networks, it took years for them to come together. Standing Rock will do the same thing for the next one. It is a progressive healing and learning,&#8221; Spotted Eagle continued. In the unlikely alliances that came together, from the Keystone XL fight to Standing Rock, with farmers and landowners joining their actions, she noted, &#8220;That was where the power was.&#8221;</p> <p>READ: <a href="" type="internal">Dakota Access Pipeline Protests Recall America&#8217;s Historical Shame</a></p> <p>To Dave Archambault II, the tribal chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, the struggle &#8212; and the response from indigenous people &#8212; is global. He greeted reporters Sept. 14 alongside the delegation from Ecuador. &#8220;We all have similar struggles, where this dependency this world has on fossil fuels is affecting and damaging Mother Earth,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It is the indigenous peoples who are standing up with that spirit, that awakening of that spirit and saying, &#8216;It is time to protect what is precious to us.&#8217;&#8221; Nina Gualinga, one of the Ecuadorian visitors, noted, &#8220;The world needs indigenous people. The statistics say that we are 4 percent of the world&#8217;s population, but we are protecting more than 80 percent of the world&#8217;s biodiversity.&#8221;</p> <p>A press conference with (from left to right) Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II, Ecuadorian environmental and indigenous rights activist Franco Viteri, Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network and Ecuadorian environmental and indigenous rights activist Nina Gualinga. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>In an age where courts have deemed corporate entities &#8220;persons&#8221; with legal rights, Spotted Eagle sees a certain symmetry in the encampment&#8217;s philosophy: &#8220;The corporations have become individuals, the privatization has given them rights of individuals to just go out and wreak havoc,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Well, the river has a right and that right is being infringed upon.&#8221;</p> <p>So do the people who live around it, she argues. &#8220;We are above all challenging the lack of consultation, of course, and the free prior and informed consent. Then, just our cultural freedom. We would never put a native pipeline underneath Arlington Cemetery,&#8221; Spotted Eagle added. But, she noted wryly, &#8220;It&#8217;s always a risk when you go into the courts. These courts are the courts of the conqueror.&#8221;</p> <p>Winter will be hard, Spotted Eagle concedes. She said she hopes &#8220;the outside world will help&#8221; with donations. But, she added: &#8220;The ones that will stay are really going to have to bear down and address their cooperation even deeper, because if you go wandering off by yourself, you can perish, literally, up here.&#8221;</p> <p>A sign along the highway near the construction site reads &#8220;Flint Stands with Standing Rock.&#8221; (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>That outside support from individuals and environmental groups, she said, should respect the leadership of the Native people.&#8221; The message to the big greens is, stand by us, don&#8217;t co-opt us. And sometimes, they have to stand behind us, because 4,000, 7,000 Indians is a lot of Indians.&#8221;</p> <p>Some of the campers were planning trips back and forth, while others were committed to staying. The nature of the camp has been to swell and shrink; on the weekends, Kandi Mossett said, it grows exponentially. The estimate of 7,000 at one time does not count all the people who have passed through briefly, bringing messages of solidarity from places like Charlotte, North Carolina and Flint, Michigan. &#8220;I have people calling me, emailing me every day: &#8216;I am going to be able to come out in two weeks, are you still going to be there?&#8217;&#8221; Mossett said. &#8220;I say, &#8216;Of course.&#8217;&#8221;</p> <p>For those who can&#8217;t make it to the camp, Mossett noted, there are other ways that supporters have <a href="http://m.democracynow.org/headlines/2016/9/9/46373" type="external">held actions</a> in solidarity with the camps. &#8220;We are targeting the <a href="http://littlesis.org/maps/1634-who-s-banking-on-the-dakota-access-pipeline" type="external">financers of this project</a>: the banks,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>There are <a href="http://rezpectourwater.com/" type="external">petitions</a>, Facebook pages for the <a href="https://m.facebook.com/SacredStoneCamp" type="external">Sacred Stone</a> and <a href="https://m.facebook.com/RedWarriorCamp/" type="external">Red Warrior</a> camps, and a call for Barack Obama to visit the camp. &#8220;We will welcome you, we will greet you, we will feed you, we will put up a tepee for you,&#8221; Mossett said.</p> <p>Kandi Mossett, on a hill overlooking the Oceti Sakowin camp. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>The long-term strategy, she said, is similar to that of the Keystone XL project. &#8220;They told us &#8216;You are crazy. It is a done deal.&#8217; They told us that about the Keystone XL and they are telling us that now about Dakota Access, that it is a done deal. We respectfully disagree.&#8221; If the permit is granted, she said, they will continue to hold the space, to risk arrest, to halt construction. &#8220;Companies and shareholders, they only have so much patience and they are losing money,&#8221; she noted. &#8220;That is the bottom line: money. The more we can delay them, the more we can stall them, the more we know we are winning.&#8221;</p> <p>The sentiments of Mossett and Spotted Eagle underscore what is perhaps most significant about the camps along the Cannonball River: What is happening here is something more than just a fight to stop a pipeline.The word I heard over and over again from the people I interviewed was &#8220;decolonize.&#8221;</p> <p>In the speak-outs and prayer circles, speaker after speaker, from the Pacific Northwest and from the Amazon, from New York to Arizona recalled the historic violence committed against Native American people not far from where the camp stood. Many recalled the <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/standing-rock-dakota-access-pipeline-protest/" type="external">Battle of the Greasy Grass</a>, what is taught to schoolchildren as the Battle of Little Bighorn, which <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/why-the-founder-of-standing-rock-sioux-camp-cant-forget-the-whitestone-massacre-20160903" type="external">LaDonna Allard wrote</a> was the last time the Oceti Sakowin came together. But for her and others, the massacres at Wounded Knee and Whitestone were closer to mind. It was the anniversary of the Whitestone massacre, where 250 women and children were killed by the US military, when <a href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/09/09/obama-hear-our-cry-lakota-women-call-president-stop-violence-165737" type="external">private security guards turned dogs on the protesters</a> at Standing Rock. It was Faith Spotted Eagle&#8217;s people, the Ihanktonwan, along with the Hunkpapa, that were killed there, and the use of police and security against peaceful protesters brought up those memories.</p> <p>Cement barriers painted with messages, such as &#8220;Children Don&#8217;t Drink Oil.&#8221; (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>The echoes of historic struggles were everywhere, and to Spotted Eagle, they were reminders that the fight for the water is just a part of the fight for an entire way of life that was nearly crushed. She was raised speaking Dakota, and counted herself lucky to have her language and the worldview that came with it. The grass-roots organizing that brought together the camp, she said, was helping the Standing Rock people and other tribal governments to look past the structures imposed on them by the process of colonization. &#8220;If we don&#8217;t stop and every single day examine how I have become like the colonizer, I asked my daughter, &#8216;What is going to happen someday if we lose our songs, if we lose our language and we no longer think like Natives?&#8217; She said, &#8216;Then the colonization process is complete.&#8217;&#8221;</p> <p>In the camp, they experimented with bringing back the long-ago structure of the Oceti Sakowin. &#8220;The second part of that struggle is to wade through the colonialism that has happened between then and now and to figure out, &#8216;What can we bring back with some modifications that will work for the people?&#8217;&#8221; she said. &#8220;There have been a lot of attempts to revive the Oceti Sakowin, but it hasn?&#8217;t happened because we didn?&#8217;t have a common focus.&#8221;</p> <p>A sign outside the Red Warrior Camp. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>The common struggle has in turn opened up a space for different people to come together and share their songs and dances, their prophecies and histories. The lack of good cell phone service, Lay Ha noted, forces people to be more present. &#8220;It just brings you back to the old days where you hear the language, you hear our culture, you get to see youth riding on horseback and it&#8217;s really a change, it&#8217;s really decolonizing ourselves.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;We are at the right point in time,&#8221; Spotted Eagle agreed. &#8220;We are free at this space in time.&#8221;</p> <p>READ: <a href="" type="internal">Water Is Life, Oil Is Death: The People vs. the Bakken Pipeline in Iowa and the Dakotas</a></p> <p>Walking around the camp, you pass singing circles and the kitchen &#8212; Tuesday night the menu was moose, brought all the way from Maine by a visitor to the camp. A nurse from the medic tent made rounds, making sure that people knew that at night, the Standing Rock ambulance parked on the grounds would leave but the medics would be on duty. Young children played volleyball and posed for photographs, finished from their day at school &#8212; a fully recognized school that teaches both the core curriculum so children at the camp won&#8217;t fall behind their schools at home, and also teaches songs and dances, languages and history, about the treaties and the fight for the water.</p> <p>The kitchen at the Oceti Sakowin camp. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>At night, campfires burned and tepees glowed, lit from within, as the open mic for speak-outs gave way to singing and dancing.</p> <p>&#8220;We have had a few growing pains, but that is to be expected when you go from 30 people to 1,000 people in two or three days,&#8221; Mossett said. &#8220;There are a lot of logistics behind the scenes, things that people don&#8217;t see. Where are people going to go to the bathroom? Bringing in porta potties. Waste disposal. It was a really beautiful thing to see the community step up on our own and say, &#8216;Did you forget we are sovereign nations? We are going to do this and make it happen.&#8217;&#8221;</p> <p>People walking to the construction site near the Missouri River, whose waters they are trying to protect. (Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyers.com)</p> <p>The coming together of the nations was something Mossett wanted for as long as she could remember, and that more than anything helped her envision a victory, not just against the Dakota Access Pipeline, not just against the whole extractive industry but for something much bigger.</p> <p>&#8220;This pipeline would have already been built if we hadn&#8217;t come out here, taken back the power for ourselves and said, &#8216;Hey, nobody is going to help us or protect us except for us,&#8217;&#8221; Mossett said. &#8220;I think it was the nonviolent direct actions. In fact, I know that it was the nonviolent direct actions that got us to this point.&#8221;</p>

Standing Firm at Standing Rock: Why the Struggle Is Bigger Than One Pipeline

https://truthdig.com/articles/standing-firm-at-standing-rock-why-the-struggle-is-bigger-than-one-pipeline/

2016-09-28

4left

By Sarah Jaffe Moyers ampamp Company A 8220speakout8221 on the road to the Dakota Access pipeline construction site earlier in September Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom The first sign that not everything is normal as you drive down Highway 1806 toward the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota is a checkpoint manned by camouflageclad National Guard troops The inspection on Sept 13 was perfunctory they simply asked if we knew 8220what was going on down the road8221 and then waved us through even though the car we rode in had 8220NoDAPL8221 chalked on its rear windshield 8220What is going on down the road8221 is a massive campin led by the Standing Rock nation aimed at blocking the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline the DAPL in question which would carry oil from the Bakken shale in North Dakota across several states and under the Missouri River What began with a small beachhead last April on the banks of the Cannonball River on land belonging to LaDonna Brave Bull Allard has expanded to both banks of the river and up the road to multiple camps that have housed as many as 7000 people from all over the world Because of them first the Obama administration and then a federal courtstepped in to temporarily halt construction of the pipeline near the campsite Still the people of Standing Rock and their thousands of supporters aren8217t declaring victory and folding their tents just yet Horseback riders march from the Oceti Sakowin Camp to the construction site Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom The legal struggles for a permanent shutdown of the pipeline construction continue the people of Standing Rock have filed a lawsuit to halt construction as has one of the South Dakota Native American nations and landowners in Iowa as well As the lawsuits proceed other members of the camp have been involved in nonviolent direct actions locking their arms around construction machinery to prevent digging Dozens have been arrested as part of those actions including 22 people on Sept 12 the day I arrived at the camp That was days after the Obama administration8217s call for a temporary halt to construction on the pipeline and a stark reminder that the struggle was not over READ Dakota Pipeline Would Make Water the New Oil Devastating All but the Rich In addition to the legal battles and the direct actions though the people of the Oceti Sakowin and Sacred Stone camps were preparing for another challenge a North Dakota winter Already at night the temperature drops to 40 degrees Fahrenheit deliveries of blankets and warm clothing were constant as was the chopping of wood for fires and discussion of what kinds of structures would allow the camps to stay in place through the bitter cold months ahead Oceti Sakowin camp Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom 8220We8217re already winterizing in all aspects of the camp young people working with the elders to find whether it8217s longhouses whether it8217s yurts whether it8217s any kind of structures that would keep us warm for the winter8221 said Lay Ha who traveled to North Dakota from the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in late August and became part of the camp8217s youth council They8217re staying partly out of suspicion A temporary halt is of course just temporary 8220As far as I can see it8217s just another way to lull us to sleep make us go to sleep so we leave and then they8217ll start again8221 said Ista Hmi an elder from Wanblee South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation and a member of the Seven Council Fires 8220The Missouri River here it was poisoned already from the pesticides and all that but we were still able to clean it8221 he said 8220But those are just topical compared to this oil The oil if it gets in here it will start destroying the ecosystem underneath it8217ll be dead water8221 Flags at Oceti Sakowin camp Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom 8220We8217re protecting the water we8217re not protesters8221 explained Lay Ha To him as to many others in the camp that the action is led by Native people that it is built around their belief in nonviolence and in the spirit of prayer is vital It is to them much more than a protest Ha is Arapaho and Lakota on his father8217s side and Eastern Shoshone on his mother8217s he is part of what has become the largest coming together of Native people in many said more than 100 years The flags that flap overhead represent something more than a fight for clean water 8212 they are a powerful statement of solidarity a declaration of common interestThe first camp you pass once through the checkpoint is a small one on the side of the road overlooking the construction site Further along signs flags and banners hang from the barbedwire fence along the road A massive banner declares 8220No DAPL8221 Spraypainted on a concrete barrier are the words 8220Children Don8217t Drink Oil8221 Then emerges the breathtaking sight of what is now called the Oceti Sakowin camp Flags from well over 200 Native nations and international supporters line the driveway into the camp flapping in the high plains wind People ride through the camp on horseback At the entrance when you drive in you are greeted by security and a man with burning sage to smudge your car Just beyond at the main fire a microphone is set up for speakers and performers When we arrived Joan Baez sat by the fire singing 8220Blowin8217 in the Wind8221 Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network was wearing a 8220No Fracking8221 Tshirt when I met her at the media tent doing an interview alongside a delegation from Ecuador of indigenous people who have also fought the oil companies there She is from northwestern North Dakota the Fort Berthold reservation and the oil that would travel through the Dakota Access Pipeline is extracted from her community She came to Standing Rock for the formation of the original camp known as the Sacred Stone camp on LaDonna Allard8217s land At first she remembered the camp had anywhere from five to 30 people Then when Energy Transfer Partners the company behind the pipeline put out notification that it was going to begin construction the camp swelled to 200 then 700 It spilled over the river into what was at first simply called the overflow camp But as that camp grew the campers began to feel it deserved its own name Oceti Sakowin is the name for the Seven Council Fires the political structure of what is known as the Great Sioux Nation 8220We had for the first time in 200 years or more the Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation coming together in one place to meet again8221 Mossett said An 8220updated8221 road sign Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom Faith Spotted Eagle is also part of the Seven Council Fires from the Ihanktonwan or Yankton band She too was there on what she remembered as a wintry blowing day in April when the Sacred Stone camp first opened An elder and grandmother she had also been part of the successful fight against the Keystone XL Pipeline and pointed out that the networks activated by that fight were coming together again in North Dakota In 2013 she said a dream of her grandmother sent her to look at the 1863 treaty between her people and the Pawnee On the 150th anniversary of that treaty Jan 25 2013 those nations along with the Oglala and Ponca signed the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands Projects 8220In that treaty we declared that forevermore we would be allies to stop this extractive move to destroy Mother Earth from the Boreal forest down to the Gulf8221 she said Since that time other nations have joined and the treaty was renewed with prayers and a donation to the Sacred Stone camp 8220A lot of those networks it took years for them to come together Standing Rock will do the same thing for the next one It is a progressive healing and learning8221 Spotted Eagle continued In the unlikely alliances that came together from the Keystone XL fight to Standing Rock with farmers and landowners joining their actions she noted 8220That was where the power was8221 READ Dakota Access Pipeline Protests Recall America8217s Historical Shame To Dave Archambault II the tribal chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux the struggle 8212 and the response from indigenous people 8212 is global He greeted reporters Sept 14 alongside the delegation from Ecuador 8220We all have similar struggles where this dependency this world has on fossil fuels is affecting and damaging Mother Earth8221 he said 8220It is the indigenous peoples who are standing up with that spirit that awakening of that spirit and saying 8216It is time to protect what is precious to us82178221 Nina Gualinga one of the Ecuadorian visitors noted 8220The world needs indigenous people The statistics say that we are 4 percent of the world8217s population but we are protecting more than 80 percent of the world8217s biodiversity8221 A press conference with from left to right Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II Ecuadorian environmental and indigenous rights activist Franco Viteri Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network and Ecuadorian environmental and indigenous rights activist Nina Gualinga Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom In an age where courts have deemed corporate entities 8220persons8221 with legal rights Spotted Eagle sees a certain symmetry in the encampment8217s philosophy 8220The corporations have become individuals the privatization has given them rights of individuals to just go out and wreak havoc8221 she said 8220Well the river has a right and that right is being infringed upon8221 So do the people who live around it she argues 8220We are above all challenging the lack of consultation of course and the free prior and informed consent Then just our cultural freedom We would never put a native pipeline underneath Arlington Cemetery8221 Spotted Eagle added But she noted wryly 8220It8217s always a risk when you go into the courts These courts are the courts of the conqueror8221 Winter will be hard Spotted Eagle concedes She said she hopes 8220the outside world will help8221 with donations But she added 8220The ones that will stay are really going to have to bear down and address their cooperation even deeper because if you go wandering off by yourself you can perish literally up here8221 A sign along the highway near the construction site reads 8220Flint Stands with Standing Rock8221 Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom That outside support from individuals and environmental groups she said should respect the leadership of the Native people8221 The message to the big greens is stand by us don8217t coopt us And sometimes they have to stand behind us because 4000 7000 Indians is a lot of Indians8221 Some of the campers were planning trips back and forth while others were committed to staying The nature of the camp has been to swell and shrink on the weekends Kandi Mossett said it grows exponentially The estimate of 7000 at one time does not count all the people who have passed through briefly bringing messages of solidarity from places like Charlotte North Carolina and Flint Michigan 8220I have people calling me emailing me every day 8216I am going to be able to come out in two weeks are you still going to be there82178221 Mossett said 8220I say 8216Of course82178221 For those who can8217t make it to the camp Mossett noted there are other ways that supporters have held actions in solidarity with the camps 8220We are targeting the financers of this project the banks8221 she said There are petitions Facebook pages for the Sacred Stone and Red Warrior camps and a call for Barack Obama to visit the camp 8220We will welcome you we will greet you we will feed you we will put up a tepee for you8221 Mossett said Kandi Mossett on a hill overlooking the Oceti Sakowin camp Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom The longterm strategy she said is similar to that of the Keystone XL project 8220They told us 8216You are crazy It is a done deal8217 They told us that about the Keystone XL and they are telling us that now about Dakota Access that it is a done deal We respectfully disagree8221 If the permit is granted she said they will continue to hold the space to risk arrest to halt construction 8220Companies and shareholders they only have so much patience and they are losing money8221 she noted 8220That is the bottom line money The more we can delay them the more we can stall them the more we know we are winning8221 The sentiments of Mossett and Spotted Eagle underscore what is perhaps most significant about the camps along the Cannonball River What is happening here is something more than just a fight to stop a pipelineThe word I heard over and over again from the people I interviewed was 8220decolonize8221 In the speakouts and prayer circles speaker after speaker from the Pacific Northwest and from the Amazon from New York to Arizona recalled the historic violence committed against Native American people not far from where the camp stood Many recalled the Battle of the Greasy Grass what is taught to schoolchildren as the Battle of Little Bighorn which LaDonna Allard wrote was the last time the Oceti Sakowin came together But for her and others the massacres at Wounded Knee and Whitestone were closer to mind It was the anniversary of the Whitestone massacre where 250 women and children were killed by the US military when private security guards turned dogs on the protesters at Standing Rock It was Faith Spotted Eagle8217s people the Ihanktonwan along with the Hunkpapa that were killed there and the use of police and security against peaceful protesters brought up those memories Cement barriers painted with messages such as 8220Children Don8217t Drink Oil8221 Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom The echoes of historic struggles were everywhere and to Spotted Eagle they were reminders that the fight for the water is just a part of the fight for an entire way of life that was nearly crushed She was raised speaking Dakota and counted herself lucky to have her language and the worldview that came with it The grassroots organizing that brought together the camp she said was helping the Standing Rock people and other tribal governments to look past the structures imposed on them by the process of colonization 8220If we don8217t stop and every single day examine how I have become like the colonizer I asked my daughter 8216What is going to happen someday if we lose our songs if we lose our language and we no longer think like Natives8217 She said 8216Then the colonization process is complete82178221 In the camp they experimented with bringing back the longago structure of the Oceti Sakowin 8220The second part of that struggle is to wade through the colonialism that has happened between then and now and to figure out 8216What can we bring back with some modifications that will work for the people82178221 she said 8220There have been a lot of attempts to revive the Oceti Sakowin but it hasn8217t happened because we didn8217t have a common focus8221 A sign outside the Red Warrior Camp Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom The common struggle has in turn opened up a space for different people to come together and share their songs and dances their prophecies and histories The lack of good cell phone service Lay Ha noted forces people to be more present 8220It just brings you back to the old days where you hear the language you hear our culture you get to see youth riding on horseback and it8217s really a change it8217s really decolonizing ourselves8221 8220We are at the right point in time8221 Spotted Eagle agreed 8220We are free at this space in time8221 READ Water Is Life Oil Is Death The People vs the Bakken Pipeline in Iowa and the Dakotas Walking around the camp you pass singing circles and the kitchen 8212 Tuesday night the menu was moose brought all the way from Maine by a visitor to the camp A nurse from the medic tent made rounds making sure that people knew that at night the Standing Rock ambulance parked on the grounds would leave but the medics would be on duty Young children played volleyball and posed for photographs finished from their day at school 8212 a fully recognized school that teaches both the core curriculum so children at the camp won8217t fall behind their schools at home and also teaches songs and dances languages and history about the treaties and the fight for the water The kitchen at the Oceti Sakowin camp Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom At night campfires burned and tepees glowed lit from within as the open mic for speakouts gave way to singing and dancing 8220We have had a few growing pains but that is to be expected when you go from 30 people to 1000 people in two or three days8221 Mossett said 8220There are a lot of logistics behind the scenes things that people don8217t see Where are people going to go to the bathroom Bringing in porta potties Waste disposal It was a really beautiful thing to see the community step up on our own and say 8216Did you forget we are sovereign nations We are going to do this and make it happen82178221 People walking to the construction site near the Missouri River whose waters they are trying to protect Sarah Jaffe for BillMoyerscom The coming together of the nations was something Mossett wanted for as long as she could remember and that more than anything helped her envision a victory not just against the Dakota Access Pipeline not just against the whole extractive industry but for something much bigger 8220This pipeline would have already been built if we hadn8217t come out here taken back the power for ourselves and said 8216Hey nobody is going to help us or protect us except for us82178221 Mossett said 8220I think it was the nonviolent direct actions In fact I know that it was the nonviolent direct actions that got us to this point8221

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<p>MIKE WHITNEY: Fed chairman Bernanke has been on a spree lately, delivering three speeches in the last two weeks. Every chance he gets, he talks tough about the strong dollar and &#8220;holding the line&#8221; against inflation. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson even said that &#8220;intervention&#8221; in the currency markets was still an option. Is all of this jawboning just saber rattling to keep the dollar from plummeting, or is there a chance that Bernanke actually will raise rates at the Fed&#8217;s August meeting?</p> <p>Michael Hudson: The United States always has steered its monetary policy almost exclusively with domestic objectives in mind. This means ignoring the balance of payments. Like the domestic U.S. economy itself, the global financial system also is all about getting a free lunch. When Europe and Asia receive excess dollars, these are turned over to their central banks, which have little alternative but to recycle these back to the United States by buying U.S. Treasury bonds. Foreign governments &#8211; and their taxpayers &#8211; are thus financing the domestic U.S. federal budget deficit, which itself stems largely from the war in Iraq that most foreign voters oppose.</p> <p>Supporting the dollar&#8217;s exchange rate by the traditional method of raising interest rates would have a very negative effect on the stock and bond markets &#8211; and on the mortgage market. This would lead foreign investors to sell U.S. securities, and likely would end up hurting more than helping the U.S. balance of payments and hence the dollar&#8217;s exchange rate.</p> <p>So Bernanke is merely being polite in not rubbing the faces of European and Asian governments in the fact that unless they are willing to make a structural break and change the world monetary system radically, they will remain powerless to avoid giving the United States a free ride &#8211; including a free ride for its military spending and war in the Near East.</p> <p>MIKE WHITNEY : How do you explain the soaring price of oil? Is it mainly a supply/demand issue or are speculators driving the prices up?</p> <p>Michael Hudson: It&#8217;s true that enormous amounts of speculative credit are going into commodity index funds. But bear in mind that as the dollar depreciates, OPEC countries have been holding back supply largely to stabilize their receipts in euros and to offset their losses on the dollar securities they have bought with their past export proceeds. For over 30 years they have been pressured to recycle their oil earnings into the U.S. stock market and loans to U.S. financial institutions. They have taken large losses on these investments (such as last year&#8217;s money to bail out Citibank), and are trying to recoup them via the oil market. OPEC officials also have pointed to a political motive: They resent America&#8217;s military intrusion in the Middle East, especially in view of how much it contributes to the nation&#8217;s balance-of-payments deficit and federal budget deficit.</p> <p>The U.S. press prefers to blame Chinese, Indian and other foreign growth in demand for oil and raw materials. This demand has contributed to the price rise, no doubt about it. But the U.S. oil majors are receiving a windfall &#8220;economic rent&#8221; on the price run-up, and are not at all unhappy to see it continue. By not building more refining and shipping capacity, they have created bottlenecks so that even if foreign countries did supply more crude oil, it would not be reflected in refined gasoline, kerosene or other downstream product prices.</p> <p>MIKE WHITNEY: The Fed has traded over $200 billion in US Treasuries with the big investment banks for a wide variety of dodgy collateral (mostly mortgage-backed securities). How can the banks possibly hope to repay the Fed when their main sources of revenue (structured investments) have been cut off? Are the banks secretly using the money they borrow via repos from the Fed to dabble in the carry trade or speculate in the futures markets?</p> <p>Michael Hudson: The Fed&#8217;s idea was merely to buy enough time for the banks to sell their junk mortgages to the proverbial &#8220;greater fool.&#8221; But foreign investors no longer are playing this role, nor are domestic U.S. pension funds. So the most likely result will be for the Fed simply to roll over its loans &#8211; as if the problem can be cured by yet more time.</p> <p>But when a bubble bursts, time makes things worse. The financial sector has been living in the short run for quite a while now, and I suspect that a lot of money managers are planning to get out or be fired now that the game is over. And it really is over. The Treasury&#8217;s attempt to reflate the real estate market has not worked, and it can&#8217;t work. Mortgage arrears, defaults and foreclosures are rising, and much property has become unsaleable except at distress prices that leave homeowners with negative equity. This state of affairs prompts them to do just what Donald Trump would do in such a situation: to walk away from their property.</p> <p>The banks are trying to win back their losses by arbitrage operations, borrowing from the Fed at a low interest rate and lending at a higher one, and gambling on options. But options and derivatives are a zero-sum game: one party&#8217;s gain is another&#8217;s loss. So the banks collectively are simply painting themselves into a deeper corner. They hope they can tell the Fed and Treasury to keep bailing them out or else they&#8217;ll fail and cost the FDIC even more money to make good on insuring the &#8220;bad savings&#8221; that have been steered into these bad debts and bad gambles.</p> <p>The Fed and Treasury certainly seem more willing to bail out the big financial institutions than to bail out savers, pensioners, social Security recipients and other small fry. They thus follow the traditional &#8220;Big fish eat little fish&#8221; principle of favoring the vested interests.</p> <p>MIKE WHITNEY: According to most estimates, the Fed has already gone through half or more of its $900 billion balance sheet. Also, according to the latest H.4.1 data &amp;#160;&#8220;the current holdings of Treasury bills is $25 billion. &amp;#160;This is down from some $250 billion a year ago, or a net reduction of 90 per cent.&#8221; (figures from Market Ticker) Doesn&#8217;t this suggest that the Fed is just about out of firepower when it comes to bailing out the struggling banking system? Where do we go from here? Will some of the larger banks be allowed to fail or will they be nationalized?</p> <p>Michael Hudson: You need to look at what the Treasury as well as the Fed is doing. The Fed can monetize whatever it wants. And as you just pointed out in the preceding question, it has been buying junk securities in order to leave sound Treasury securities on the banking system&#8217;s balance sheets. Government bailout credit will keep the big banks alive. But many small regional banks will go under and be merged into larger money-center banks &#8211; just as many brokerage firms in recent decades have been merged into larger conglomerates.</p> <p>False reporting also will help financial institutions avoid the appearance of insolvency. They will seek more and more government guarantees, ostensibly to help middle-class depositors but actually favoring the big speculators who are their major clients.</p> <p>What we are seeing is the creation of a highly concentrated financial oligarchy &#8211; precisely the power that the Glass-Steagall Act was designed to prevent. A combination of deregulation and &#8220;moral hazard&#8221; bailouts &#8211; for the top of the economic pyramid, not the bottom &#8211; will polarize the economy all the more.</p> <p>Cities and states will preserve their credit ratings by annulling their pension obligations to public-sector workers, and raising excise taxes &#8211; but not property taxes. These already have fallen from about two-thirds of local budgets in 1930 to only about one-sixth today &#8211; that is, a decline of 75 percent, proportionally. While the debt burden and the squeeze in disposable personal income is pressuring workers, finance and property are using the crisis to get a bonanza of tax relief. Democrats in Congress are as far to the right as George Bush on this, as their base is local politics and real estate.</p> <p>Mike Whtney: According to the Financial Times: &#8220;Analysts at Citigroup said a planned tightening of the rules regarding off-balance sheet vehicles would force banks to reconsider arrangements and could result in up to $5,000bn of assets coming back on to the books. The off-balance sheet vehicles have been used by financial institutions to keep some assets off their balance sheets, thereby avoiding the need to hold regulatory capital against them.&#8221; Is there any way the banks can find investors with &#8220;deep enough pockets&#8221; to provide the capital they need to meet the requirements on $5 trillion dollars? Are most of these off-balance sheets assets mortgage backed securities and other hard-to-value bonds?</p> <p>Michael Hudson: The practice of off-balance-sheet accounting already has become quickly obsolete this year. The United States is going to adopt Europe&#8217;s normal &#8220;covered bond&#8221; practice of bank head-office liability for mortgages and other loans. (The Wall Street Journal had a good article on this on June 17, anticipating that the U.S. covered bond market might rise quickly to $1 trillion as early as next year.)</p> <p>This coverage is what has given European banks protection. In view of the heavy losses of German banks in Saxony and D&#252;sseldorf in the U.S. subprime market last summer, it&#8217;s unlikely that investors will buy mortgages that no major bank or government agency stands behind.</p> <p>Regarding more investor bailouts, I don&#8217;t see that it makes sense to lend money to a bank today without getting preferential treatment over existing holders, plus secure collateral. Government guarantees might help, especially for foreign investors. But then, the dollar&#8217;s plunge is a problem here.</p> <p>MIKE WHITNEY: Many of the TV financial gurus &#8211;as well as Henry Paulson&#8211;keep assuring us that the worst is behind us, but I don&#8217;t see it. Foreclosures are increasing, the dollar is falling, unemployment is rising, manufacturing is sluggish, food and fuel are soaring, and consumers are backed up on their credit cards, student loans and house payments. Where would you say we are in the present cycle? What will it take to rebound from the current slump? Will the stock market take a beating before all this is over? What do you think the greatest problem facing the economy is; inflation or deflation?</p> <p>Michael Hudson: &amp;#160;The idea that we&#8217;re even in a business &#8220;cycle&#8221; is whistling in the dark. If we&#8217;re in a cycle, then that implies there&#8217;s an automatic recovery in store. This happy free-market idea was developed at the National Bureau of Economic Research by opponents of government regulatory policy. But the economy doesn&#8217;t move by a sine curve. There is a slow buildup, and a sudden plunge, so the shape is ratchet-shaped. This is why 19th-century writers didn&#8217;t speak of economic cycles, but rather of periodic financial crises.</p> <p>Today&#8217;s plunging real estate and stock market prices are not a self-correcting ebb and flow in which downturns set in motion automatic stabilizers that produce recovery. Each U.S. recovery since World War II has started out from a higher level of debt. The result is like driving a car with the brakes pressed more and more tightly. Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve flooded the banking system with enough credit to enable debts to be carried by borrowing against the rising price of homes and office buildings, corporate stocks and bonds. In effect, the interest charge was simply added onto the debt balance.</p> <p>But today, the prospects are dim for paying off debts out of further price gains for homes and real estate. Speculators have pulled out of the market &#8211; and as late as 2006 they accounted for about a sixth of new purchases. Asset-price inflation fueled by the Federal Reserve &#8211; is giving way to debt deflation. The United States and other countries have reached a limit in which scheduled interest and amortization absorb the entire economic surplus of so many individuals, companies and government bodies that new construction, investment and employment are grinding to a halt. Families, real estate investors and companies are obliged to use their entire disposable income to pay their creditors or face bankruptcy. This leaves them without enough money to sustain the living standards of recent years.</p> <p>This means that there won&#8217;t be a rebound, and it will take longer than 2009 to recover.</p> <p>MW: I read about 8 or 9 articles every day about the meltdown in housing. I always tell my wife that its like reading a Tom Clancy novel except the ending is less certain. As Yale economist Robert Schiller pointed out last month; the decline in prices is now greater than it was during the Great Depression. Will prices find a bottom in 2009 or will it take longer? If prices keep falling then how are the banks going to sell the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities that they are presently holding?&amp;#160;</p> <p>Michael Hudson: Prices will keep going down, because they have been fed by plunging interest rates, zero-amortization mortgages and low or zero (or even negative) down payments in recent years. That world has ended.</p> <p>It means that the banks can&#8217;t sell their mortgage-backed securities &#8211; except to the government, at a loss except to insiders. The actual losses are much worse than the present price statistics show, because many people are frozen in with negative equity. So instead of price declines, we&#8217;ll simply see many more foreclosures.</p> <p>Mike Whtiney: How serious is the current crisis in the financial markets and housing and what steps do you think Obama or McCain should take to stabilize the markets, reduce the deficits, strengthen the dollar, increase employment, and put the economy on solid footing? Is it possible to have a strong economy without policies that distribute the nation&#8217;s wealth more equitably? As chief economic advisor to Rep Dennis Kucinich, what one bit of advice would you give to Obama to restore America&#8217;s economic vitality and put the country on the right path again?</p> <p>Michael Hudson: In academic economic terms, America has never been in as &#8220;optimum&#8221; a position as it is today. That&#8217;s the bad news. An optimum position is, mathematically speaking, one in which you can&#8217;t move without making your situation worse. That&#8217;s the position we&#8217;re now in. There&#8217;s nowhere to move &#8211; at least within the existing structure. &#8220;The market&#8221; can&#8217;t be stabilized, because it was artificial to begin with, based on fictitious prices. It&#8217;s hard to impose fiction on reality for very long, and the rest of the world has woken up.</p> <p>In times past, bankruptcy would have wiped out the bad debts. The problem with debt write-offs is that bad savings go by the boards too. But today, the very wealthy hold most of the savings, so the government doesn&#8217;t want to have them take a loss. It would rather wipe out pensioners, consumers, workers, industrial companies and foreign investors. So debts will be kept on the books and the economy will slowly be strangled by debt deflation.</p> <p>The US can&#8217;t reduce the balance-of-payments deficit without scaling back its foreign military spending. Congress is refusing to let foreign governments invest in much besides overpriced junk here, so central banks are treating the dollar like a hot potato, trying to buy foreign assets that can play a role in their own future economic development.</p> <p>I think that at some point Obama will have to tell the public the bad news that restoring vitality will take radical measures &#8211; probably ones that Congress will try to water down so much that things are going to get worse &#8211; much worse &#8211; before the needed reforms will be made. He can say this before taking office, blaming the Republicans for their regressive tax policies and at the same time bringing pressure on the new Democratic Congress to back a return to progressive taxation and serious financial restructuring. As president, he will have to do what FDR did, and challenge the financial oligarchy with new government regulatory agencies staffed with real regulators, not deregulators as under the Bush-Clinton-Bush regime.</p> <p>He should make large depositors and &#8220;savers&#8221; take the losses on their bad bets. And he should repeal the Clinton repeal of Glass Steagall.</p> <p>Most of all, he will have to make the tax system back progressive again if the domestic market is Social Security and medical care should be paid out of the general budget, not as user fees. And until this change is done, FICA withholding should be levied on total income, without an upper cutoff point. There should be a LOWER cut-off point, however: Only people who earn over $60,000 a year should contribute. This would end up being fairly revenue-neutral. Pres. Obama should say that his policy is not to &#8220;soak the rich.&#8221; It is to make them pay their way once again by favoring a strong middle class.</p> <p>Unless he does this, what used to be a democracy will be turned into an oligarchy. And oligarchies historically are so short-sighted that they stifle the domestic economy, driving enterprise and emigration abroad. This threatens to reverse America&#8217;s long-term affluence, which means literally a flowing-in &#8211; an inflow of capital, of skilled immigrants and other labor, of technology, and of foreign support. All this has now been put in danger by the policies pursued at least since 1980.</p> <p>Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world&#8217;s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens &amp;amp; Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich&#8217;s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including <a href="" type="internal">Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire</a> (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, <a href="mailto:mh@michael-hudson.com" type="external">mh@michael-hudson.com</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">Your Ad Here</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

The Game is Over. There Won’t be a Rebound

https://counterpunch.org/2008/06/21/the-game-is-over-there-won-t-be-a-rebound/

2008-06-21

4left

MIKE WHITNEY Fed chairman Bernanke has been on a spree lately delivering three speeches in the last two weeks Every chance he gets he talks tough about the strong dollar and 8220holding the line8221 against inflation Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson even said that 8220intervention8221 in the currency markets was still an option Is all of this jawboning just saber rattling to keep the dollar from plummeting or is there a chance that Bernanke actually will raise rates at the Fed8217s August meeting Michael Hudson The United States always has steered its monetary policy almost exclusively with domestic objectives in mind This means ignoring the balance of payments Like the domestic US economy itself the global financial system also is all about getting a free lunch When Europe and Asia receive excess dollars these are turned over to their central banks which have little alternative but to recycle these back to the United States by buying US Treasury bonds Foreign governments 8211 and their taxpayers 8211 are thus financing the domestic US federal budget deficit which itself stems largely from the war in Iraq that most foreign voters oppose Supporting the dollar8217s exchange rate by the traditional method of raising interest rates would have a very negative effect on the stock and bond markets 8211 and on the mortgage market This would lead foreign investors to sell US securities and likely would end up hurting more than helping the US balance of payments and hence the dollar8217s exchange rate So Bernanke is merely being polite in not rubbing the faces of European and Asian governments in the fact that unless they are willing to make a structural break and change the world monetary system radically they will remain powerless to avoid giving the United States a free ride 8211 including a free ride for its military spending and war in the Near East MIKE WHITNEY How do you explain the soaring price of oil Is it mainly a supplydemand issue or are speculators driving the prices up Michael Hudson It8217s true that enormous amounts of speculative credit are going into commodity index funds But bear in mind that as the dollar depreciates OPEC countries have been holding back supply largely to stabilize their receipts in euros and to offset their losses on the dollar securities they have bought with their past export proceeds For over 30 years they have been pressured to recycle their oil earnings into the US stock market and loans to US financial institutions They have taken large losses on these investments such as last year8217s money to bail out Citibank and are trying to recoup them via the oil market OPEC officials also have pointed to a political motive They resent America8217s military intrusion in the Middle East especially in view of how much it contributes to the nation8217s balanceofpayments deficit and federal budget deficit The US press prefers to blame Chinese Indian and other foreign growth in demand for oil and raw materials This demand has contributed to the price rise no doubt about it But the US oil majors are receiving a windfall 8220economic rent8221 on the price runup and are not at all unhappy to see it continue By not building more refining and shipping capacity they have created bottlenecks so that even if foreign countries did supply more crude oil it would not be reflected in refined gasoline kerosene or other downstream product prices MIKE WHITNEY The Fed has traded over 200 billion in US Treasuries with the big investment banks for a wide variety of dodgy collateral mostly mortgagebacked securities How can the banks possibly hope to repay the Fed when their main sources of revenue structured investments have been cut off Are the banks secretly using the money they borrow via repos from the Fed to dabble in the carry trade or speculate in the futures markets Michael Hudson The Fed8217s idea was merely to buy enough time for the banks to sell their junk mortgages to the proverbial 8220greater fool8221 But foreign investors no longer are playing this role nor are domestic US pension funds So the most likely result will be for the Fed simply to roll over its loans 8211 as if the problem can be cured by yet more time But when a bubble bursts time makes things worse The financial sector has been living in the short run for quite a while now and I suspect that a lot of money managers are planning to get out or be fired now that the game is over And it really is over The Treasury8217s attempt to reflate the real estate market has not worked and it can8217t work Mortgage arrears defaults and foreclosures are rising and much property has become unsaleable except at distress prices that leave homeowners with negative equity This state of affairs prompts them to do just what Donald Trump would do in such a situation to walk away from their property The banks are trying to win back their losses by arbitrage operations borrowing from the Fed at a low interest rate and lending at a higher one and gambling on options But options and derivatives are a zerosum game one party8217s gain is another8217s loss So the banks collectively are simply painting themselves into a deeper corner They hope they can tell the Fed and Treasury to keep bailing them out or else they8217ll fail and cost the FDIC even more money to make good on insuring the 8220bad savings8221 that have been steered into these bad debts and bad gambles The Fed and Treasury certainly seem more willing to bail out the big financial institutions than to bail out savers pensioners social Security recipients and other small fry They thus follow the traditional 8220Big fish eat little fish8221 principle of favoring the vested interests MIKE WHITNEY According to most estimates the Fed has already gone through half or more of its 900 billion balance sheet Also according to the latest H41 data amp1608220the current holdings of Treasury bills is 25 billion amp160This is down from some 250 billion a year ago or a net reduction of 90 per cent8221 figures from Market Ticker Doesn8217t this suggest that the Fed is just about out of firepower when it comes to bailing out the struggling banking system Where do we go from here Will some of the larger banks be allowed to fail or will they be nationalized Michael Hudson You need to look at what the Treasury as well as the Fed is doing The Fed can monetize whatever it wants And as you just pointed out in the preceding question it has been buying junk securities in order to leave sound Treasury securities on the banking system8217s balance sheets Government bailout credit will keep the big banks alive But many small regional banks will go under and be merged into larger moneycenter banks 8211 just as many brokerage firms in recent decades have been merged into larger conglomerates False reporting also will help financial institutions avoid the appearance of insolvency They will seek more and more government guarantees ostensibly to help middleclass depositors but actually favoring the big speculators who are their major clients What we are seeing is the creation of a highly concentrated financial oligarchy 8211 precisely the power that the GlassSteagall Act was designed to prevent A combination of deregulation and 8220moral hazard8221 bailouts 8211 for the top of the economic pyramid not the bottom 8211 will polarize the economy all the more Cities and states will preserve their credit ratings by annulling their pension obligations to publicsector workers and raising excise taxes 8211 but not property taxes These already have fallen from about twothirds of local budgets in 1930 to only about onesixth today 8211 that is a decline of 75 percent proportionally While the debt burden and the squeeze in disposable personal income is pressuring workers finance and property are using the crisis to get a bonanza of tax relief Democrats in Congress are as far to the right as George Bush on this as their base is local politics and real estate Mike Whtney According to the Financial Times 8220Analysts at Citigroup said a planned tightening of the rules regarding offbalance sheet vehicles would force banks to reconsider arrangements and could result in up to 5000bn of assets coming back on to the books The offbalance sheet vehicles have been used by financial institutions to keep some assets off their balance sheets thereby avoiding the need to hold regulatory capital against them8221 Is there any way the banks can find investors with 8220deep enough pockets8221 to provide the capital they need to meet the requirements on 5 trillion dollars Are most of these offbalance sheets assets mortgage backed securities and other hardtovalue bonds Michael Hudson The practice of offbalancesheet accounting already has become quickly obsolete this year The United States is going to adopt Europe8217s normal 8220covered bond8221 practice of bank headoffice liability for mortgages and other loans The Wall Street Journal had a good article on this on June 17 anticipating that the US covered bond market might rise quickly to 1 trillion as early as next year This coverage is what has given European banks protection In view of the heavy losses of German banks in Saxony and D252sseldorf in the US subprime market last summer it8217s unlikely that investors will buy mortgages that no major bank or government agency stands behind Regarding more investor bailouts I don8217t see that it makes sense to lend money to a bank today without getting preferential treatment over existing holders plus secure collateral Government guarantees might help especially for foreign investors But then the dollar8217s plunge is a problem here MIKE WHITNEY Many of the TV financial gurus 8211as well as Henry Paulson8211keep assuring us that the worst is behind us but I don8217t see it Foreclosures are increasing the dollar is falling unemployment is rising manufacturing is sluggish food and fuel are soaring and consumers are backed up on their credit cards student loans and house payments Where would you say we are in the present cycle What will it take to rebound from the current slump Will the stock market take a beating before all this is over What do you think the greatest problem facing the economy is inflation or deflation Michael Hudson amp160The idea that we8217re even in a business 8220cycle8221 is whistling in the dark If we8217re in a cycle then that implies there8217s an automatic recovery in store This happy freemarket idea was developed at the National Bureau of Economic Research by opponents of government regulatory policy But the economy doesn8217t move by a sine curve There is a slow buildup and a sudden plunge so the shape is ratchetshaped This is why 19thcentury writers didn8217t speak of economic cycles but rather of periodic financial crises Today8217s plunging real estate and stock market prices are not a selfcorrecting ebb and flow in which downturns set in motion automatic stabilizers that produce recovery Each US recovery since World War II has started out from a higher level of debt The result is like driving a car with the brakes pressed more and more tightly Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve flooded the banking system with enough credit to enable debts to be carried by borrowing against the rising price of homes and office buildings corporate stocks and bonds In effect the interest charge was simply added onto the debt balance But today the prospects are dim for paying off debts out of further price gains for homes and real estate Speculators have pulled out of the market 8211 and as late as 2006 they accounted for about a sixth of new purchases Assetprice inflation fueled by the Federal Reserve 8211 is giving way to debt deflation The United States and other countries have reached a limit in which scheduled interest and amortization absorb the entire economic surplus of so many individuals companies and government bodies that new construction investment and employment are grinding to a halt Families real estate investors and companies are obliged to use their entire disposable income to pay their creditors or face bankruptcy This leaves them without enough money to sustain the living standards of recent years This means that there won8217t be a rebound and it will take longer than 2009 to recover MW I read about 8 or 9 articles every day about the meltdown in housing I always tell my wife that its like reading a Tom Clancy novel except the ending is less certain As Yale economist Robert Schiller pointed out last month the decline in prices is now greater than it was during the Great Depression Will prices find a bottom in 2009 or will it take longer If prices keep falling then how are the banks going to sell the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgagebacked securities that they are presently holdingamp160 Michael Hudson Prices will keep going down because they have been fed by plunging interest rates zeroamortization mortgages and low or zero or even negative down payments in recent years That world has ended It means that the banks can8217t sell their mortgagebacked securities 8211 except to the government at a loss except to insiders The actual losses are much worse than the present price statistics show because many people are frozen in with negative equity So instead of price declines we8217ll simply see many more foreclosures Mike Whtiney How serious is the current crisis in the financial markets and housing and what steps do you think Obama or McCain should take to stabilize the markets reduce the deficits strengthen the dollar increase employment and put the economy on solid footing Is it possible to have a strong economy without policies that distribute the nation8217s wealth more equitably As chief economic advisor to Rep Dennis Kucinich what one bit of advice would you give to Obama to restore America8217s economic vitality and put the country on the right path again Michael Hudson In academic economic terms America has never been in as 8220optimum8221 a position as it is today That8217s the bad news An optimum position is mathematically speaking one in which you can8217t move without making your situation worse That8217s the position we8217re now in There8217s nowhere to move 8211 at least within the existing structure 8220The market8221 can8217t be stabilized because it was artificial to begin with based on fictitious prices It8217s hard to impose fiction on reality for very long and the rest of the world has woken up In times past bankruptcy would have wiped out the bad debts The problem with debt writeoffs is that bad savings go by the boards too But today the very wealthy hold most of the savings so the government doesn8217t want to have them take a loss It would rather wipe out pensioners consumers workers industrial companies and foreign investors So debts will be kept on the books and the economy will slowly be strangled by debt deflation The US can8217t reduce the balanceofpayments deficit without scaling back its foreign military spending Congress is refusing to let foreign governments invest in much besides overpriced junk here so central banks are treating the dollar like a hot potato trying to buy foreign assets that can play a role in their own future economic development I think that at some point Obama will have to tell the public the bad news that restoring vitality will take radical measures 8211 probably ones that Congress will try to water down so much that things are going to get worse 8211 much worse 8211 before the needed reforms will be made He can say this before taking office blaming the Republicans for their regressive tax policies and at the same time bringing pressure on the new Democratic Congress to back a return to progressive taxation and serious financial restructuring As president he will have to do what FDR did and challenge the financial oligarchy with new government regulatory agencies staffed with real regulators not deregulators as under the BushClintonBush regime He should make large depositors and 8220savers8221 take the losses on their bad bets And he should repeal the Clinton repeal of Glass Steagall Most of all he will have to make the tax system back progressive again if the domestic market is Social Security and medical care should be paid out of the general budget not as user fees And until this change is done FICA withholding should be levied on total income without an upper cutoff point There should be a LOWER cutoff point however Only people who earn over 60000 a year should contribute This would end up being fairly revenueneutral Pres Obama should say that his policy is not to 8220soak the rich8221 It is to make them pay their way once again by favoring a strong middle class Unless he does this what used to be a democracy will be turned into an oligarchy And oligarchies historically are so shortsighted that they stifle the domestic economy driving enterprise and emigration abroad This threatens to reverse America8217s longterm affluence which means literally a flowingin 8211 an inflow of capital of skilled immigrants and other labor of technology and of foreign support All this has now been put in danger by the policies pursued at least since 1980 Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank now JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co Arthur Anderson and later at the Hudson Institute no relation In 1990 he helped established the world8217s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens ampamp Clark Dr Hudson was Dennis Kucinich8217s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign and has advised the US Canadian Mexican and Latvian governments as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research UNITAR A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri Kansas City UMKC he is the author of many books including Super Imperialism The Economic Strategy of American Empire new ed Pluto Press 2002 He can be reached via his website mhmichaelhudsoncom amp160 amp160 amp160 Your Ad Here amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

MIKE/PROPN WHITNEY/PROPN Fed/PROPN chairman/NOUN Bernanke/PROPN has/AUX been/AUX on/ADP a/DET spree/NOUN lately/ADV delivering/VERB three/NUM speeches/NOUN in/ADP the/DET last/ADJ two/NUM weeks/NOUN Every/DET chance/NOUN he/PRON gets/VERB he/PRON talks/VERB tough/ADJ about/ADP the/DET strong/ADJ dollar/NOUN and/CCONJ 8220holding/VERB the/DET line8221/NOUN against/ADP inflation/NOUN Treasury/PROPN Secretary/PROPN Henry/PROPN Paulson/PROPN even/ADV said/VERB that/SCONJ 8220intervention8221/NOUN in/ADP the/DET currency/NOUN markets/NOUN was/AUX still/ADV an/DET option/NOUN Is/AUX all/PRON of/ADP this/DET jawboning/NOUN just/ADV saber/NOUN rattling/VERB to/PART keep/VERB the/DET dollar/NOUN from/ADP plummeting/VERB or/CCONJ is/AUX there/PRON a/DET chance/NOUN that/SCONJ Bernanke/PROPN actually/ADV will/AUX raise/VERB rates/NOUN at/ADP the/DET Fed8217s/PROPN August/PROPN meeting/NOUN Michael/PROPN Hudson/PROPN The/DET United/PROPN States/PROPN always/ADV has/AUX steered/VERB its/PRON 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<p>How many more get-out-of-jail free cards does Karl Rove get? Eat your heart out Martha Stewart. You should have tried playing Monopoly with the G-Men.</p> <p>On October 28 2005, the office of the Special Prosecutor released a press statement which stated in part:</p> <p>&#8220;A major focus of the grand jury investigation was to determine which government officials had disclosed to the media prior to July 14, 2003, information concerning Valerie Wilson&#8217;s CIA affiliation, and the nature, timing, extent, and purpose of such disclosures, as well as whether any official made such a disclosure knowing that Valerie Wilson&#8217;s employment by the CIA was classified information.&#8221;</p> <p>Somebody needs to inform Fitzgerald that &#8220;we got em.&#8221; Kind of like Bush in Poland when he announced finding two trailers in Iraq and said that they had found the WMDs that Colin Powell had referred to in his speech at the UN.</p> <p>Hey Mr Fitzgerald, as for those government officials you&#8217;ve been looking for, we found em. Surprise, surprise, its Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.</p> <p>When reading the criminal indictment against Libby, its clear that Karl Rove and Libby each told reporters about Valerie Plame&#8217;s status as a CIA agent before Novak&#8217;s column was published, albeit Libby did it first on June 23, 2003, when he told Judy Miller from the New York Times.</p> <p>That is, first as far as we know anyways, because after close to a 3-year tax dollar funded investigation, it has since been revealed that Bob Woodward, of the Washington Post, was told of Valerie&#8217;s CIA status reportedly before Libby and Rove made the revelations to Miller, Cooper or Novak.</p> <p>But as the law applies to Libby and Rove, it doesn&#8217;t matter who leaked first, because they still violated the &#8220;Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement,&#8221; Form SF-312, that they signed as a condition of employment which prohibits even confirming or repeating classified information already leaked. The briefing book that comes with the form states in relevant part:</p> <p>Before confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.</p> <p>By now, a lot of people are wondering why it is that Libby is arrested and Rove is not. It&#8217;s probably due to a variety of reasons.</p> <p>On August 13, 2005, journalist, Murray Waas, reported that back in 2003, officials from the Justice Department and the FBI recommended the appointment of a special prosecutor because they felt that Rove had not been truthful about his conversation with Cooper, nor in claiming that he had first heard of Valerie&#8217;s identity from a reporter whose name he could not remember.</p> <p>At the time, Rove maintained that he had only spoken about Valerie to reporters after her identity had already become public. But we now know that Rove and Libby were the sources for Cooper&#8217;s article in Time Magazine, published 3 days after Novak&#8217;s column which cited unnamed government officials, when describing Valerie as a &#8220;CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.&#8221;</p> <p>So again why is Libby the only one arrested? His only variation from the agreed upon talking points was when he added the name Tim Russert to &#8220;the reporter-told-me&#8221; story, while Rove stuck to the line that he could not remember the reporter,s name.</p> <p>For one thing, when the investigation began, I suspect that it&#8217;s highly unlikely that Libby had any of the top dogs at the Justice Department in his back pocket. Whereas Rove reportedly raked in over $750,000 in consulting fees for working on prior campaigns for John Ashcroft, the reigning Attorney General at the time, and with a political hatchet man like Rove involved, who knows how many skeletons could be buried along those campaign trails.</p> <p>Ashcroft is said to have been briefed on at least one of Rove&#8217;s interviews with the FBI. That briefing probably led to the first get-out-of-jail-free card for Rove.</p> <p>But even with the FBI breathing down his neck, in February 2004, Rove twice went before the grand jury and lied through his teeth. He refused to admit that he had spoken to Novak about Valerie before she was outed, and he denied talking with Cooper period.</p> <p>However, on December 2, 2005, the New York Times, reported that a conversation between Rove&#8217;s lawyer and &#8220;a journalist for Time magazine led Mr. Rove to change his testimony last year to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case.&#8221;</p> <p>Which means Rove received another get-out-of-jail-free card in this instance.</p> <p>According to Time Magazine journalist, Viveca Novak&#8217;s article titled, &#8220;What Viveca Novak Told Fitzgerald,&#8221; on December 10, 2003, her visits and conversations Attorney Robert Luskin began innocently enough.</p> <p>&#8220;In October 2003, as we each made our way through a glass of wine, he asked me what I was working on,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;I told him I was trying to get a handle on the Valerie Plame leak investigation,&#8221; Viveca said.</p> <p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; Luskin reportedly told her, &#8220;you&#8217;re sitting next to Karl Rove&#8217;s lawyer.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I began spending a little more time than usual with Luskin as I tried to keep track of the investigation,&#8221; Viveca explained.</p> <p>Sometime during the week of October 18, 2005, which Viveca refers to as &#8220;indictment week,&#8221; she says, Luskin &#8220;phoned me and said he had disclosed to Fitzgerald the content of a conversation he and I had had at Cafe Deluxe more than a year earlier and that Fitzgerald might want to talk to me.&#8221;</p> <p>According to Viveca, she did meet with Fitzgerald on November 10, 2005, for about two hours after her attorney advised Fitzgerald that she would discuss only her interactions with Luskin that were relevant to the conversation in question, with no &#8220;fishing expeditions, no questions about my other reporting or sources in the case,&#8221; she wrote.</p> <p>Fitzgerald agreed to the conditions, she said, and advised her lawyer that he wanted to &#8220;remove the chicken bone without disturbing the body.&#8221;</p> <p>During the meeting, Fitzgerald asked if Luskin had ever talked to Viveca about whether Rove was Cooper&#8217;s source on the topic of Wilson&#8217;s wife.</p> <p>&#8220;That was the &#8220;chicken bone&#8221; Fitzgerald had referred to,&#8221; Viveca wrote.</p> <p>Here is what happened according to her first-person account of her visits with Luskin as to what was discussed about Rove and Cooper:</p> <p>&#8220;Toward the end of one of our meetings,&#8221; she said, &#8220;I remember Luskin looking at me and saying something to the effect of &#8220;Karl doesn&#8217;t have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I responded instinctively,&#8221; Viveca wrote, &#8220;thinking he was trying to spin me, and said something like, &#8220;Are you sure about that? That&#8217;s not what I hear around TIME.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;He looked surprised and very serious,&#8221; she said. &#8220;There&#8217;s nothing in the phone logs,&#8221; Luskin told Viveca.</p> <p>&#8220;In the course of the investigation, the logs of all Rove&#8217;s calls around the July 2003 time period,&#8221; Viveca wrote, &#8220;had been combed, and Luskin was telling me there were no references to Matt.&#8221;</p> <p>Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, its apparent that Rove realized the importance of covering his tracks while he was leaking to reporters in the summer of 2003. Here lies the missing link to this puzzle.</p> <p>In a November 28, 2005, article in Raw Story, Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna, who have doggedly investigated this matter, reported that Rove,s former personal assistant, Susan Ralston, whose job it was to screen Rove,s phone calls at the White House, had previously testified that Cooper,s call to Rove was not logged in because Cooper had called through the White House switchboard and was transferred to Rove,s office, as opposed to calling Rove,s office directly.</p> <p>But citing &#8220;those close to the probe, the Raw Story article noted, &#8220;that Fitzgerald obtained documentary evidence showing that other unrelated calls transferred to Rove,s office by the switchboard were logged.</p> <p>In addition, in a July 25, 2005, Time Magazine article titled, &#8220;What I Told The Grand Jury,&#8221; Cooper recounts his recollection of what happened when he called the White House.</p> <p>&#8220;I recall calling Rove from my office at TIME magazine,&#8221; Cooper wrote, &#8220;through the White House switchboard and being transferred to his office.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn&#8217;t there or was busy before going on vacation,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;But then, I recall,&#8221; Cooper said, &#8220;she said something like, &#8220;Hang on,&#8221; and I was transferred to him.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I recall,&#8221; Cooper wrote, &#8220;saying something like, &#8220;I&#8217;m writing about Wilson,&#8221; before he interjected, &#8220;Don&#8217;t get too far out on Wilson.&#8221;</p> <p>No doubt in light of these discoveries, Fitzgerald invited Ms Ralston for a return engagement with the grand jury.</p> <p>According to Raw Story, while testifying the second time, Ralston said that Rove instructed her not to log in the call from Cooper and she also provided information about other calls between Rove and reporters, including Robert Novak.</p> <p>It should be noted here that Ms Ralston was hired by Rove after she came highly recommended from his good friend: Jack Abramoff, for whom Ms Ralston performed similar duties &#8220;&#8211; that is until Abramoff realized she&#8217;d be far more useful embedded in the West Wing,&#8221; according to Rolling Stone Magazine.</p> <p>After his chat with Viveca, Attorney Luskin reportedly orchestrated a search for any record of a conversation between Rove and Cooper and low and behold, an e-mail from Rove to senior White House official, Stephen Hadley surfaced, that provided detail of a conversation between Rove and Cooper that took place before Valerie was outed by Robert Novak.</p> <p>There has been much speculation about when the Rove-Hadley email was found and when it was turned over to Fitzgerald. In her December 19, article, Viveca claims that she did not find out until the fall of 2005, that her remark to Luskin had led to a search for evidence that Rove and Cooper had talked.</p> <p>&#8220;According to Luskin,&#8221; Viveca wrote in the article, &#8220;he turned the e-mail over to Fitzgerald when he found it, leading Rove to acknowledge before the grand jury in October 2004 that he had indeed spoken with Cooper.&#8221;</p> <p>The fact that Rove was not charged on the spot for this slick trick, shows that he got another get-out-of-jail-free card because he had been ordered to turn over all emails to the special prosecutor just like everyone else in the White House.</p> <p>&#8220;On October 3, 2003,&#8221; according to a memo authored by Andy Card, then White House Chief of Staff, &#8220;every employee in the Executive Office of the President received instructions from Counsel&#8217;s office about obligations to search for and provide documents that may be related to the Justice Department&#8217;s investigation.&#8221;</p> <p>In addition, the subpoenas issued by Fitzgerald to the White House called for, among other things:</p> <p>1) All documents from February 1, 2002 through 2003 related to Plame, Wilson&#8217;s trip to Niger, or to contacts with journalists.</p> <p>2) All documents from July 6 to July 21, 2003 from the White House Iraq Group (of which Libby, Hadley, and Rove were members).</p> <p>3) All documents relating to conversations with Matt Cooper of Time Magazine.</p> <p>According to reporter, Jason Leopold, neither Hadley nor Rove disclosed the communication about Valerie when they were questioned by the FBI, or testified to the grand jury.</p> <p>Rove said that he found out about Valerie from reporters, and, &#8220;Hadley testified that he recalled learning about Plame Wilson when her name was published in a newspaper column,&#8221; Leopold said.</p> <p>As it turns out, the email to Hadley was sent within minutes after Rove spoke to Cooper on July 11, 2003, and included the comments: &#8220;Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he,s got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn,t this damaging? Hasn,t the president been hurt? I didn,t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn,t get Time far out in front on this.</p> <p>In February 2006, Fitzgerald informed Libby&#8217;s attorneys that the White House had turned over about 250 pages of previously undisclosed e-mails from the Cheney&#8217;s office, which have no doubt provided hours of interesting reading for the prosecutor&#8217;s team.</p> <p>With his feet to the fire, on October 15, 2004, Rove marched back into the grand jury to change his story and say that he must have discussed Valerie with Cooper after all, because the e-mail established that he had in fact had a conversation with Cooper.</p> <p>That day, Viveca Novak wrote a web exclusive for Time and quoted her drinking buddy, Luskin as saying: &#8220;My client appeared voluntarily before the grand jury and has cooperated with the investigation since it began.&#8221;</p> <p>In the article, Viveca mentions a question to which she knows the answer but doesn&#8217;t share it with her readers. &#8220;Fitzgerald is trying to find out who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative married to former ambassador Joe Wilson, to several journalists in July 2003,&#8221; she wrote.</p> <p>In December 2005, Luskin testified that his meeting with Viveca where he learned about the Rove-Cooper connection, took place in late January or early February 2004, the same month in which Rove had reportedly testified twice and Fitzgerald had sought the authority to prosecute officials if they were found to have obstructed his investigation.</p> <p>However the problem is that Viveca, says she thinks the conversation took place in either March or May 2004.</p> <p>But a more pressing dilemma for Viveca personally, has turned out to be that she continued to write articles on the leak case without informing her boss at Time Magazine about her insider knowledge of the facts.</p> <p>According to the April 27, 2006, New York Times, Viveca no longer works for Time. &#8220;She left the magazine after a dispute over her role in the case,&#8221; the NYT&#8217;s said, &#8220;taking a buyout package last month.&#8221;</p> <p>So it looks like another journalist bites the dust in the wake of the illegal conduct by the White House. After a 20-some year tenure, Judy Miller got the boot from the New York Times for not revealing her involvement with the Libby to her boss. Bob Novak got hot under the collar when asked a question about his part in the case and walked of a live broadcast on CNN and got canned, and even Bob Woodward is said to have fallen off his pedestal at the Washington Post.</p> <p>Yet as the body-count rises, Karl Rove is always seen smiling like a cat that just ate a canary and knows he got away with it.</p> <p>Why Rove waited some five or six months to correct his testimony with the grand jury is said to be a mystery but it may simply be that when Luskin gave him the news that he was busted, Cooper was still refusing to identify Rove as his source and so he decided to run out the clock and bet the farm.</p> <p>What could he lose? The odds were good. The Supreme Court had certainly demonstrated its allegiance to the Bush team in the past.</p> <p>When the lower court ordered Cooper to testify, just as expected, Time appealed the decision all the way to the High Court but was unsuccessful.</p> <p>But in this case, Rove had the most to lose.</p> <p>On July 13, 2005, Cooper appeared before the grand jury and informed the panel that Rove was the official who told him that Valerie was employed at the CIA, and the panel already knew that Libby was the other source.</p> <p>According to Cooper, his conversation with Rove was the first time he had heard anything about Wilson,s wife. In addition, Rove had told Cooper that more information that would discredit Wilson and his findings in Niger would soon be declassified.</p> <p>In a July 25, 2005, article discussing his testimony, in Time Magazine, Cooper wrote: &#8220;Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson&#8217;s wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Did Rove say that she worked at the &#8216;agency&#8217; on &#8216;W.M.D.&#8217;? Yes,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; Cooper wrote.</p> <p>Cooper also told the grand jury that he had a distinct memory of Rove ending the phone call by saying, &#8220;I,ve already said too much.</p> <p>Over this time period, Rove got dealt a whole deck of get-out-of-jail-free cards.</p> <p>After it became known that Rove was indeed Cooper&#8217;s secret source, on July 15, 2005, ninety-one Democrats in Congress signed a letter to Bush calling for Rove to explain his role in the leak, or to resign and 13 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for hearings on the matter.</p> <p>When the Libby indictment was issued, and it became known that Rove had definitely participated in blowing Valerie&#8217;s cover, 16 former CIA and military intelligence officials petitioned Bush to suspend Rove&#8217;s security clearance and Bush refused to grant their request.</p> <p>Karl Rove still has security clearance to this very day.</p> <p>The granting of this free pass becomes all the more obvious when compared to what happened to former Clinton advisor, Sandy Berger, in 2003, when he took classified documents from the National Archives, to prepare to testify before the 9/11 Commission. In order to settle the case, Berger had to plead guilty to mishandling of documents in violation of the Espionage Act, and his security clearance was suspended for 3 years.</p> <p>In the grand jury sessions, press aides were reportedly confronted with internal White House documents, mainly e-mails and telephone logs, between White House aides and reporters and were questioned about conversations with reporters.</p> <p>According to the New York Times, the set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by none other than Scooter Libby.</p> <p>The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to Novak shortly before the appearance of his July 14 column, the Washington Post reported.</p> <p>That said, it should be interesting to see how many more get-out-of-jail-free cards Fitzgerald has up his sleeve and how they get distributed.</p> <p>EVELYN PRINGLE is an investigative reporter. She can be reached at: <a href="mailto:evelyn.pringle@sbcglobal.net" type="external">evelyn.pringle@sbcglobal.net</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Rove and Fitzgerald Play Monopoly

https://counterpunch.org/2006/05/13/rove-and-fitzgerald-play-monopoly/

2006-05-13

4left

How many more getoutofjail free cards does Karl Rove get Eat your heart out Martha Stewart You should have tried playing Monopoly with the GMen On October 28 2005 the office of the Special Prosecutor released a press statement which stated in part 8220A major focus of the grand jury investigation was to determine which government officials had disclosed to the media prior to July 14 2003 information concerning Valerie Wilson8217s CIA affiliation and the nature timing extent and purpose of such disclosures as well as whether any official made such a disclosure knowing that Valerie Wilson8217s employment by the CIA was classified information8221 Somebody needs to inform Fitzgerald that 8220we got em8221 Kind of like Bush in Poland when he announced finding two trailers in Iraq and said that they had found the WMDs that Colin Powell had referred to in his speech at the UN Hey Mr Fitzgerald as for those government officials you8217ve been looking for we found em Surprise surprise its Scooter Libby and Karl Rove When reading the criminal indictment against Libby its clear that Karl Rove and Libby each told reporters about Valerie Plame8217s status as a CIA agent before Novak8217s column was published albeit Libby did it first on June 23 2003 when he told Judy Miller from the New York Times That is first as far as we know anyways because after close to a 3year tax dollar funded investigation it has since been revealed that Bob Woodward of the Washington Post was told of Valerie8217s CIA status reportedly before Libby and Rove made the revelations to Miller Cooper or Novak But as the law applies to Libby and Rove it doesn8217t matter who leaked first because they still violated the 8220Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement8221 Form SF312 that they signed as a condition of employment which prohibits even confirming or repeating classified information already leaked The briefing book that comes with the form states in relevant part Before confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has in fact been declassified If it has not confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure By now a lot of people are wondering why it is that Libby is arrested and Rove is not It8217s probably due to a variety of reasons On August 13 2005 journalist Murray Waas reported that back in 2003 officials from the Justice Department and the FBI recommended the appointment of a special prosecutor because they felt that Rove had not been truthful about his conversation with Cooper nor in claiming that he had first heard of Valerie8217s identity from a reporter whose name he could not remember At the time Rove maintained that he had only spoken about Valerie to reporters after her identity had already become public But we now know that Rove and Libby were the sources for Cooper8217s article in Time Magazine published 3 days after Novak8217s column which cited unnamed government officials when describing Valerie as a 8220CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction8221 So again why is Libby the only one arrested His only variation from the agreed upon talking points was when he added the name Tim Russert to 8220the reportertoldme8221 story while Rove stuck to the line that he could not remember the reporters name For one thing when the investigation began I suspect that it8217s highly unlikely that Libby had any of the top dogs at the Justice Department in his back pocket Whereas Rove reportedly raked in over 750000 in consulting fees for working on prior campaigns for John Ashcroft the reigning Attorney General at the time and with a political hatchet man like Rove involved who knows how many skeletons could be buried along those campaign trails Ashcroft is said to have been briefed on at least one of Rove8217s interviews with the FBI That briefing probably led to the first getoutofjailfree card for Rove But even with the FBI breathing down his neck in February 2004 Rove twice went before the grand jury and lied through his teeth He refused to admit that he had spoken to Novak about Valerie before she was outed and he denied talking with Cooper period However on December 2 2005 the New York Times reported that a conversation between Rove8217s lawyer and 8220a journalist for Time magazine led Mr Rove to change his testimony last year to the grand jury in the CIA leak case8221 Which means Rove received another getoutofjailfree card in this instance According to Time Magazine journalist Viveca Novak8217s article titled 8220What Viveca Novak Told Fitzgerald8221 on December 10 2003 her visits and conversations Attorney Robert Luskin began innocently enough 8220In October 2003 as we each made our way through a glass of wine he asked me what I was working on8221 she wrote 8220I told him I was trying to get a handle on the Valerie Plame leak investigation8221 Viveca said 8220Well8221 Luskin reportedly told her 8220you8217re sitting next to Karl Rove8217s lawyer8221 8220I began spending a little more time than usual with Luskin as I tried to keep track of the investigation8221 Viveca explained Sometime during the week of October 18 2005 which Viveca refers to as 8220indictment week8221 she says Luskin 8220phoned me and said he had disclosed to Fitzgerald the content of a conversation he and I had had at Cafe Deluxe more than a year earlier and that Fitzgerald might want to talk to me8221 According to Viveca she did meet with Fitzgerald on November 10 2005 for about two hours after her attorney advised Fitzgerald that she would discuss only her interactions with Luskin that were relevant to the conversation in question with no 8220fishing expeditions no questions about my other reporting or sources in the case8221 she wrote Fitzgerald agreed to the conditions she said and advised her lawyer that he wanted to 8220remove the chicken bone without disturbing the body8221 During the meeting Fitzgerald asked if Luskin had ever talked to Viveca about whether Rove was Cooper8217s source on the topic of Wilson8217s wife 8220That was the 8220chicken bone8221 Fitzgerald had referred to8221 Viveca wrote Here is what happened according to her firstperson account of her visits with Luskin as to what was discussed about Rove and Cooper 8220Toward the end of one of our meetings8221 she said 8220I remember Luskin looking at me and saying something to the effect of 8220Karl doesn8217t have a Cooper problem He was not a source for Matt8221 8220I responded instinctively8221 Viveca wrote 8220thinking he was trying to spin me and said something like 8220Are you sure about that That8217s not what I hear around TIME8221 8220He looked surprised and very serious8221 she said 8220There8217s nothing in the phone logs8221 Luskin told Viveca 8220In the course of the investigation the logs of all Rove8217s calls around the July 2003 time period8221 Viveca wrote 8220had been combed and Luskin was telling me there were no references to Matt8221 Looking back with 2020 hindsight its apparent that Rove realized the importance of covering his tracks while he was leaking to reporters in the summer of 2003 Here lies the missing link to this puzzle In a November 28 2005 article in Raw Story Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna who have doggedly investigated this matter reported that Roves former personal assistant Susan Ralston whose job it was to screen Roves phone calls at the White House had previously testified that Coopers call to Rove was not logged in because Cooper had called through the White House switchboard and was transferred to Roves office as opposed to calling Roves office directly But citing 8220those close to the probe the Raw Story article noted 8220that Fitzgerald obtained documentary evidence showing that other unrelated calls transferred to Roves office by the switchboard were logged In addition in a July 25 2005 Time Magazine article titled 8220What I Told The Grand Jury8221 Cooper recounts his recollection of what happened when he called the White House 8220I recall calling Rove from my office at TIME magazine8221 Cooper wrote 8220through the White House switchboard and being transferred to his office8221 8220I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn8217t there or was busy before going on vacation8221 he said 8220But then I recall8221 Cooper said 8220she said something like 8220Hang on8221 and I was transferred to him8221 8220I recall8221 Cooper wrote 8220saying something like 8220I8217m writing about Wilson8221 before he interjected 8220Don8217t get too far out on Wilson8221 No doubt in light of these discoveries Fitzgerald invited Ms Ralston for a return engagement with the grand jury According to Raw Story while testifying the second time Ralston said that Rove instructed her not to log in the call from Cooper and she also provided information about other calls between Rove and reporters including Robert Novak It should be noted here that Ms Ralston was hired by Rove after she came highly recommended from his good friend Jack Abramoff for whom Ms Ralston performed similar duties 82208211 that is until Abramoff realized she8217d be far more useful embedded in the West Wing8221 according to Rolling Stone Magazine After his chat with Viveca Attorney Luskin reportedly orchestrated a search for any record of a conversation between Rove and Cooper and low and behold an email from Rove to senior White House official Stephen Hadley surfaced that provided detail of a conversation between Rove and Cooper that took place before Valerie was outed by Robert Novak There has been much speculation about when the RoveHadley email was found and when it was turned over to Fitzgerald In her December 19 article Viveca claims that she did not find out until the fall of 2005 that her remark to Luskin had led to a search for evidence that Rove and Cooper had talked 8220According to Luskin8221 Viveca wrote in the article 8220he turned the email over to Fitzgerald when he found it leading Rove to acknowledge before the grand jury in October 2004 that he had indeed spoken with Cooper8221 The fact that Rove was not charged on the spot for this slick trick shows that he got another getoutofjailfree card because he had been ordered to turn over all emails to the special prosecutor just like everyone else in the White House 8220On October 3 20038221 according to a memo authored by Andy Card then White House Chief of Staff 8220every employee in the Executive Office of the President received instructions from Counsel8217s office about obligations to search for and provide documents that may be related to the Justice Department8217s investigation8221 In addition the subpoenas issued by Fitzgerald to the White House called for among other things 1 All documents from February 1 2002 through 2003 related to Plame Wilson8217s trip to Niger or to contacts with journalists 2 All documents from July 6 to July 21 2003 from the White House Iraq Group of which Libby Hadley and Rove were members 3 All documents relating to conversations with Matt Cooper of Time Magazine According to reporter Jason Leopold neither Hadley nor Rove disclosed the communication about Valerie when they were questioned by the FBI or testified to the grand jury Rove said that he found out about Valerie from reporters and 8220Hadley testified that he recalled learning about Plame Wilson when her name was published in a newspaper column8221 Leopold said As it turns out the email to Hadley was sent within minutes after Rove spoke to Cooper on July 11 2003 and included the comments 8220Matt Cooper called to give me a headsup that hes got a welfare reform story coming When he finished his brief headsup he immediately launched into Niger Isnt this damaging Hasnt the president been hurt I didnt take the bait but I said if I were him I wouldnt get Time far out in front on this In February 2006 Fitzgerald informed Libby8217s attorneys that the White House had turned over about 250 pages of previously undisclosed emails from the Cheney8217s office which have no doubt provided hours of interesting reading for the prosecutor8217s team With his feet to the fire on October 15 2004 Rove marched back into the grand jury to change his story and say that he must have discussed Valerie with Cooper after all because the email established that he had in fact had a conversation with Cooper That day Viveca Novak wrote a web exclusive for Time and quoted her drinking buddy Luskin as saying 8220My client appeared voluntarily before the grand jury and has cooperated with the investigation since it began8221 In the article Viveca mentions a question to which she knows the answer but doesn8217t share it with her readers 8220Fitzgerald is trying to find out who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame a CIA operative married to former ambassador Joe Wilson to several journalists in July 20038221 she wrote In December 2005 Luskin testified that his meeting with Viveca where he learned about the RoveCooper connection took place in late January or early February 2004 the same month in which Rove had reportedly testified twice and Fitzgerald had sought the authority to prosecute officials if they were found to have obstructed his investigation However the problem is that Viveca says she thinks the conversation took place in either March or May 2004 But a more pressing dilemma for Viveca personally has turned out to be that she continued to write articles on the leak case without informing her boss at Time Magazine about her insider knowledge of the facts According to the April 27 2006 New York Times Viveca no longer works for Time 8220She left the magazine after a dispute over her role in the case8221 the NYT8217s said 8220taking a buyout package last month8221 So it looks like another journalist bites the dust in the wake of the illegal conduct by the White House After a 20some year tenure Judy Miller got the boot from the New York Times for not revealing her involvement with the Libby to her boss Bob Novak got hot under the collar when asked a question about his part in the case and walked of a live broadcast on CNN and got canned and even Bob Woodward is said to have fallen off his pedestal at the Washington Post Yet as the bodycount rises Karl Rove is always seen smiling like a cat that just ate a canary and knows he got away with it Why Rove waited some five or six months to correct his testimony with the grand jury is said to be a mystery but it may simply be that when Luskin gave him the news that he was busted Cooper was still refusing to identify Rove as his source and so he decided to run out the clock and bet the farm What could he lose The odds were good The Supreme Court had certainly demonstrated its allegiance to the Bush team in the past When the lower court ordered Cooper to testify just as expected Time appealed the decision all the way to the High Court but was unsuccessful But in this case Rove had the most to lose On July 13 2005 Cooper appeared before the grand jury and informed the panel that Rove was the official who told him that Valerie was employed at the CIA and the panel already knew that Libby was the other source According to Cooper his conversation with Rove was the first time he had heard anything about Wilsons wife In addition Rove had told Cooper that more information that would discredit Wilson and his findings in Niger would soon be declassified In a July 25 2005 article discussing his testimony in Time Magazine Cooper wrote 8220Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson8217s wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him Yes8221 8220Did Rove say that she worked at the 8216agency8217 on 8216WMD8217 Yes8221 he said 8220When he said things would be declassified soon was that itself impermissible I don8217t know8221 Cooper wrote Cooper also told the grand jury that he had a distinct memory of Rove ending the phone call by saying 8220Ive already said too much Over this time period Rove got dealt a whole deck of getoutofjailfree cards After it became known that Rove was indeed Cooper8217s secret source on July 15 2005 ninetyone Democrats in Congress signed a letter to Bush calling for Rove to explain his role in the leak or to resign and 13 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for hearings on the matter When the Libby indictment was issued and it became known that Rove had definitely participated in blowing Valerie8217s cover 16 former CIA and military intelligence officials petitioned Bush to suspend Rove8217s security clearance and Bush refused to grant their request Karl Rove still has security clearance to this very day The granting of this free pass becomes all the more obvious when compared to what happened to former Clinton advisor Sandy Berger in 2003 when he took classified documents from the National Archives to prepare to testify before the 911 Commission In order to settle the case Berger had to plead guilty to mishandling of documents in violation of the Espionage Act and his security clearance was suspended for 3 years In the grand jury sessions press aides were reportedly confronted with internal White House documents mainly emails and telephone logs between White House aides and reporters and were questioned about conversations with reporters According to the New York Times the set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by none other than Scooter Libby The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to Novak shortly before the appearance of his July 14 column the Washington Post reported That said it should be interesting to see how many more getoutofjailfree cards Fitzgerald has up his sleeve and how they get distributed EVELYN PRINGLE is an investigative reporter She can be reached at evelynpringlesbcglobalnet amp160 amp160 amp160

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amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN

<p>Image: Andrew Lichtenstein</p> <p /> <p>Sitting in an interview room deep within the walls of Unit Nine, Darrell Cannon hunches over suddenly, his huge hands clench and unclench, and his jaw works wildly as he tries to rein in his emotions. It doesn&#8217;t help. The six-foot-three-inch prisoner, a senior figure in El Rukn, one of Chicago&#8217;s most notorious gangs, begins to cry.</p> <p>Metamorphosis. The 48-year-old has become a terrified child. &#8220;I hate them just that bad,&#8221; he says softly through his tears.</p> <p>It&#8217;s an hour and a half into the interview, and either Cannon has just demonstrated an improbably powerful acting talent &#8212; responding exactly how physicians who examine torture victims expect them to behave when reliving their torment &#8212; or he has just finished recounting a chilling true story of police torture.</p> <p>Unit Nine is one of three maximum-security wings in Chicago&#8217;s sprawling Cook County Jail. Cannon has been housed here since mid-1998, when he was moved up from a state prison to attend court hearings on a motion to suppress the 1983 confession that landed him a life sentence for murder.</p> <p>Cannon has never denied that he was driving the car in which a young man was shot and killed, but has long argued that he neither knew in advance about the murder nor participated in it &#8212; and that he only confessed after a <a href="chicops2.html" type="external">prolonged encounter</a> with the fists, boots, shotguns, and cattle prods of the police who arrested him. His denial of the murder plans may or may not wash, but the torture claims could eventually land him a new trial.</p> <p>Cannon is getting another day in court, more than a decade and a half after the crime, with the help of attorneys Flint Taylor and Tim Lohraff of the People&#8217;s Law Office &#8212; and he&#8217;s not alone.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Dozens of other prisoners have come forward saying they were tortured into confessing by police officers from Chicago&#8217;s Area Two who were, at the time, under the leadership of Commander Jon Burge. Their claims are hair-raising &#8212; and remarkably consistent. They tell of alligator clips attached to their ears, noses, mouths, penises, and testicles; of electric shocks to the genitals; of being burned atop radiators. Now, after years of such claims being brushed aside, at least five prisoners in addition to Cannon who say they were tortured are having arguments heard in the state and federal courts this year. All told, 10 people on Illinois&#8217; death row claim they were tortured by Burge&#8217;s squad into admitting guilt, and the validity of the confessions of dozens of other current and former prisoners are now in doubt.</p> <p>This could turn into one of the great scandals in modern American judicial history, exposing a pattern of police violence as horrific as many of the crimes against which they were supposed to be fighting.</p> <p>Due process be damned The mentality of the police, according to then-head of the Chicago PD Richard Brzeczek, seems to have been &#8220;&#8216;we know he did it, but we have to circumvent these goofy rules of due process, either by lying or fabricating evidence, whatever it takes to convict this person.&#8217; Or they&#8217;d fabricate evidence and lie even though somebody didn&#8217;t commit the offense. (They thought) it&#8217;s OK, because he&#8217;s going to do the time for all the crimes he didn&#8217;t get caught for.&#8221;</p> <p>Darrell Cannon is, to put it mildly, no saint. Initiated into his gang at 14, he spent two years in a juvenile detention center for shooting two rival gang members. Later, as an adult, he spent 13 years in prison on a murder rap. He was released in early 1983, but soon migrated back into the arms of El Rukn.</p> <p>Less than a year later, the ex-prisoner was involved in another murder. A small-timer named Darrin Ross owed some drug money to A.D., a gangster colleague of Cannon&#8217;s. Darrell and A.D. took Ross for a ride. Ross&#8217; body was later found in one of the far South Side&#8217;s remote tracts of low-slung public housing.</p> <p>It wasn&#8217;t too long before the police from Burge&#8217;s Area Two violent crimes squad caught up with Cannon. The cops arrested Cannon inside his apartment early in the morning, and then took their prisoner for a little ride of their own. Several hours later, they had a confession.</p> <p>Cannon claims that the officers drove him to a deserted wasteground near the city&#8217;s southernmost limits. &#8220;It was normal,&#8221; Cannon, says for the police &#8220;to beat you up a little bit, put a few bruises on your head. But what the characters here was doing was very out of character.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Cannon alleges that first the officers suspended him by his arms, which were handcuffed behind his back. Then, he says, an officer named Peter Dignan pulled a shotgun from the car&#8217;s trunk and showed Cannon the shell in its chamber, saying &#8220;Look at this, nigger.&#8221; According to Cannon, the officers then forced the gun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger &#8212; but through a sleight of hand, the cops had slipped the shell out of the gun&#8217;s barrel. The trigger clicked, Cannon&#8217;s hair stood on end, and the officers started laughing, he says. &#8220;In my lifetime, I&#8217;d never experienced anything remotely close to this,&#8221; Cannon recalls.</p> <p>Three times, Cannon was mock-executed. Still he wouldn&#8217;t confess. And so, Cannon says, the officers re-cuffed him with his hands stretched out above his head, laid him down on the backseat of the car, pulled his trousers and underwear down, and stuck a cattle-prod to his testicles.</p> <p>&#8220;It was a burning sensation that seemed to go all through [my] body. After about the fourth time, I lost count. The pain got to the point where I couldn&#8217;t handle it anymore and I told them that I&#8217;d say whatever they wanted me to say.&#8221;</p> <p>Cannon&#8217;s lawyer brought up the torture charges during his trial, but the judge refused to hear him out. (That judge is now serving time for accepting bribes.) Cannon was sentenced to life without parole.</p> <p>A history of brutality Chicago has a long history of violence, both gangster- and police-related. The People&#8217;s Law Office, now representing Cannon and many other putative torture victims, first made a name for itself by investigating the FBI and Chicago police force&#8217;s role in the shooting deaths of Chicago&#8217;s Black Panther leadership in the late 1960s. Last summer, arresting officers managed to shoot three unarmed suspects to death in the space of a couple of weeks. Last autumn, a jury awarded $28 million to a man shot and paralyzed by police.</p> <p>Cannon&#8217;s story was echoed by numerous black men in Chicago over a period of two decades. In the 1980s, Chicago judges routinely dismissed these claims as fabrications concocted by desperate prisoners who were facing either the death penalty or life behind bars. Still, the city often paid out cash settlements to these prisoners &#8212; without ever admitting the truth of their allegations. This held for Cannon: Although the police never admitted torturing Cannon, they did agree to a civil settlement of several thousand dollars.</p> <p>Over the following years, allegations by several dozen other prisoners came to light, all claiming similar treatment at the hands of the Violent Crimes Unit of South Chicago&#8217;s precinct Areas Two and Three. Gradually, largely due to the detective work of lawyers such as Taylor and Lohraff, a pattern emerged. Either the dozens of men, all of whom were African American and few of whom knew each other, had all coincidentally fabricated essentially the same story over a period of nearly two decades to numerous different attorneys, or a cabal of white police officers under the command of Jon Burge were torturing a significant number of suspects into making confessions.</p> <p>One of them is Aaron Patterson, a former gang member who had grown up near the old steel mills on the south side of Chicago. In 1986 he was arrested and charged him with the particularly vicious stabbing murders of an old Hispanic couple, named the Sanchezes, who had served as neighborhood fences for stolen goods. It took a while, but eventually Patterson confessed. However, the young man waited until his interrogators were out of the room, and then used a paper clip to etch into a bench that he had only admitted to the crime after being suffocated with a typewriter bag, beaten, and told by Burge that he would be shot and killed unless he owned up. &#8220;I passively agreed to what they said,&#8221; he told me in a letter, &#8220;by repeating these words, &#8216;whatever you say,&#8217; every time they kept saying things in reference to the case.&#8221; As soon as he got to court, Patterson told the judge he&#8217;d only confessed after being tortured.</p> <p>The judge wanted none of it, and Patterson wound up on death row. Now, he is hoping that newly uncovered evidence pointing to another suspect&#8217;s guilt for the Sanchez murder will free him, and hoping the courts will recognize that he was tortured in time to prevent his execution.</p> <p>The orchestrator Jon Burge grew up in the working class Irish communities of southern Chicago. A red-head with a pugilist&#8217;s frame, he served as a military policeman during the Vietnam War. That&#8217;s likely where he first came into contact with tools of the trade such as the electric shock-producing &#8220;Tucker Telephone,&#8221; as well as psychological torture methods such as meticulously staged mock executions.</p> <p>In the early 1970s, Burge joined the Chicago police force, rapidly rising up the ranks. By the early 1980s, he headed the violent crimes squad in the drug- and gang-infested south side streets patrolled by the Chicago PD&#8217;s Area Two. In the late 1980s, he moved over to Area Three, taking his methods with him.</p> <p>Burge was a popular commander, a hands-on leader who inspired the trust of his underlings. In the summers Burge would live on his boat, The Vigilante, hosting cop parties on the waters of Lake Michigan. Sources have told Darrell Cannon&#8217;s lawyers that, at these water-borne gatherings, Burge would boast of his ability to break prisoners.</p> <p>Burge&#8217;s unit got results: They solved bloody homicides and got numerous dubious characters off the streets and into Illinois&#8217; prisons. There was only one problem. Scores of the poor, always African American men who confessed their misdeeds to Burge&#8217;s unit would tell their state-appointed defense lawyers, and often the judges hearing their cases, that they had been viciously brutalized by Burge or his underlings. They claimed that they had had alligator clips attached to sensitive parts of their bodies and had electric shocks administered; sometimes cattle prods were used. They claimed that they had had bags put over their heads for minutes at a time, a technique known as the &#8220;Dry Submarino.&#8221;</p> <p>Others stated they had been burned atop radiators or subjected to mock executions, like Cannon&#8217;s. Several drew detailed diagrams of the instruments used to torment them. Others, including Cannon, directed investigators from the Office of Professional Standards to the locations where the violence allegedly occurred.</p> <p>Burge seemed to revel in his power to inflict injury on those he had within his clutches. In many cases, the people he and his colleagues allegedly tortured had probably done the crimes he was extracting confessions about. Other times, they may well have been innocent of the particular crime of which they were being accused, but guilty of a slew of other offenses.</p> <p>But, in February 1982, Burge&#8217;s unit slipped up, leaving such visible torture marks on a prisoner that the courts were eventually forced to take action.</p> <p>That month, three Chicago police officers were shot dead, prompting the force to launch one of the biggest manhunts in its history. Hundreds of officers combed the streets, arresting young black men, frisking people at random, saturating the ghetto in their search for the killers.</p> <p>Amid a welter of publicity, two brothers were picked up and taken to Area Two&#8217;s headquarters. The elder brother, Andrew Wilson, later was taken to the county jail with severe facial bruising and cuts suggestive of a prolonged pistol-whipping, strange alligator-clip marks on his ears, nose, penis, and testicles, marks indicative of wires having been attached to his extremities, and large burns on his body. The jail was so concerned that his lawyers would blame its staff for the injuries that they refused to admit him without a doctor examining him first. Police chief Brzeczek was contacted, and in his words, gave the local commanders &#8220;one of the great chewing-outs of a lifetime.&#8221;</p> <p>Andrew Wilson was sentenced to death. But three years later Wilson&#8217;s confession was indeed thrown out by the Supreme Court, which found ample evidence of excessive police force. In 1987, at a new trial, Wilson&#8217;s original death sentence was changed to life without parole. Wilson then sued the city and eventually won a $1.1 million settlement.</p> <p>Breaking ranks As the scandal unraveled in the early 1990s, Chicago&#8217;s political establishment gradually began to abandon Burge. Decorated war hero and police commander that he was, he was to take the fall for all of the violence and brutality and disregard for due process that had permeated Areas Two and Three for a quarter of a century under the studiedly blind eye of Chicago&#8217;s political machine.</p> <p>Brzeczek claims to have ordered a special internal investigation into Wilson&#8217;s torture shortly after it happened, and to have sent a letter to Richard Daley Jr., then the State&#8217;s Attorney, in charge of Illinois&#8217; prosecutors. (Daley is now Chicago&#8217;s mayor.)</p> <p>In the letter, Brzeczek outlined the specific charges against Burge and his team, detailed his belief that top officers in the precinct must have known what was going on in their holding cells, and called for a broad outside investigation. Daley&#8217;s office never replied.</p> <p>&#8220;This was not a legal decision,&#8221; Brzeczek asserts, &#8220;but a political decision. They chose to ignore it.&#8221; But, when Wilson&#8217;s lawyer successfully appealed the death-penalty conviction and won the suit against Chicago, Burge&#8217;s star began to wane.</p> <p>In December 1991, after two years of demonstrations and a scathing <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aipub/1999/SUM/25116899.htm" type="external">Amnesty International report</a>, the city&#8217;s leadership suspended Burge. More than 2,000 police officers demonstrated in support of him, and black-tie fund-raisers were held in his honor. Nevertheless, facing a mountain of evidence as to Area Two&#8217;s brutal methods, Burge was fired in 1993.</p> <p>Yet despite dropping Burge, the police department and prosecutors never admitted a systematic pattern of abuse, settling civil suits without ever acknowledging criminal wrongdoing. Rather than admit that Area Two had gone rotten, the state&#8217;s attorney&#8217;s office still refuses to recognize all the other claims of torture. None of the state&#8217;s attorney&#8217;s lawyers would comment on the allegations against Burge made by Cannon or any of the other prisoners. The current police department administration also refuses to comment. No other Area Two officers have been disciplined for their actions. Six years after being fired, Burge himself has never been brought up on any criminal charges.</p> <p>Keeping a low profile More than 1,500 miles from the rough streets of inner-city Chicago lies Apollo Beach, Fla., a rinkydink little town perched on an inlet feeding into the Gulf of Mexico.</p> <p>Built around the lawns of a well-manicured golf course, complete with a series of artificial and stultifyingly similar canals, it is a new community, home mainly to people fleeing the harsh winters and day-to-day complexities of life on the rest of the continent.</p> <p>Burge, now in his mid-50s, retired down here after his career went up in flames in Chicago. He lives near the Apollo Beach golf course, in a large bungalow with pink wooden window shutters, a red-tile roof, and an indoor swimming pool. Amid the other pink, yellow and sky-blue bungalows, the ex-commander&#8217;s house stands out for its excessive sterility: The walls and the driveway look as if they have never been touched or even breathed upon, his car is hidden behind the locked door of his garage, the garden has no flowery touches, and drawn window shades shut out the world.</p> <p>The ex-commander has an unlisted phone number. A Vietnam veteran, he is not a member of any of the myriad American Legion and Veteran of Foreign Wars posts in the vicinity. A boat-owner, he is not a member of either of the town&#8217;s marinas. Nor is he a member of the golf course a stone&#8217;s throw from his property, or the nearby racket club and gym. His is the existence of a man who does not want the world to know where he is.</p> <p>Burge did not reply to letters that I sent him. When I knocked on his door he told me he didn&#8217;t like my &#8220;ethics or manners,&#8221; ordered me off his land and threatened to call the sheriff. When I phoned him he shouted down the line, &#8220;I have nothing to say. My friend, I don&#8217;t need to defend myself. I&#8217;ve done nothing wrong and I don&#8217;t need to talk to you or anyone else.&#8221; He proceeded to insult me a few times, and then hung up.</p> <p>Justice creeps nearer Sometime in the next few months, the judge hearing Darrell Cannon&#8217;s case will make his rulings. Known to be no fan of defendants, Judge John Morrisey may nevertheless have to confront the torture charges laid out before him by doctors who specialize in treating torture victims, an investigator from the Office of Professional Standards and the personal testimony of several prisoners. Ex-police chief Brzeczek, who now practices law as a defense attorney, believes that all those who claimed torture at the time of their trial, but who weren&#8217;t listened to, should now get new trials.</p> <p>In the end, this is not primarily a story about innocent men framed for crimes they did not commit, although that is certainly a big part of it. Rather, it is about how a democratic society, that claims to imbue all its citizens with &#8220;inalienable rights,&#8221; deals with those people &#8212; almost always poor and often non-white &#8212; who have chosen, or fallen into, lives of crime, or who have otherwise fallen outside the margins of the acceptable.</p> <p>&#8220;People are entitled to a fair trial,&#8221; says a colleague of Judge Morrissey&#8217;s who is involved in hearing the appeal of another prisoner who confessed at the hands of Burge. &#8220;That&#8217;s the real issue.&#8221;</p> <p>Photos by Andrew Lichtenstein</p> <p />

Trial by Torture

https://motherjones.com/politics/2000/03/trial-torture-0/

2000-03-03

4left

Image Andrew Lichtenstein Sitting in an interview room deep within the walls of Unit Nine Darrell Cannon hunches over suddenly his huge hands clench and unclench and his jaw works wildly as he tries to rein in his emotions It doesn8217t help The sixfootthreeinch prisoner a senior figure in El Rukn one of Chicago8217s most notorious gangs begins to cry Metamorphosis The 48yearold has become a terrified child 8220I hate them just that bad8221 he says softly through his tears It8217s an hour and a half into the interview and either Cannon has just demonstrated an improbably powerful acting talent 8212 responding exactly how physicians who examine torture victims expect them to behave when reliving their torment 8212 or he has just finished recounting a chilling true story of police torture Unit Nine is one of three maximumsecurity wings in Chicago8217s sprawling Cook County Jail Cannon has been housed here since mid1998 when he was moved up from a state prison to attend court hearings on a motion to suppress the 1983 confession that landed him a life sentence for murder Cannon has never denied that he was driving the car in which a young man was shot and killed but has long argued that he neither knew in advance about the murder nor participated in it 8212 and that he only confessed after a prolonged encounter with the fists boots shotguns and cattle prods of the police who arrested him His denial of the murder plans may or may not wash but the torture claims could eventually land him a new trial Cannon is getting another day in court more than a decade and a half after the crime with the help of attorneys Flint Taylor and Tim Lohraff of the People8217s Law Office 8212 and he8217s not alone Dozens of other prisoners have come forward saying they were tortured into confessing by police officers from Chicago8217s Area Two who were at the time under the leadership of Commander Jon Burge Their claims are hairraising 8212 and remarkably consistent They tell of alligator clips attached to their ears noses mouths penises and testicles of electric shocks to the genitals of being burned atop radiators Now after years of such claims being brushed aside at least five prisoners in addition to Cannon who say they were tortured are having arguments heard in the state and federal courts this year All told 10 people on Illinois8217 death row claim they were tortured by Burge8217s squad into admitting guilt and the validity of the confessions of dozens of other current and former prisoners are now in doubt This could turn into one of the great scandals in modern American judicial history exposing a pattern of police violence as horrific as many of the crimes against which they were supposed to be fighting Due process be damned The mentality of the police according to thenhead of the Chicago PD Richard Brzeczek seems to have been 82208216we know he did it but we have to circumvent these goofy rules of due process either by lying or fabricating evidence whatever it takes to convict this person8217 Or they8217d fabricate evidence and lie even though somebody didn8217t commit the offense They thought it8217s OK because he8217s going to do the time for all the crimes he didn8217t get caught for8221 Darrell Cannon is to put it mildly no saint Initiated into his gang at 14 he spent two years in a juvenile detention center for shooting two rival gang members Later as an adult he spent 13 years in prison on a murder rap He was released in early 1983 but soon migrated back into the arms of El Rukn Less than a year later the exprisoner was involved in another murder A smalltimer named Darrin Ross owed some drug money to AD a gangster colleague of Cannon8217s Darrell and AD took Ross for a ride Ross8217 body was later found in one of the far South Side8217s remote tracts of lowslung public housing It wasn8217t too long before the police from Burge8217s Area Two violent crimes squad caught up with Cannon The cops arrested Cannon inside his apartment early in the morning and then took their prisoner for a little ride of their own Several hours later they had a confession Cannon claims that the officers drove him to a deserted wasteground near the city8217s southernmost limits 8220It was normal8221 Cannon says for the police 8220to beat you up a little bit put a few bruises on your head But what the characters here was doing was very out of character8221 Cannon alleges that first the officers suspended him by his arms which were handcuffed behind his back Then he says an officer named Peter Dignan pulled a shotgun from the car8217s trunk and showed Cannon the shell in its chamber saying 8220Look at this nigger8221 According to Cannon the officers then forced the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger 8212 but through a sleight of hand the cops had slipped the shell out of the gun8217s barrel The trigger clicked Cannon8217s hair stood on end and the officers started laughing he says 8220In my lifetime I8217d never experienced anything remotely close to this8221 Cannon recalls Three times Cannon was mockexecuted Still he wouldn8217t confess And so Cannon says the officers recuffed him with his hands stretched out above his head laid him down on the backseat of the car pulled his trousers and underwear down and stuck a cattleprod to his testicles 8220It was a burning sensation that seemed to go all through my body After about the fourth time I lost count The pain got to the point where I couldn8217t handle it anymore and I told them that I8217d say whatever they wanted me to say8221 Cannon8217s lawyer brought up the torture charges during his trial but the judge refused to hear him out That judge is now serving time for accepting bribes Cannon was sentenced to life without parole A history of brutality Chicago has a long history of violence both gangster and policerelated The People8217s Law Office now representing Cannon and many other putative torture victims first made a name for itself by investigating the FBI and Chicago police force8217s role in the shooting deaths of Chicago8217s Black Panther leadership in the late 1960s Last summer arresting officers managed to shoot three unarmed suspects to death in the space of a couple of weeks Last autumn a jury awarded 28 million to a man shot and paralyzed by police Cannon8217s story was echoed by numerous black men in Chicago over a period of two decades In the 1980s Chicago judges routinely dismissed these claims as fabrications concocted by desperate prisoners who were facing either the death penalty or life behind bars Still the city often paid out cash settlements to these prisoners 8212 without ever admitting the truth of their allegations This held for Cannon Although the police never admitted torturing Cannon they did agree to a civil settlement of several thousand dollars Over the following years allegations by several dozen other prisoners came to light all claiming similar treatment at the hands of the Violent Crimes Unit of South Chicago8217s precinct Areas Two and Three Gradually largely due to the detective work of lawyers such as Taylor and Lohraff a pattern emerged Either the dozens of men all of whom were African American and few of whom knew each other had all coincidentally fabricated essentially the same story over a period of nearly two decades to numerous different attorneys or a cabal of white police officers under the command of Jon Burge were torturing a significant number of suspects into making confessions One of them is Aaron Patterson a former gang member who had grown up near the old steel mills on the south side of Chicago In 1986 he was arrested and charged him with the particularly vicious stabbing murders of an old Hispanic couple named the Sanchezes who had served as neighborhood fences for stolen goods It took a while but eventually Patterson confessed However the young man waited until his interrogators were out of the room and then used a paper clip to etch into a bench that he had only admitted to the crime after being suffocated with a typewriter bag beaten and told by Burge that he would be shot and killed unless he owned up 8220I passively agreed to what they said8221 he told me in a letter 8220by repeating these words 8216whatever you say8217 every time they kept saying things in reference to the case8221 As soon as he got to court Patterson told the judge he8217d only confessed after being tortured The judge wanted none of it and Patterson wound up on death row Now he is hoping that newly uncovered evidence pointing to another suspect8217s guilt for the Sanchez murder will free him and hoping the courts will recognize that he was tortured in time to prevent his execution The orchestrator Jon Burge grew up in the working class Irish communities of southern Chicago A redhead with a pugilist8217s frame he served as a military policeman during the Vietnam War That8217s likely where he first came into contact with tools of the trade such as the electric shockproducing 8220Tucker Telephone8221 as well as psychological torture methods such as meticulously staged mock executions In the early 1970s Burge joined the Chicago police force rapidly rising up the ranks By the early 1980s he headed the violent crimes squad in the drug and ganginfested south side streets patrolled by the Chicago PD8217s Area Two In the late 1980s he moved over to Area Three taking his methods with him Burge was a popular commander a handson leader who inspired the trust of his underlings In the summers Burge would live on his boat The Vigilante hosting cop parties on the waters of Lake Michigan Sources have told Darrell Cannon8217s lawyers that at these waterborne gatherings Burge would boast of his ability to break prisoners Burge8217s unit got results They solved bloody homicides and got numerous dubious characters off the streets and into Illinois8217 prisons There was only one problem Scores of the poor always African American men who confessed their misdeeds to Burge8217s unit would tell their stateappointed defense lawyers and often the judges hearing their cases that they had been viciously brutalized by Burge or his underlings They claimed that they had had alligator clips attached to sensitive parts of their bodies and had electric shocks administered sometimes cattle prods were used They claimed that they had had bags put over their heads for minutes at a time a technique known as the 8220Dry Submarino8221 Others stated they had been burned atop radiators or subjected to mock executions like Cannon8217s Several drew detailed diagrams of the instruments used to torment them Others including Cannon directed investigators from the Office of Professional Standards to the locations where the violence allegedly occurred Burge seemed to revel in his power to inflict injury on those he had within his clutches In many cases the people he and his colleagues allegedly tortured had probably done the crimes he was extracting confessions about Other times they may well have been innocent of the particular crime of which they were being accused but guilty of a slew of other offenses But in February 1982 Burge8217s unit slipped up leaving such visible torture marks on a prisoner that the courts were eventually forced to take action That month three Chicago police officers were shot dead prompting the force to launch one of the biggest manhunts in its history Hundreds of officers combed the streets arresting young black men frisking people at random saturating the ghetto in their search for the killers Amid a welter of publicity two brothers were picked up and taken to Area Two8217s headquarters The elder brother Andrew Wilson later was taken to the county jail with severe facial bruising and cuts suggestive of a prolonged pistolwhipping strange alligatorclip marks on his ears nose penis and testicles marks indicative of wires having been attached to his extremities and large burns on his body The jail was so concerned that his lawyers would blame its staff for the injuries that they refused to admit him without a doctor examining him first Police chief Brzeczek was contacted and in his words gave the local commanders 8220one of the great chewingouts of a lifetime8221 Andrew Wilson was sentenced to death But three years later Wilson8217s confession was indeed thrown out by the Supreme Court which found ample evidence of excessive police force In 1987 at a new trial Wilson8217s original death sentence was changed to life without parole Wilson then sued the city and eventually won a 11 million settlement Breaking ranks As the scandal unraveled in the early 1990s Chicago8217s political establishment gradually began to abandon Burge Decorated war hero and police commander that he was he was to take the fall for all of the violence and brutality and disregard for due process that had permeated Areas Two and Three for a quarter of a century under the studiedly blind eye of Chicago8217s political machine Brzeczek claims to have ordered a special internal investigation into Wilson8217s torture shortly after it happened and to have sent a letter to Richard Daley Jr then the State8217s Attorney in charge of Illinois8217 prosecutors Daley is now Chicago8217s mayor In the letter Brzeczek outlined the specific charges against Burge and his team detailed his belief that top officers in the precinct must have known what was going on in their holding cells and called for a broad outside investigation Daley8217s office never replied 8220This was not a legal decision8221 Brzeczek asserts 8220but a political decision They chose to ignore it8221 But when Wilson8217s lawyer successfully appealed the deathpenalty conviction and won the suit against Chicago Burge8217s star began to wane In December 1991 after two years of demonstrations and a scathing Amnesty International report the city8217s leadership suspended Burge More than 2000 police officers demonstrated in support of him and blacktie fundraisers were held in his honor Nevertheless facing a mountain of evidence as to Area Two8217s brutal methods Burge was fired in 1993 Yet despite dropping Burge the police department and prosecutors never admitted a systematic pattern of abuse settling civil suits without ever acknowledging criminal wrongdoing Rather than admit that Area Two had gone rotten the state8217s attorney8217s office still refuses to recognize all the other claims of torture None of the state8217s attorney8217s lawyers would comment on the allegations against Burge made by Cannon or any of the other prisoners The current police department administration also refuses to comment No other Area Two officers have been disciplined for their actions Six years after being fired Burge himself has never been brought up on any criminal charges Keeping a low profile More than 1500 miles from the rough streets of innercity Chicago lies Apollo Beach Fla a rinkydink little town perched on an inlet feeding into the Gulf of Mexico Built around the lawns of a wellmanicured golf course complete with a series of artificial and stultifyingly similar canals it is a new community home mainly to people fleeing the harsh winters and daytoday complexities of life on the rest of the continent Burge now in his mid50s retired down here after his career went up in flames in Chicago He lives near the Apollo Beach golf course in a large bungalow with pink wooden window shutters a redtile roof and an indoor swimming pool Amid the other pink yellow and skyblue bungalows the excommander8217s house stands out for its excessive sterility The walls and the driveway look as if they have never been touched or even breathed upon his car is hidden behind the locked door of his garage the garden has no flowery touches and drawn window shades shut out the world The excommander has an unlisted phone number A Vietnam veteran he is not a member of any of the myriad American Legion and Veteran of Foreign Wars posts in the vicinity A boatowner he is not a member of either of the town8217s marinas Nor is he a member of the golf course a stone8217s throw from his property or the nearby racket club and gym His is the existence of a man who does not want the world to know where he is Burge did not reply to letters that I sent him When I knocked on his door he told me he didn8217t like my 8220ethics or manners8221 ordered me off his land and threatened to call the sheriff When I phoned him he shouted down the line 8220I have nothing to say My friend I don8217t need to defend myself I8217ve done nothing wrong and I don8217t need to talk to you or anyone else8221 He proceeded to insult me a few times and then hung up Justice creeps nearer Sometime in the next few months the judge hearing Darrell Cannon8217s case will make his rulings Known to be no fan of defendants Judge John Morrisey may nevertheless have to confront the torture charges laid out before him by doctors who specialize in treating torture victims an investigator from the Office of Professional Standards and the personal testimony of several prisoners Expolice chief Brzeczek who now practices law as a defense attorney believes that all those who claimed torture at the time of their trial but who weren8217t listened to should now get new trials In the end this is not primarily a story about innocent men framed for crimes they did not commit although that is certainly a big part of it Rather it is about how a democratic society that claims to imbue all its citizens with 8220inalienable rights8221 deals with those people 8212 almost always poor and often nonwhite 8212 who have chosen or fallen into lives of crime or who have otherwise fallen outside the margins of the acceptable 8220People are entitled to a fair trial8221 says a colleague of Judge Morrissey8217s who is involved in hearing the appeal of another prisoner who confessed at the hands of Burge 8220That8217s the real issue8221 Photos by Andrew Lichtenstein

Image/NOUN Andrew/PROPN Lichtenstein/PROPN Sitting/VERB in/ADP an/DET interview/NOUN room/NOUN deep/ADV within/ADP the/DET walls/NOUN of/ADP Unit/PROPN Nine/PROPN Darrell/PROPN Cannon/PROPN hunches/VERB over/ADP suddenly/ADV his/PRON huge/ADJ hands/NOUN clench/NOUN and/CCONJ unclench/NOUN and/CCONJ his/PRON jaw/NOUN works/VERB wildly/ADV as/SCONJ he/PRON tries/VERB to/PART rein/VERB in/ADP his/PRON emotions/NOUN It/PRON doesn8217/NOUN t/NOUN help/VERB The/DET sixfootthreeinch/NOUN prisoner/NOUN a/DET senior/ADJ figure/NOUN in/ADP El/PROPN Rukn/PROPN one/NUM of/ADP Chicago8217s/PROPN most/ADV notorious/ADJ gangs/NOUN begins/VERB to/PART cry/VERB Metamorphosis/PROPN The/DET 48yearold/PROPN has/AUX become/VERB a/DET terrified/ADJ child/NOUN 8220I/NOUN hate/VERB them/PRON just/ADV that/DET bad8221/NOUN he/PRON says/VERB softly/ADV through/ADP his/PRON tears/NOUN It8217s/PROPN an/DET hour/NOUN and/CCONJ a/DET half/NOUN into/ADP the/DET interview/NOUN and/CCONJ either/CCONJ Cannon/PROPN has/AUX just/ADV demonstrated/VERB an/DET improbably/ADV powerful/ADJ acting/VERB talent/NOUN 8212/NUM responding/VERB exactly/ADV how/SCONJ physicians/NOUN who/PRON examine/VERB torture/NOUN victims/NOUN expect/VERB them/PRON to/PART behave/VERB when/SCONJ reliving/VERB their/PRON torment/NOUN 8212/NUM or/CCONJ he/PRON has/AUX just/ADV finished/VERB recounting/VERB a/DET chilling/ADJ true/ADJ story/NOUN of/ADP police/NOUN torture/NOUN Unit/PROPN Nine/PROPN is/AUX one/NUM of/ADP three/NUM maximumsecurity/NOUN wings/NOUN in/ADP Chicago8217s/PROPN sprawling/VERB Cook/PROPN County/PROPN Jail/PROPN Cannon/PROPN has/AUX been/AUX housed/VERB here/ADV since/SCONJ mid1998/NOUN when/SCONJ he/PRON was/AUX moved/VERB up/ADP from/ADP a/DET state/NOUN prison/NOUN to/PART attend/VERB court/NOUN hearings/NOUN on/ADP a/DET motion/NOUN to/PART suppress/VERB the/DET 1983/NUM confession/NOUN that/PRON landed/VERB him/PRON a/DET life/NOUN sentence/NOUN for/ADP murder/NOUN Cannon/PROPN has/AUX never/ADV 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attorneys/NOUN Flint/PROPN Taylor/PROPN and/CCONJ Tim/PROPN Lohraff/PROPN of/ADP the/DET People8217s/PROPN Law/PROPN Office/PROPN 8212/NUM and/CCONJ he8217s/PROPN not/PART alone/ADV Dozens/NOUN of/ADP other/ADJ prisoners/NOUN have/AUX come/VERB forward/ADV saying/VERB they/PRON were/AUX tortured/VERB into/ADP confessing/NOUN by/ADP police/NOUN officers/NOUN from/ADP Chicago8217s/PROPN Area/PROPN Two/NUM who/PRON were/AUX at/ADP the/DET time/NOUN under/ADP the/DET leadership/NOUN of/ADP Commander/PROPN Jon/PROPN Burge/PROPN Their/PRON claims/NOUN are/AUX hairraising/VERB 8212/NUM and/CCONJ remarkably/ADV consistent/ADJ They/PRON tell/VERB of/ADP alligator/NOUN clips/NOUN attached/VERB to/ADP their/PRON ears/NOUN noses/NOUN mouths/NOUN penises/NOUN and/CCONJ testicles/NOUN of/ADP electric/ADJ shocks/NOUN to/ADP the/DET genitals/NOUN of/ADP being/AUX burned/VERB atop/ADP radiators/NOUN Now/ADV after/ADP years/NOUN of/ADP such/ADJ claims/NOUN being/AUX brushed/VERB aside/ADV at/ADV least/ADV five/NUM prisoners/NOUN in/ADP addition/NOUN to/ADP Cannon/PROPN who/PRON say/VERB they/PRON were/AUX tortured/VERB are/AUX having/VERB arguments/NOUN heard/VERB in/ADP the/DET state/NOUN and/CCONJ federal/ADJ courts/NOUN this/DET year/NOUN All/PRON told/VERB 10/NUM people/NOUN on/ADP Illinois8217/PROPN death/NOUN row/NOUN claim/NOUN they/PRON were/AUX tortured/VERB by/ADP Burge8217s/PROPN squad/PROPN into/ADP admitting/VERB guilt/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET validity/NOUN of/ADP the/DET confessions/NOUN of/ADP dozens/NOUN of/ADP other/ADJ current/ADJ and/CCONJ former/ADJ prisoners/NOUN are/AUX now/ADV in/ADP doubt/NOUN This/PRON could/AUX turn/VERB into/ADP one/NUM of/ADP the/DET great/ADJ scandals/NOUN in/ADP modern/ADJ American/ADJ judicial/ADJ history/NOUN exposing/VERB a/DET pattern/NOUN of/ADP police/NOUN violence/NOUN as/ADV horrific/ADJ as/ADP many/ADJ of/ADP the/DET crimes/NOUN against/ADP which/PRON they/PRON were/AUX supposed/VERB to/PART be/AUX fighting/VERB Due/ADJ 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Initiated/VERB into/ADP his/PRON gang/NOUN at/ADP 14/NUM he/PRON spent/VERB two/NUM years/NOUN in/ADP a/DET juvenile/ADJ detention/NOUN center/NOUN for/ADP shooting/VERB two/NUM rival/ADJ gang/NOUN members/NOUN Later/ADV as/ADP an/DET adult/NOUN he/PRON spent/VERB 13/NUM years/NOUN in/ADP prison/NOUN on/ADP a/DET murder/NOUN rap/NOUN He/PRON was/AUX released/VERB in/ADP early/ADJ 1983/NUM but/CCONJ soon/ADV migrated/VERB back/ADV into/ADP the/DET arms/NOUN of/ADP El/PROPN Rukn/PROPN Less/ADJ than/ADP a/PRON year/NOUN later/ADV the/DET exprisoner/NOUN was/AUX involved/VERB in/ADP another/DET murder/NOUN A/DET smalltimer/NOUN named/VERB Darrin/PROPN Ross/PROPN owed/VERB some/DET drug/NOUN money/NOUN to/ADP AD/VERB a/DET gangster/NOUN colleague/NOUN of/ADP Cannon8217s/PROPN Darrell/PROPN and/CCONJ AD/PROPN took/VERB Ross/PROPN for/ADP a/DET ride/NOUN Ross8217/PROPN body/NOUN was/AUX later/ADV found/VERB in/ADP one/NUM of/ADP the/DET far/ADJ South/PROPN Side8217s/PROPN remote/ADJ 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characters/NOUN here/ADV was/AUX doing/VERB was/AUX very/ADV out/ADP of/ADP character8221/PROPN Cannon/PROPN alleges/VERB that/SCONJ first/ADV the/DET officers/NOUN suspended/VERB him/PRON by/ADP his/PRON arms/NOUN which/PRON were/AUX handcuffed/VERB behind/ADP his/PRON back/NOUN Then/ADV he/PRON says/VERB an/DET officer/NOUN named/VERB Peter/PROPN Dignan/PROPN pulled/VERB a/DET shotgun/NOUN from/ADP the/DET car8217s/PROPN trunk/NOUN and/CCONJ showed/VERB Cannon/PROPN the/DET shell/NOUN in/ADP its/PRON chamber/NOUN saying/VERB 8220Look/NOUN at/ADP this/DET nigger8221/PROPN According/VERB to/ADP Cannon/PROPN the/DET officers/NOUN then/ADV forced/VERB the/DET gun/NOUN into/ADP his/PRON mouth/NOUN and/CCONJ pulled/VERB the/DET trigger/NOUN 8212/NUM but/CCONJ through/ADP a/DET sleight/NOUN of/ADP hand/NOUN the/DET cops/NOUN had/AUX slipped/VERB the/DET shell/NOUN out/ADP of/ADP the/DET gun8217s/PROPN barrel/NOUN The/DET trigger/NOUN clicked/VERB Cannon8217s/PROPN hair/NOUN stood/VERB 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<p>Weighing in at a gargantuan 261 pages, Amoris Laetitia (&#8220;The Joy of Love&#8221;) is, by my quick reckoning, the longest such document in the history of the papal magisterium, and by a good 10 percent or more. Its sheer size suggests the wisdom &#8212; although probably the futility, too &#8212; of Pope Francis&#8217;s plea that his apostolic exhortation &#8220;on love in the family&#8221; be read &#8220;patiently and carefully,&#8221; piece by piece, and then pondered as a whole.</p> <p>The futility comes from the fact that various pre-exhortation Catholic spin machines have set a context for the reception of Amoris Laetitia that the world media will find irresistible, by focusing almost exclusive attention on the question of whether the pope would endorse one or other of Walter Cardinal Kasper&#8217;s proposals for admitting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to holy communion (quick preview: Francis doesn&#8217;t). So look in the early going for a vast, global argument over whether a &#8220;door has been opened&#8221; or a &#8220;first step taken&#8221; to vindicating Kasper. Those who will say that Kasper has not been vindicated seem to me to have the better of the argument, on a close reading of the text of the exhortation. But that won&#8217;t prevent others, including German-speaking bishops and theologians who don&#8217;t seem capable of recognizing that their proposals were rejected by two synods of bishops, from claiming victory.</p> <p>The other problem with the Pope&#8217;s plea for patience and care in reading Amoris Laetitia is that most Catholics (not to mention others) are simply not going to wade through a text of this length. And that is a shame, because the exhortation says many important things about love, marriage, the family, and the current cultural crisis of a world in which the imperial autonomous Self is running roughshod over just about everything, leaving a lot of human unhappiness in its wake.</p> <p>Thus it might be a useful orientation for those who are going to take a cut at reading this vast, sprawling text to highlight some of what impress me as the exhortation&#8217;s most striking arguments &#8212; which may also serve as a mini-summary for those who have neither the time nor the inclination to read Amoris Laetitia (hereafter, AL) in full.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>THE BIBLE SETS THE STAGE</p> <p>At last October&#8217;s second synod on the family, the working document prepared by the synod office was severely criticized for beginning with some second-rate sociology rather than with the Word of God. Pope Francis evidently heard that criticism, for AL begins with a rich reflection on the Bible, which, as the Pope says, &#8220;is full of families, births, love stories, and family crises.&#8221; Francis then speaks movingly of &#8220;the majestic early chapters of Genesis,&#8221; which &#8220;present the human couple in its deepest reality.&#8221; Which is to say, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is not a pious myth with no relevance for the 21st century; it speaks a truth about our being made male and female, and about the complementarity built into our difference, that is ageless and enduring. Moreover, Francis reminds us (following John Paul II), &#8220;the couple that loves and begets life is a true, living icon&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;capable of revealing God the Creator and Savior.&#8221; This even sheds light on that most unfathomable of Christian mysteries, the Holy Trinity, for &#8220;the couple&#8217;s fruitful relationship becomes an image for understanding and describing the mystery of God himself.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;The triune God is a communion of love, and the family is its living reflection.&#8221;</p> <p>Francis goes on to celebrate the Bible&#8217;s speaking of &#8220;the gift of children&#8221; and shows how, in primitive Christianity, the family was thought of as the &#8220;domestic Church, a setting for the Eucharist, the presence of Christ seated at the table.&#8221; But the Bible also speaks of the pain and suffering involved in family life, which is, like many other sorrows in the human condition, the result of the will to power run amok. Those biblical accounts of family struggle help us to understand something important: that &#8220;the word of God is not a series of abstract ideas but rather a source of comfort and companionship for every family that experiences difficulties or suffering.&#8221; If 21st-century Christians can learn to see the world through a lens ground by Biblical faith, they will see the truth about love, marriage, and the family clearly: that despite our tendency to make a mess of things, families are called to &#8220;become a communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.&#8221; Then Christians can live in the sure confidence that the end of their journey is that Kingdom where God &#8220;will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore&#8221; (Rev. 21:4).</p> <p>THE CONTEMPORARY CRISIS OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY</p> <p>Francis&#8217;s catalogue of the cultural factors gnawing away at marriage and the family is comprehensive and, it seems to me, acute. It includes &#8220;extreme individualism,&#8221; the &#8220;pace of life&#8221; that militates against decisions for permanent relationships, and the mantra of &#8220;choice&#8221; as the highest of human goods, all of which lead to &#8220;an inability to give oneself generously to others.&#8221; Confused ideas of freedom &#8211;&amp;#160;&#8220;that each individual can act arbitrarily, as if there were no truths, values, and principles to provide guidance, and everything [is] possible and permissible&#8221; &#8211;&amp;#160;intensify the crisis.</p> <p>The Pope cautions against a Church &#8220;on the defensive, wasting pastoral energy on denouncing a decadent world without being proactive in proposing ways of finding true happiness.&#8221; Which is true enough, in those sectors of the Church, rare in my experience, where such doomsaying is the plat du jour. But then Francis himself goes on to deplore the &#8220;narcissism&#8221; that &#8220;makes people incapable of looking beyond themselves,&#8221; which is surely one major factor in the contemporary meltdown of marriage and the family. So, too, he writes, is that &#8220;great poverty of contemporary culture&#8221; which is &#8220;loneliness, arising from the absence of God in a person&#8217;s life and the fragility of relationships.&#8221;</p> <p>AL then discusses the challenges posed to marriage and the family by economic dislocation, migration, human trafficking, the abuse of women, the sexual abuse of children, dire poverty, a rapidly evolving global economy, and an &#8220;ideology of gender.&#8221; But over and beyond those undoubted scourges is &#8220;a failure to realize that only the exclusive and indissoluble union between a man and a woman has a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment that bears fruit in new life.&#8221; And that ignorance is leading to &#8220;a legal deconstruction of the family, tending to adopt models based almost exclusively on the autonomy of the individual will.&#8221; (Justice Anthony Kennedy, please call the Vatican.)</p> <p>Yet the bad news is not all the news there is. Thus Francis concludes this section of AL with a prayer: &#8220;I thank God that many families, which are far from considering themselves perfect, live in love, fulfill their calling, and keep moving forward, even if they may fall many times along the way.&#8221;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>CHRIST AND THE FAMILY</p> <p>The Christian family, the pope writes, &#8220;can be fully understood only in the light of the Father&#8217;s infinite love revealed in Christ, who gave himself for our sake and who continues to live in our midst&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;at the heart of so many love stories.&#8221; This means that the Christian family is, was, and always will be countercultural: not to be different for difference&#8217;s sake, but to offer a model of a nobler way of living. That way is rooted in God&#8217;s original plan for humanity and reaches its perfection in &#8220;marriage and the family&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;redeemed by Christ and restored in the image of the Holy Trinity, the mystery from which all true love flows.&#8221;</p> <p>That is why the Catholic Church believes and teaches &#8212; and will always believe and teach &#8212; that marriage is indissoluble, sacramental, and ordered to both the sanctification of the spouses and the begetting and rearing of children. Francis applauds Blessed Paul VI for Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical on the morally appropriate means of regulating fertility, recommends Saint John Paul II&#8217;s theology of the body for its &#8220;vision of the vocation of men and women to love,&#8221; and notes that Benedict XVI found in the family that place where &#8220;we learn the experience of the common good.&#8221;</p> <p>Thus Christians must always propose marriage as something far more, and far deeper, than &#8220;a social convention, an empty ritual, or merely the outward sign of a commitment.&#8221; Marriage is a &#8220;vocation, inasmuch as it is a response to a specific call to experience conjugal love as an imperfect sign of the love between Christ and the Church.&#8221; So&amp;#160;the decision to marry, like the decision to seek ordination or enter consecrated religious life, &#8220;ought to be the fruit of a process of vocational discernment.&#8221; That, in turn, means that marriage preparation ought to be one crucial instrument in the Church&#8217;s work of evangelization, as pastors help those preparing for marriage to enter into the &#8220;nuptial mystery.&#8221;</p> <p>AL&#8217;s celebration of the gift of children also includes what may be Pope Francis&#8217;s most ringing affirmation of the right to life of the unborn: &#8220;I feel it urgent to state that, if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in its mother&#8217;s womb, that no alleged right to one&#8217;s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the &#8216;property&#8217; of another human being.&#8221;</p> <p>The pope then explicates this Christ-centered understanding of love in marriage in an entire chapter given to a sentence-by-sentence exegesis of Saint Paul&#8217;s hymn to love as the &#8220;more excellent way&#8221; in I Corinthians 13:4-7. After looking at how each of the qualities that Paul ascribes to genuine love as &#8220;the greatest of these&#8221; ought to shape a marriage, Francis notes that the &#8220;mystery of marriage&#8221; is that &#8220;God makes of the two spouses one single existence.&#8221; There, husband and wife, through conjugal love, participate in what Thomas Aquinas called &#8220;the greatest form of friendship,&#8221; in which passion is &#8220;always directed to an ever more stable and intense union,&#8221; and in which sex is understood as &#8220;an interpersonal language in which the other is taken seriously, in his or her sacred and inviolable dignity.&#8221; As for those young people scared by the idea of permanent commitment, the Pope offers this counsel: Marriage is &#8220;the means to ensure that [your] love will truly grow and endure.&#8221;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>THE FRUITFULNESS OF MARRIAGE, THE PLAGUE OF DIVORCE, AND EDUCATION</p> <p>AL celebrates&amp;#160;the procreative character of marriage and the family and discusses in a touching way how adoption expands the fruitfulness of marriage. The pope who not infrequently cites his grandmother in his homilies also lifts up the beauty of the generationally extended family. The &#8220;family,&#8221; in Francis&#8217;s view, is a network of relationships, in which the young and the elderly have responsibilities toward each other, as do brothers and sisters.</p> <p>Beyond marriage preparation, AL calls for the Church to accompany young married couples in their first years of marriage, as they begin their families, and as they experience crises. Marital crisis too easily leads to marital breakdown; thus the pope urges all to see that &#8220;each crisis has a lesson to teach us; we need to learn to listen for it with the ear of the heart.&#8221;</p> <p>The Church&#8217;s care must also extend to those who have been abandoned by their spouse, who are separated, or who are divorced, and refers pastors to the revised procedures for determining whether a first marriage did not in fact exist (usually referred to as an &#8220;annulment&#8221;). But there is no suggestion here that divorce is a minor matter, not least because of its bad effects on children. Rather, the pope writes, &#8220;divorce is an evil and the increasing number of divorces is very troubling. Hence our most important pastoral task with regard to families is to strengthen their love, helping to heal wounds, and working to prevent the spread of this drama of our times.&#8221;</p> <p>AL offers a strong affirmation of &#8220;sex education,&#8221; but makes clear that this is not a sub-discipline of plumbing. Rather, education in human sexuality ought to take place &#8220;within the broader framework of an education for love, for mutual self-giving.&#8221; How this might be done in, say, American public schools will be an interesting topic of discussion down the line.</p> <p>PASTORAL ACCOMPANIMENT IN DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES</p> <p>The eighth chapter of AL, which takes up the question of the Church&#8217;s care for those in broken marriages and those who have been divorced and civilly remarried, will doubtless be the focus of extended discussion. That this will happen is due in no small part to the hijacking of the synods of 2014 and 2015 by northern European bishops who seem to think that a radical change in the Church&#8217;s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and on worthiness to receive holy communion is a magic solution to the death of their local Churches, where regular Mass attendance is now in the mid single digits.</p> <p>As this discussion unfolds, it will be important to keep in mind that AL cites the Final Report of the 2015 Synod on the key point: that all pastoral accompaniment of the divorced and civilly remarried, including discernment of ways in which they can be better integrated into the life of the Catholic community, is to take place &#8220;according to the teaching of the Church&#8221; &#8212; which means, in this context, the Church&#8217;s settled teaching on indissolubility and on worthiness to receive holy communion. It will also be important to keep in mind, as this discussion continues, that the kind of pastoral accompaniment and discernment so strongly urged by Pope Francis is in fact what goes on in the Catholic parishes and dioceses with which I&#8217;m most familiar. There are exceptions, I&#8217;m sure, and I&#8217;ve heard my share of horror stories about unfeeling and incompetent priests &#8212; and they are horrific, and disgraceful. But the priests and bishops I know bend every possible effort to be sensitive to difficult situations, and to see how they might be resolved in ways that serve both mercy and truth.</p> <p>Failure is not something new in the Church; failure has been part of the Christian story from the beginning. If the Church has failed to make sufficiently clear that we are all sinners, that we all live by the divine mercy, and that, at the end, we have only the merits of Christ to plead on our behalf, then it is good to be reminded, as Pope Francis so regularly reminds us, of these truths. At the same time, the pope of mercy is the pope of a &#8220;Church permanently in mission,&#8221; as he put it in the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. And the most vital, evangelically assertive parts of the world Church today are those that have neither abandoned mercy in the name of abstract truth, nor abandoned the patrimony of truth bequeathed to the Church by Christ for the sake of a thin notion of mercy that is more sentimental than divine. Truth and mercy always go together. Pope Francis knows that. And the discussion of AL&#8217;s proposals on dealing with the most complex situations will be well served if the discussants keep that indissoluble dyad in mind.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>QUESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE</p> <p>At the very outset of this lengthy document, Pope Francis writes that it is not his purpose to settle everything, and that there is a &#8220;need for continued open discussion of a number of doctrinal, moral, spiritual, and pastoral questions.&#8221;</p> <p>Among them might be the question of how the unity of the Church coheres with the proposal that &#8220;each country or region&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;.&amp;#160;can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs.&#8221; There&#8217;s an obvious truth in that; but there is also truth in the observation, made during the 2015 synod, that what is a grave sin in Poland cannot be a source of grace on the German side of the Polish&#8211;German border. What, then, are the boundaries of the &#8220;inculturation&#8221; of truth and mercy, such that the Church remains the Church, and faithful to Christ, wherever she is?</p> <p>Then there is AL&#8217;s regular use of the term &#8220;ideal&#8221; to describe the Church&#8217;s full understanding of marriage. Here, too, is an obvious truth. But one wonders whether it wouldn&#8217;t be better to describe that &#8220;ideal&#8221; as the &#8220;full&#8221; truth of marriage to which we aspire in our lives. Part of the genius of John Paul II with young people was that he knew the young want to be challenged to lead lives of heroic virtue &#8212; just as he knew that no one always lives that &#8220;ideal.&#8221; That is why he stressed the importance of confession and the sacrament of reconciliation as a means to keep seeking noble and heroic goals.</p> <p>Amoris Laetitia will also keep the theologians busy, analyzing its moral theology and its reading of Church tradition. All of this churning, I think we must believe, will finally work out to the good of the Church and the advance of its mission of evangelization and service &#8212; and to the good of a world that badly needs to hear the truths the pope teaches. But that will happen only if AL is read in full, with the care and patience its author requests, and with these striking two sentences from the document as the framework for the ongoing discussion: &#8220;To show understanding in the face of exceptional situations never implies dimming the light of the fuller ideal, or proposing less than what Jesus offers to human beings. Today, more important than the pastoral care of failures is the pastoral effort to strengthen marriages and thus to prevent their breakdown.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8211; George&amp;#160;Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington&#8217;s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p>

Pope Francis on Love, Marriage, and the Family

https://eppc.org/publications/pope-francis-on-love-marriage-and-the-family/

1right-center

Weighing in at a gargantuan 261 pages Amoris Laetitia 8220The Joy of Love8221 is by my quick reckoning the longest such document in the history of the papal magisterium and by a good 10 percent or more Its sheer size suggests the wisdom 8212 although probably the futility too 8212 of Pope Francis8217s plea that his apostolic exhortation 8220on love in the family8221 be read 8220patiently and carefully8221 piece by piece and then pondered as a whole The futility comes from the fact that various preexhortation Catholic spin machines have set a context for the reception of Amoris Laetitia that the world media will find irresistible by focusing almost exclusive attention on the question of whether the pope would endorse one or other of Walter Cardinal Kasper8217s proposals for admitting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to holy communion quick preview Francis doesn8217t So look in the early going for a vast global argument over whether a 8220door has been opened8221 or a 8220first step taken8221 to vindicating Kasper Those who will say that Kasper has not been vindicated seem to me to have the better of the argument on a close reading of the text of the exhortation But that won8217t prevent others including Germanspeaking bishops and theologians who don8217t seem capable of recognizing that their proposals were rejected by two synods of bishops from claiming victory The other problem with the Pope8217s plea for patience and care in reading Amoris Laetitia is that most Catholics not to mention others are simply not going to wade through a text of this length And that is a shame because the exhortation says many important things about love marriage the family and the current cultural crisis of a world in which the imperial autonomous Self is running roughshod over just about everything leaving a lot of human unhappiness in its wake Thus it might be a useful orientation for those who are going to take a cut at reading this vast sprawling text to highlight some of what impress me as the exhortation8217s most striking arguments 8212 which may also serve as a minisummary for those who have neither the time nor the inclination to read Amoris Laetitia hereafter AL in full amp160 THE BIBLE SETS THE STAGE At last October8217s second synod on the family the working document prepared by the synod office was severely criticized for beginning with some secondrate sociology rather than with the Word of God Pope Francis evidently heard that criticism for AL begins with a rich reflection on the Bible which as the Pope says 8220is full of families births love stories and family crises8221 Francis then speaks movingly of 8220the majestic early chapters of Genesis8221 which 8220present the human couple in its deepest reality8221 Which is to say the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is not a pious myth with no relevance for the 21st century it speaks a truth about our being made male and female and about the complementarity built into our difference that is ageless and enduring Moreover Francis reminds us following John Paul II 8220the couple that loves and begets life is a true living iconamp160amp160amp160amp160capable of revealing God the Creator and Savior8221 This even sheds light on that most unfathomable of Christian mysteries the Holy Trinity for 8220the couple8217s fruitful relationship becomes an image for understanding and describing the mystery of God himselfamp160amp160amp160amp160The triune God is a communion of love and the family is its living reflection8221 Francis goes on to celebrate the Bible8217s speaking of 8220the gift of children8221 and shows how in primitive Christianity the family was thought of as the 8220domestic Church a setting for the Eucharist the presence of Christ seated at the table8221 But the Bible also speaks of the pain and suffering involved in family life which is like many other sorrows in the human condition the result of the will to power run amok Those biblical accounts of family struggle help us to understand something important that 8220the word of God is not a series of abstract ideas but rather a source of comfort and companionship for every family that experiences difficulties or suffering8221 If 21stcentury Christians can learn to see the world through a lens ground by Biblical faith they will see the truth about love marriage and the family clearly that despite our tendency to make a mess of things families are called to 8220become a communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit8221 Then Christians can live in the sure confidence that the end of their journey is that Kingdom where God 8220will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore8221 Rev 214 THE CONTEMPORARY CRISIS OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY Francis8217s catalogue of the cultural factors gnawing away at marriage and the family is comprehensive and it seems to me acute It includes 8220extreme individualism8221 the 8220pace of life8221 that militates against decisions for permanent relationships and the mantra of 8220choice8221 as the highest of human goods all of which lead to 8220an inability to give oneself generously to others8221 Confused ideas of freedom 8211amp1608220that each individual can act arbitrarily as if there were no truths values and principles to provide guidance and everything is possible and permissible8221 8211amp160intensify the crisis The Pope cautions against a Church 8220on the defensive wasting pastoral energy on denouncing a decadent world without being proactive in proposing ways of finding true happiness8221 Which is true enough in those sectors of the Church rare in my experience where such doomsaying is the plat du jour But then Francis himself goes on to deplore the 8220narcissism8221 that 8220makes people incapable of looking beyond themselves8221 which is surely one major factor in the contemporary meltdown of marriage and the family So too he writes is that 8220great poverty of contemporary culture8221 which is 8220loneliness arising from the absence of God in a person8217s life and the fragility of relationships8221 AL then discusses the challenges posed to marriage and the family by economic dislocation migration human trafficking the abuse of women the sexual abuse of children dire poverty a rapidly evolving global economy and an 8220ideology of gender8221 But over and beyond those undoubted scourges is 8220a failure to realize that only the exclusive and indissoluble union between a man and a woman has a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment that bears fruit in new life8221 And that ignorance is leading to 8220a legal deconstruction of the family tending to adopt models based almost exclusively on the autonomy of the individual will8221 Justice Anthony Kennedy please call the Vatican Yet the bad news is not all the news there is Thus Francis concludes this section of AL with a prayer 8220I thank God that many families which are far from considering themselves perfect live in love fulfill their calling and keep moving forward even if they may fall many times along the way8221 amp160 CHRIST AND THE FAMILY The Christian family the pope writes 8220can be fully understood only in the light of the Father8217s infinite love revealed in Christ who gave himself for our sake and who continues to live in our midstamp160amp160amp160amp160at the heart of so many love stories8221 This means that the Christian family is was and always will be countercultural not to be different for difference8217s sake but to offer a model of a nobler way of living That way is rooted in God8217s original plan for humanity and reaches its perfection in 8220marriage and the familyamp160amp160amp160amp160redeemed by Christ and restored in the image of the Holy Trinity the mystery from which all true love flows8221 That is why the Catholic Church believes and teaches 8212 and will always believe and teach 8212 that marriage is indissoluble sacramental and ordered to both the sanctification of the spouses and the begetting and rearing of children Francis applauds Blessed Paul VI for Humanae Vitae the 1968 encyclical on the morally appropriate means of regulating fertility recommends Saint John Paul II8217s theology of the body for its 8220vision of the vocation of men and women to love8221 and notes that Benedict XVI found in the family that place where 8220we learn the experience of the common good8221 Thus Christians must always propose marriage as something far more and far deeper than 8220a social convention an empty ritual or merely the outward sign of a commitment8221 Marriage is a 8220vocation inasmuch as it is a response to a specific call to experience conjugal love as an imperfect sign of the love between Christ and the Church8221 Soamp160the decision to marry like the decision to seek ordination or enter consecrated religious life 8220ought to be the fruit of a process of vocational discernment8221 That in turn means that marriage preparation ought to be one crucial instrument in the Church8217s work of evangelization as pastors help those preparing for marriage to enter into the 8220nuptial mystery8221 AL8217s celebration of the gift of children also includes what may be Pope Francis8217s most ringing affirmation of the right to life of the unborn 8220I feel it urgent to state that if the family is the sanctuary of life the place where life is conceived and cared for it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed So great is the value of a human life and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in its mother8217s womb that no alleged right to one8217s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the 8216property8217 of another human being8221 The pope then explicates this Christcentered understanding of love in marriage in an entire chapter given to a sentencebysentence exegesis of Saint Paul8217s hymn to love as the 8220more excellent way8221 in I Corinthians 1347 After looking at how each of the qualities that Paul ascribes to genuine love as 8220the greatest of these8221 ought to shape a marriage Francis notes that the 8220mystery of marriage8221 is that 8220God makes of the two spouses one single existence8221 There husband and wife through conjugal love participate in what Thomas Aquinas called 8220the greatest form of friendship8221 in which passion is 8220always directed to an ever more stable and intense union8221 and in which sex is understood as 8220an interpersonal language in which the other is taken seriously in his or her sacred and inviolable dignity8221 As for those young people scared by the idea of permanent commitment the Pope offers this counsel Marriage is 8220the means to ensure that your love will truly grow and endure8221 amp160 THE FRUITFULNESS OF MARRIAGE THE PLAGUE OF DIVORCE AND EDUCATION AL celebratesamp160the procreative character of marriage and the family and discusses in a touching way how adoption expands the fruitfulness of marriage The pope who not infrequently cites his grandmother in his homilies also lifts up the beauty of the generationally extended family The 8220family8221 in Francis8217s view is a network of relationships in which the young and the elderly have responsibilities toward each other as do brothers and sisters Beyond marriage preparation AL calls for the Church to accompany young married couples in their first years of marriage as they begin their families and as they experience crises Marital crisis too easily leads to marital breakdown thus the pope urges all to see that 8220each crisis has a lesson to teach us we need to learn to listen for it with the ear of the heart8221 The Church8217s care must also extend to those who have been abandoned by their spouse who are separated or who are divorced and refers pastors to the revised procedures for determining whether a first marriage did not in fact exist usually referred to as an 8220annulment8221 But there is no suggestion here that divorce is a minor matter not least because of its bad effects on children Rather the pope writes 8220divorce is an evil and the increasing number of divorces is very troubling Hence our most important pastoral task with regard to families is to strengthen their love helping to heal wounds and working to prevent the spread of this drama of our times8221 AL offers a strong affirmation of 8220sex education8221 but makes clear that this is not a subdiscipline of plumbing Rather education in human sexuality ought to take place 8220within the broader framework of an education for love for mutual selfgiving8221 How this might be done in say American public schools will be an interesting topic of discussion down the line PASTORAL ACCOMPANIMENT IN DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES The eighth chapter of AL which takes up the question of the Church8217s care for those in broken marriages and those who have been divorced and civilly remarried will doubtless be the focus of extended discussion That this will happen is due in no small part to the hijacking of the synods of 2014 and 2015 by northern European bishops who seem to think that a radical change in the Church8217s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and on worthiness to receive holy communion is a magic solution to the death of their local Churches where regular Mass attendance is now in the mid single digits As this discussion unfolds it will be important to keep in mind that AL cites the Final Report of the 2015 Synod on the key point that all pastoral accompaniment of the divorced and civilly remarried including discernment of ways in which they can be better integrated into the life of the Catholic community is to take place 8220according to the teaching of the Church8221 8212 which means in this context the Church8217s settled teaching on indissolubility and on worthiness to receive holy communion It will also be important to keep in mind as this discussion continues that the kind of pastoral accompaniment and discernment so strongly urged by Pope Francis is in fact what goes on in the Catholic parishes and dioceses with which I8217m most familiar There are exceptions I8217m sure and I8217ve heard my share of horror stories about unfeeling and incompetent priests 8212 and they are horrific and disgraceful But the priests and bishops I know bend every possible effort to be sensitive to difficult situations and to see how they might be resolved in ways that serve both mercy and truth Failure is not something new in the Church failure has been part of the Christian story from the beginning If the Church has failed to make sufficiently clear that we are all sinners that we all live by the divine mercy and that at the end we have only the merits of Christ to plead on our behalf then it is good to be reminded as Pope Francis so regularly reminds us of these truths At the same time the pope of mercy is the pope of a 8220Church permanently in mission8221 as he put it in the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium And the most vital evangelically assertive parts of the world Church today are those that have neither abandoned mercy in the name of abstract truth nor abandoned the patrimony of truth bequeathed to the Church by Christ for the sake of a thin notion of mercy that is more sentimental than divine Truth and mercy always go together Pope Francis knows that And the discussion of AL8217s proposals on dealing with the most complex situations will be well served if the discussants keep that indissoluble dyad in mind amp160 QUESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE At the very outset of this lengthy document Pope Francis writes that it is not his purpose to settle everything and that there is a 8220need for continued open discussion of a number of doctrinal moral spiritual and pastoral questions8221 Among them might be the question of how the unity of the Church coheres with the proposal that 8220each country or regionamp160amp160amp160amp160can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs8221 There8217s an obvious truth in that but there is also truth in the observation made during the 2015 synod that what is a grave sin in Poland cannot be a source of grace on the German side of the Polish8211German border What then are the boundaries of the 8220inculturation8221 of truth and mercy such that the Church remains the Church and faithful to Christ wherever she is Then there is AL8217s regular use of the term 8220ideal8221 to describe the Church8217s full understanding of marriage Here too is an obvious truth But one wonders whether it wouldn8217t be better to describe that 8220ideal8221 as the 8220full8221 truth of marriage to which we aspire in our lives Part of the genius of John Paul II with young people was that he knew the young want to be challenged to lead lives of heroic virtue 8212 just as he knew that no one always lives that 8220ideal8221 That is why he stressed the importance of confession and the sacrament of reconciliation as a means to keep seeking noble and heroic goals Amoris Laetitia will also keep the theologians busy analyzing its moral theology and its reading of Church tradition All of this churning I think we must believe will finally work out to the good of the Church and the advance of its mission of evangelization and service 8212 and to the good of a world that badly needs to hear the truths the pope teaches But that will happen only if AL is read in full with the care and patience its author requests and with these striking two sentences from the document as the framework for the ongoing discussion 8220To show understanding in the face of exceptional situations never implies dimming the light of the fuller ideal or proposing less than what Jesus offers to human beings Today more important than the pastoral care of failures is the pastoral effort to strengthen marriages and thus to prevent their breakdown8221 8211 Georgeamp160Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington8217s Ethics and Public Policy Center where he holds the William E Simon Chair in Catholic Studies

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<p>Editor&#8217;s Note: In the following essay, Wellford &#8220;Buzz&#8221; Wilms, The director of the Education Leadership Program at UCLA forcefully argues that public education funds must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies and redirected into the schools, where principals, teachers and parents can meaningfully influence what is being taught.</p> <p>The <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30713FF3F540C758EDDAA0894DE404482" type="external">recent news</a> reported in The New York Times that schools are throwing out science, social studies and art to make time for drilling students in remedial math and reading is a sign of things gone terribly wrong. Former New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol told the Times that narrowing education to just math and reading would be akin to restricting violin students to playing scales day after day. &#8220;They&#8217;d lose their zest for music.&#8221; But most schools that serve poor populations, like those in Cuero, Texas, are squeezed to meet federal math and reading standards. Cuero Superintendent Henry Lind told the paper, &#8220;When you have so many hours per day and you&#8217;re behind in some area that&#8217;s being hammered on, you have to work on that.&#8221;</p> <p>But by the looks of things, hammering students for higher test scores isn&#8217;t making much of a difference. Most students have already lost their zest for learning. How do we know? In Los Angeles, upwards of 50% of Latino and African American students never finish high school. This is just the tip of the iceberg.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve been a professor of education at UCLA for more than 25 years and am convinced that despite the fads that come and go, nothing has put a dent in the public schools&#8217; failure to educate inner-city children. In fact, things are getting worse. But I am also convinced that we&#8217;ve been looking in the wrong places for solutions. My own research across a wide array of organizations &#8212; corporations, trade unions, public schools, colleges, teacher unions and police agencies &#8212; suggests another way of looking at the problem and that solutions will come from a new direction.</p> <p /> <p>This essay is a proposition &#8212; one that I hope will spark a lively debate among Truthdig readers and inform policy leaders. Future essays will examine Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa&#8217;s campaign to take over the public schools, analyze whether teacher unions can be a force for productive change, and expose promising ways to rebuild public investment in the schools.</p> <p>Let&#8217;s start with Jonathan Kozol&#8217;s new book, &#8220; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400052440/sr=8-1/qid=1146047163/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4687477-0252864?%5Fencoding=UTF8" type="external">The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America</a>.&#8221; It is a scathing indictment of American social policy that banned racial segregation in public schools in 1955 and then turned a blind eye to its implementation. Today, Kozol says, schools are more segregated than ever. But he fails to explain why resegregation has occurred. Because Kozol overlooks the root causes of the problem, his solutions &#8212; spending more money on dysfunctional schools and wishing for a social mandate to desegregate the schools &#8212; miss the point.</p> <p>To be sure the problems are undeniable. Kozol examines the appalling condition of big-city schools. In school after school we see children who are brimming with potential but who are walled off from the larger society and abandoned by the schools. Most middle-class white Americans simply cannot comprehend the horrid schools that Kozol describes. Ceilings fall in, toilets are filthy, libraries, music and arts have been stripped away. Teachers in these schools, who are paid 40% less than teachers in the suburbs, are forced to teach &#8220;scripted&#8221; lessons that are written for children who are deemed incapable of learning.</p> <p>It is all part of the latest reform pushed by the Bush administration&#8217;s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_child_left_behind" type="external">No Child Left Behind</a> initiative, a reform aimed at the singular pursuit of increasing test scores. Learning has been stripped of its intrinsic meaning and reduced to simplistic steps &#8212; &#8220;Authentic Writing,&#8221; &#8220;Active Listening,&#8221; &#8220;Accountable Talk&#8221; &#8212; that hamper teachers in teaching anything but how to take a test. Behind it all is an attempt to impose control, much as mass production techniques were used a century ago, to standardize instruction to fit new immigrants to the system.</p> <p>Meanwhile, millions of children are failing. In nearly half of the high schools in America&#8217;s 100 largest districts, fewer than 50% of students graduate in four years. Most of these students are from poor Latino and African-American families. And from 1993 to 2000 the number of failing schools has mushroomed by 75%. Mayor Villaraigosa calls Los Angeles&#8217; high dropout rates &#8220;numbers that should put a chill down your spine.&#8221;</p> <p>The reasons, Kozol argues, are lack of money and racial discrimination that produce inferior and segregated schools. No doubt this is partly true. We have tried to desegregate the schools for a half-century and failed. Middle-class white parents have voted for individual freedom with their feet, enrolling their children in private schools, leaving the public schools more segregated than ever. The same is true for middle-class black families. Gail Foster, an educator who has studied black independent schools, was quoted in 2004 in The New York Times as saying: &#8220;Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children. What&#8217;s left, in even working-class communities, are schools filled with the least empowered families. Families with the least parent involvement to offer, families with the least help with homework to offer. There&#8217;s been a continual outflow for at least 10 years, and it isn&#8217;t stopping now.&#8221;</p> <p>More money is not the answer either. Kozol points to wide disparities in educational expenditures ranging from $11,700 per student in New York City to $22,000 in suburban Manhasset. Disturbing as that is, study after study shows that equalizing money does not necessarily equalize learning.</p> <p>In 1966, sociologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Coleman" type="external">James Coleman</a> conducted the most extensive study ever made of desegregating education and found that what mattered most in students&#8217; learning was the economic status of their peers rather than the racial makeup of the school. He also found that school funding was not closely related to students&#8217; achievement &#8212; their families&#8217; economic status was far more predictive. Coleman&#8217;s findings were controversial and led to a bitter debate, but they have been replicated many times. Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up best when he commented shortly after Coleman&#8217;s groundbreaking study, &#8220;We should begin to see that the underlying reality is not race but social class.&#8221;</p> <p>Since social class matters because money follows privilege, and since desegregation will take generations to eradicate, what can be done now? Are poor children doomed to attend grossly inadequate schools? Surely not. We must find ways to remove the influences that have crippled the schools. Money must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies that snuff out innovation. Instead it must go directly to schools where principals and teachers can influence what is taught and what children learn, and help bring parents back into the fold. Otherwise, it is going down a rat hole.Parents have a significant role to play in their children&#8217;s education, but their voices have been largely silenced. Over the last 40 years, we have witnessed the decline of civic involvement and the growing dominance of self-interest over the greater good, a social deterioration that sociologist Robert Putnam calls &#8220;hollowing out&#8221; in his 2000 book &#8220;Bowling Alone.&#8221; One result, as the old saying goes, is that &#8220;the rich get richer&#8221; and the poor fall ever further behind in crumbling schools.</p> <p>Over the last 25 years, education in general has been taken from ordinary citizens and teachers by politicians, administrators, union leaders, publishers, test makers, consultants, university professors, hardware and software developers and the media, each playing its part in keeping alive the illusion of reform. All in all, this $1-trillion industry has replaced the common interest, and no one, it seems, can muster the will to rein it in.</p> <p>Local control is only a dim memory. Decisions now come from the top &#8212; from the federal and state governments, school boards and high-level administrators who have little knowledge of what goes on in the classroom. Teachers are left out of these decisions, carrying on the best they can, safe in the assumption that the newest fad, like those before it, will blow over. Parents are all but forgotten.</p> <p>While command-and-control management may seem to produce results in the short run, it strips schools of the capacity to develop the stable leadership that is necessary to sustain success. Principals are besieged with demands from district offices and from the educational fads that emanate from publishers and university researchers. Many principals know that they put their careers in peril unless they do what their bosses want. One elementary school principal told me, &#8220;District directives undermine our own abilities to think for ourselves, to believe in what we see and know.&#8221; When schools discover something that works, it is rarely sustained because they lack authority or stable leadership.</p> <p>In 1969 when I worked for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, I monitored the schools in impoverished Ocean Hill-Brownsville in New York City. The local school board hired a charismatic superintendent, who fired incompetent teachers and hired young and idealistic ones. The firings set the local board at odds with the huge teachers&#8217; union, which demanded due process for the fired teachers. The superintendent, Rhody McCoy, was convinced that good teachers had to respect the children they taught. He put it in plain words: &#8220;If you&#8217;re convinced that this kid is doomed by nature or by something else to lead a shrunken and curtailed life, then you&#8217;re basically incompetent to teach that child.&#8221; The experiment worked. Observing classrooms left no doubt in my mind that students were learning. Eager first-graders sat attentively on the floor in semicircles shouting out answers to fraction problems and reading aloud. The schools buzzed with excitement as parent helpers streamed in and out of classrooms. But in a bitter power struggle the board seized authority and the experiment ended.</p> <p>Years later, in 1985, Deborah Meier, a passionate educator who founded Harlem&#8217;s Central Park East Secondary School, achieved stunning successes that led the school to be celebrated as a model alternative school in Time magazine. But it could not be sustained beyond Meier&#8217;s unique leadership. Today, 10 years after Meier left, a respected children&#8217;s advocacy group, Insideschools and Advocates for Children, reports that the Harlem school &#8220;&#8230;has fallen on hard times in recent years with rapid staff turnover, low staff morale and uneven discipline.&#8221;</p> <p>In risk-averse environments like public schools, few principals will stick out their necks, because they don&#8217;t want to buck the bosses downtown. Courageous and visionary principals like Rhody McCoy and Deborah Meier keep coming. But charismatic leadership is no match for heavy-handed district management, which always wins out.</p> <p>Take Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles, for example. In 1989, Howard Lappin took over a failing middle school. With the help of teachers and an infusion of money, Lappin wrested control from the district and transformed Foshay. The school expanded into a K-12 &#8220;learning center&#8221; and became largely autonomous of the district&#8217;s bureaucratic requirements. Teachers and administrators decided who would be hired and what would be taught. Foshay succeeded, and in 2000 its high school was selected by Newsweek as one of the 100 best in America. But in 2001 Lappin retired, and his unique leadership was lost. Today Foshay is being threatened with sanctions by the district and the county because gains in students&#8217; test scores have stalled. As the school has fallen under the district&#8217;s &#8220;one-size-fits all&#8221; bureaucratic requirements, the impact has been to undermine the once vibrant teacher leadership that made the school so enviable.</p> <p>The problem with public education is not with the teachers, or with the children, but the way we organize the schools. Probably the greatest casualties are teachers themselves, who are forced to accept decisions by authorities about teaching that they know to be nonsense. One professor interviewed by Kozol said that forcing an absurdity on teachers teaches something: acquiescence. For example, in study after study, teachers report that relying on test scores as sole marks of student achievement and teaching scripted lessons destroy students&#8217; natural love of learning. And such practices also erode teachers&#8217; professional authority, which is fundamental to student learning.</p> <p>Why is it so hard to foster the only kind of reform that really works, which is right in the schoolhouse? Because politicians, school board members and administrators are under intense pressure to produce immediate results, i.e., higher and higher test scores &#8212; a goal that is pursued through directives from districts with little input of principals, teachers and parents. Superintendents serve at the pleasure of school boards, and most board members are elected or appointed and have limited terms of office. As test scores have become the measure of educational quality, everyone is under immense pressure to show fast results or be turned out.</p> <p>No wonder that school boards hire superintendents who promise to deliver quick results. But few do. Superintendents last on average only three or four years. Many are thwarted by outmoded bureaucracies that were designed a century ago using top-down control practiced in American industry to mass-produce learning. Within these organizations, power has quietly accumulated, making them all but impervious to outside influence. Sid Thompson, former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, told me: &#8220;Trying to change the district is like trying to change the direction of a fast-moving freight train. You might knock it off course for a moment, but before you know it it&#8217;s rattling right down the tracks again.&#8221; Frustration and suspicion about who might emerge from the shadows to sabotage their plans often lead superintendents to jealously guard their power. In 2002, Day Higuchi, then president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the Los Angeles teacher union, had high hopes for working with the school district&#8217;s new &#8220;can-do&#8221; superintendent, Roy Romer. Higuchi hoped that Romer would endorse a new union initiative called Lesson Study, a plan to help teachers work collectively to improve classroom lessons. At a breakfast meeting that I attended, Higuchi presented Romer with an invitation to work with the union to develop and spread Lesson Study across the district. When Higuchi finished, Romer flipped over his paper placemat and with a red felt pen drew a box with an S in it. &#8220;That&#8217;s me,&#8221; he said. Beneath he drew 11 boxes with smaller s&#8217;s in them, representing the 11 local superintendents, and below that, a number of small boxes with roofs, representing schools and teachers. Then, pulling his face near to Higuchi&#8217;s, he drew bold red arrows pointing downward from the top. Romer jabbed his pen in the air to accentuate each word: &#8220;You cannot usurp my authority to manage this district!&#8221; It was a dumbfounding moment, one that revealed the true underside of the use of power. Here was a chance for a new superintendent to forge a small but significant step with the union, but Romer, who recently announced his resignation, explained that he was &#8220;in a hurry.&#8221; He clearly had little time for ideas that were at odds with his own. In the end his refusal to work with the union undermined the possibility of creating a broader base of power that could transcend self-interest.</p> <p>Nor are the unions exempt from self-interest. A few years ago I helped establish a national group of union presidents called TURN (Teacher Union Reform Network) who were dedicated to remaking their unions as forces to improve education. One way was to cooperate with administrators and encourage teachers to use their classroom know-how to redesign teaching at the schoolhouse. But hostility and mistrust run deep. The union leaders became nervous, fearing that fellow unionists would attack them for &#8220;collaborating&#8221; with the enemy and that if the effort to collaborate failed they would share the blame. Don Watley, president of the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees, commented: &#8220;It&#8217;s like the Normandy landing. We&#8217;ve got the best troops in the world. We&#8217;ve got the best officers in the world. And we&#8217;ve got the best equipment in the world. But at 0800 when we hit the beach half of us are going to get killed!&#8221; Sadly, in the years to come, the ingrained mistrust, and the unpredictable dance of union politics, prevented these unionists from becoming a positive force in educational reform. Instead, they have been reduced to stockpiling power, much as the Soviets and Americans stockpiled nuclear weapons during the Cold War, to oppose any hostile moves the other side might make.</p> <p>So what can be done to break the standoff between teacher unions and districts? How can teachers&#8217; professional authority be restored? How can parents be awakened and brought back into the fold? Experience shows that it can be done. Schools such as Harlem&#8217;s Central Park East Secondary, Los Angeles&#8217; Foshay Learning Center, those in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and many others attest to the fact that schools can be made into safe places where children learn. Sustaining them is the hard part.</p> <p>There is little doubt that trying to build good schools with command-and-control management doesn&#8217;t work. School boards, superintendents and union officials need to clear the obstacles &#8212; unnecessary bureaucratic requirements and outmoded work rules &#8212; to make innovation at the schoolhouse possible. These top-level educational leaders also must make resources available to support new ways of teaching. Jonathan Kozol has it right. Teaching is the only reform that counts and it can be done only at the schoolhouse by teachers, principals, parents and students working together.</p> <p>Turning school districts upside down will also mean turning a century of top-down management on its head. But where is such bold leadership to be found? One promising place is among big-city mayors. But they must resist trying to take over the schools, as they did in New York, Chicago and Boston with mixed results at best. Instead, popular mayors could use their influence and visibility to tell the truth about the condition of education and to build a popular consensus about how change must occur.</p> <p>In the next essay I am going to examine what mayors can do. Waiting for the schools to be saved by someone else is nonsense. Only concerted local action offers a chance. Doubters should recall Margaret Mead&#8217;s observation: &#8220;Never doubt that a small group of concerned people can change the world. Indeed, it&#8217;s the only thing that ever has.&#8221;</p> <p />

Taking Back Our Schools--and Fixing Them

https://truthdig.com/articles/taking-back-our-schools-and-fixing-them/

2006-04-26

4left

Editor8217s Note In the following essay Wellford 8220Buzz8221 Wilms The director of the Education Leadership Program at UCLA forcefully argues that public education funds must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies and redirected into the schools where principals teachers and parents can meaningfully influence what is being taught The recent news reported in The New York Times that schools are throwing out science social studies and art to make time for drilling students in remedial math and reading is a sign of things gone terribly wrong Former New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol told the Times that narrowing education to just math and reading would be akin to restricting violin students to playing scales day after day 8220They8217d lose their zest for music8221 But most schools that serve poor populations like those in Cuero Texas are squeezed to meet federal math and reading standards Cuero Superintendent Henry Lind told the paper 8220When you have so many hours per day and you8217re behind in some area that8217s being hammered on you have to work on that8221 But by the looks of things hammering students for higher test scores isn8217t making much of a difference Most students have already lost their zest for learning How do we know In Los Angeles upwards of 50 of Latino and African American students never finish high school This is just the tip of the iceberg I8217ve been a professor of education at UCLA for more than 25 years and am convinced that despite the fads that come and go nothing has put a dent in the public schools8217 failure to educate innercity children In fact things are getting worse But I am also convinced that we8217ve been looking in the wrong places for solutions My own research across a wide array of organizations 8212 corporations trade unions public schools colleges teacher unions and police agencies 8212 suggests another way of looking at the problem and that solutions will come from a new direction This essay is a proposition 8212 one that I hope will spark a lively debate among Truthdig readers and inform policy leaders Future essays will examine Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa8217s campaign to take over the public schools analyze whether teacher unions can be a force for productive change and expose promising ways to rebuild public investment in the schools Let8217s start with Jonathan Kozol8217s new book 8220 The Shame of the Nation The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America8221 It is a scathing indictment of American social policy that banned racial segregation in public schools in 1955 and then turned a blind eye to its implementation Today Kozol says schools are more segregated than ever But he fails to explain why resegregation has occurred Because Kozol overlooks the root causes of the problem his solutions 8212 spending more money on dysfunctional schools and wishing for a social mandate to desegregate the schools 8212 miss the point To be sure the problems are undeniable Kozol examines the appalling condition of bigcity schools In school after school we see children who are brimming with potential but who are walled off from the larger society and abandoned by the schools Most middleclass white Americans simply cannot comprehend the horrid schools that Kozol describes Ceilings fall in toilets are filthy libraries music and arts have been stripped away Teachers in these schools who are paid 40 less than teachers in the suburbs are forced to teach 8220scripted8221 lessons that are written for children who are deemed incapable of learning It is all part of the latest reform pushed by the Bush administration8217s No Child Left Behind initiative a reform aimed at the singular pursuit of increasing test scores Learning has been stripped of its intrinsic meaning and reduced to simplistic steps 8212 8220Authentic Writing8221 8220Active Listening8221 8220Accountable Talk8221 8212 that hamper teachers in teaching anything but how to take a test Behind it all is an attempt to impose control much as mass production techniques were used a century ago to standardize instruction to fit new immigrants to the system Meanwhile millions of children are failing In nearly half of the high schools in America8217s 100 largest districts fewer than 50 of students graduate in four years Most of these students are from poor Latino and AfricanAmerican families And from 1993 to 2000 the number of failing schools has mushroomed by 75 Mayor Villaraigosa calls Los Angeles8217 high dropout rates 8220numbers that should put a chill down your spine8221 The reasons Kozol argues are lack of money and racial discrimination that produce inferior and segregated schools No doubt this is partly true We have tried to desegregate the schools for a halfcentury and failed Middleclass white parents have voted for individual freedom with their feet enrolling their children in private schools leaving the public schools more segregated than ever The same is true for middleclass black families Gail Foster an educator who has studied black independent schools was quoted in 2004 in The New York Times as saying 8220Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children What8217s left in even workingclass communities are schools filled with the least empowered families Families with the least parent involvement to offer families with the least help with homework to offer There8217s been a continual outflow for at least 10 years and it isn8217t stopping now8221 More money is not the answer either Kozol points to wide disparities in educational expenditures ranging from 11700 per student in New York City to 22000 in suburban Manhasset Disturbing as that is study after study shows that equalizing money does not necessarily equalize learning In 1966 sociologist James Coleman conducted the most extensive study ever made of desegregating education and found that what mattered most in students8217 learning was the economic status of their peers rather than the racial makeup of the school He also found that school funding was not closely related to students8217 achievement 8212 their families8217 economic status was far more predictive Coleman8217s findings were controversial and led to a bitter debate but they have been replicated many times Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up best when he commented shortly after Coleman8217s groundbreaking study 8220We should begin to see that the underlying reality is not race but social class8221 Since social class matters because money follows privilege and since desegregation will take generations to eradicate what can be done now Are poor children doomed to attend grossly inadequate schools Surely not We must find ways to remove the influences that have crippled the schools Money must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies that snuff out innovation Instead it must go directly to schools where principals and teachers can influence what is taught and what children learn and help bring parents back into the fold Otherwise it is going down a rat holeParents have a significant role to play in their children8217s education but their voices have been largely silenced Over the last 40 years we have witnessed the decline of civic involvement and the growing dominance of selfinterest over the greater good a social deterioration that sociologist Robert Putnam calls 8220hollowing out8221 in his 2000 book 8220Bowling Alone8221 One result as the old saying goes is that 8220the rich get richer8221 and the poor fall ever further behind in crumbling schools Over the last 25 years education in general has been taken from ordinary citizens and teachers by politicians administrators union leaders publishers test makers consultants university professors hardware and software developers and the media each playing its part in keeping alive the illusion of reform All in all this 1trillion industry has replaced the common interest and no one it seems can muster the will to rein it in Local control is only a dim memory Decisions now come from the top 8212 from the federal and state governments school boards and highlevel administrators who have little knowledge of what goes on in the classroom Teachers are left out of these decisions carrying on the best they can safe in the assumption that the newest fad like those before it will blow over Parents are all but forgotten While commandandcontrol management may seem to produce results in the short run it strips schools of the capacity to develop the stable leadership that is necessary to sustain success Principals are besieged with demands from district offices and from the educational fads that emanate from publishers and university researchers Many principals know that they put their careers in peril unless they do what their bosses want One elementary school principal told me 8220District directives undermine our own abilities to think for ourselves to believe in what we see and know8221 When schools discover something that works it is rarely sustained because they lack authority or stable leadership In 1969 when I worked for the US Department of Health Education and Welfare I monitored the schools in impoverished Ocean HillBrownsville in New York City The local school board hired a charismatic superintendent who fired incompetent teachers and hired young and idealistic ones The firings set the local board at odds with the huge teachers8217 union which demanded due process for the fired teachers The superintendent Rhody McCoy was convinced that good teachers had to respect the children they taught He put it in plain words 8220If you8217re convinced that this kid is doomed by nature or by something else to lead a shrunken and curtailed life then you8217re basically incompetent to teach that child8221 The experiment worked Observing classrooms left no doubt in my mind that students were learning Eager firstgraders sat attentively on the floor in semicircles shouting out answers to fraction problems and reading aloud The schools buzzed with excitement as parent helpers streamed in and out of classrooms But in a bitter power struggle the board seized authority and the experiment ended Years later in 1985 Deborah Meier a passionate educator who founded Harlem8217s Central Park East Secondary School achieved stunning successes that led the school to be celebrated as a model alternative school in Time magazine But it could not be sustained beyond Meier8217s unique leadership Today 10 years after Meier left a respected children8217s advocacy group Insideschools and Advocates for Children reports that the Harlem school 82208230has fallen on hard times in recent years with rapid staff turnover low staff morale and uneven discipline8221 In riskaverse environments like public schools few principals will stick out their necks because they don8217t want to buck the bosses downtown Courageous and visionary principals like Rhody McCoy and Deborah Meier keep coming But charismatic leadership is no match for heavyhanded district management which always wins out Take Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles for example In 1989 Howard Lappin took over a failing middle school With the help of teachers and an infusion of money Lappin wrested control from the district and transformed Foshay The school expanded into a K12 8220learning center8221 and became largely autonomous of the district8217s bureaucratic requirements Teachers and administrators decided who would be hired and what would be taught Foshay succeeded and in 2000 its high school was selected by Newsweek as one of the 100 best in America But in 2001 Lappin retired and his unique leadership was lost Today Foshay is being threatened with sanctions by the district and the county because gains in students8217 test scores have stalled As the school has fallen under the district8217s 8220onesizefits all8221 bureaucratic requirements the impact has been to undermine the once vibrant teacher leadership that made the school so enviable The problem with public education is not with the teachers or with the children but the way we organize the schools Probably the greatest casualties are teachers themselves who are forced to accept decisions by authorities about teaching that they know to be nonsense One professor interviewed by Kozol said that forcing an absurdity on teachers teaches something acquiescence For example in study after study teachers report that relying on test scores as sole marks of student achievement and teaching scripted lessons destroy students8217 natural love of learning And such practices also erode teachers8217 professional authority which is fundamental to student learning Why is it so hard to foster the only kind of reform that really works which is right in the schoolhouse Because politicians school board members and administrators are under intense pressure to produce immediate results ie higher and higher test scores 8212 a goal that is pursued through directives from districts with little input of principals teachers and parents Superintendents serve at the pleasure of school boards and most board members are elected or appointed and have limited terms of office As test scores have become the measure of educational quality everyone is under immense pressure to show fast results or be turned out No wonder that school boards hire superintendents who promise to deliver quick results But few do Superintendents last on average only three or four years Many are thwarted by outmoded bureaucracies that were designed a century ago using topdown control practiced in American industry to massproduce learning Within these organizations power has quietly accumulated making them all but impervious to outside influence Sid Thompson former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District told me 8220Trying to change the district is like trying to change the direction of a fastmoving freight train You might knock it off course for a moment but before you know it it8217s rattling right down the tracks again8221 Frustration and suspicion about who might emerge from the shadows to sabotage their plans often lead superintendents to jealously guard their power In 2002 Day Higuchi then president of United Teachers Los Angeles the Los Angeles teacher union had high hopes for working with the school district8217s new 8220cando8221 superintendent Roy Romer Higuchi hoped that Romer would endorse a new union initiative called Lesson Study a plan to help teachers work collectively to improve classroom lessons At a breakfast meeting that I attended Higuchi presented Romer with an invitation to work with the union to develop and spread Lesson Study across the district When Higuchi finished Romer flipped over his paper placemat and with a red felt pen drew a box with an S in it 8220That8217s me8221 he said Beneath he drew 11 boxes with smaller s8217s in them representing the 11 local superintendents and below that a number of small boxes with roofs representing schools and teachers Then pulling his face near to Higuchi8217s he drew bold red arrows pointing downward from the top Romer jabbed his pen in the air to accentuate each word 8220You cannot usurp my authority to manage this district8221 It was a dumbfounding moment one that revealed the true underside of the use of power Here was a chance for a new superintendent to forge a small but significant step with the union but Romer who recently announced his resignation explained that he was 8220in a hurry8221 He clearly had little time for ideas that were at odds with his own In the end his refusal to work with the union undermined the possibility of creating a broader base of power that could transcend selfinterest Nor are the unions exempt from selfinterest A few years ago I helped establish a national group of union presidents called TURN Teacher Union Reform Network who were dedicated to remaking their unions as forces to improve education One way was to cooperate with administrators and encourage teachers to use their classroom knowhow to redesign teaching at the schoolhouse But hostility and mistrust run deep The union leaders became nervous fearing that fellow unionists would attack them for 8220collaborating8221 with the enemy and that if the effort to collaborate failed they would share the blame Don Watley president of the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees commented 8220It8217s like the Normandy landing We8217ve got the best troops in the world We8217ve got the best officers in the world And we8217ve got the best equipment in the world But at 0800 when we hit the beach half of us are going to get killed8221 Sadly in the years to come the ingrained mistrust and the unpredictable dance of union politics prevented these unionists from becoming a positive force in educational reform Instead they have been reduced to stockpiling power much as the Soviets and Americans stockpiled nuclear weapons during the Cold War to oppose any hostile moves the other side might make So what can be done to break the standoff between teacher unions and districts How can teachers8217 professional authority be restored How can parents be awakened and brought back into the fold Experience shows that it can be done Schools such as Harlem8217s Central Park East Secondary Los Angeles8217 Foshay Learning Center those in Ocean HillBrownsville and many others attest to the fact that schools can be made into safe places where children learn Sustaining them is the hard part There is little doubt that trying to build good schools with commandandcontrol management doesn8217t work School boards superintendents and union officials need to clear the obstacles 8212 unnecessary bureaucratic requirements and outmoded work rules 8212 to make innovation at the schoolhouse possible These toplevel educational leaders also must make resources available to support new ways of teaching Jonathan Kozol has it right Teaching is the only reform that counts and it can be done only at the schoolhouse by teachers principals parents and students working together Turning school districts upside down will also mean turning a century of topdown management on its head But where is such bold leadership to be found One promising place is among bigcity mayors But they must resist trying to take over the schools as they did in New York Chicago and Boston with mixed results at best Instead popular mayors could use their influence and visibility to tell the truth about the condition of education and to build a popular consensus about how change must occur In the next essay I am going to examine what mayors can do Waiting for the schools to be saved by someone else is nonsense Only concerted local action offers a chance Doubters should recall Margaret Mead8217s observation 8220Never doubt that a small group of concerned people can change the world Indeed it8217s the only thing that ever has8221

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<p>KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Some Malaysian businesses are skirting around or playing down the portrayal of canines in Chinese New Year decorations this year, wary of offending the country&#8217;s Muslim majority in the Year of the Dog.</p> FILE PHOTO: A staff poses with a dog-shaped gold figurine, at Chow Tai Fook Jewellery store ahead of the Lunar Year of the Dog in Hong Kong, China December 14, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo <p>Dogs are considered &#8220;unclean&#8221; under Islamic tradition and Muslims are required to carry out a ritual of washing themselves if they are in contact with the animal.</p> <p>Multicultural Malaysia has seen an increasing intolerance toward activities considered insulting to Islam, reflected in protests in recent years of beer festivals and concerts.</p> <p>While Muslim Malays are the biggest ethnic group among Malaysia&#8217;s 32 million people, Chinese make up the second-biggest group with 23 percent of the population.</p> <p>One shopping mall in the popular Kuala Lumpur tourist area of Bukit Bintang did not depict dogs in its decorations ahead of the new year in February, focusing instead on the 10th anniversary theme of the center, Pavilion Kuala Lumpur.</p> <p>Director of Marketing Kung Suan Ai said religious and cultural sensitivities were a determining factor in conceptualizing decorations. The mall attracts three million people of various backgrounds each month, she said.</p> <p>&#8220;One of the considerations we take in when we work on decoration concepts for Pavilion KL is to create something highly experiential... and also to be socially accepting (for) all,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Twelve animals, including a dog and a pig, another animal Muslims consider as unclean, make up the traditional Chinese zodiac.</p> <p>Malaysian Muslim leaders have been vocal about events that involve dogs before. After the 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in Glasgow, when athletes paraded with a Scottish terrier donning their country&#8217;s name, local politicians aired their disproval, calling the stunt &#8220;disrespectful&#8221;.</p> <p>In 2016, religious authorities asked popular pretzel chain Auntie Anne&#8217;s to change the name of its &#8220;Pretzel Dog&#8221; to &#8220;Pretzel Sausage&#8221;.</p> <p>At MyTOWN, another Kuala Lumpur shopping center where half the visitors are Muslim, the mall downplayed the depiction of dogs in its decorations.</p> <p>&#8220;We have the dogs but it&#8217;s in how we (display) them. They are not the main object. They are life size and placed as ambient decorations,&#8221; said Head of Marketing Christopher Koh, so that the canine would not appear like an idol.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the same with the pig (for the Year of the Boar), Malaysian retailers won&#8217;t usually put up a giant pig as a centerpiece.&#8221;</p> <p>Alex Chow, who runs a company supplying packaging materials, said corporate clients have stuck to generic illustrations for their packaging designs this year.</p> <p>Chinese Malaysian Wong Wei-Shen, who has several dogs as pets, said businesses were being &#8220;ridiculous&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a shame because Malaysia is a multicultural country. To dismiss the fact that the Chinese have a dog as one of the zodiac animals is unfair,&#8221; said Wong.</p> <p>&#8220;Every zodiac animal has its good attributes, and the dog represents a guide, a best friend, a comforter and loyal friend.&#8221; said Wong.</p> <p>Reporting by Liz Lee; Editing by Praveen Menon and Neil Fullick</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>The U.S. government&#8217;s Supreme Court battle with Microsoft Corp over whether technology companies can be forced to hand over data stored overseas could be nearing its end, after federal prosecutors asked that the case be dismissed.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo <p>President Donald Trump on March 22 signed a provision into law making it clear that U.S. judges can issue warrants for such data, while giving companies an avenue to object if the request conflicts with foreign law.</p> <p>&#8220;This case is now moot,&#8221; the U.S. Department of Justice said, citing the newly passed legislation, in a 16-page court filing on Friday that requested the dismissal.</p> <p>The Supreme Court on Feb. 27 heard arguments in the case, which had been one of the most closely watched of the high court&#8217;s current term. Some justices urged Congress to pass a law to resolve the matter.</p> FILE PHOTO: Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith (R) makes a statement to the news media with his lawyer Josh Rosenkranz outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., February 27, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis <p>Microsoft and the Justice Department had been locked in a dispute over how U.S. prosecutors seek access to data held on overseas computer servers owned by American companies. The case involved Microsoft&#8217;s challenge to a domestic warrant issued by a U.S. judge for emails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin relating to a drug-trafficking investigation.</p> <p>The bipartisan new law, known as the Cloud Act, was supported by Microsoft, other major technology companies and the Trump administration. But civil liberties groups opposed it, saying it lacked sufficient privacy protections.</p> <p>Microsoft, which has 100 data centers in 40 countries, was the first American company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the United States. The Microsoft customer whose emails were sought told the company he was based in Ireland when he signed up for his account.</p> <p>A representative for Microsoft did not immediately return requests for comment on the Justice Department&#8217;s filing.</p> <p>Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Alex Dobuzinskis; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ATLANTA (Reuters) - Atlanta&#8217;s top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a nine-day-old cyber attack that plunged the Southeastern U.S. metropolis into technological chaos and forced some city workers to revert to paper.</p> A view of Atlanta's City Hall, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Laila Kearney <p>On an Easter and Passover holiday weekend, city officials labored in preparation for the workweek to come.</p> <p>Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives, recreating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating &#8220;ransomware&#8221; virus attacks to hit an American city.</p> <p>Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta&#8217;s computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical systems.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s extraordinarily frustrating,&#8221; said Councilman Howard Shook, whose office lost 16 years of digital records.</p> <p>One compromised city computer seen by Reuters showed multiple corrupted documents with &#8220;weapologize&#8221; and &#8220;imsorry&#8221; added to file names.</p> <p>Ransomware attacks have surged in recent years as cyber extortionists moved from attacking individual computers to large organizations, including businesses, healthcare organizations and government agencies. Previous high-profile attacks have shut down factories, prompted hospitals to turn away patients and forced local emergency dispatch systems to move to manual operations.</p> <p>Ransomware typically corrupts data and does not steal it. The city of Atlanta has said it does not believe private residents&#8217; information is in the hands of hackers, but they do not know for sure.</p> <p>City officials have declined to discuss the extent of damage beyond disclosed outages that have shut down some services at municipal offices, including courts and the water department.</p> <p>Nearly 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Georgia city itself is home to more than 450,000 people, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.</p> <p>City officials told Reuters that police files and financial documents were rendered inaccessible by unknown hackers who demanded $51,000 worth of bitcoin to provide digital keys to unlock scrambled files.</p> <p>&#8220;Everything on my hard drive is gone,&#8221; City Auditor Amanda Noble said in her office housed in Atlanta City Hall&#8217;s ornate tower.</p> <p>City officials have not disclosed the extent to which servers for backing up information on PCs were corrupted or what kind of information they think is unrecoverable without paying the ransom.</p> <p>Noble discovered the disarray on March 22 when she turned on her computer to discover that files could not be opened after being encrypted by a powerful computer virus known as SamSam that renamed them with gibberish.</p> <p>&#8220;I said, &#8216;This is wrong,&#8217;&#8221; she recalled.</p> <p>City officials then quickly entered her office and told her to shut down the computer before warning the rest of the building.</p> <p>Noble is working on a personal laptop and using her smartphone to search for details of current projects mentioned in emails stored on that device.</p> <p>Not all computers were compromised. Ten of 18 machines in the auditing office were not affected, Noble said.</p> <p>OLD-SCHOOL ANALOG</p> <p>Atlanta police returned to taking written case notes and have lost access to some investigative databases, department spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters. He declined to discuss the contents of the affected files.</p> <p>&#8220;Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future,&#8221; he said. By the weekend, he added, officers were returning to digital police reports.</p> <p>Meanwhile, some city employees complained they have been left in the dark, unsure when it is safe to turn on their computers.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know anything,&#8221; said one frustrated employee as she left for a lunch break on Friday.</p> FEEBLE <p>Like City Hall, whose 1930 neo-Gothic structure is attached to a massive modern wing, the city&#8217;s computer system is a combination of old and new.&amp;#160;</p> A view of Atlanta's City Hall, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Laila Kearney <p>&#8220;One of the reasons why municipalities are vulnerable is we just have so many different systems,&#8221; Noble said.&amp;#160;</p> <p>The city published results from a recent cyber-security audit in January, and had started implementing its recommendations before the ransomware virus hit. The audit called for better record-keeping and hiring more technology workers.</p> <p>Councilman Shook said he is worried about how much the recovery will cost the city, but that he supports funding a cyber-security overhaul to counter future attacks.</p> <p>For now his staff are temporarily sharing one aging laptop.</p> <p>&#8220;Things are very slow,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It was a very surreal experience to be shut down like that.&#8221;</p> <p>Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who took office in January, has declined to say if the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note whose image was released by a local television station.</p> <p>Shook, who chairs the city council&#8217;s finance subcommittee, said he did not know whether the city is negotiating with the hackers, but that it appears no ransom has been paid to date.</p> <p>The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is helping Atlanta respond, typically discourages ransomware victims from paying up.</p> <p>FBI officials could not immediately be reached for comment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed the agency is helping Atlanta respond to the attack, but declined to comment further.</p> <p>Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid, said Mark Weatherford, a former senior DHS cyber official.</p> <p>Weatherford, who previously served as California&#8217;s chief information security officer, said the situation might have been resolved with little pain if the city had quickly made that payment.</p> <p>&#8220;The longer it goes, the worse it gets,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Laila Kearney; additional reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Daniel Bases and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - About 200 people demonstrated in Sacramento on Saturday to protest the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark, in the latest of nearly two weeks of mostly peaceful rallies since the unarmed black man was gunned down in his grandmother&#8217;s yard.</p> <p>The death of the 22-year-old father of two was the latest in a string of killings of black men by police that have triggered street protests and fueled a renewed national debate about bias in the U.S. criminal justice system.</p> <p>Saturday&#8217;s demonstration brought together a multi-racial crowd, many holding signs such as &#8220;Stop Police Rage&#8221; and &#8220;Power to the People.&#8221; It was led by retired National Basketball Association player Matt Barnes, who grew up in the area and had two stints with the Sacramento Kings franchise.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re here today to raise awareness, to come together peacefully and to have some accountability for the officers, not only in Sacramento but across the country, who have been doing this,&#8221; Barnes told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.</p> <p>Some of Clark&#8217;s relatives attended the gathering in a city plaza. It followed a more heated protest overnight, during which demonstrators yelled expletives at police clad in riot gear.</p> <p>Clark was shot on the night of March 18 by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows. Police said the officers feared he had a gun, but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone.</p> <p>Police have said he was moving towards officers in a menacing way. The shooting was captured on a body cam video released by police.</p> Salena Manni (L), fiancee of Stephon Clark, holds their son Cairo and an unidentified man holds son Aiden (2nd R) while Basim Elkarra speaks and Rev Shane Harris listens at a rally in Sacramento, California, U.S., March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES <p>On Friday, an attorney for Clark&#8217;s family released a private autopsy showing most of the eight bullets that hit Clark struck him in the back, contradicting the police version of events.</p> <p>Clark was shot six times in the back, once in the side and once in the leg, said the attorney, Benjamin Crump.</p> <p>&#8220;This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances,&#8221; Crump said.</p> Slideshow (14 Images) <p>The Sacramento Police Department said it would have no further comment until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy by the county coroner, and a review by state and local prosecutors.</p> <p>In several days of sporadic protests, protesters have blocked traffic and twice delayed fans from reaching games played by the Kings at the Golden 1 Center.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing Chizu Nomiyama and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than $35 million, in one of the highest-profile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years.</p> Magomed Magomedov, a business partner and brother of co-owner of Russia's Summa group Ziyavudin Magomedov, attends a hearing on his detention at the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow, Russia March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva <p>Magomedov denied the charges at a pre-trial hearing, where a judge ordered that he be held in custody until May 30.</p> <p>One of Russia&#8217;s richest men, the 49-year-old Magomedov holds assets in construction and logistics through his sprawling Summa Group. He also has investments in U.S. tech ventures, including the Virgin One Hyperloop project.</p> <p>He was detained along with his business partner and brother, Magomed Magomedov, and Artur Maksidov, the head of a company in the Summa Group that was involved in the construction of a soccer World Cup venue in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.</p> <p>Both businessmen will also be held in custody until May 30, the court ruled.</p> <p>At a hearing in Moscow&#8217;s Tverskoy District Court to decide whether Magomedov and his associates should be detained before their trial, Judge Maria Sizintseva said they had acted as part of an organized crime group and had tried to put pressure on witnesses. She rejected an offer from Magomedov to put up a $35 million bail bond, and ordered he be detained.</p> <p>Citing the arguments against granting bail, the judge said Magomedov had access to his own aircraft, and assets abroad. The day before he was detained, he had booked a flight from Moscow to Miami, the judge said.</p> <p>Summa said it planned to appeal the court decision and was ready to cooperate with the investigation.</p> MUSCULAR STATE <p>Invited to speak from a cage in the courtroom, Magomedov, dressed in a dark-blue jogging suit, said: &#8220;I categorically disagree with the charges presented ... The prosecution case does not stand up to scrutiny.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>He said he needed treatment in the United States for a medical problem, and offered to put up the $35 million bail. &#8220;I&#8217;m willing to pull together this money, so no one has any thoughts that I might go on the run,&#8221; Magomedov said.</p> <p>Magomedov is part of a group of Russian multi-millionaires who, while publicly loyal to the Kremlin, are not in President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s inner circle.</p> <p>Some members of the group say they are being squeezed by a tough economy, Western sanctions on Russia, and powerful state-run companies that are muscling in on nearly all sectors of the economy.</p> <p>In past cases when magnates have been prosecuted, some in the Russia business community have said the tycoons were victims of a plot by the Kremlin or by politically connected business rivals - though the authorities deny that.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NMTP.MM" type="external">Novorossiyskiy Morskoy Torgovyi Port PAO</a> 7.765 NMTP.MM Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange -0.19 (-2.33%) NMTP.MM TRNF_p.MM FESH.MM <p>People familiar with the Russian judicial system say high-profile corruption cases are rarely fabricated, but that the law is applied selectively, and that prosecutions can be influenced by outside factors.</p> <p>Ziyavudin Magomedov ranked 63rd last year on the Forbes list of the richest business people in Russia with $1.4 billion. In January, he was listed by the U.S. Treasury Department as one of 96 &#8220;oligarchs&#8221; close to Putin.</p> <p>His Caspian Venture Capital fund has investments in ride-hailing service Uber UBER.UL; Diamond Foundry, a company that produces man-made diamonds; and Peek, an online leisure activities company.</p> <p>Magomedov is also co-executive chairman of Los Angeles-based tech firm Virgin Hyperloop One, which is chaired by Richard Branson. It is one of several firms developing a futuristic transport system that involves propelling people at high speed through sealed tubes.</p> <p>He also co-owns the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NMTP.MM" type="external">NMTP.MM</a>) with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TRNF_p.MM" type="external">TRNF_p.MM</a>) and transportation group Fesco ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FESH.MM" type="external">FESH.MM</a>).</p> <p>Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Christian Lowe; Editing by Larry King</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

In Year of the Dog, Malaysia plays down, skirts dog decorations U.S. government seeks end to Supreme Court privacy fight with Microsoft With paper and phones, Atlanta struggles to recover from cyber attack Autopsy prompts more protests over killing of black man in California Russian tycoon Magomedov arrested on embezzlement charges

https://reuters.com/article/us-lunar-newyear-malaysia/in-year-of-the-dog-malaysia-plays-down-skirts-dog-decorations-idUSKBN1FB173

2018-01-22

2least

KUALA LUMPUR Reuters Some Malaysian businesses are skirting around or playing down the portrayal of canines in Chinese New Year decorations this year wary of offending the country8217s Muslim majority in the Year of the Dog FILE PHOTO A staff poses with a dogshaped gold figurine at Chow Tai Fook Jewellery store ahead of the Lunar Year of the Dog in Hong Kong China December 14 2017 REUTERSTyrone SiuFile Photo Dogs are considered 8220unclean8221 under Islamic tradition and Muslims are required to carry out a ritual of washing themselves if they are in contact with the animal Multicultural Malaysia has seen an increasing intolerance toward activities considered insulting to Islam reflected in protests in recent years of beer festivals and concerts While Muslim Malays are the biggest ethnic group among Malaysia8217s 32 million people Chinese make up the secondbiggest group with 23 percent of the population One shopping mall in the popular Kuala Lumpur tourist area of Bukit Bintang did not depict dogs in its decorations ahead of the new year in February focusing instead on the 10th anniversary theme of the center Pavilion Kuala Lumpur Director of Marketing Kung Suan Ai said religious and cultural sensitivities were a determining factor in conceptualizing decorations The mall attracts three million people of various backgrounds each month she said 8220One of the considerations we take in when we work on decoration concepts for Pavilion KL is to create something highly experiential and also to be socially accepting for all8221 she said Twelve animals including a dog and a pig another animal Muslims consider as unclean make up the traditional Chinese zodiac Malaysian Muslim leaders have been vocal about events that involve dogs before After the 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in Glasgow when athletes paraded with a Scottish terrier donning their country8217s name local politicians aired their disproval calling the stunt 8220disrespectful8221 In 2016 religious authorities asked popular pretzel chain Auntie Anne8217s to change the name of its 8220Pretzel Dog8221 to 8220Pretzel Sausage8221 At MyTOWN another Kuala Lumpur shopping center where half the visitors are Muslim the mall downplayed the depiction of dogs in its decorations 8220We have the dogs but it8217s in how we display them They are not the main object They are life size and placed as ambient decorations8221 said Head of Marketing Christopher Koh so that the canine would not appear like an idol 8220It8217s the same with the pig for the Year of the Boar Malaysian retailers won8217t usually put up a giant pig as a centerpiece8221 Alex Chow who runs a company supplying packaging materials said corporate clients have stuck to generic illustrations for their packaging designs this year Chinese Malaysian Wong WeiShen who has several dogs as pets said businesses were being 8220ridiculous8221 8220It8217s a shame because Malaysia is a multicultural country To dismiss the fact that the Chinese have a dog as one of the zodiac animals is unfair8221 said Wong 8220Every zodiac animal has its good attributes and the dog represents a guide a best friend a comforter and loyal friend8221 said Wong Reporting by Liz Lee Editing by Praveen Menon and Neil Fullick Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles The US government8217s Supreme Court battle with Microsoft Corp over whether technology companies can be forced to hand over data stored overseas could be nearing its end after federal prosecutors asked that the case be dismissed FILE PHOTO The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles California US June 13 2017 REUTERSMike BlakeFile Photo President Donald Trump on March 22 signed a provision into law making it clear that US judges can issue warrants for such data while giving companies an avenue to object if the request conflicts with foreign law 8220This case is now moot8221 the US Department of Justice said citing the newly passed legislation in a 16page court filing on Friday that requested the dismissal The Supreme Court on Feb 27 heard arguments in the case which had been one of the most closely watched of the high court8217s current term Some justices urged Congress to pass a law to resolve the matter FILE PHOTO Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith R makes a statement to the news media with his lawyer Josh Rosenkranz outside of the US Supreme Court in Washington US February 27 2018 REUTERSLeah Millis Microsoft and the Justice Department had been locked in a dispute over how US prosecutors seek access to data held on overseas computer servers owned by American companies The case involved Microsoft8217s challenge to a domestic warrant issued by a US judge for emails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin relating to a drugtrafficking investigation The bipartisan new law known as the Cloud Act was supported by Microsoft other major technology companies and the Trump administration But civil liberties groups opposed it saying it lacked sufficient privacy protections Microsoft which has 100 data centers in 40 countries was the first American company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the United States The Microsoft customer whose emails were sought told the company he was based in Ireland when he signed up for his account A representative for Microsoft did not immediately return requests for comment on the Justice Department8217s filing Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Alex Dobuzinskis Additional reporting by Dustin Volz Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ATLANTA Reuters Atlanta8217s top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a ninedayold cyber attack that plunged the Southeastern US metropolis into technological chaos and forced some city workers to revert to paper A view of Atlantas City Hall in Atlanta Georgia US March 31 2018 REUTERSLaila Kearney On an Easter and Passover holiday weekend city officials labored in preparation for the workweek to come Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives recreating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating 8220ransomware8221 virus attacks to hit an American city Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta8217s computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical systems 8220It8217s extraordinarily frustrating8221 said Councilman Howard Shook whose office lost 16 years of digital records One compromised city computer seen by Reuters showed multiple corrupted documents with 8220weapologize8221 and 8220imsorry8221 added to file names Ransomware attacks have surged in recent years as cyber extortionists moved from attacking individual computers to large organizations including businesses healthcare organizations and government agencies Previous highprofile attacks have shut down factories prompted hospitals to turn away patients and forced local emergency dispatch systems to move to manual operations Ransomware typically corrupts data and does not steal it The city of Atlanta has said it does not believe private residents8217 information is in the hands of hackers but they do not know for sure City officials have declined to discuss the extent of damage beyond disclosed outages that have shut down some services at municipal offices including courts and the water department Nearly 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area The Georgia city itself is home to more than 450000 people according to the latest data from the US Census Bureau City officials told Reuters that police files and financial documents were rendered inaccessible by unknown hackers who demanded 51000 worth of bitcoin to provide digital keys to unlock scrambled files 8220Everything on my hard drive is gone8221 City Auditor Amanda Noble said in her office housed in Atlanta City Hall8217s ornate tower City officials have not disclosed the extent to which servers for backing up information on PCs were corrupted or what kind of information they think is unrecoverable without paying the ransom Noble discovered the disarray on March 22 when she turned on her computer to discover that files could not be opened after being encrypted by a powerful computer virus known as SamSam that renamed them with gibberish 8220I said 8216This is wrong82178221 she recalled City officials then quickly entered her office and told her to shut down the computer before warning the rest of the building Noble is working on a personal laptop and using her smartphone to search for details of current projects mentioned in emails stored on that device Not all computers were compromised Ten of 18 machines in the auditing office were not affected Noble said OLDSCHOOL ANALOG Atlanta police returned to taking written case notes and have lost access to some investigative databases department spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters He declined to discuss the contents of the affected files 8220Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future8221 he said By the weekend he added officers were returning to digital police reports Meanwhile some city employees complained they have been left in the dark unsure when it is safe to turn on their computers 8220We don8217t know anything8221 said one frustrated employee as she left for a lunch break on Friday FEEBLE Like City Hall whose 1930 neoGothic structure is attached to a massive modern wing the city8217s computer system is a combination of old and newamp160 A view of Atlantas City Hall in Atlanta Georgia US March 31 2018 REUTERSLaila Kearney 8220One of the reasons why municipalities are vulnerable is we just have so many different systems8221 Noble saidamp160 The city published results from a recent cybersecurity audit in January and had started implementing its recommendations before the ransomware virus hit The audit called for better recordkeeping and hiring more technology workers Councilman Shook said he is worried about how much the recovery will cost the city but that he supports funding a cybersecurity overhaul to counter future attacks For now his staff are temporarily sharing one aging laptop 8220Things are very slow8221 he said 8220It was a very surreal experience to be shut down like that8221 Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms who took office in January has declined to say if the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note whose image was released by a local television station Shook who chairs the city council8217s finance subcommittee said he did not know whether the city is negotiating with the hackers but that it appears no ransom has been paid to date The Federal Bureau of Investigation which is helping Atlanta respond typically discourages ransomware victims from paying up FBI officials could not immediately be reached for comment A Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed the agency is helping Atlanta respond to the attack but declined to comment further Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid said Mark Weatherford a former senior DHS cyber official Weatherford who previously served as California8217s chief information security officer said the situation might have been resolved with little pain if the city had quickly made that payment 8220The longer it goes the worse it gets8221 he said 8220This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back8221 Reporting by Laila Kearney additional reporting by Jim Finkle editing by Daniel Bases and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SACRAMENTO Calif Reuters About 200 people demonstrated in Sacramento on Saturday to protest the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark in the latest of nearly two weeks of mostly peaceful rallies since the unarmed black man was gunned down in his grandmother8217s yard The death of the 22yearold father of two was the latest in a string of killings of black men by police that have triggered street protests and fueled a renewed national debate about bias in the US criminal justice system Saturday8217s demonstration brought together a multiracial crowd many holding signs such as 8220Stop Police Rage8221 and 8220Power to the People8221 It was led by retired National Basketball Association player Matt Barnes who grew up in the area and had two stints with the Sacramento Kings franchise 8220We8217re here today to raise awareness to come together peacefully and to have some accountability for the officers not only in Sacramento but across the country who have been doing this8221 Barnes told the Sacramento Bee newspaper Some of Clark8217s relatives attended the gathering in a city plaza It followed a more heated protest overnight during which demonstrators yelled expletives at police clad in riot gear Clark was shot on the night of March 18 by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows Police said the officers feared he had a gun but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone Police have said he was moving towards officers in a menacing way The shooting was captured on a body cam video released by police Salena Manni L fiancee of Stephon Clark holds their son Cairo and an unidentified man holds son Aiden 2nd R while Basim Elkarra speaks and Rev Shane Harris listens at a rally in Sacramento California US March 31 2018 REUTERSBob Strong NO RESALES NO ARCHIVES On Friday an attorney for Clark8217s family released a private autopsy showing most of the eight bullets that hit Clark struck him in the back contradicting the police version of events Clark was shot six times in the back once in the side and once in the leg said the attorney Benjamin Crump 8220This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances8221 Crump said Slideshow 14 Images The Sacramento Police Department said it would have no further comment until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy by the county coroner and a review by state and local prosecutors In several days of sporadic protests protesters have blocked traffic and twice delayed fans from reaching games played by the Kings at the Golden 1 Center Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York Editing Chizu Nomiyama and Sandra Maler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than 35 million in one of the highestprofile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years Magomed Magomedov a business partner and brother of coowner of Russias Summa group Ziyavudin Magomedov attends a hearing on his detention at the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow Russia March 31 2018 REUTERSTatyana Makeyeva Magomedov denied the charges at a pretrial hearing where a judge ordered that he be held in custody until May 30 One of Russia8217s richest men the 49yearold Magomedov holds assets in construction and logistics through his sprawling Summa Group He also has investments in US tech ventures including the Virgin One Hyperloop project He was detained along with his business partner and brother Magomed Magomedov and Artur Maksidov the head of a company in the Summa Group that was involved in the construction of a soccer World Cup venue in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Both businessmen will also be held in custody until May 30 the court ruled At a hearing in Moscow8217s Tverskoy District Court to decide whether Magomedov and his associates should be detained before their trial Judge Maria Sizintseva said they had acted as part of an organized crime group and had tried to put pressure on witnesses She rejected an offer from Magomedov to put up a 35 million bail bond and ordered he be detained Citing the arguments against granting bail the judge said Magomedov had access to his own aircraft and assets abroad The day before he was detained he had booked a flight from Moscow to Miami the judge said Summa said it planned to appeal the court decision and was ready to cooperate with the investigation MUSCULAR STATE Invited to speak from a cage in the courtroom Magomedov dressed in a darkblue jogging suit said 8220I categorically disagree with the charges presented The prosecution case does not stand up to scrutiny8221 Slideshow 7 Images He said he needed treatment in the United States for a medical problem and offered to put up the 35 million bail 8220I8217m willing to pull together this money so no one has any thoughts that I might go on the run8221 Magomedov said Magomedov is part of a group of Russian multimillionaires who while publicly loyal to the Kremlin are not in President Vladimir Putin8217s inner circle Some members of the group say they are being squeezed by a tough economy Western sanctions on Russia and powerful staterun companies that are muscling in on nearly all sectors of the economy In past cases when magnates have been prosecuted some in the Russia business community have said the tycoons were victims of a plot by the Kremlin or by politically connected business rivals though the authorities deny that Novorossiyskiy Morskoy Torgovyi Port PAO 7765 NMTPMM Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange 019 233 NMTPMM TRNF_pMM FESHMM People familiar with the Russian judicial system say highprofile corruption cases are rarely fabricated but that the law is applied selectively and that prosecutions can be influenced by outside factors Ziyavudin Magomedov ranked 63rd last year on the Forbes list of the richest business people in Russia with 14 billion In January he was listed by the US Treasury Department as one of 96 8220oligarchs8221 close to Putin His Caspian Venture Capital fund has investments in ridehailing service Uber UBERUL Diamond Foundry a company that produces manmade diamonds and Peek an online leisure activities company Magomedov is also coexecutive chairman of Los Angelesbased tech firm Virgin Hyperloop One which is chaired by Richard Branson It is one of several firms developing a futuristic transport system that involves propelling people at high speed through sealed tubes He also coowns the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port NMTPMM with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft TRNF_pMM and transportation group Fesco FESHMM Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov Writing by Gabrielle TetraultFarber and Christian Lowe Editing by Larry King Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

KUALA/PROPN LUMPUR/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Some/DET Malaysian/ADJ businesses/NOUN are/AUX skirting/VERB around/ADV or/CCONJ playing/VERB down/ADP the/DET portrayal/NOUN of/ADP canines/NOUN in/ADP Chinese/PROPN New/PROPN Year/PROPN decorations/NOUN this/DET year/NOUN wary/ADJ of/ADP offending/VERB the/DET country8217s/PROPN Muslim/ADJ majority/NOUN in/ADP the/DET Year/PROPN of/ADP the/DET Dog/PROPN FILE/NOUN PHOTO/PROPN A/DET staff/NOUN poses/VERB with/ADP a/DET dogshaped/VERB gold/NOUN figurine/NOUN at/ADP Chow/PROPN Tai/PROPN Fook/PROPN Jewellery/PROPN store/NOUN ahead/ADV of/ADP the/DET Lunar/PROPN Year/PROPN of/ADP the/DET Dog/PROPN in/ADP Hong/PROPN Kong/PROPN China/PROPN December/PROPN 14/NUM 2017/NUM REUTERSTyrone/PROPN SiuFile/PROPN Photo/PROPN Dogs/PROPN are/AUX considered/VERB 8220unclean8221/NOUN under/ADP Islamic/ADJ tradition/NOUN and/CCONJ Muslims/PROPN are/AUX required/VERB to/PART carry/VERB out/ADP a/DET ritual/NOUN of/ADP washing/VERB themselves/PRON if/SCONJ they/PRON 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<p>Dear Moby,</p> <p>I&#8217;m sitting in <a href="http://www.littlepinerestaurant.com/" type="external">Little Pine</a> right now eating the unbelievable vegan french toast &#8212; so thick, doughy and sweet, got all these different berries on it. Nobody else&#8217;s is close. And good on you for having the best hash browns and tomato soup in veganville.</p> <p>And you know what else&#8212; thanks for being the manic messiah on stage. I&#8217;ve seen you running around possessed at the old Promo West in Columbus, Ohio and your Area2 show at the Jones Beach Amphitheater on Long Island &#8212; that concert was something else, with David Bowie cursing and daring God to make it rain, thunder and lighting even harder than it was &#8212; and God rising to the occasion by blowing over banners and lights and scaffolding until all of us ran away from the deluge. Not exactly &#8220;Panic in Detroit&#8221; but good enough for rock and roll work.</p> <p>I recently saw the incredible video of your song, &#8220; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtL3Jsl2ieE" type="external">Don&#8217;t Leave Me,</a>&#8221; which powerfully captures what it&#8217;s like to be in a research lab or factory farm and not be able to rescue the animals, the feeling of betrayal of leaving them there, how well aware the animals are of the crimes committed against them, the monumental evil and injustice of raising and killing innocent beings for food, fur and &#8220;research.&#8221; You&#8217;ve made a loud, clear call to veganism as a moral base line, not as something noble we can do but the bare minimum for claims to being ethical at all. You&#8217;ve done a great thing.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Would that your head was on as straight about human problems and their solutions.</p> <p>Sometimes I think the best way to get to the heart of a matter is by digressing. For instance, I don&#8217;t like that wooden deer head on the wall behind the cash register. I guess it&#8217;s some kind of cool ironic statement, coming from a committed animal activist such as yourself. I think it&#8217;s just pure pretentious bullshit and normalizes the idea that it&#8217;s fine for humans to separate other species&#8217; heads from their bodies. (But WTF do I know &#8212; I&#8217;m from Deplorable, OH 45505.) None of your local vegan sycophants will tell you this because the animal rights movement, such as it is/was, became a tame celebrity-worshipping controlled opposition two+ decades ago.</p> <p>I just read your <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7572616/moby-open-letter-to-america-trump" type="external">open letter</a> to Billboard lamenting the Trumped queen without a crown so I thought I would write one to you. I didn&#8217;t know you have been a supporter of Hillary Clinton for almost 20 years. Looks like you&#8217;re going to be known as Mopey for awhile.</p> <p>Thanks for the wi-fi. Now on to the fake-meat of the matter:</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>You excoriate the women and &#8220;family values voters&#8221; who voted for Trump. But railing against Trump&#8217;s sexism is only a winner if your candidate&#8217;s husband is not a serial sexual assaulter. The deplorables don&#8217;t have your sophistication to see the differences between Bill Clinton&#8217;s and Donald Trump&#8217;s conduct toward women. (They didn&#8217;t grow up &#8220;spelling women W-O-M-Y-N&#8221; as you note in <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/moby-donald-trump-is-actual-sociopath-w448443" type="external">your Rolling Stone column</a>.) Neither Trump&#8217;s deplorables nor the adorables who chose Hillary voted based on character because neither candidate has any. The deplorables voted on emotion and the hope (so 2008) that there might be a change in their current circumstances or, failing that, just blow up the whole fucking shit house. Hillary and Obama saying the country is on the right track, while a record 94 million people are not in the labor force, is not a winner.</p> <p>You ask, &#8220;America, why are you so afraid of evidence?&#8221; And then you list Trump&#8217;s obvious faults and castigate the people who voted for him. What caught my eye is the year 1995 when you said Trump lost almost a billion dollars.</p> <p>What else was going on in this time period?</p> <p>Well, in 1994 Bill Clinton gave us his crime bill (written by war monger and bag man for the credit card mobsters, Joe Biden &#8212; strange how some pieces of shit aren&#8217;t biodegradable) which created 50 new federal offenses, allocated millions of dollars for new prisons and the three strikes law to make sure those cages got filled. It also made 60 new offenses eligible for the death penalty, eliminated inmates from getting higher education &#8212; cuz we want them to be less educated and less vested in society when they come out &#8212; and put 100,000 slave catchers on the streets to go after those &#8220;super predators&#8221; as Hillary called them.</p> <p>In short, after Nixon laid the foundation of the mass incarceration state with his fake war on drugs in 1971, and Reagan put up the walls of mandatory minimums and racist sentencing disparities, the Clintons came along and put on the finishing touches and locked the doors. (Here&#8217;s a fearful symmetry for you: Nixon&#8217;s War on Drugs was a cover for destroying the radical black left and Bill Clinton repackaged it in 1998 as Plan Columbia to destroy Marxist guerrillas in Columbia and as a base of operations to destroy the left in all of Latin America. Remember, Moby, America is all about destroying the left everywhere in the world &#8212; sometimes the tools are fake wars on drugs, sometimes Islamic fanatics. The US ruling class has so thoroughly destroyed the left in America that people like you don&#8217;t even know that you&#8217;re not on it.)</p> <p>Then, in 1996, a year after Trump lost the billion dollars that is so vexing for you, Bill Clinton &#8220;ended welfare as we know it&#8221; by eliminating FDR&#8217;s 1935 Aid to Families with Dependent Children and driving America&#8217;s poorest people out of their homes and into homeless shelters or the streets. (When you drive south a couple miles down from Little Pine on Glendale Ave., and see the mini tent city under the overpass, thank faithful servants to capital like the Clintons whose crimes aren&#8217;t dead &#8212; they&#8217;re not even past.) Senior advisers to Slick Willie prepared a study that estimated that over a million children would fall into poverty if he ended AFDC and he did it anyway. Children&#8217;s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman said at the time: &#8220;President Clinton&#8217;s signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.&#8221; Journalist and social justice activist Barbara Ehrenreich: &#8220;It is hard to miss the racism and misogyny that helped motivate welfare reform.&#8221; But what do these people know about impoverished mothers and children &#8212; and the villains who wrecked their lives &#8212; compared to some happening coastal music maker such as yourself? Ben Norton &#8212; the token human being at Salon &#8212; summed it all up nicely <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.</p> <p>(Side bar: Trump would never bring up the Clintons&#8217; gutting welfare but every time he ran at Hillary from the left &#8212; on trade or foreign intervention &#8212; he got support, you could hear it in the audience of every debate. The country is &#8212; finally &#8212; open to a politician who at least says s/he&#8217;s more interested in re-building America than tearing down other nations. But there&#8217;s cyborg Hillary &#8212; &#8220;erudite&#8221; as you hilariously call her &#8212; marching in neocon lockstep about no-fly zones in Syria and fighting Russia over it. No average American, on the left or right, wants to fight Russia over Syria &#8212; it&#8217;s only the Israel-firsters, those traitors to America. Now, admittedly, I&#8217;m a traitor to America too but I can&#8217;t get any traction like the Zionists. Formerly rabid, mad-bombing comment sections of Yahoo News, The Washington Post and the New York Times have flipped over the last year with 90% of commenters now against Hillary&#8217;s Syria policy. When the mad dogs of war have lost interest in it, it&#8217;s not a winning strategy to promote it.)</p> <p>(Before I forget, Moby, didn&#8217;t you think it was funny that Trump&#8217;s theme song on his victory night was the Stones&#8217; &#8220;You Can&#8217;t Away Get What You Want.&#8221; Sure beats weak-ass shit like the Clintons&#8217; choice of &#8220;Don&#8217;t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.&#8221;)</p> <p>You claim that Reagan and Bush &#8220;ruined the economy&#8221; and Clinton and Obama came after them and &#8220;fixed it.&#8221; I&#8217;m glad you brought this up. There&#8217;s no ups and downs here &#8212; there is only the continual, seamless economic ruination of the working class majority. In 1999 Clinton repealed FDR&#8217;s Glass-Steagall Act that prevented banks from gambling with depositor&#8217;s money, and this paved the way for the great financial meltdown in 2008, from which the working class still has not recovered. You&#8217;re so utterly out of touch with most of America that you think people have recovered. Half of Americans can&#8217;t come up with $400 for an emergency. Get up to speed on flyover country by listening to James McMurtry&#8217;s &#8220; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOWrqR_QFfg" type="external">We Can&#8217;t Make It Here Anymore.</a>&#8221; With NAFTA, Clinton not only finished off the rust belt but he was able to dump Archer Daniels Midland&#8217;s heavily subsidized grain on Mexico, driving thousands of peasant farmers off their land and across the border, perhaps to work as dishwashers and cooks in your restaurant. Trump&#8217;s candidacy can be seen as the delayed reaction of the working class to Bill Clinton&#8217;s presidency. So, therefore, run Hillary against him! Bernie handily beat Trump in <a href="" type="internal">every poll</a> but the dumbocrats just had to have the first woman war criminal and first woman Wall Street stooge as president &#8212; now that&#8217;s goddam diversity!</p> <p>As for Obama, a perfect record: no CIA torturers or spying telecom companies or criminal bankers prosecuted, the elimination of habeas corpus with the National Defense Authorization Act, the precedent of killing American citizens without charge or trial, the greatest destruction of black wealth in over 100 years, the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class majority up the super rich since the Great Depression, seven countries illegally bombed, many thousands killed and millions injured, maimed and made into refugees in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, the greatest expansion of the surveillance state, the deportation of over two million immigrants &#8212; the most in America&#8217;s history, the bailing out of two deservedly failing industries: nuclear power and health care, the latter while Obama had Democrat majorities in the House and Senate and 70% of the American public begging for single payer health care. And the cherry on top: the complete pacification and demobilization of the so-called &#8220;left&#8221; to any of the foregoing acts which they would be shrieking about had Bush done them. Obama&#8217;s one of the most successful presidents the lords of capital have ever owned.</p> <p>Nearer to your heart, Moby, <a href="" type="internal">Obama re-legalized horse slaughter</a> for human consumption after it was banned under the big bad Bush. Obama&#8217;s pole axes &#8212; just like his drones &#8212; are witty, uplifting, break ground for minorities and attended Harvard, unlike awful Republican ones. As a parting shot to non-human beings, Obama is planning for the Food Safety and Inspection Service to label factory farmed &#8220;meat&#8221; &#8212; <a href="" type="internal">unanesthetized castration, debeaking, dehorning, prolonged confinement</a> &#8212; &#8220;humane.&#8221; That&#8217;s how Obama &#8220;fixed&#8221; things, Moby &#8212; and the American people were so appreciative that they elected Donald Trump! Fucking ingrates! Now, why didn&#8217;t Trump&#8217;s talk about &#8220;pussy-grabbing&#8221; and &#8220;building a wall&#8221; (that&#8217;s already there) mitigate against all of this? A puzzler for the fake left mind. Who&#8217;s &#8220;afraid of evidence,&#8221; Moby?</p> <p>Speaking of the deplorables, I&#8217;m not sure if they defeated Hillary Clinton. She may have been defeated by the ownership of the country. She may have been betrayed by someone close to her or above her by sending those emails to Wikileaks. Although there were myriad great reasons for her loss, in her post-election conference call with donors, she noted those leaks came at key moments in her campaign, none more weird than James Roseannadanna Comey&#8217;s late October surprise and subsequent &#8220;Nevermind.&#8221; He might as well have added &#8220;Nevermore.&#8221; Hillary knows she lost the trust of the plutocrats she&#8217;s slavishly devoted herself to for decades. Denying her the ultimate marriage to power, they left her standing at the altar. And going home with peckerhead is no consolation.</p> <p>Who in power would want to derail Hillary? They all seemed to be in her corner. But perhaps some of the richest non-Zionist families in America didn&#8217;t like the prospect of all the wealth they&#8217;ve stolen to go up in smoke in a nuclear war with Russia on behalf of shit most of them they don&#8217;t care about &#8212; like neocons dreams of destroying Syria for Israel. Perhaps the people in the CIA, the NSA or the FBI who understand that they need to be the only ones with blackmail material on American politicians &#8212; it&#8217;s no good if Russia, China or others obtained damaging dirt from her unsecured server. Another thought is that putting Hillary in was going to paralyze the congress with endless investigations so that the business of America &#8212; capitalist plunder &#8212; would be hindered. You might have had some sexist Tea Party assholes ruining Hillary&#8217;s chances of turning over Social Security to Wall Street &#8212; just like their racism and spite against Obama stopped him from his &#8220;grand bargain&#8221; of selling out senior citizens.</p> <p>Nobody stands taller and more righteous against &#8220;comments&#8221; than you do, Moby, whether the comments are directed against women, gays or Latinos. But you give us crickets about Obama deporting 2.5 million immigrants. To you, Trump&#8217;s comments about &#8220;rapist Mexicans&#8221; is worse than rounding up 2.5 million people, wrecking untold families and sending them back to Mexico. And ask the people of Honduras what they think of Obama and Hillary&#8217;s <a href="" type="internal">real and tangible coup</a> and its murderous aftermath which is sending people fleeing across borders to this day. Honduras is now the murder capital of the world for labor organizers and environmental activists. Read murdered activist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berta_C%C3%A1ceres" type="external">Berta Caceres</a>&#8217; wiki page and see what she thinks of your beloved Hillary. Hillary Clinton doesn&#8217;t have one one/millionth the humanity or integrity of Berta Caceres. While your heroes &#8212; Obama and Hillary &#8212; made Honduran lives unbearable, another fucking asshole is going to block their escape route at the southern border. A humane and reasonable person would say that America should stop making peoples&#8217; lives unlivable &#8212; in Honduras, in Mexico, in Syria, in Libya &#8212; so they can stay in their own countries &#8212; but Obama and the Clintons are the well-rewarded tools of barbarous capital. The world can&#8217;t take any more of your concept of &#8220;erudition.&#8221;</p> <p>Lastly, you show true intellectual and moral cowardice in your Billboard letter and your Rolling Stone column by not mentioning the issue of war and peace, the most important issue of this or any other time. Hillary Clinton has supported every war in our lifetime. She&#8217;s supported and/or directly put in motion the obliteration of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Honduras and was hungering to fuck up the Iranian people for the benefit of big donor Haim Saban and Israel. Hillary cackled like the fiend that she is about the sodomizing of Gaddafi with a bayonet. Libyans had free healthcare and education and Libyan women had the highest status of any in Africa &#8212; and Hillary and Obama destroyed all of it, <a href="" type="internal">turning Libya into a takfiri playground</a>. Moby, do Libyan women factor into your discussion of &#8220;first-, second- and third-wave feminism&#8221; that you pat yourself on the back about in your Rolling Stone column? Can you be anymore fucking hypocritical and irrelevant? Why don&#8217;t you care about those people, those lives? How many thousands of Muslim deaths can you justify and/or look away from in order to support Hillary and Obama? How does war and peace not even merit a mention in your Billboard letter? What the fuck is that matter with you? The Unbearable Lightness of a Fake Left Whale. You&#8217;re a fucking joke but you&#8217;re presented to us as someone on the left to be listened to. Rubbish. You&#8217;re a tool of capitalist media. You&#8217;re here so other, truly radical voices, aren&#8217;t. Anyone with any class consciousness would understand that the Clintons, Obama, Bush and Cheney are all monsters, enemies of the worldwide working class who belong in jail.</p> <p>Remember the fake deer head on your restaurant wall that I said normalizes the idea that it&#8217;s OK for humans to separate other species&#8217; heads from their bodies? You and the rest of the fake left have normalized the idea that it&#8217;s &#8220;progressive&#8221; to support war criminals, wreck other nation&#8217;s sovereignty and give away the country to Wall Street. The deplorables aren&#8217;t the problem, Moby. There will always be fearful people and reactionaries who scapegoat minorities. The problem is people like you: the poseurs and the people who stopped progressing, the unclassconcious sell-out left that has walked off the playing field over the past 40 years, especially the unions who promote bullshit like the &#8220;brotherhood of capital and labor&#8221; when it&#8217;s their historical mission to overthrow capitalism. And don&#8217;t forget the white left that talked a good game in the 1960s and early 1970s but ran like hell away from black people &#8212; physically, politically, socially &#8212; as soon as they were able. (White people boxes: Viet Nam War over &#8212; white asses spared &#8212; check. Roe v. Wade &#8212; white wombs freed &#8212; check. We&#8217;re outta here.)</p> <p>In your pre-election Rolling Stone column you talk about your support of Hillary hurting your professional life but you&#8217;re gonna bravely do it anyway because keeping Trump out of the White House is more important than &#8220;trying to protect a career.&#8221; More meaningless tripe and unearned high regard, spoken by someone whose net worth is <a href="http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/richest-djs/moby-net-worth/" type="external">$32 million</a> and owns <a href="" type="internal">this mansion</a>. Non-humans excepted, you are too invested in this system to ever be an effective advocate for the revolutionary changes that need to be made. You buttress this system. You did great under Bush and Obama, you will do great under Trump. Progress always comes (or doesn&#8217;t) from people with their backs against the wall. It never comes from the comfortable. To paraphrase Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report: Progress in America will come from the working class majority making the streets ungovernable by anyone other than us.</p> <p>Dan De Leon recommends socialism everywhere, including workers at Little Pine overthrowing Moby and owning and operating it in their own interests.</p>

Moby Dickhead: A Harpoon, from One Vegan to Another

https://counterpunch.org/2016/11/25/moby-dickhead-a-harpoon-from-one-vegan-to-another/

2016-11-25

4left

Dear Moby I8217m sitting in Little Pine right now eating the unbelievable vegan french toast 8212 so thick doughy and sweet got all these different berries on it Nobody else8217s is close And good on you for having the best hash browns and tomato soup in veganville And you know what else8212 thanks for being the manic messiah on stage I8217ve seen you running around possessed at the old Promo West in Columbus Ohio and your Area2 show at the Jones Beach Amphitheater on Long Island 8212 that concert was something else with David Bowie cursing and daring God to make it rain thunder and lighting even harder than it was 8212 and God rising to the occasion by blowing over banners and lights and scaffolding until all of us ran away from the deluge Not exactly 8220Panic in Detroit8221 but good enough for rock and roll work I recently saw the incredible video of your song 8220 Don8217t Leave Me8221 which powerfully captures what it8217s like to be in a research lab or factory farm and not be able to rescue the animals the feeling of betrayal of leaving them there how well aware the animals are of the crimes committed against them the monumental evil and injustice of raising and killing innocent beings for food fur and 8220research8221 You8217ve made a loud clear call to veganism as a moral base line not as something noble we can do but the bare minimum for claims to being ethical at all You8217ve done a great thingamp160 Would that your head was on as straight about human problems and their solutions Sometimes I think the best way to get to the heart of a matter is by digressing For instance I don8217t like that wooden deer head on the wall behind the cash register I guess it8217s some kind of cool ironic statement coming from a committed animal activist such as yourself I think it8217s just pure pretentious bullshit and normalizes the idea that it8217s fine for humans to separate other species8217 heads from their bodies But WTF do I know 8212 I8217m from Deplorable OH 45505 None of your local vegan sycophants will tell you this because the animal rights movement such as it iswas became a tame celebrityworshipping controlled opposition two decades ago I just read your open letter to Billboard lamenting the Trumped queen without a crown so I thought I would write one to you I didn8217t know you have been a supporter of Hillary Clinton for almost 20 years Looks like you8217re going to be known as Mopey for awhile Thanks for the wifi Now on to the fakemeat of the matter amp160 You excoriate the women and 8220family values voters8221 who voted for Trump But railing against Trump8217s sexism is only a winner if your candidate8217s husband is not a serial sexual assaulter The deplorables don8217t have your sophistication to see the differences between Bill Clinton8217s and Donald Trump8217s conduct toward women They didn8217t grow up 8220spelling women WOMYN8221 as you note in your Rolling Stone column Neither Trump8217s deplorables nor the adorables who chose Hillary voted based on character because neither candidate has any The deplorables voted on emotion and the hope so 2008 that there might be a change in their current circumstances or failing that just blow up the whole fucking shit house Hillary and Obama saying the country is on the right track while a record 94 million people are not in the labor force is not a winner You ask 8220America why are you so afraid of evidence8221 And then you list Trump8217s obvious faults and castigate the people who voted for him What caught my eye is the year 1995 when you said Trump lost almost a billion dollars What else was going on in this time period Well in 1994 Bill Clinton gave us his crime bill written by war monger and bag man for the credit card mobsters Joe Biden 8212 strange how some pieces of shit aren8217t biodegradable which created 50 new federal offenses allocated millions of dollars for new prisons and the three strikes law to make sure those cages got filled It also made 60 new offenses eligible for the death penalty eliminated inmates from getting higher education 8212 cuz we want them to be less educated and less vested in society when they come out 8212 and put 100000 slave catchers on the streets to go after those 8220super predators8221 as Hillary called them In short after Nixon laid the foundation of the mass incarceration state with his fake war on drugs in 1971 and Reagan put up the walls of mandatory minimums and racist sentencing disparities the Clintons came along and put on the finishing touches and locked the doors Here8217s a fearful symmetry for you Nixon8217s War on Drugs was a cover for destroying the radical black left and Bill Clinton repackaged it in 1998 as Plan Columbia to destroy Marxist guerrillas in Columbia and as a base of operations to destroy the left in all of Latin America Remember Moby America is all about destroying the left everywhere in the world 8212 sometimes the tools are fake wars on drugs sometimes Islamic fanatics The US ruling class has so thoroughly destroyed the left in America that people like you don8217t even know that you8217re not on it Then in 1996 a year after Trump lost the billion dollars that is so vexing for you Bill Clinton 8220ended welfare as we know it8221 by eliminating FDR8217s 1935 Aid to Families with Dependent Children and driving America8217s poorest people out of their homes and into homeless shelters or the streets When you drive south a couple miles down from Little Pine on Glendale Ave and see the mini tent city under the overpass thank faithful servants to capital like the Clintons whose crimes aren8217t dead 8212 they8217re not even past Senior advisers to Slick Willie prepared a study that estimated that over a million children would fall into poverty if he ended AFDC and he did it anyway Children8217s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman said at the time 8220President Clinton8217s signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children8221 Journalist and social justice activist Barbara Ehrenreich 8220It is hard to miss the racism and misogyny that helped motivate welfare reform8221 But what do these people know about impoverished mothers and children 8212 and the villains who wrecked their lives 8212 compared to some happening coastal music maker such as yourself Ben Norton 8212 the token human being at Salon 8212 summed it all up nicely here Side bar Trump would never bring up the Clintons8217 gutting welfare but every time he ran at Hillary from the left 8212 on trade or foreign intervention 8212 he got support you could hear it in the audience of every debate The country is 8212 finally 8212 open to a politician who at least says she8217s more interested in rebuilding America than tearing down other nations But there8217s cyborg Hillary 8212 8220erudite8221 as you hilariously call her 8212 marching in neocon lockstep about nofly zones in Syria and fighting Russia over it No average American on the left or right wants to fight Russia over Syria 8212 it8217s only the Israelfirsters those traitors to America Now admittedly I8217m a traitor to America too but I can8217t get any traction like the Zionists Formerly rabid madbombing comment sections of Yahoo News The Washington Post and the New York Times have flipped over the last year with 90 of commenters now against Hillary8217s Syria policy When the mad dogs of war have lost interest in it it8217s not a winning strategy to promote it Before I forget Moby didn8217t you think it was funny that Trump8217s theme song on his victory night was the Stones8217 8220You Can8217t Away Get What You Want8221 Sure beats weakass shit like the Clintons8217 choice of 8220Don8217t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow8221 You claim that Reagan and Bush 8220ruined the economy8221 and Clinton and Obama came after them and 8220fixed it8221 I8217m glad you brought this up There8217s no ups and downs here 8212 there is only the continual seamless economic ruination of the working class majority In 1999 Clinton repealed FDR8217s GlassSteagall Act that prevented banks from gambling with depositor8217s money and this paved the way for the great financial meltdown in 2008 from which the working class still has not recovered You8217re so utterly out of touch with most of America that you think people have recovered Half of Americans can8217t come up with 400 for an emergency Get up to speed on flyover country by listening to James McMurtry8217s 8220 We Can8217t Make It Here Anymore8221 With NAFTA Clinton not only finished off the rust belt but he was able to dump Archer Daniels Midland8217s heavily subsidized grain on Mexico driving thousands of peasant farmers off their land and across the border perhaps to work as dishwashers and cooks in your restaurant Trump8217s candidacy can be seen as the delayed reaction of the working class to Bill Clinton8217s presidency So therefore run Hillary against him Bernie handily beat Trump in every poll but the dumbocrats just had to have the first woman war criminal and first woman Wall Street stooge as president 8212 now that8217s goddam diversity As for Obama a perfect record no CIA torturers or spying telecom companies or criminal bankers prosecuted the elimination of habeas corpus with the National Defense Authorization Act the precedent of killing American citizens without charge or trial the greatest destruction of black wealth in over 100 years the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class majority up the super rich since the Great Depression seven countries illegally bombed many thousands killed and millions injured maimed and made into refugees in Iraq Syria Libya Somalia Pakistan Afghanistan and Yemen the greatest expansion of the surveillance state the deportation of over two million immigrants 8212 the most in America8217s history the bailing out of two deservedly failing industries nuclear power and health care the latter while Obama had Democrat majorities in the House and Senate and 70 of the American public begging for single payer health care And the cherry on top the complete pacification and demobilization of the socalled 8220left8221 to any of the foregoing acts which they would be shrieking about had Bush done them Obama8217s one of the most successful presidents the lords of capital have ever owned Nearer to your heart Moby Obama relegalized horse slaughter for human consumption after it was banned under the big bad Bush Obama8217s pole axes 8212 just like his drones 8212 are witty uplifting break ground for minorities and attended Harvard unlike awful Republican ones As a parting shot to nonhuman beings Obama is planning for the Food Safety and Inspection Service to label factory farmed 8220meat8221 8212 unanesthetized castration debeaking dehorning prolonged confinement 8212 8220humane8221 That8217s how Obama 8220fixed8221 things Moby 8212 and the American people were so appreciative that they elected Donald Trump Fucking ingrates Now why didn8217t Trump8217s talk about 8220pussygrabbing8221 and 8220building a wall8221 that8217s already there mitigate against all of this A puzzler for the fake left mind Who8217s 8220afraid of evidence8221 Moby Speaking of the deplorables I8217m not sure if they defeated Hillary Clinton She may have been defeated by the ownership of the country She may have been betrayed by someone close to her or above her by sending those emails to Wikileaks Although there were myriad great reasons for her loss in her postelection conference call with donors she noted those leaks came at key moments in her campaign none more weird than James Roseannadanna Comey8217s late October surprise and subsequent 8220Nevermind8221 He might as well have added 8220Nevermore8221 Hillary knows she lost the trust of the plutocrats she8217s slavishly devoted herself to for decades Denying her the ultimate marriage to power they left her standing at the altar And going home with peckerhead is no consolation Who in power would want to derail Hillary They all seemed to be in her corner But perhaps some of the richest nonZionist families in America didn8217t like the prospect of all the wealth they8217ve stolen to go up in smoke in a nuclear war with Russia on behalf of shit most of them they don8217t care about 8212 like neocons dreams of destroying Syria for Israel Perhaps the people in the CIA the NSA or the FBI who understand that they need to be the only ones with blackmail material on American politicians 8212 it8217s no good if Russia China or others obtained damaging dirt from her unsecured server Another thought is that putting Hillary in was going to paralyze the congress with endless investigations so that the business of America 8212 capitalist plunder 8212 would be hindered You might have had some sexist Tea Party assholes ruining Hillary8217s chances of turning over Social Security to Wall Street 8212 just like their racism and spite against Obama stopped him from his 8220grand bargain8221 of selling out senior citizens Nobody stands taller and more righteous against 8220comments8221 than you do Moby whether the comments are directed against women gays or Latinos But you give us crickets about Obama deporting 25 million immigrants To you Trump8217s comments about 8220rapist Mexicans8221 is worse than rounding up 25 million people wrecking untold families and sending them back to Mexico And ask the people of Honduras what they think of Obama and Hillary8217s real and tangible coup and its murderous aftermath which is sending people fleeing across borders to this day Honduras is now the murder capital of the world for labor organizers and environmental activists Read murdered activist Berta Caceres8217 wiki page and see what she thinks of your beloved Hillary Hillary Clinton doesn8217t have one onemillionth the humanity or integrity of Berta Caceres While your heroes 8212 Obama and Hillary 8212 made Honduran lives unbearable another fucking asshole is going to block their escape route at the southern border A humane and reasonable person would say that America should stop making peoples8217 lives unlivable 8212 in Honduras in Mexico in Syria in Libya 8212 so they can stay in their own countries 8212 but Obama and the Clintons are the wellrewarded tools of barbarous capital The world can8217t take any more of your concept of 8220erudition8221 Lastly you show true intellectual and moral cowardice in your Billboard letter and your Rolling Stone column by not mentioning the issue of war and peace the most important issue of this or any other time Hillary Clinton has supported every war in our lifetime She8217s supported andor directly put in motion the obliteration of people in Iraq Afghanistan Libya Syria Honduras and was hungering to fuck up the Iranian people for the benefit of big donor Haim Saban and Israel Hillary cackled like the fiend that she is about the sodomizing of Gaddafi with a bayonet Libyans had free healthcare and education and Libyan women had the highest status of any in Africa 8212 and Hillary and Obama destroyed all of it turning Libya into a takfiri playground Moby do Libyan women factor into your discussion of 8220first second and thirdwave feminism8221 that you pat yourself on the back about in your Rolling Stone column Can you be anymore fucking hypocritical and irrelevant Why don8217t you care about those people those lives How many thousands of Muslim deaths can you justify andor look away from in order to support Hillary and Obama How does war and peace not even merit a mention in your Billboard letter What the fuck is that matter with you The Unbearable Lightness of a Fake Left Whale You8217re a fucking joke but you8217re presented to us as someone on the left to be listened to Rubbish You8217re a tool of capitalist media You8217re here so other truly radical voices aren8217t Anyone with any class consciousness would understand that the Clintons Obama Bush and Cheney are all monsters enemies of the worldwide working class who belong in jail Remember the fake deer head on your restaurant wall that I said normalizes the idea that it8217s OK for humans to separate other species8217 heads from their bodies You and the rest of the fake left have normalized the idea that it8217s 8220progressive8221 to support war criminals wreck other nation8217s sovereignty and give away the country to Wall Street The deplorables aren8217t the problem Moby There will always be fearful people and reactionaries who scapegoat minorities The problem is people like you the poseurs and the people who stopped progressing the unclassconcious sellout left that has walked off the playing field over the past 40 years especially the unions who promote bullshit like the 8220brotherhood of capital and labor8221 when it8217s their historical mission to overthrow capitalism And don8217t forget the white left that talked a good game in the 1960s and early 1970s but ran like hell away from black people 8212 physically politically socially 8212 as soon as they were able White people boxes Viet Nam War over 8212 white asses spared 8212 check Roe v Wade 8212 white wombs freed 8212 check We8217re outta here In your preelection Rolling Stone column you talk about your support of Hillary hurting your professional life but you8217re gonna bravely do it anyway because keeping Trump out of the White House is more important than 8220trying to protect a career8221 More meaningless tripe and unearned high regard spoken by someone whose net worth is 32 million and owns this mansion Nonhumans excepted you are too invested in this system to ever be an effective advocate for the revolutionary changes that need to be made You buttress this system You did great under Bush and Obama you will do great under Trump Progress always comes or doesn8217t from people with their backs against the wall It never comes from the comfortable To paraphrase Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report Progress in America will come from the working class majority making the streets ungovernable by anyone other than us Dan De Leon recommends socialism everywhere including workers at Little Pine overthrowing Moby and owning and operating it in their own interests

Dear/PROPN Moby/PROPN I8217/PROPN m/AUX sitting/VERB in/ADP Little/PROPN Pine/PROPN right/ADV now/ADV eating/VERB the/DET unbelievable/ADJ vegan/NOUN french/ADJ toast/NOUN 8212/NUM so/ADV thick/ADJ doughy/NOUN and/CCONJ sweet/ADJ got/VERB all/DET these/DET different/ADJ berries/NOUN on/ADP it/PRON Nobody/PRON else8217s/NUM is/AUX close/ADJ And/CCONJ good/ADJ on/ADP you/PRON for/ADP having/VERB the/DET best/ADJ hash/NOUN browns/NOUN and/CCONJ tomato/PROPN soup/NOUN in/ADP veganville/NOUN And/CCONJ you/PRON know/VERB what/PRON else8212/VERB thanks/NOUN for/ADP being/AUX the/DET manic/ADJ messiah/NOUN on/ADP stage/NOUN I8217ve/PROPN seen/VERB you/PRON running/VERB around/ADV possessed/VERB at/ADP the/DET old/ADJ Promo/PROPN West/PROPN in/ADP Columbus/PROPN Ohio/PROPN and/CCONJ your/PRON Area2/NOUN show/NOUN at/ADP the/DET Jones/PROPN Beach/PROPN Amphitheater/PROPN on/ADP Long/PROPN Island/PROPN 8212/NUM that/SCONJ concert/NOUN was/AUX something/PRON else/ADV with/ADP David/PROPN 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<p>The <a href="http://michael-hudson.com" type="external">political economist Michael Hudson</a> explains how economic terms like &#8220;capital gains&#8221; are deployed to deceive the public about who is benefiting from economic policy and where wealth is going.</p> <p>A rushed transcript provided by <a href="http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;task=view&amp;amp;id=31&amp;amp;Itemid=74&amp;amp;jumival=17742" type="external">The Real News Network</a> follows.</p> <p>&#8212;Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a></p> <p>Transcript:</p> <p /> <p>SHARMINI PERIES, TRNN: Welcome back to the Real News Network. I&#8217;m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore.</p> <p>Today I&#8217;m being joined in our Baltimore studio by economist Michael Hudson. Michael has a new book out J is for Junk Economics: A Survivor&#8217;s Guide to Economic Vocabulary in an Age of Deception. Michael is a distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Thanks so much for joining us Michael.</p> <p>MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here in your Baltimore studio.</p> <p>PERIES: Thank you. So Michael, in the first segment we spoke more generally in terms of how people are misled through our policy makers in Washington in particular. But give us some specific examples of some of the terms used to mislead us.</p> <p>HUDSON: Well take the word capital gains. People originally think capital gains, you have the image of industry growing and innovation taking place. There&#8217;s an indication as if somehow when real estate and housing prices go up, everybody&#8217;s getting richer. When the stock prices go up, the economies got richer. So Hillary Clinton was able to say, look at how the stock market soared in the last 8 years thanks to Mr. Obama.</p> <p>Well the stock market has soared but not the employees working conditions for the stock market. Most of these capital gains don&#8217;t simply reflect what the textbooks say. The textbooks say, well a company&#8217;s worth whatever it&#8217;s expected future earnings are. So the reason stocks are going up and bonds are going up and real estate is rents are going to go up and profits are going up and the economy is expanding and everybody&#8217;s getting richer. But that&#8217;s not why the stock market goes up at all.</p> <p>The stock market has gone up since 2008 in America, in Europe, all over the world because the central banks have flooded the economy with creating new money. They didn&#8217;t create the money to hire workers. They didn&#8217;t create the money to build infrastructure, they didn&#8217;t create the money to invest in the economy. They didn&#8217;t create the money to pay off the mortgages of people who had junk mortgages and were exploitive. They didn&#8217;t create the money to write of student loans. All the money that was created, every penny, was created to give to the banks. To the Wall Street banks at 0.1% interests to create reserves at the Federal Reserve so that the banks could then lend out money and what did they do to who did they lend it to?</p> <p>Well they lent to corporate [raiders]. So, part of the reason the stock market has gone up is that corporate [raiders] have borrowed very inexpensively 1%, say from a bank, and bought companies whose dividend rates are 3% or 4 or 5% and they get what&#8217;s called the arbitrage, the difference. So all of a sudden you have the take over a company with borrowed money. As a result of paying interest to the banks and this borrowed money, you don&#8217;t have to pay income tax on it because this is counted as a cost of doing business, not as a cost of takeover.</p> <p>The first thing they do is tighten working condition. They work the labor harder. They let the labor force go. When people retire, they don&#8217;t hire new workers. They just work the remaining workers all the more. So, what&#8217;s happened isn&#8217;t a new investment. It&#8217;s just the opposite. It&#8217;s disinvestment. It&#8217;s asset stripping. What creates the stock market going up is not capital formation. It&#8217;s asset stripping. When Donald Trump calls that wealth creation, it means his wealth- meaning the money he&#8217;s been able to make. But that money has been made by making the economy poorer.</p> <p>So, when people talk about the economy, they have to realize that it&#8217;s actually money layers. Not everybody is a millionaire working on Wall Street. Some people actually have to work for paychecks and out of their paychecks they have to pay rising healthcare costs, rising money to the banks, rising debt service. They have to borrow more money just to break even. Their rents are going way up to larger portions of their income.</p> <p>So, what people are actually left with to spend is maybe 25 to 30% of their income on goods and services after paying taxes and after paying the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate). Whether it&#8217;s housing insurance or mortgage insurance. So there&#8217;s an idea of distracting people. Don&#8217;t think of your condition. Think of how the overall economy is doing. But don&#8217;t think of the economy as an overall unit. Think of the stock market as the economy. Think of the rich people as the economy. Look at the yachts that are made. Somebody&#8217;s living a lot better. Couldn&#8217;t it be you?</p> <p>Well they don&#8217;t explain why it&#8217;s not you. The reason they&#8217;re living better is what used to be called a transfer payment. Something that is not really earned but it&#8217;s just a transfer of income like from a rent when a landlord will raise the rent, all of a sudden, same house, nobody&#8217;s invested more. Nobody&#8217;s saying oh your rent&#8217;s going up about $50 a month this month. No that&#8217;s a transfer payment. You just have to pay more. The landlord didn&#8217;t do anything to earn that more money. He just found that he&#8217;s able to squeeze more money out of you.HUDSON (cont.): So squeezing money out of you to make money for a [inaud.] class and that was a word that used to be used 100 years ago, the [inaud.] were people who lived on rents. They were coupon clippers, they were landlords, they were the idle rich who inherited money and somehow you have like even the words widows and orphans. People say you have to provide large capital gains, meaning debt financed asset price inflation so that the widows and orphans can survive. The widows and orphans are all living on trust funds. Or they&#8217;re living on alimony. Or they&#8217;re living on inherited wealth. People forget that before 1900, widows and orphans used to be poor people. We&#8217;re talking Charles Dickens type novels. Widows and orphans were the people who needed welfare. They weren&#8217;t the millionaires.</p> <p>So today when people talk about widows and orphans, they mean millionaires. When they talk about the low interest rates that capitalists aren&#8217;t making to get rich enough, that&#8217;s really hurting the pension funds. Our hearts bleed for the workers. Their hearts aren&#8217;t bleeding for the workers. They&#8217;re trotting out pension funds in front of their factotums to say, make the pension funds richer and behind them, the fact is that 75% of all the stocks and bonds are really owned by just a small percentage of the American population they&#8217;re really talking about themselves.</p> <p>So, you have the economic vocabulary turning into vocabulary of deception. So, I go over what this vocabulary is and what the concepts are and I also talk about what the original concepts were in classical economics. Everyone from Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill, they were all reforms. What they wanted to reform was getting rid of this parasitic landlord class that had conquered England in 1066 and it&#8217;s the heirs of the military of the warlords ended up taking the land and just making everybody pay them and all of their descendants for not doing anything. Just for being conquered.</p> <p>You could say that the carry over of this today. The rent that people have to pay, the money they have to pay the banks instead of having a public option. That&#8217;s the price they still have to pay for being conquered. The group that I&#8217;m working with is trying to promote public options. We&#8217;re trying to promote public banking that would provide credit cards, banking services, [vanilla] services at a fraction of the price that Chase Manhattan or Citi Bank or Bank of America charges.</p> <p>Yea all these charges that people pay are economically unnecessary. There&#8217;s no real cost behind them. There&#8217;s no value behind them. So, they&#8217;re what the classical economist called empty pricing. Prices with no real cost value. What they called fictitious capital. Capital that clings on junk mortgage borrowers that actually, the pretense that all these debts can be paid but it&#8217;s all fictitious because everybody knows at least on Wall Street everybody knows that debts can&#8217;t be paid. That somebody has to default and Wall Street&#8217;s plan is well make the government reimburse us like the bailouts that happened in 2008 so that we don&#8217;t lose, let&#8217;s pass all of the loss onto the tax payers without changing the banks, without throwing our guys in jail even though these were fraudulent mortgages.</p> <p>PERIES: And the government itself doesn&#8217;t pay its debt.</p> <p>HUDSON: That&#8217;s right. The whole idea is that it doesn&#8217;t. At least if it does pay the debt, it only pays &#8211; there are two kinds of debts that the governments have. They have a debt to the bond holders and they do pay that. They have a debt to the social security recipients. Hillary promised she was going to cut back social security. She was going to cut back social spending and social security and medical care so that the government would have enough money to pay her backers on Wall Street. So she was Obama&#8217;s legacy. A standing for Wall Street.</p> <p>A stand in is a politician who can deliver her constituency to her Wall Street backers and that&#8217;s what a politician does in America. You get a constituency; you make them believe your promises and then you turn them over to your financial campaign backers. That&#8217;s what politics has become and that&#8217;s as much an art of deception as economics is.</p> <p>PERIES: Now Donald Trump is proposing to spend trillions of dollars in terms of infrastructure development in this country. That sounds very good. Of course, in the immediate future that means jobs for people. But what is the problem with that kind of infrastructure development in the long term and what kind of plan is he thinking of when he&#8217;s thinking infrastructure development?</p> <p>HUDSON: There are many ways of building infrastructure. The way Donald Trump would like, he&#8217;s like to spend like a hundred million dollars building a new bridge in the highway. Then he would like to sell it, privatize it to a private buy like himself for 10 million dollars. So, the government would spend a huge amount of money that could&#8217;ve been used for a free bridge or a free road. He&#8217;ll then sell it for 10 million dollars to a private owner and then the private owner will put a toll booth up and charge money for coming across and make a mint.</p> <p>This is what happened in England under Margaret Thatcher. This is called Thatcherism and it&#8217;s what destroyed the English economy. It&#8217;s what&#8217;s destroying the European economy and turning Europe into a dead zone. So, you could do infrastructure in the way of a giveaway. A real infrastructure would be the government would indeed pay for rebuilding this. But the whole idea of what mad America rich in the 19th century was the government will develop this infrastructure and it will provide these services freely to the population. Because if you begin to charge people for bridges and for roads and for parking meters as is in Chicago and for everything else that&#8217;s being privatized, you&#8217;re going to have even higher costs of living and the wages are going to go up and it will be even harder to compete with foreign countries and to make exports because nobody can afford to pay the prices that the American workers have to pay just to live and export in competition with Asia or even Europe or Germany.</p> <p>Germany doesn&#8217;t have all of these costs. Germany has very low rental charges. Maybe 10-15% of your income. Not 40% as here. Low priced public health, free autobahn to drive on. Not at all like this. So, Donald Trump wants essentially to double the cost of living for everybody and give the capital away to his republican backers and essentially leave the whole country unemployed but the 1% is going to be very, very rich.PERIES: Right. Now let&#8217;s go back to some specific examples in terms of the kind of infrastructure that Donald Trump wants to build. So, he wants to build new airports. He says our airports are outdated. He wants to build new roads and new bridges and build a wall over the US-Mexico border. All of these are considered infrastructure. In the past we&#8217;ve been told that public-private partnerships are actually a good thing. It even sounds good, public-private partnerships for the betterment of society. But it really isn&#8217;t and in terms of myth making, where does this take us?</p> <p>HUDSON: The word public partnership it&#8217;s really a one way partnership. The private, tells the government what to do. All of the costs are born by the government. All of the risks and the profits go to the private sector. It really means we&#8217;re creating an opportunity for banks to make a killing on making loans for all of this will be financed by bank credit. That banks or bond holders are going to be paid very high interest rates on.</p> <p>The government could create all this money the same way banks do. The government has computer keyboards which is how a bank creates money. They could create their own money without having to pay interests to anyone. They could either charge the airlines for it or they could provide the airports more freely but public partnerships are designed to quadruple or quintuple the actual costs of doing business and pretend that this is in the public interests instead of just in the interests of the banks and the corporate insiders that the banks are willing to leave money to.</p> <p>If you look at investigative journalists looked at just one horror story after another of private public partnerships. Look at London&#8217;s railroads. Look at what England did with the railroads. Water. Public Private partnership for water. People now have to pay huge amounts just to get water in England, that used to be free. The transportation quality goes down. The price goes way up. So the partnership is a very exploited. We&#8217;re not talking about equal partnership. We&#8217;re talking about a dominate submissive sadomasochistic partnership.</p> <p>PERIES: Then this point you were making about the government can print all the money they want if they want to invest it in infrastructure and own that infrastructure, they can make money to then pay back the treasury if they need to. But instead they&#8217;re going to borrow the money from these banks and then be indebted. So is this kind of debt a bad thing?</p> <p>HUDSON: Well the debt is bad when you have to repay it. All new money is a kind of debt. All money is created on a computer. You can look at it in terms of a balance sheet. When you create, when you go into a bank and you want a loan, the bank will give you a bank deposit and you&#8217;ll sign a promissory note. The bank has an asset and you have a debt to the bank and you can spend your deposit anyway. But the bank charges money for all of this. The government can do the same thing. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The Treasury can just print, issue a 1 trillion dollar coin for instance. Give it to the Federal Reserve and the Fed can issue notes about it. You could call to claim whatever you want. It&#8217;s all constitutional because you can assign any level price you want to a coin. All money is just created artificially.</p> <p>So, it&#8217;s a monopoly it&#8217;s a legal privilege and for thousands of years from Mesopotamia through Greece and Rome, all the money was created by the temples to make sure that it was honest money. But it was all privatized after over thousands of years of history and now banks charge for something that the government can do for free.</p> <p>PERIES: Michael, for Donald Trump and the Republicans, they are against creating debt aren&#8217;t they?</p> <p>HUDSON: No. They know that most people are afraid of going into debt. Because if you go into debt you actually have to repay it. Government debt doesn&#8217;t have to be repaid. If you repaid government debt, there wouldn&#8217;t be anymore money. What they&#8217;re really looking for is &#8211; the way to cut debt is by cutting the deficit and what we want to cut is social security. We want to a sort of downsize it. Hillary wanted to put it into the stock market. We want to pay less social spending. We want less medical care. We want to spend less money on the 95% of the population so all the money gets spent on the top 5%.</p> <p>So, they&#8217;re really against what debt is spent for. They&#8217;re against democratic debt. They&#8217;re against democracy. What they really want is oligarchic debt which used to be state socialism. Government will only give money to the banks. They&#8217;re all for the kind of debt that is the bank bailout in 2008. They&#8217;re all for giving money to Wall Street. They&#8217;re all for giving subsidies to Donald Trump for building his buildings in New York and enabling him to make a killing. They&#8217;re just against giving debt to the workers or to the middle class or to the cities or to anyone who&#8217;s not one of the 5%.</p> <p>PERIES: Alright so this is the kind of austerity plan that Paul Ryan &#8211;</p> <p>HUDSON: Austerity is the word.</p> <p>PERIES: &#8211; is trying to promote that he wants Donald Trump to sign onto.</p> <p>HUDSON: Right.</p> <p>PERIES: Alright Michael I thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.</p>

Trump Wants to Make the 1 Percent Even Richer—and Use Washington's Deceptive Language to Do It

https://truthdig.com/articles/trump-wants-to-make-the-1-percent-even-richer-and-use-washingtons-deceptive-language-to-do-it/

2016-11-28

4left

The political economist Michael Hudson explains how economic terms like 8220capital gains8221 are deployed to deceive the public about who is benefiting from economic policy and where wealth is going A rushed transcript provided by The Real News Network follows 8212Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly Transcript SHARMINI PERIES TRNN Welcome back to the Real News Network I8217m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore Today I8217m being joined in our Baltimore studio by economist Michael Hudson Michael has a new book out J is for Junk Economics A Survivor8217s Guide to Economic Vocabulary in an Age of Deception Michael is a distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City Thanks so much for joining us Michael MICHAEL HUDSON Good to be here in your Baltimore studio PERIES Thank you So Michael in the first segment we spoke more generally in terms of how people are misled through our policy makers in Washington in particular But give us some specific examples of some of the terms used to mislead us HUDSON Well take the word capital gains People originally think capital gains you have the image of industry growing and innovation taking place There8217s an indication as if somehow when real estate and housing prices go up everybody8217s getting richer When the stock prices go up the economies got richer So Hillary Clinton was able to say look at how the stock market soared in the last 8 years thanks to Mr Obama Well the stock market has soared but not the employees working conditions for the stock market Most of these capital gains don8217t simply reflect what the textbooks say The textbooks say well a company8217s worth whatever it8217s expected future earnings are So the reason stocks are going up and bonds are going up and real estate is rents are going to go up and profits are going up and the economy is expanding and everybody8217s getting richer But that8217s not why the stock market goes up at all The stock market has gone up since 2008 in America in Europe all over the world because the central banks have flooded the economy with creating new money They didn8217t create the money to hire workers They didn8217t create the money to build infrastructure they didn8217t create the money to invest in the economy They didn8217t create the money to pay off the mortgages of people who had junk mortgages and were exploitive They didn8217t create the money to write of student loans All the money that was created every penny was created to give to the banks To the Wall Street banks at 01 interests to create reserves at the Federal Reserve so that the banks could then lend out money and what did they do to who did they lend it to Well they lent to corporate raiders So part of the reason the stock market has gone up is that corporate raiders have borrowed very inexpensively 1 say from a bank and bought companies whose dividend rates are 3 or 4 or 5 and they get what8217s called the arbitrage the difference So all of a sudden you have the take over a company with borrowed money As a result of paying interest to the banks and this borrowed money you don8217t have to pay income tax on it because this is counted as a cost of doing business not as a cost of takeover The first thing they do is tighten working condition They work the labor harder They let the labor force go When people retire they don8217t hire new workers They just work the remaining workers all the more So what8217s happened isn8217t a new investment It8217s just the opposite It8217s disinvestment It8217s asset stripping What creates the stock market going up is not capital formation It8217s asset stripping When Donald Trump calls that wealth creation it means his wealth meaning the money he8217s been able to make But that money has been made by making the economy poorer So when people talk about the economy they have to realize that it8217s actually money layers Not everybody is a millionaire working on Wall Street Some people actually have to work for paychecks and out of their paychecks they have to pay rising healthcare costs rising money to the banks rising debt service They have to borrow more money just to break even Their rents are going way up to larger portions of their income So what people are actually left with to spend is maybe 25 to 30 of their income on goods and services after paying taxes and after paying the FIRE sector Finance Insurance Real Estate Whether it8217s housing insurance or mortgage insurance So there8217s an idea of distracting people Don8217t think of your condition Think of how the overall economy is doing But don8217t think of the economy as an overall unit Think of the stock market as the economy Think of the rich people as the economy Look at the yachts that are made Somebody8217s living a lot better Couldn8217t it be you Well they don8217t explain why it8217s not you The reason they8217re living better is what used to be called a transfer payment Something that is not really earned but it8217s just a transfer of income like from a rent when a landlord will raise the rent all of a sudden same house nobody8217s invested more Nobody8217s saying oh your rent8217s going up about 50 a month this month No that8217s a transfer payment You just have to pay more The landlord didn8217t do anything to earn that more money He just found that he8217s able to squeeze more money out of youHUDSON cont So squeezing money out of you to make money for a inaud class and that was a word that used to be used 100 years ago the inaud were people who lived on rents They were coupon clippers they were landlords they were the idle rich who inherited money and somehow you have like even the words widows and orphans People say you have to provide large capital gains meaning debt financed asset price inflation so that the widows and orphans can survive The widows and orphans are all living on trust funds Or they8217re living on alimony Or they8217re living on inherited wealth People forget that before 1900 widows and orphans used to be poor people We8217re talking Charles Dickens type novels Widows and orphans were the people who needed welfare They weren8217t the millionaires So today when people talk about widows and orphans they mean millionaires When they talk about the low interest rates that capitalists aren8217t making to get rich enough that8217s really hurting the pension funds Our hearts bleed for the workers Their hearts aren8217t bleeding for the workers They8217re trotting out pension funds in front of their factotums to say make the pension funds richer and behind them the fact is that 75 of all the stocks and bonds are really owned by just a small percentage of the American population they8217re really talking about themselves So you have the economic vocabulary turning into vocabulary of deception So I go over what this vocabulary is and what the concepts are and I also talk about what the original concepts were in classical economics Everyone from Adam Smith John Stewart Mill they were all reforms What they wanted to reform was getting rid of this parasitic landlord class that had conquered England in 1066 and it8217s the heirs of the military of the warlords ended up taking the land and just making everybody pay them and all of their descendants for not doing anything Just for being conquered You could say that the carry over of this today The rent that people have to pay the money they have to pay the banks instead of having a public option That8217s the price they still have to pay for being conquered The group that I8217m working with is trying to promote public options We8217re trying to promote public banking that would provide credit cards banking services vanilla services at a fraction of the price that Chase Manhattan or Citi Bank or Bank of America charges Yea all these charges that people pay are economically unnecessary There8217s no real cost behind them There8217s no value behind them So they8217re what the classical economist called empty pricing Prices with no real cost value What they called fictitious capital Capital that clings on junk mortgage borrowers that actually the pretense that all these debts can be paid but it8217s all fictitious because everybody knows at least on Wall Street everybody knows that debts can8217t be paid That somebody has to default and Wall Street8217s plan is well make the government reimburse us like the bailouts that happened in 2008 so that we don8217t lose let8217s pass all of the loss onto the tax payers without changing the banks without throwing our guys in jail even though these were fraudulent mortgages PERIES And the government itself doesn8217t pay its debt HUDSON That8217s right The whole idea is that it doesn8217t At least if it does pay the debt it only pays 8211 there are two kinds of debts that the governments have They have a debt to the bond holders and they do pay that They have a debt to the social security recipients Hillary promised she was going to cut back social security She was going to cut back social spending and social security and medical care so that the government would have enough money to pay her backers on Wall Street So she was Obama8217s legacy A standing for Wall Street A stand in is a politician who can deliver her constituency to her Wall Street backers and that8217s what a politician does in America You get a constituency you make them believe your promises and then you turn them over to your financial campaign backers That8217s what politics has become and that8217s as much an art of deception as economics is PERIES Now Donald Trump is proposing to spend trillions of dollars in terms of infrastructure development in this country That sounds very good Of course in the immediate future that means jobs for people But what is the problem with that kind of infrastructure development in the long term and what kind of plan is he thinking of when he8217s thinking infrastructure development HUDSON There are many ways of building infrastructure The way Donald Trump would like he8217s like to spend like a hundred million dollars building a new bridge in the highway Then he would like to sell it privatize it to a private buy like himself for 10 million dollars So the government would spend a huge amount of money that could8217ve been used for a free bridge or a free road He8217ll then sell it for 10 million dollars to a private owner and then the private owner will put a toll booth up and charge money for coming across and make a mint This is what happened in England under Margaret Thatcher This is called Thatcherism and it8217s what destroyed the English economy It8217s what8217s destroying the European economy and turning Europe into a dead zone So you could do infrastructure in the way of a giveaway A real infrastructure would be the government would indeed pay for rebuilding this But the whole idea of what mad America rich in the 19th century was the government will develop this infrastructure and it will provide these services freely to the population Because if you begin to charge people for bridges and for roads and for parking meters as is in Chicago and for everything else that8217s being privatized you8217re going to have even higher costs of living and the wages are going to go up and it will be even harder to compete with foreign countries and to make exports because nobody can afford to pay the prices that the American workers have to pay just to live and export in competition with Asia or even Europe or Germany Germany doesn8217t have all of these costs Germany has very low rental charges Maybe 1015 of your income Not 40 as here Low priced public health free autobahn to drive on Not at all like this So Donald Trump wants essentially to double the cost of living for everybody and give the capital away to his republican backers and essentially leave the whole country unemployed but the 1 is going to be very very richPERIES Right Now let8217s go back to some specific examples in terms of the kind of infrastructure that Donald Trump wants to build So he wants to build new airports He says our airports are outdated He wants to build new roads and new bridges and build a wall over the USMexico border All of these are considered infrastructure In the past we8217ve been told that publicprivate partnerships are actually a good thing It even sounds good publicprivate partnerships for the betterment of society But it really isn8217t and in terms of myth making where does this take us HUDSON The word public partnership it8217s really a one way partnership The private tells the government what to do All of the costs are born by the government All of the risks and the profits go to the private sector It really means we8217re creating an opportunity for banks to make a killing on making loans for all of this will be financed by bank credit That banks or bond holders are going to be paid very high interest rates on The government could create all this money the same way banks do The government has computer keyboards which is how a bank creates money They could create their own money without having to pay interests to anyone They could either charge the airlines for it or they could provide the airports more freely but public partnerships are designed to quadruple or quintuple the actual costs of doing business and pretend that this is in the public interests instead of just in the interests of the banks and the corporate insiders that the banks are willing to leave money to If you look at investigative journalists looked at just one horror story after another of private public partnerships Look at London8217s railroads Look at what England did with the railroads Water Public Private partnership for water People now have to pay huge amounts just to get water in England that used to be free The transportation quality goes down The price goes way up So the partnership is a very exploited We8217re not talking about equal partnership We8217re talking about a dominate submissive sadomasochistic partnership PERIES Then this point you were making about the government can print all the money they want if they want to invest it in infrastructure and own that infrastructure they can make money to then pay back the treasury if they need to But instead they8217re going to borrow the money from these banks and then be indebted So is this kind of debt a bad thing HUDSON Well the debt is bad when you have to repay it All new money is a kind of debt All money is created on a computer You can look at it in terms of a balance sheet When you create when you go into a bank and you want a loan the bank will give you a bank deposit and you8217ll sign a promissory note The bank has an asset and you have a debt to the bank and you can spend your deposit anyway But the bank charges money for all of this The government can do the same thing The Federal Reserve and the Treasury The Treasury can just print issue a 1 trillion dollar coin for instance Give it to the Federal Reserve and the Fed can issue notes about it You could call to claim whatever you want It8217s all constitutional because you can assign any level price you want to a coin All money is just created artificially So it8217s a monopoly it8217s a legal privilege and for thousands of years from Mesopotamia through Greece and Rome all the money was created by the temples to make sure that it was honest money But it was all privatized after over thousands of years of history and now banks charge for something that the government can do for free PERIES Michael for Donald Trump and the Republicans they are against creating debt aren8217t they HUDSON No They know that most people are afraid of going into debt Because if you go into debt you actually have to repay it Government debt doesn8217t have to be repaid If you repaid government debt there wouldn8217t be anymore money What they8217re really looking for is 8211 the way to cut debt is by cutting the deficit and what we want to cut is social security We want to a sort of downsize it Hillary wanted to put it into the stock market We want to pay less social spending We want less medical care We want to spend less money on the 95 of the population so all the money gets spent on the top 5 So they8217re really against what debt is spent for They8217re against democratic debt They8217re against democracy What they really want is oligarchic debt which used to be state socialism Government will only give money to the banks They8217re all for the kind of debt that is the bank bailout in 2008 They8217re all for giving money to Wall Street They8217re all for giving subsidies to Donald Trump for building his buildings in New York and enabling him to make a killing They8217re just against giving debt to the workers or to the middle class or to the cities or to anyone who8217s not one of the 5 PERIES Alright so this is the kind of austerity plan that Paul Ryan 8211 HUDSON Austerity is the word PERIES 8211 is trying to promote that he wants Donald Trump to sign onto HUDSON Right PERIES Alright Michael I thank you so much for joining us today And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network

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<p>In a park in the middle of a leafy, bohemian neighborhood where homes list for close to $1 million, a tractor's massive claw scooped up the refuse of the homeless - mattresses, tents, wooden frames, a wicker chair, an outdoor propane heater. Workers in masks and steel-shanked boots plucked used needles and mounds of waste from the underbrush.</p> <p>Just a day before, this corner of Ravenna Park was an illegal home for the down and out, one of 400 such encampments that have popped up in Seattle's parks, under bridges, on freeway medians and along busy sidewalks. Now, as police and social workers approached, some of the dispossessed scurried away, vanishing into a metropolis that is struggling to cope with an enormous wave of homelessness.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>That struggle is not Seattle's alone. A homeless crisis of unprecedented proportions is rocking the West Coast, and its victims are being left behind by the very things that mark the region's success: soaring housing costs, rock-bottom vacancy rates and a roaring economy that waits for no one. All along the coast, elected officials are scrambling for solutions.</p> <p>"I've got economically zero unemployment in my city, and I've got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just can't afford housing," said Seattle City Councilman Mike O'Brien. "There's nowhere for these folks to move to. Every time we open up a new place, it fills up."</p> <p>The rising numbers of homeless people have pushed abject poverty into the open like never before and have overwhelmed cities and nonprofits. The surge in people living on the streets has put public health at risk, led several cities to declare states of emergency and forced cities and counties to spend millions - in some cases billions - in a search for solutions.</p> <p>San Diego now scrubs its sidewalks with bleach to counter a deadly hepatitis A outbreak that has spread to other cities and forced California to declare a state of emergency last month. In Anaheim, home to Disneyland, 400 people sleep along a bike path in the shadow of Angel Stadium. Organizers in Portland lit incense at a recent outdoor food festival to cover up the stench of urine in a parking lot where vendors set up shop.</p> <p>Homelessness is not new on the West Coast. But interviews with local officials and those who serve the homeless in California, Oregon and Washington - coupled with an Associated Press review of preliminary homeless data - confirm it's getting worse. People who were once able to get by, even if they suffered a setback, are now pushed to the streets because housing has become so expensive.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>All it takes is a prolonged illness, a lost job, a broken limb, a family crisis. What was once a blip in fortunes now seems a life sentence.</p> <p>"Most homeless people I know aren't homeless because they're addicts," said Tammy Stephen, 54, who lives at a homeless encampment in Seattle. "Most people are homeless because they can't afford a place to live."</p> <p>Among the AP's findings:</p> <p>&#8212; Official counts taken earlier this year in California, Oregon and Washington show 168,000 homeless people in the three states, according to an AP tally of every jurisdiction in those states that reports homeless numbers to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That is 19,000 more than were counted two years ago, although the numbers may not be directly comparable because of factors ranging from the weather to new counting methods.</p> <p>&#8212; During the same period, the number of unsheltered people in the three states - defined as someone sleeping outside, in a bus or train station, abandoned building or vehicle - has climbed 18 percent to 105,000.</p> <p>&#8212; Rising rents are the main culprit. The median one-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area is significantly more expensive than it is in the New York City metro area, and apartments in San Francisco are listed at a higher price than those in Manhattan.</p> <p>&#8212; Since 2015, at least 10 cities or municipal regions in California, Oregon and Washington - and Honolulu, as well - have declared states of emergency due to the rise of homelessness, a designation usually reserved for natural disasters.</p> <p>"What do we want as a city to look like? That's what the citizens here need to decide," said Gordon Walker, head of the regional task force for the homeless in San Diego, where the unsheltered homeless population has spiked by 18 percent in the past year. "What are we going to allow? Are we willing to have people die on the streets?"</p> <p>___</p> <p>With alarming frequency, the West Coast's newly homeless are people who were able to survive on the margins - until those margins moved.</p> <p>For years, Stanley Timmings, 62, and his 61-year-old girlfriend, Linda Catlin, were able to rent a room in a friend's house on their combined disability payments.</p> <p>Last spring, that friend died of colon cancer and the couple was thrust on Seattle's streets.</p> <p>Timmings used their last savings to buy a used RV for $300 and spent another $300 to register it. They bought a car from a junk yard for $275.</p> <p>Now, the couple parks the RV near a small regional airport and uses the car to get around.</p> <p>They have no running water and no propane for the cook stove. They go to the bathroom in a bucket and dump it behind a nearby business. They shower and do laundry at a nonprofit and buy water at a grocery depot. After four months, the stench of human waste inside the RV is overwhelming. Every inch of space is crammed with their belongings: jugs of laundry detergent, stacks of clothes, pots and pans, and tattered paperback novels. They are exhausted, scared and defeated, with no solution in sight.</p> <p>"Between the two of us a month, we get $1,440 in disability. We can't find a place for that," he said. "Our income is (about) $17,000 ... a year. That puts us way out of the ballpark, not even close. It might have been enough but anymore, no. It's not."</p> <p>A new study funded by the real estate information firm Zillow and conducted by the University of Washington found a strong link between rising housing prices and rising homelessness numbers. A 5 percent rent increase in Los Angeles, for example, would mean about 2,000 more homeless people there, the authors said.</p> <p>Nationally, homelessness has been trending down, partly because governments and nonprofit groups have gotten better at moving people into housing. That's true in many West Coast cities, too, but the flow the other direction is even faster. And on the West Coast, shelter systems are smaller.</p> <p>"If you have a disability income, you make about $9,000 a year and renting a studio in Seattle is about $1,800 a month and so that's twice your income," said Margaret King, director of housing programs for DESC, a nonprofit that works with Seattle's homeless.</p> <p>"So everybody who was just hanging on because they had cheap rent, they're losing that ... and they wind up outside. It's just exploded."</p> <p>Nowhere is that more evident than California's Silicon Valley, where high salaries and a tight housing market have pushed rent out of reach for thousands. In ever-shifting communities of the homeless, RVs and cars cluster by the dozens in the city where Google built its global headquarters and just blocks from Stanford University.</p> <p>Ellen Tara James-Penney, a lecturer at San Jose State University, has been sleeping out of a car for about a decade, ever since she lost her housing while an undergraduate at the school where she now teaches four English courses, a job that pays $28,000 a year. Home is an old Volvo.</p> <p>"I've basically been homeless since 2007, and I'm really tired," she said. "Really tired."</p> <p>She actually got her start in the high tech industry, before being laid off during the tech meltdown of the early 2000s. Like many who couldn't find work, she went to college, accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in student debt along the way.</p> <p>Now 54, she grades papers and prepares lesson plans in her car. Among her few belongings is a pair of her grandmother's fancy stiletto pumps, a reminder to herself that "it's not going to be like this forever."</p> <p>Increased housing costs aren't just sweeping up low-income workers: The numbers of homeless youth also is rising.</p> <p>A recent count in Los Angeles, for example, found that those ages 18 to 24 were the fastest-growing homeless group by age, up 64 percent, followed by those under 18. Los Angeles and other cities have made a concerted effort to improve their tallies of homeless youth, which likely accounts for some of the increase.</p> <p>One of the reasons is the combined cost of housing and tuition, said Will Lehman, policy supervisor at Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. A recent study by the University of Wisconsin found that one in five Los Angeles Community College District students is homeless, he said.</p> <p>"They can pay for books, for classes but just can't afford an apartment. They're choosing to prioritize going to school," Lehman said. "They don't choose their situation."</p> <p>___</p> <p>Michael Madigan opened a new wine bar in Portland a few years ago overlooking a ribbon of parks not far from the city's trendy Pearl District.</p> <p>Business was good until, almost overnight, dozens of homeless people showed up on the sidewalk. A large encampment on the other side of the city had been shut down, and its residents moved to the park at his doorstep.</p> <p>"We literally turned the corner one day ... and there were 48 tents set up on this one block that hadn't been there the day before," he said.</p> <p>Madigan's business dropped 50 percent in four months and he closed his bar. There are fewer homeless people there now, but the campers have moved to a bike path that winds through residential neighborhoods in east Portland, prompting hundreds of complaints about trash, noise, drug use and illegal camping.</p> <p>Rachel Sterry, a naturopathic doctor, lives near that path and sometimes doesn't feel safe when she's commuting by bike with her 1-year-old son. Dogs have rolled in human feces in a local park; recent improvements she's made to her small home are overshadowed by the line of tents and tarps a few dozen yards from her front door, she said.</p> <p>"I have to stop and get off my bike to ask people to move their card game or their lounge chairs or their trash out of the way when I'm just trying to get from point A to point B," she said. "If I were to scream or get hurt, nobody would know."</p> <p>For Seattle resident Elisabeth James, the reality check came when a homeless man forced his way into a glass-enclosed ATM lobby with her after she swiped her card to open the door for after-hours access. After a few nerve-wracking minutes, the man left the lobby but stayed outside, banging on the glass. Police were too busy to respond so James called her husband, who scared the man away and walked her home. The man, she believes, just wanted to get out of the rain.</p> <p>A neighborhood pocket park has become a flashpoint, too: When James took her 2-year-old grandchild there, she saw people injecting heroin.</p> <p>"I'm not a NIMBY person, but I just think that we can do so much more," said James, who founded an activist group called Speak Out Seattle last year. "I wanted to do something that was effective, that brought frustrated people together to find solutions. We're spending a lot of money to house people and we're getting a bigger problem."</p> <p>The crisis is not limited to large metropolises. In Oregon City, a suburban, working-class town of 36,000 people, the police department this summer added a full-time position for a homeless outreach officer after roughly half the calls concerned trash, trespassing, human waste and illegal encampments.</p> <p>The city has no overnight shelters and never had a significant homeless population until about three years ago.</p> <p>On a recent fall day, officer Mike Day tromped into a greenbelt across from a strip mall to check on a man he recently connected with a counselor, calmed an intoxicated man and arranged emergency care for a man who was suicidal.</p> <p>"How many social workers have you met that go into the woods to follow up with the homeless population and to help with mental health? This is a bit of a hybrid position, certainly, and maybe it's not exactly the role of a police officer - but it's a creative approach to find a solution to the problem," he said.</p> <p>The question was, "What can we do differently? Because right now, it's not working."</p> <p>___</p> <p>All along the West Coast, local governments are scrambling to answer that question - and taxpayers are footing the bill.</p> <p>Voters have approved more than $8 billion in spending since 2015 on affordable housing and other anti-homelessness programs, mostly as tax increases. Los Angeles voters, for example, approved $1.2 billion to build 10,000 units of affordable housing over a decade to address a ballooning homeless population that's reached 34,000 people within city limits.</p> <p>Seattle spent $61 million on homeless-related issues last year, and a recent budget proposal would increase that to $63 million. Four years ago, the city spent $39 million on homelessness. Sacramento has set a goal of moving 2,000 people off the streets in the next three years and may place a housing bond before voters in 2018.</p> <p>Appeals for money have angered residents who see tent encampments growing in their cities despite more spending.</p> <p>"Those are like whack-a-mole because they just sprout up and then they disappear and then they sprout up somewhere else," said Gretchen Taylor, who helped found the Neighborhood Safety Alliance of Seattle in 2016.</p> <p>Seattle is initiating competitive bidding among nonprofit organizations for city dollars going toward homelessness programs. It's also pouring money into "rapid rehousing," a strategy that houses people quickly and then provides rental assistance for up to 18 months.</p> <p>Like San Francisco, Seattle has started opening 24-hour, "low-barrier" shelters that offer beds even if people are abusing drugs, have a pet or want to sleep together as a couple. But the city's first 24-hour shelter has only 75 beds, and turnover is extremely low.</p> <p>A team of specially trained police officers and social workers has also been visiting homeless camps to try to place people in shelter. After repeated visits - and with 72 hours of notice - the city cleans out the camps and hauls away abandoned belongings.</p> <p>These efforts are starting to yield results, although the overall number of homeless people continues to swell.</p> <p>Nearly 740 families moved into some type of shelter between October 2016 and August 2017, and 39 percent of the people contacted by the new police teams wind up sheltered, according a recent city homeless report. That's an improvement from a 5 percent shelter rate 18 months ago, said Sgt. Eric Zerr, who leads that effort.</p> <p>But the approach has its detractors. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit alleging the sweeps violate the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. And a debate is raging about whether the sweeps are necessary "tough love" or a cruel policy that criminalizes poverty in a city with a reputation for liberalism.</p> <p>"When a city can't offer housing, they should not be able to sweep that spot unless it's posing some sort of significant health and safety issue," said Sara Rankin, a professor with the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project at the Seattle University School of Law.</p> <p>"If someone doesn't have a place to go, you can't just continue to chase them from place to place."</p> <p>___</p> <p>Above all, the West Coast lacks long-term, low-income housing for people like Ashley Dibble and her 3-year-old daughter.</p> <p>Dibble, 29, says she has been homeless off and on for about a year, after her ex-boyfriend squandered money on his car and didn't pay the rent for three months. Evicted, Dibble says she lived in the back of a moving truck and with several different friends around Seattle before winding up on the streets. She sent her toddler to live with the girl's paternal grandparents in Florida.</p> <p>She and her new boyfriend were sleeping under tarps near Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, when an outreach team referred them to a new shelter. Now, Dibble talks to her daughter daily by phone and is trying to find a way back into housing so she can bring her home.</p> <p>With an eviction on her record and little income, no one will rent to her.</p> <p>"I've had so many doors slammed in my face, it's ridiculous," Dibble said, wiping away tears.</p> <p>Seattle's DESC operates 1,200 so-called "permanent supportive housing units" -housing for the mentally ill or severely addicted who can't stay housed without constant help from case managers, counselors and rehabilitation programs. The nonprofit completes a new building every 18 months and they immediately fill; at any given time, there are only about eight to 10 units free in the whole city - but 1,600 people qualify.</p> <p>Among this population, "almost nobody's going to get housing because there isn't any," DESC's Margaret King said. "It doesn't really matter."</p> <p>There is so little housing, and so much despair. Nonprofit workers with decades of experience are shocked by the surge in homeless people and in the banality of the ways they wound up on the streets.</p> <p>"It's a sea of humanity crashing against services, and services at this point are overwhelmed, literally overwhelmed. It's catastrophic," said Jeremy Lemoine, an outreach case manager with REACH, a Seattle homeless-assistance program. "It's a refugee crisis right here in the States, right here under our noses."</p> <p>"I don't mean to sound hopeless. I generate hope for a living for people - that there is a future for them - but we need to address it now."</p> <p>___</p> <p>Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco, Julie Watson in San Diego and Chris Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report. AP photographers Jae Hong in Los Angeles and Ted Warren in Seattle, and AP videographer Manuel Valdes in Seattle also contributed.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Follow Gillian Flaccus at https://twitter.com/gflaccus and Mulvihill at https://twitter.com/geoffmulvihill</p> <p>Follow AP's complete coverage of the homeless crisis here: https://apnews.com/tag/HomelessCrisis</p>

Amid booming economy, homelessness soars on US West Coast

http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/11/06/homeless-explosion-on-west-coast-pushing-cities-to-brink.html

2017-11-08

0right

In a park in the middle of a leafy bohemian neighborhood where homes list for close to 1 million a tractors massive claw scooped up the refuse of the homeless mattresses tents wooden frames a wicker chair an outdoor propane heater Workers in masks and steelshanked boots plucked used needles and mounds of waste from the underbrush Just a day before this corner of Ravenna Park was an illegal home for the down and out one of 400 such encampments that have popped up in Seattles parks under bridges on freeway medians and along busy sidewalks Now as police and social workers approached some of the dispossessed scurried away vanishing into a metropolis that is struggling to cope with an enormous wave of homelessness Continue Reading Below That struggle is not Seattles alone A homeless crisis of unprecedented proportions is rocking the West Coast and its victims are being left behind by the very things that mark the regions success soaring housing costs rockbottom vacancy rates and a roaring economy that waits for no one All along the coast elected officials are scrambling for solutions Ive got economically zero unemployment in my city and Ive got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just cant afford housing said Seattle City Councilman Mike OBrien Theres nowhere for these folks to move to Every time we open up a new place it fills up The rising numbers of homeless people have pushed abject poverty into the open like never before and have overwhelmed cities and nonprofits The surge in people living on the streets has put public health at risk led several cities to declare states of emergency and forced cities and counties to spend millions in some cases billions in a search for solutions San Diego now scrubs its sidewalks with bleach to counter a deadly hepatitis A outbreak that has spread to other cities and forced California to declare a state of emergency last month In Anaheim home to Disneyland 400 people sleep along a bike path in the shadow of Angel Stadium Organizers in Portland lit incense at a recent outdoor food festival to cover up the stench of urine in a parking lot where vendors set up shop Homelessness is not new on the West Coast But interviews with local officials and those who serve the homeless in California Oregon and Washington coupled with an Associated Press review of preliminary homeless data confirm its getting worse People who were once able to get by even if they suffered a setback are now pushed to the streets because housing has become so expensive Advertisement All it takes is a prolonged illness a lost job a broken limb a family crisis What was once a blip in fortunes now seems a life sentence Most homeless people I know arent homeless because theyre addicts said Tammy Stephen 54 who lives at a homeless encampment in Seattle Most people are homeless because they cant afford a place to live Among the APs findings 8212 Official counts taken earlier this year in California Oregon and Washington show 168000 homeless people in the three states according to an AP tally of every jurisdiction in those states that reports homeless numbers to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development That is 19000 more than were counted two years ago although the numbers may not be directly comparable because of factors ranging from the weather to new counting methods 8212 During the same period the number of unsheltered people in the three states defined as someone sleeping outside in a bus or train station abandoned building or vehicle has climbed 18 percent to 105000 8212 Rising rents are the main culprit The median onebedroom apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area is significantly more expensive than it is in the New York City metro area and apartments in San Francisco are listed at a higher price than those in Manhattan 8212 Since 2015 at least 10 cities or municipal regions in California Oregon and Washington and Honolulu as well have declared states of emergency due to the rise of homelessness a designation usually reserved for natural disasters What do we want as a city to look like Thats what the citizens here need to decide said Gordon Walker head of the regional task force for the homeless in San Diego where the unsheltered homeless population has spiked by 18 percent in the past year What are we going to allow Are we willing to have people die on the streets ___ With alarming frequency the West Coasts newly homeless are people who were able to survive on the margins until those margins moved For years Stanley Timmings 62 and his 61yearold girlfriend Linda Catlin were able to rent a room in a friends house on their combined disability payments Last spring that friend died of colon cancer and the couple was thrust on Seattles streets Timmings used their last savings to buy a used RV for 300 and spent another 300 to register it They bought a car from a junk yard for 275 Now the couple parks the RV near a small regional airport and uses the car to get around They have no running water and no propane for the cook stove They go to the bathroom in a bucket and dump it behind a nearby business They shower and do laundry at a nonprofit and buy water at a grocery depot After four months the stench of human waste inside the RV is overwhelming Every inch of space is crammed with their belongings jugs of laundry detergent stacks of clothes pots and pans and tattered paperback novels They are exhausted scared and defeated with no solution in sight Between the two of us a month we get 1440 in disability We cant find a place for that he said Our income is about 17000 a year That puts us way out of the ballpark not even close It might have been enough but anymore no Its not A new study funded by the real estate information firm Zillow and conducted by the University of Washington found a strong link between rising housing prices and rising homelessness numbers A 5 percent rent increase in Los Angeles for example would mean about 2000 more homeless people there the authors said Nationally homelessness has been trending down partly because governments and nonprofit groups have gotten better at moving people into housing Thats true in many West Coast cities too but the flow the other direction is even faster And on the West Coast shelter systems are smaller If you have a disability income you make about 9000 a year and renting a studio in Seattle is about 1800 a month and so thats twice your income said Margaret King director of housing programs for DESC a nonprofit that works with Seattles homeless So everybody who was just hanging on because they had cheap rent theyre losing that and they wind up outside Its just exploded Nowhere is that more evident than Californias Silicon Valley where high salaries and a tight housing market have pushed rent out of reach for thousands In evershifting communities of the homeless RVs and cars cluster by the dozens in the city where Google built its global headquarters and just blocks from Stanford University Ellen Tara JamesPenney a lecturer at San Jose State University has been sleeping out of a car for about a decade ever since she lost her housing while an undergraduate at the school where she now teaches four English courses a job that pays 28000 a year Home is an old Volvo Ive basically been homeless since 2007 and Im really tired she said Really tired She actually got her start in the high tech industry before being laid off during the tech meltdown of the early 2000s Like many who couldnt find work she went to college accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in student debt along the way Now 54 she grades papers and prepares lesson plans in her car Among her few belongings is a pair of her grandmothers fancy stiletto pumps a reminder to herself that its not going to be like this forever Increased housing costs arent just sweeping up lowincome workers The numbers of homeless youth also is rising A recent count in Los Angeles for example found that those ages 18 to 24 were the fastestgrowing homeless group by age up 64 percent followed by those under 18 Los Angeles and other cities have made a concerted effort to improve their tallies of homeless youth which likely accounts for some of the increase One of the reasons is the combined cost of housing and tuition said Will Lehman policy supervisor at Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority A recent study by the University of Wisconsin found that one in five Los Angeles Community College District students is homeless he said They can pay for books for classes but just cant afford an apartment Theyre choosing to prioritize going to school Lehman said They dont choose their situation ___ Michael Madigan opened a new wine bar in Portland a few years ago overlooking a ribbon of parks not far from the citys trendy Pearl District Business was good until almost overnight dozens of homeless people showed up on the sidewalk A large encampment on the other side of the city had been shut down and its residents moved to the park at his doorstep We literally turned the corner one day and there were 48 tents set up on this one block that hadnt been there the day before he said Madigans business dropped 50 percent in four months and he closed his bar There are fewer homeless people there now but the campers have moved to a bike path that winds through residential neighborhoods in east Portland prompting hundreds of complaints about trash noise drug use and illegal camping Rachel Sterry a naturopathic doctor lives near that path and sometimes doesnt feel safe when shes commuting by bike with her 1yearold son Dogs have rolled in human feces in a local park recent improvements shes made to her small home are overshadowed by the line of tents and tarps a few dozen yards from her front door she said I have to stop and get off my bike to ask people to move their card game or their lounge chairs or their trash out of the way when Im just trying to get from point A to point B she said If I were to scream or get hurt nobody would know For Seattle resident Elisabeth James the reality check came when a homeless man forced his way into a glassenclosed ATM lobby with her after she swiped her card to open the door for afterhours access After a few nervewracking minutes the man left the lobby but stayed outside banging on the glass Police were too busy to respond so James called her husband who scared the man away and walked her home The man she believes just wanted to get out of the rain A neighborhood pocket park has become a flashpoint too When James took her 2yearold grandchild there she saw people injecting heroin Im not a NIMBY person but I just think that we can do so much more said James who founded an activist group called Speak Out Seattle last year I wanted to do something that was effective that brought frustrated people together to find solutions Were spending a lot of money to house people and were getting a bigger problem The crisis is not limited to large metropolises In Oregon City a suburban workingclass town of 36000 people the police department this summer added a fulltime position for a homeless outreach officer after roughly half the calls concerned trash trespassing human waste and illegal encampments The city has no overnight shelters and never had a significant homeless population until about three years ago On a recent fall day officer Mike Day tromped into a greenbelt across from a strip mall to check on a man he recently connected with a counselor calmed an intoxicated man and arranged emergency care for a man who was suicidal How many social workers have you met that go into the woods to follow up with the homeless population and to help with mental health This is a bit of a hybrid position certainly and maybe its not exactly the role of a police officer but its a creative approach to find a solution to the problem he said The question was What can we do differently Because right now its not working ___ All along the West Coast local governments are scrambling to answer that question and taxpayers are footing the bill Voters have approved more than 8 billion in spending since 2015 on affordable housing and other antihomelessness programs mostly as tax increases Los Angeles voters for example approved 12 billion to build 10000 units of affordable housing over a decade to address a ballooning homeless population thats reached 34000 people within city limits Seattle spent 61 million on homelessrelated issues last year and a recent budget proposal would increase that to 63 million Four years ago the city spent 39 million on homelessness Sacramento has set a goal of moving 2000 people off the streets in the next three years and may place a housing bond before voters in 2018 Appeals for money have angered residents who see tent encampments growing in their cities despite more spending Those are like whackamole because they just sprout up and then they disappear and then they sprout up somewhere else said Gretchen Taylor who helped found the Neighborhood Safety Alliance of Seattle in 2016 Seattle is initiating competitive bidding among nonprofit organizations for city dollars going toward homelessness programs Its also pouring money into rapid rehousing a strategy that houses people quickly and then provides rental assistance for up to 18 months Like San Francisco Seattle has started opening 24hour lowbarrier shelters that offer beds even if people are abusing drugs have a pet or want to sleep together as a couple But the citys first 24hour shelter has only 75 beds and turnover is extremely low A team of specially trained police officers and social workers has also been visiting homeless camps to try to place people in shelter After repeated visits and with 72 hours of notice the city cleans out the camps and hauls away abandoned belongings These efforts are starting to yield results although the overall number of homeless people continues to swell Nearly 740 families moved into some type of shelter between October 2016 and August 2017 and 39 percent of the people contacted by the new police teams wind up sheltered according a recent city homeless report Thats an improvement from a 5 percent shelter rate 18 months ago said Sgt Eric Zerr who leads that effort But the approach has its detractors The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit alleging the sweeps violate the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure And a debate is raging about whether the sweeps are necessary tough love or a cruel policy that criminalizes poverty in a city with a reputation for liberalism When a city cant offer housing they should not be able to sweep that spot unless its posing some sort of significant health and safety issue said Sara Rankin a professor with the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project at the Seattle University School of Law If someone doesnt have a place to go you cant just continue to chase them from place to place ___ Above all the West Coast lacks longterm lowincome housing for people like Ashley Dibble and her 3yearold daughter Dibble 29 says she has been homeless off and on for about a year after her exboyfriend squandered money on his car and didnt pay the rent for three months Evicted Dibble says she lived in the back of a moving truck and with several different friends around Seattle before winding up on the streets She sent her toddler to live with the girls paternal grandparents in Florida She and her new boyfriend were sleeping under tarps near Safeco Field home of the Seattle Mariners when an outreach team referred them to a new shelter Now Dibble talks to her daughter daily by phone and is trying to find a way back into housing so she can bring her home With an eviction on her record and little income no one will rent to her Ive had so many doors slammed in my face its ridiculous Dibble said wiping away tears Seattles DESC operates 1200 socalled permanent supportive housing units housing for the mentally ill or severely addicted who cant stay housed without constant help from case managers counselors and rehabilitation programs The nonprofit completes a new building every 18 months and they immediately fill at any given time there are only about eight to 10 units free in the whole city but 1600 people qualify Among this population almost nobodys going to get housing because there isnt any DESCs Margaret King said It doesnt really matter There is so little housing and so much despair Nonprofit workers with decades of experience are shocked by the surge in homeless people and in the banality of the ways they wound up on the streets Its a sea of humanity crashing against services and services at this point are overwhelmed literally overwhelmed Its catastrophic said Jeremy Lemoine an outreach case manager with REACH a Seattle homelessassistance program Its a refugee crisis right here in the States right here under our noses I dont mean to sound hopeless I generate hope for a living for people that there is a future for them but we need to address it now ___ Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco Julie Watson in San Diego and Chris Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report AP photographers Jae Hong in Los Angeles and Ted Warren in Seattle and AP videographer Manuel Valdes in Seattle also contributed ___ Follow Gillian Flaccus at httpstwittercomgflaccus and Mulvihill at httpstwittercomgeoffmulvihill Follow APs complete coverage of the homeless crisis here httpsapnewscomtagHomelessCrisis

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<p>WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - The White House said it will hold a briefing on Friday about a possible government shutdown, as lawmakers face a looming deadline to keep the government funded.</p> <p>Marc Short, White House legislative affairs director, and Mick Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and Budget, will conduct the briefing at 10:30 a.m. ET, the White House said in a statement. (Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers and the farm industry were skeptical of the Trump administration&#8217;s promise to shield farmers from the rapidly escalating trade dispute between the United States and China, concerned about the lack of details in protecting the U.S. agricultural export sector now embroiled in the back-and-forth.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) speaks with reporters as he arrives for the weekly Republican senate caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. January 4, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst <p>Major farming states supported U.S. President Donald Trump in big numbers in the 2016 election, but lawmakers from those states were harsh in their criticism on Friday of proposed tariffs that have unsettled both the industry and agricultural trading markets.</p> <p>It is unclear what types of options exist to protect the sector, though expectations were that the omnibus farm bill, the U.S. government&#8217;s main food and agricultural policy tool, could include crop insurance and potentially other subsidies that could address the concerns. That bill is up for renewal this year.</p> <p>&#8220;This is not a good situation. It just isn&#8217;t,&#8221; said U.S. Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who heads the Senate Agriculture Committee.</p> <p>However, no specific proposals for protecting farmers have been suggested, and farming industry representatives were leery of tariff relief.</p> <p>&#8220;We have heard no specific proposals and haven&#8217;t offered any,&#8221; said Will Rodger, director of policy communications at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest farm lobby group in the nation. &#8220;Our preferred outcome is a negotiated solution so that neither China nor the U.S. actually imposes tariffs.&#8221;</p> <p>Beijing rattled markets on Wednesday by threatening extra levies on U.S. goods including soybeans, the most valuable U.S. farm export to China, in retaliation for earlier U.S. trade actions. Fears later eased as many cited China&#8217;s reliance on U.S. soybeans.</p> <p>But on Friday, China warned it was fully prepared to respond with a &#8220;fierce counter strike&#8221; if the United States follows through on Trump&#8217;s latest threat on Thursday to impose tariffs on an extra $100 billion in Chinese goods.</p> <p>The administration has said it would find a way to protect farmers, but U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Bill Northey told Reuters on Thursday there were no specific plans yet. &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of different options out there,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>U.S. Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, a Republican, said on the sidelines of a commodities conference in Kansas on Friday that he would support help for farmers, even though taxpayers would have to foot the bill for additional support for agriculture. Kansas was the nation&#8217;s largest producer of wheat and sorghum in 2016, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.</p> <p>He added that the &#8220;better way to handle this is not to put the farmer in the damaging position in the first place.&#8221;</p> <p>On Thursday, before Trump threatened extra tariffs, Roberts said the trade conflict created a background of uncertainty for negotiating the farm bill. The current bill was passed in 2014 and was expected to cost $489 billion over five years; it expires at the end of 2018.</p> <p>&#8220;Farmers have to have some degree of predictability and stability,&#8221; he said on the sidelines of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission conference in Kansas. &#8220;This kind of environment certainly doesn&#8217;t provide that.&#8221;</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) speaks during a U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Thayer/File Photo <p>U.S. farmers &#8211; particularly those who grow commodity grains and oilseeds, such as corn and soybeans &#8211; already benefit from a number of government-backed programs. These include subsidized premiums for federal crop insurance, which helps protect farmers against weather and insect damage and against low prices for their crops.</p> <p>But whatever options the White House chooses, they could cause more problems than they solve, said Chad P. Bown, a trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He said tariff-specific subsidies to U.S. farmers could incentivize them to produce more goods at a time when global grain supply is at near-historic highs.</p> <p>In the previous century, farm bills subsidized farmland and grain purchases, a practice that was eventually ended.</p> <p>&#8220;The question is: What kind of support would he have in mind?&#8221; Bown said, referring to Trump.</p> <p>Soybean futures have dropped 1.5 percent over the last five days as the dispute has heated up.</p> <p>&#8220;If (farmers) are worried about the price that they&#8217;re going to get eventually, they&#8217;re going to invest less, they&#8217;re less likely to spend on fertilizer and seed, though most of those decisions have been made already,&#8221; said Jonas Oxgaard, senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein &amp;amp; Co.</p> <p>&#8220;It is my hope the Trump Administration will reconsider these tariffs and pursue policies that enhance our competitiveness, rather than reduce our access to foreign markets,&#8221; U.S. Senator Jodi Ernst of Iowa said in a statement.</p> <p>Iowa is the No. 2 U.S. agriculture state in terms of farm cash receipts, led by corn, hogs, soybeans, cattle and dairy products. Its soybean production was valued at nearly $6 billion in 2016, according to the USDA.</p> <p>Reporting by Tom Polansek in Overland Park, Kansas; P.J. Huffstutter and Karl Plume in Chicago, Ayenat Mersie in New York and Richard Cowan in Washington; Writing by David Gaffen; Editing by Susan Thomas and Matthew Lewis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China warned on Friday it was fully prepared to respond with a &#8220;fierce counter strike&#8221; of fresh trade measures if the United States follows through on President Donald Trump&#8217;s threat to slap tariffs on an additional $100 billion of Chinese goods.</p> <p>Trump, in light of what he called China&#8217;s &#8220;unfair retaliation&#8221; against earlier U.S. trade actions, had upped the ante on Thursday by ordering U.S. officials to identify extra tariffs, escalating a tit-for-tat confrontation with potentially damaging consequences for the world&#8217;s two biggest economies.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Commerce Ministry spokesman, Gao Feng, called the U.S. action &#8220;extremely mistaken&#8221; and unjustified, adding that the spat was a struggle between unilateralism and multilateralism. He also said no negotiations were likely in the current circumstances.</p> <p>&#8220;The result of this behavior is to smash your own foot with a stone,&#8221; Gao told a news briefing in Beijing. &#8220;If the United States announces an additional $100 billion list of tariffs, China has already fully prepared, and will not hesitate to immediately make, a fierce counter strike.&#8221;</p> <p>While U.S. officials said they were prepared to talk the issues through with China, there was no clear path to communication. Both Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow were on television to promote the idea of talks, with Mnuchin telling CNBC &#8220;we are in communication regularly&#8221;.</p> <p>Gao was speaking shortly after Trump defended his proposed tariffs on U.S. radio, saying the move might cause &#8220;a little pain&#8221; but the United States will be better off in the long run.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-china-kudlow/white-houses-kudlow-china-dispute-could-be-resolved-in-three-months-idUSKCN1HD2M0" type="external">White House's Kudlow: China dispute could be resolved in three months</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-china-protections/u-s-lawmakers-skeptical-of-promises-to-shield-farmers-from-trade-dispute-idUSKCN1HD23I" type="external">U.S. lawmakers skeptical of promises to shield farmers from trade dispute</a> <p>Asked in an interview with New York station WABC about the effect on U.S. stock markets, Trump said the market has gone up (since he took office) &#8220;so we might lose a little bit of it.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;So we may take a hit and you know what, ultimately we&#8217;re going to be much stronger for it.&#8221;</p> <p>Financial markets have been roiled by the prospect of threats becoming action and U.S. stocks tumbled on Friday as investors worried about an escalating trade war.</p> <p>Kudlow told Bloomberg Television Trump and America&#8217;s top trade official Robert Lighthizer were &#8220;thinking about submitting a list of suggestions to the Chinese.&#8221;</p> <p>On Wednesday, China unveiled a list of 106 U.S. goods including soybeans, whiskey, frozen beef and aircraft targeted for tariffs, just hours after the Trump administration proposed duties on some 1,300 Chinese industrial, technology, transport and medical products.</p> <p>Washington called for those $50 billion in extra duties after it said an investigation had determined that Chinese government policies are designed to transfer U.S. intellectual property to Chinese companies and allow them to seize leadership in key high-technology industries of the future.</p> <p>China said it was not afraid of a trade war, even though it did not seek one, and accused the United States of provoking the conflict. Gao said comments from U.S. officials about ongoing talks about trade issues were incorrect.</p> <p>&#8220;Under these conditions, the two sides cannot conduct any negotiations on this issue,&#8221; Gao said, without elaborating.</p> <p>Kudlow, who has repeatedly sought this week to soothe markets with mention of possible talks, told Bloomberg Television there were always ongoing discussions on trade between the United States and China but that negotiations on the tariffs had not begun.</p> <p>Seeking to tamp down alarm, he told reporters outside the White House, &#8220;so nothing&#8217;s happened. Nothing&#8217;s been executed ... There&#8217;s no &#8216;there&#8217; there yet, but there will be.&#8221;</p> CHINA&#8217;S ROLE <p>While Beijing calls Washington the aggressor and says it is spurring global protectionism, China&#8217;s trading partners have complained for years that it abuses World Trade Organization rules and propagates unfair policies that lock foreign firms out of some sectors. China has promised repeatedly to open up sectors such as financial services.</p> <p>President Xi Jinping is expected to unveil reform measures next week and his country&#8217;s opening up while attending the Boao Forum, China&#8217;s equivalent of Davos, in the southern island province of Hainan.</p> <p>So far, U.S. information technology products from mobile phones to personal computers have largely escaped the ire of Beijing, as well as telecoms equipment and aircraft larger than the equivalent of a Boeing 737.</p> <p>Among sectors most affected by a trade war could be technology, particularly chipmakers. The U.S. semiconductor industry relies on China for about a quarter of its revenue.</p> <p>It also remains to be seen if the dispute would trigger a nationalistic backlash in terms of travel. When ties between Beijing and Seoul chilled, Chinese tourism to South Korea plummeted and Chinese consumers shunned Made-in-South Korea products.</p> Shipping containers are being loaded onto Xin Da Yang Zhou ship from Shanghai, China at Pier J at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, California, U.S., April 4, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Riha Jr. <p>On Chinese social media on Friday, among the most searched phrases were &#8220;China hasn&#8217;t grown up afraid&#8221; and &#8220;China will follow through to the end.&#8221;</p> <p>The China Chamber of International Commerce said the Chinese business community would firmly support its government&#8217;s efforts to counter &#8220;irrational and erroneous&#8221; U.S. words and actions, the official Xinhua news agency reported, and urged Washington not to go &#8220;further and further down the wrong path.&#8221;</p> DAMAGING CONSEQUENCES <p>Analysts at Oxford Economics, referring to the fact that the tariffs announced this week are not yet in effect, said in a note to clients that, &#8220;Importantly, these threatened tariffs will be subject to negotiation, and therefore shouldn&#8217;t be considered as final.&#8221;</p> <p>However it added a full-blown trade war &#8220;would have a more pronounced effect. The U.S. and China would suffer significant slowdown in real GDP growth &#8211; a cumulative loss around 1.0 percentage point.&#8221; It cut global economic growth to 2.5 percent in 2019 from 3.0 percent in Oxford&#8217;s baseline scenario.</p> <p>The escalating tit-for-tat over trade has roiled global financial markets, hitting equities, the dollar and a range of riskier assets such as copper, and boosting safe havens such as the Japanese yen and gold.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>&#8220;This is what a trade war looks like, and what we have warned against from the start,&#8221; said National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay.</p> <p>&#8220;We are on a dangerous downward spiral and American families will be on the losing end,&#8221; Shay added in a statement, urging Trump &#8220;to stop playing a game of chicken with the U.S. economy.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Tom Daly, Michael Martina and Min Zhang in BEIJING and Steve Holland, David Lawder and Doina Chiacu in WASHINGTON; Additional writing by Ryan Woo, Alex Richardson, Lindsay Dunsmuir and David Chance; Editing by Frances Kerry and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A &#8220;caravan&#8221; of Central American migrants pressed on through Mexico on Friday, greatly diminished in size a day after hundreds of exhausted members left a field where they had been stranded all week, pressured by government officials who have been under fire from U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico toward the U.S. border, eat at a shelter set up for them by the Catholic church, in Puebla, Mexico April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido <p>About 800 people were left in the caravan, said Irineo Mujica, director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group that has since 2010 been staging annual caravans to ensure safe passage for migrants and draw attention to their rights.</p> <p>This year&#8217;s caravan had about 1,500 migrants at its peak, but people began to leave the group after immigration authorities stalled it in the southern town of Matias Romero and screened men, women, and children following pressure from Trump.</p> <p>Organizers later decided to end the caravan in Mexico City instead of the U.S. border as had previously been intended.</p> <p>Pueblo Sin Fronteras director Mujica told Mexican radio from Campo Nuevo in the eastern state of Veracruz that he was with about 150 migrants from the caravan who were waiting to board a train on Friday.</p> <p>Another 600 migrants, he said, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, had already made it to the central city of Puebla for a conference with U.S. and Mexican immigration lawyers who were due to give instructions on how to seek asylum.</p> <p>Earlier, he had told Reuters the group was struggling to find transportation for the migrants. By Thursday evening, most of the women and children had boarded buses, leaving the park which since Sunday had been littered with piles of clothes and makeshift tents. The men, packs on their backs and lacking bus fare, prepared to board a freight train or to walk 24 hours to the next city.</p> <p>Though not all of the migrants in the caravan who spoke with Reuters said they wanted asylum in the United States or Mexico, at least a dozen described facing lethal threats from gangs or even their own authorities.</p> <p>&#8220;Even in the night, it&#8217;s not hot, but the cold assaults you,&#8221; Carlos Francisco Portillo, a former soldier from El Salvador, said of the long walk. &#8220;You can&#8217;t advance much,&#8221; added another migrant from Nicaragua.</p> <p>The train was barely safer, added Portillo, unless you strapped yourself to the roof for sleep to avoid falling off. His choice was to either take the freight train, walk all night, or head home to near certain death from a gang.</p> <p>Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor was freed by a New York judge on $50,000 bail on Friday after being charged with assault for his part in a melee at a media event to publicize a series of UFC fights at a Brooklyn arena.</p> <p>The sport&#8217;s best-known athlete and an international star, McGregor, 29, appeared before a judge at the Kings County Criminal Court, dressed in a blue, long-sleeved shirt that hid his trademark tattoos. He is charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal mischief.</p> <p>&#8220;He&#8217;s the most visible face on the planet; he has no criminal history and the bail package is completely appropriate in the $50,000 amount,&#8221; his lawyer Jim Walden told the judge.</p> <p>McGregor, sporting a beard and a somber expression, stood through the hearing with hands shackled behind his back, saying only a few inaudible words to the lawyer.</p> <p>The judge also granted a request to allow to the Irish-born McGregor to travel outside the United States before his next court appearance on June 14.</p> <p>The MMA star had surrendered to police on Thursday evening, soon after a video of the fracas at Brooklyn&#8217;s Barclay Center went viral. It appears to show McGregor and his entourage using a metal barricade and other objects to smash windows on a bus filled with fighters departing from the media event.</p> <p>The fracas appeared to be related to the Ultimate Fighting Championship&#8217;s decision to strip McGregor of his title. He last fought in a UFC bout in November 2016, when he defeated Eddie Alvarez to win the lightweight belt.</p> Mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor (L), stands with his lawyer Jim Walden during his appearance in a New York City courtroom on charges of assault in New York, NY, U.S., April 6, 2018. Mary Altaffer/Pool via REUTERS <p>But he never defended the title, though he took on boxer Floyd Mayweather in August 2017. His technical knockout loss to Mayweather was the second biggest pay-per-view fight in history.</p> <p>In January, the UFC announced that Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson would fight for the undisputed lightweight title at Saturday&#8217;s MMA event, known as UFC 223.</p> <p>UFC President Dana White told ESPN on Friday that a UFC fighter on the bus was hit and cut by a dolly thrown through the window, and that another fighter had the cornea of his eyes cut as the glass broke into dust-like material.</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>UFC was founded in 1993 and popularized cage fighting. It holds dozens of fights around the world every year that have surpassed pro wresting and boxing in popularity, and are broadcast in more than 156 nations, reaching 1.1 billion households.</p> <p>In July 2016, the UFC said it had agreed to be bought by talent agency WME-IMG in a transaction a source valued at $4 billion, one of the largest price tags for a sports brand.</p> <p>Reporting by Gina Cherelus, Jonathan Allen and Philip O'Connor; editing by Frank McGurty, Bernadette Baum and Richard Chang</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

White House to hold briefing at 10:30 EST on possible govt shutdown U.S. lawmakers skeptical of promises to shield farmers from trade dispute Trump threatens more China tariffs, Beijing ready to hit back Migrant caravan, down by almost half, soldiers on through Mexico MMA fighter McGregor freed on bail after Brooklyn melee

https://reuters.com/article/usa-congress-shutdown-briefing/white-house-to-hold-briefing-at-1030-est-on-possible-govt-shutdown-idUSL1N1PE0QK

2018-01-19

2least

WASHINGTON Jan 19 Reuters The White House said it will hold a briefing on Friday about a possible government shutdown as lawmakers face a looming deadline to keep the government funded Marc Short White House legislative affairs director and Mick Mulvaney head of the Office of Management and Budget will conduct the briefing at 1030 am ET the White House said in a statement Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe Editing by Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles OVERLAND PARK Kan Reuters US lawmakers and the farm industry were skeptical of the Trump administration8217s promise to shield farmers from the rapidly escalating trade dispute between the United States and China concerned about the lack of details in protecting the US agricultural export sector now embroiled in the backandforth FILE PHOTO US Senator Pat Roberts RKS speaks with reporters as he arrives for the weekly Republican senate caucus meeting at the US Capitol in Washington US January 4 2018 REUTERSJonathan Ernst Major farming states supported US President Donald Trump in big numbers in the 2016 election but lawmakers from those states were harsh in their criticism on Friday of proposed tariffs that have unsettled both the industry and agricultural trading markets It is unclear what types of options exist to protect the sector though expectations were that the omnibus farm bill the US government8217s main food and agricultural policy tool could include crop insurance and potentially other subsidies that could address the concerns That bill is up for renewal this year 8220This is not a good situation It just isn8217t8221 said US Senator Pat Roberts a Kansas Republican who heads the Senate Agriculture Committee However no specific proposals for protecting farmers have been suggested and farming industry representatives were leery of tariff relief 8220We have heard no specific proposals and haven8217t offered any8221 said Will Rodger director of policy communications at the American Farm Bureau Federation the largest farm lobby group in the nation 8220Our preferred outcome is a negotiated solution so that neither China nor the US actually imposes tariffs8221 Beijing rattled markets on Wednesday by threatening extra levies on US goods including soybeans the most valuable US farm export to China in retaliation for earlier US trade actions Fears later eased as many cited China8217s reliance on US soybeans But on Friday China warned it was fully prepared to respond with a 8220fierce counter strike8221 if the United States follows through on Trump8217s latest threat on Thursday to impose tariffs on an extra 100 billion in Chinese goods The administration has said it would find a way to protect farmers but US Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Bill Northey told Reuters on Thursday there were no specific plans yet 8220There8217s a lot of different options out there8221 he said US Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas a Republican said on the sidelines of a commodities conference in Kansas on Friday that he would support help for farmers even though taxpayers would have to foot the bill for additional support for agriculture Kansas was the nation8217s largest producer of wheat and sorghum in 2016 according to the US Department of Agriculture He added that the 8220better way to handle this is not to put the farmer in the damaging position in the first place8221 On Thursday before Trump threatened extra tariffs Roberts said the trade conflict created a background of uncertainty for negotiating the farm bill The current bill was passed in 2014 and was expected to cost 489 billion over five years it expires at the end of 2018 8220Farmers have to have some degree of predictability and stability8221 he said on the sidelines of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission conference in Kansas 8220This kind of environment certainly doesn8217t provide that8221 FILE PHOTO US Sen Jerry Moran RKS speaks during a US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington US February 7 2018 REUTERSEric ThayerFile Photo US farmers 8211 particularly those who grow commodity grains and oilseeds such as corn and soybeans 8211 already benefit from a number of governmentbacked programs These include subsidized premiums for federal crop insurance which helps protect farmers against weather and insect damage and against low prices for their crops But whatever options the White House chooses they could cause more problems than they solve said Chad P Bown a trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics He said tariffspecific subsidies to US farmers could incentivize them to produce more goods at a time when global grain supply is at nearhistoric highs In the previous century farm bills subsidized farmland and grain purchases a practice that was eventually ended 8220The question is What kind of support would he have in mind8221 Bown said referring to Trump Soybean futures have dropped 15 percent over the last five days as the dispute has heated up 8220If farmers are worried about the price that they8217re going to get eventually they8217re going to invest less they8217re less likely to spend on fertilizer and seed though most of those decisions have been made already8221 said Jonas Oxgaard senior analyst at Sanford C Bernstein ampamp Co 8220It is my hope the Trump Administration will reconsider these tariffs and pursue policies that enhance our competitiveness rather than reduce our access to foreign markets8221 US Senator Jodi Ernst of Iowa said in a statement Iowa is the No 2 US agriculture state in terms of farm cash receipts led by corn hogs soybeans cattle and dairy products Its soybean production was valued at nearly 6 billion in 2016 according to the USDA Reporting by Tom Polansek in Overland Park Kansas PJ Huffstutter and Karl Plume in Chicago Ayenat Mersie in New York and Richard Cowan in Washington Writing by David Gaffen Editing by Susan Thomas and Matthew Lewis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGWASHINGTON Reuters China warned on Friday it was fully prepared to respond with a 8220fierce counter strike8221 of fresh trade measures if the United States follows through on President Donald Trump8217s threat to slap tariffs on an additional 100 billion of Chinese goods Trump in light of what he called China8217s 8220unfair retaliation8221 against earlier US trade actions had upped the ante on Thursday by ordering US officials to identify extra tariffs escalating a titfortat confrontation with potentially damaging consequences for the world8217s two biggest economies China8217s Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng called the US action 8220extremely mistaken8221 and unjustified adding that the spat was a struggle between unilateralism and multilateralism He also said no negotiations were likely in the current circumstances 8220The result of this behavior is to smash your own foot with a stone8221 Gao told a news briefing in Beijing 8220If the United States announces an additional 100 billion list of tariffs China has already fully prepared and will not hesitate to immediately make a fierce counter strike8221 While US officials said they were prepared to talk the issues through with China there was no clear path to communication Both Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow were on television to promote the idea of talks with Mnuchin telling CNBC 8220we are in communication regularly8221 Gao was speaking shortly after Trump defended his proposed tariffs on US radio saying the move might cause 8220a little pain8221 but the United States will be better off in the long run Related Coverage White Houses Kudlow China dispute could be resolved in three months US lawmakers skeptical of promises to shield farmers from trade dispute Asked in an interview with New York station WABC about the effect on US stock markets Trump said the market has gone up since he took office 8220so we might lose a little bit of it8221 8220So we may take a hit and you know what ultimately we8217re going to be much stronger for it8221 Financial markets have been roiled by the prospect of threats becoming action and US stocks tumbled on Friday as investors worried about an escalating trade war Kudlow told Bloomberg Television Trump and America8217s top trade official Robert Lighthizer were 8220thinking about submitting a list of suggestions to the Chinese8221 On Wednesday China unveiled a list of 106 US goods including soybeans whiskey frozen beef and aircraft targeted for tariffs just hours after the Trump administration proposed duties on some 1300 Chinese industrial technology transport and medical products Washington called for those 50 billion in extra duties after it said an investigation had determined that Chinese government policies are designed to transfer US intellectual property to Chinese companies and allow them to seize leadership in key hightechnology industries of the future China said it was not afraid of a trade war even though it did not seek one and accused the United States of provoking the conflict Gao said comments from US officials about ongoing talks about trade issues were incorrect 8220Under these conditions the two sides cannot conduct any negotiations on this issue8221 Gao said without elaborating Kudlow who has repeatedly sought this week to soothe markets with mention of possible talks told Bloomberg Television there were always ongoing discussions on trade between the United States and China but that negotiations on the tariffs had not begun Seeking to tamp down alarm he told reporters outside the White House 8220so nothing8217s happened Nothing8217s been executed There8217s no 8216there8217 there yet but there will be8221 CHINA8217S ROLE While Beijing calls Washington the aggressor and says it is spurring global protectionism China8217s trading partners have complained for years that it abuses World Trade Organization rules and propagates unfair policies that lock foreign firms out of some sectors China has promised repeatedly to open up sectors such as financial services President Xi Jinping is expected to unveil reform measures next week and his country8217s opening up while attending the Boao Forum China8217s equivalent of Davos in the southern island province of Hainan So far US information technology products from mobile phones to personal computers have largely escaped the ire of Beijing as well as telecoms equipment and aircraft larger than the equivalent of a Boeing 737 Among sectors most affected by a trade war could be technology particularly chipmakers The US semiconductor industry relies on China for about a quarter of its revenue It also remains to be seen if the dispute would trigger a nationalistic backlash in terms of travel When ties between Beijing and Seoul chilled Chinese tourism to South Korea plummeted and Chinese consumers shunned MadeinSouth Korea products Shipping containers are being loaded onto Xin Da Yang Zhou ship from Shanghai China at Pier J at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach California US April 4 2018 REUTERSBob Riha Jr On Chinese social media on Friday among the most searched phrases were 8220China hasn8217t grown up afraid8221 and 8220China will follow through to the end8221 The China Chamber of International Commerce said the Chinese business community would firmly support its government8217s efforts to counter 8220irrational and erroneous8221 US words and actions the official Xinhua news agency reported and urged Washington not to go 8220further and further down the wrong path8221 DAMAGING CONSEQUENCES Analysts at Oxford Economics referring to the fact that the tariffs announced this week are not yet in effect said in a note to clients that 8220Importantly these threatened tariffs will be subject to negotiation and therefore shouldn8217t be considered as final8221 However it added a fullblown trade war 8220would have a more pronounced effect The US and China would suffer significant slowdown in real GDP growth 8211 a cumulative loss around 10 percentage point8221 It cut global economic growth to 25 percent in 2019 from 30 percent in Oxford8217s baseline scenario The escalating titfortat over trade has roiled global financial markets hitting equities the dollar and a range of riskier assets such as copper and boosting safe havens such as the Japanese yen and gold Slideshow 2 Images 8220This is what a trade war looks like and what we have warned against from the start8221 said National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay 8220We are on a dangerous downward spiral and American families will be on the losing end8221 Shay added in a statement urging Trump 8220to stop playing a game of chicken with the US economy8221 Reporting by Tom Daly Michael Martina and Min Zhang in BEIJING and Steve Holland David Lawder and Doina Chiacu in WASHINGTON Additional writing by Ryan Woo Alex Richardson Lindsay Dunsmuir and David Chance Editing by Frances Kerry and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MEXICO CITY Reuters A 8220caravan8221 of Central American migrants pressed on through Mexico on Friday greatly diminished in size a day after hundreds of exhausted members left a field where they had been stranded all week pressured by government officials who have been under fire from US President Donald Trump Central American migrants moving in a caravan through Mexico toward the US border eat at a shelter set up for them by the Catholic church in Puebla Mexico April 6 2018 REUTERSEdgard Garrido About 800 people were left in the caravan said Irineo Mujica director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras a group that has since 2010 been staging annual caravans to ensure safe passage for migrants and draw attention to their rights This year8217s caravan had about 1500 migrants at its peak but people began to leave the group after immigration authorities stalled it in the southern town of Matias Romero and screened men women and children following pressure from Trump Organizers later decided to end the caravan in Mexico City instead of the US border as had previously been intended Pueblo Sin Fronteras director Mujica told Mexican radio from Campo Nuevo in the eastern state of Veracruz that he was with about 150 migrants from the caravan who were waiting to board a train on Friday Another 600 migrants he said mostly from El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras had already made it to the central city of Puebla for a conference with US and Mexican immigration lawyers who were due to give instructions on how to seek asylum Earlier he had told Reuters the group was struggling to find transportation for the migrants By Thursday evening most of the women and children had boarded buses leaving the park which since Sunday had been littered with piles of clothes and makeshift tents The men packs on their backs and lacking bus fare prepared to board a freight train or to walk 24 hours to the next city Though not all of the migrants in the caravan who spoke with Reuters said they wanted asylum in the United States or Mexico at least a dozen described facing lethal threats from gangs or even their own authorities 8220Even in the night it8217s not hot but the cold assaults you8221 Carlos Francisco Portillo a former soldier from El Salvador said of the long walk 8220You can8217t advance much8221 added another migrant from Nicaragua The train was barely safer added Portillo unless you strapped yourself to the roof for sleep to avoid falling off His choice was to either take the freight train walk all night or head home to near certain death from a gang Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor was freed by a New York judge on 50000 bail on Friday after being charged with assault for his part in a melee at a media event to publicize a series of UFC fights at a Brooklyn arena The sport8217s bestknown athlete and an international star McGregor 29 appeared before a judge at the Kings County Criminal Court dressed in a blue longsleeved shirt that hid his trademark tattoos He is charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal mischief 8220He8217s the most visible face on the planet he has no criminal history and the bail package is completely appropriate in the 50000 amount8221 his lawyer Jim Walden told the judge McGregor sporting a beard and a somber expression stood through the hearing with hands shackled behind his back saying only a few inaudible words to the lawyer The judge also granted a request to allow to the Irishborn McGregor to travel outside the United States before his next court appearance on June 14 The MMA star had surrendered to police on Thursday evening soon after a video of the fracas at Brooklyn8217s Barclay Center went viral It appears to show McGregor and his entourage using a metal barricade and other objects to smash windows on a bus filled with fighters departing from the media event The fracas appeared to be related to the Ultimate Fighting Championship8217s decision to strip McGregor of his title He last fought in a UFC bout in November 2016 when he defeated Eddie Alvarez to win the lightweight belt Mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor L stands with his lawyer Jim Walden during his appearance in a New York City courtroom on charges of assault in New York NY US April 6 2018 Mary AltafferPool via REUTERS But he never defended the title though he took on boxer Floyd Mayweather in August 2017 His technical knockout loss to Mayweather was the second biggest payperview fight in history In January the UFC announced that Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson would fight for the undisputed lightweight title at Saturday8217s MMA event known as UFC 223 UFC President Dana White told ESPN on Friday that a UFC fighter on the bus was hit and cut by a dolly thrown through the window and that another fighter had the cornea of his eyes cut as the glass broke into dustlike material Slideshow 7 Images UFC was founded in 1993 and popularized cage fighting It holds dozens of fights around the world every year that have surpassed pro wresting and boxing in popularity and are broadcast in more than 156 nations reaching 11 billion households In July 2016 the UFC said it had agreed to be bought by talent agency WMEIMG in a transaction a source valued at 4 billion one of the largest price tags for a sports brand Reporting by Gina Cherelus Jonathan Allen and Philip OConnor editing by Frank McGurty Bernadette Baum and Richard Chang Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 22 (Reuters) - Wintrust Financial Corp:</p> <p>* ORATION REPORTS RECORD FOURTH QUARTER 2017 NET INCOME, AN INCREASE OF 26% OVER PRIOR YEAR, AND RECORD FULL-YEAR 2017 NET INCOME OF $257.7 MILLION, AN INCREASE OF 25% OVER PRIOR YEAR</p> * Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE $1.17 <p>* Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW $1.13 &#8212; THOMSON REUTERS I/B/E/S</p> <p>* QTRLY NET INTEREST INCOME $219.1 MILLION VERSUS $190.8 MILLION Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin on Wednesday in response to heavy criticism and nominated his personal physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, to replace him in the latest turnover among Trump&#8217;s team.</p> FILE PHOTO: Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin talks with U.S. President Donald Trump during the signing of an executive order entitled "Supporting our Veterans during their Transition from Uniformed Service to Civilian Life" in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., January 9, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files <p>White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Shulkin had become a distraction due to a constant wave of speculation about his future and said he would be leaving in the next day or two. They said an undersecretary at the Department of Defense, Robert Wilkie, will be the acting secretary.</p> <p>Shulkin had drawn fire for a damning report from the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. It found that during a trip to London and Denmark he improperly accepted tickets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament and his chief of staff made false statements so Shulkin&#8217;s wife could travel at government expense.</p> <p>One official said the criticism of Shulkin was &#8220;making it harder for him to carry out the duties of secretary of the VA, which is something the president has made clear is a big priority for him.&#8221;</p> <p>Jackson, a rear admiral of the U.S. Navy, has been working as a presidential physician since the George W. Bush administration, and has been the lead doctor monitoring Trump&#8217;s health since Trump became president.</p> <p>Jackson gave Trump a clean bill of health early this year after giving the president a physical. He put him on a diet to lose some weight and directed him to get some exercise. Aides said Trump has been eating more fish and fewer cheeseburgers lately.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump listens as U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin speaks during a Department of Veterans Affairs Telehealth event at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo <p>A Texas native who has been on active duty since 1995, Jackson served during the U.S.-led war in Iraq as an emergency medicine physician in Taqaddum, Iraq.</p> <p>&#8220;Admiral Jackson is highly trained and qualified and as a service member himself, he has seen firsthand the tremendous sacrifice our veterans make and has a deep appreciation for the debt our great country owes them,&#8221; Trump said.</p> <p>A White House official said Trump warmed to Jackson and had been aware that Shulkin had sought to make Jackson the VA undersecretary last year.</p> <p>&#8220;The president wants somebody who gives him the best possible care to go over and give that same care to the veterans. That&#8217;s how strongly he feels about getting them represented properly,&#8221; the official said.</p> <p>Trump said he appreciated Shulkin&#8217;s work, including passage of the VA Accountability Act.&#8221;He has been a great supporter of veterans across the country and I am grateful for his service,&#8221; Trump said in a statement.</p> <p>U.S. Representative Phil Roe, a Republican who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, said he hated to see Shulkin go but respected Trump&#8217;s decision.</p> <p>&#8220;At the end of the day, cabinet secretaries serve at the pleasure of the president,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Will Fischer, director of government relations for the VoteVets lobby group, said his group hopes Jackson will oppose any attempt to privatize the VA or its health services, a concept that Republicans talk about occasionally.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>&#8220;If Dr. Jackson can do that, immediately, he will do a lot to help his chances at confirmation,&#8221; Fischer said.</p> <p>The VA oversees healthcare and benefits going to roughly 20 million U.S. military veterans. The Veterans Health Administration, the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States, provides care at more than 1,200 facilities, including 170 VA Medical Centers, to more than 9 million veterans.</p> <p>Trump praised Shulkin as &#8220;fantastic&#8221; when he chose him to head the VA in January 2017. Trump, who promised improved veterans&#8217; care during his presidential campaign, last year said the department had made &#8220;tremendous progress&#8221; under Shulkin.</p> <p>But support for him at the White House eroded quickly in recent weeks as Trump grew weary of the drumbeat of negative headlines about him.</p> <p>Shulkin said after the release of the inspector general&#8217;s report that he would comply with its recommendations, including reimbursing the government for his wife&#8217;s $4,312 airfare and paying his friend for the Wimbledon tickets. The department announced two days after the report was issued that Shulkin&#8217;s chief of staff, Vivieca Wright Simpson, would retire.</p> <p>Shulkin joins a long list of senior officials who have either resigned or been fired since Trump took office in January 2017. Others include Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, FBI chief James Comey and FBI No. 2 Andrew McCabe, Trump&#8217;s chief strategist Steve Bannon, national security advisers H.R. McMaster and Michael Flynn, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, communications directors Hope Hicks and Anthony Scaramucci, and economic adviser Gary Cohn.</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Leslie Adler and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve toxin that had been left on the front door of their home in England, British counter-terrorism police said on Wednesday.</p> A police officer stands guard outside of the home of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, Britain, March 6, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville <p>After the first known offensive use of a chemical weapon on European soil since World War Two, Britain blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the attempted assassination and the West has expelled around 130 Russian diplomats.</p> <p>Russia has denied any involvement in the attack and has said it suspects the British secret services of using the Novichok nerve agent, which was developed by the Soviet military, to frame Russia and stoke anti-Russian hysteria.</p> <p>&#8220;We believe the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent from their front door,&#8221; said Dean Haydon, Britain&#8217;s&#8217; senior national coordinator for counter terrorism policing.</p> <p>&#8220;Specialists have identified the highest concentration of the nerve agent, to-date, as being on the front door of the address,&#8221; Scotland Yard said in a statement.</p> <p>Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, have been in a critical condition since being found unconscious on a public bench in the English city of Salisbury on March 4. A British judge has said they may have suffered permanent brain damage.</p> <p>The attempted murder of Skripal, a 66-year-old former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britain&#8217;s MI6 spy service, has plunged Moscow&#8217;s relations with the West to a new post-Cold War low.</p> <p>After Britain expelled 23 Russians it said were spies working under diplomatic cover, Russia followed by throwing out 23 British diplomats. The United States and other Western countries, including most member states of the European Union and NATO, expelled over 100 diplomats.</p> Police officers stand guard outside of the home of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, Britain, March 6, 2018.REUTERS/Toby Melville &#8220;ENOUGH IS ENOUGH&#8221; <p>British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the Kremlin had underestimated the Western response to the attack on Skripal and his daughter, which also injured a British policeman.</p> <p>Johnson told an audience of ambassadors in London that 27 countries have now moved to expel Russian diplomats over Moscow&#8217;s suspected involvement - which Russia denies.</p> <p>&#8220;These expulsions represent a moment when a feeling has suddenly crystallized, when years of vexation and provocation have worn the collective patience to breaking point, and when across the world &#8211; across three continents &#8211; there are countries who are willing to say enough is enough,&#8221; Johnson said.</p> <p>&#8220;If they (Russia) believed that we had become so morally weakened, so dependent on hydrocarbons, so chronically risk averse and so fearful of Russia that we would not dare to respond, then this is their answer,&#8221; he added.</p> <p>Putin, who has been dealing with a deadly shopping center fire in Siberia, has yet to respond, though Moscow has threatened to take retaliatory action against the West.</p> <p>&#8220;An analysis of all the circumstances ... leads us to think of the possible involvement in it (the poisoning) of the British intelligence services,&#8221; the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday before the announcement by British police.</p> <p>&#8220;If convincing evidence to the contrary is not presented to the Russian side we will consider that we are dealing with an attempt on the lives of our citizens as a result of a massive political provocation.&#8221;</p> <p>A London court last week gave permission for blood samples to be taken from the Skripals for examination by chemical weapons inspectors to confirm a conclusion by Britain that the military nerve agent had been used.</p> <p>An unidentified doctor who is treating the Skripals said they were both heavily sedated and unable to communicate, and that it was not possible to assess when or to what extent either may regain mental capacity, according to the court&#8217;s ruling.</p> Slideshow (8 Images) <p>Skripal, who was turned by British spies while in Spain, ended up in Britain after a Cold War-style spy swap that brought 10 Russian spies captured in the United States back to Moscow in exchange for those accused by Moscow of spying for the West.</p> <p>Since emerging from the John le Carre world of high espionage and betrayal, Skripal lived modestly in the English cathedral city of Salisbury and kept out of the spotlight until he was found unconscious on March 4.</p> <p>His house in Salisbury, which featured a good-luck horseshoe on the front door, was bought for 260,000 pounds ($360,000) in 2011. Skripal was listed at living there under his own name.</p> <p>In the years since he found refuge in Britain, Skripal lost both a wife and son.</p> <p>The attack on Skripal has been likened in Britain to the killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of Putin, who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium 210.</p> <p>Russia denied any involvement in that killing.</p> <p>An inquiry led by senior British judge Robert Owen found that former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoy and another Russian, Dmitry Kovtun, carried out the killing as part of an operation probably directed by Russia&#8217;s Federal Security Service (FSB).</p> <p>British police said they would continue to focus their enquiries around Skripal&#8217;s home address as the investigation continued.</p> <p>Writing by Richard Balmforth and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Heavens, David Stamp and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - After most European Union states expelled Russian diplomats over the Salisbury spy poisoning, sources in Brussels expect the bloc to hold the line on Russia sanctions for now.</p> <p>EU foreign ministers will discuss the bloc&#8217;s troubled ties with Moscow on April 16, a broad debate planned long before a former Russian spy was found slumped on a public bench together with his daughter in the English town of Salisbury on March 4.</p> <p>But, diplomats and officials said, any appetite that might have been there at the turn of the year to soften the bloc&#8217;s line and seek more &#8220;selective engagement&#8221; with Moscow has dissipated after the toxin attack, which Britain, followed by the rest of the EU, blames on Moscow. [nL8N1R84DY]</p> <p>&#8220;Just several weeks ago, the Austrians were ready to join the traditional Russia doves in asking for more engagement with Russia. Now, that would not be possible,&#8221; said a senior diplomat from a country traditionally hawkish on Moscow.</p> <p>The West responded to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia by expelling more than 100 Russians as undercover spies, including 60 sent home from the United States.</p> <p>Nineteen of the EU&#8217;s 28 states have told Russian diplomats to leave, and three others recalled their own ambassadors. Only Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Portugal, Slovenia and Austria have not joined the coordinated action.</p> <p>The biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War came days after the fourth anniversary of Moscow&#8217;s military annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine.</p> <p>Back then, the EU responded by slapping sanctions on Russia, which it stepped up as Moscow backed rebels in east Ukraine. They include curbs on doing business and a blacklist of officials.</p> <p>&#8220;The ball is now in Moscow&#8217;s court, we&#8217;ll see if they respond by kicking out as many EU diplomats,&#8221; said another senior EU person. &#8220;We will discuss accordingly but there seems to be no appetite to reopen the economic sanctions.&#8221;</p> <p>An EU official dealing with the matter said the expulsions already establish an EU &#8220;red line&#8221;, meaning the bloc would not go any further for now.</p> <p>The EU&#8217;s economic sanctions, which target Russia&#8217;s energy, defense and financial sectors, are in place until the end of July any an extension requires unanimity of all 28 EU states.</p> <p>Despite the bloc&#8217;s traditional split on how to handle Russia, most recently seen in a clash between two of the bloc&#8217;s top officials on whether to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his fourth presidential term, the sanctions have been extended every six months since first being imposed in mid-2014.</p> <p>The sources said the bloc could consider smaller changes to the sanctions regime, either looking at longer extensions of one year, or adding a few names to the EU&#8217;s blacklist over Russia&#8217;s presidential elections earlier this month, which were also held in the annexed Crimea.</p> Russia angry at 'boorish' expulsion of diplomats <p>But mostly they expected no substantial changes from the April meeting, with another senior EU diplomat saying: &#8220;We have sent a very clear and strong signal. Now we sit and wait to see what happens next.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Peter Graff</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday it would respond in kind to the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by the West over the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury.</p> A general view shows the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Russia March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva <p>What began as a row between London and Moscow after Britain accused Russia of using a nerve agent to poison Skripal and his daughter has now snowballed into an international chorus of rebuke for the Kremlin, with even some friendly governments ejecting Russian diplomats.</p> <p>Adding to the list on Wednesday, Slovakia, Malta and Luxembourg each recalled their ambassador in Moscow for consultations, while Montenegro said it would expel a Russian diplomat. Slovakia and Montenegro, while both members of the U.S.-led NATO alliance, are traditionally close to Russia.</p> <p>The biggest demarche came from the United States, which on Monday said it was expelling 60 Russian diplomats. That dented Russian President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s hopes of forging a friendly relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-police/former-russian-spy-poisoned-by-nerve-agent-on-door-of-home-in-england-police-idUSKBN1H4327" type="external">Former Russian spy poisoned by nerve agent on door of home in England: police</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-johnson/britains-johnson-says-russia-underestimated-global-response-to-nerve-attack-idUSKBN1H435U" type="external">Britain's Johnson says Russia underestimated global response to nerve attack</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-eu/eu-to-hold-line-on-russia-sanctions-after-diplomatic-expulsions-idUSKBN1H42IE" type="external">EU to hold line on Russia sanctions after diplomatic expulsions</a> <p>Valentina Matviyenko, a Kremlin loyalist and speaker of the upper house of parliament, said Russia would retaliate.</p> <p>&#8220;Without a doubt, Russia, as is diplomatic practice, will respond symmetrically and observe parity when it comes to the number of diplomats,&#8221; RIA news agency quoted her as saying.</p> <p>Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said a Russian military aircraft had, for the first time since the Cold War, conducted a training flight via the North Pole to North America, RIA news agency reported.</p> <p>There was no immediate indication that the flight was linked to Russia&#8217;s standoff with the West. The U.S. navy is holding a five-week training exercise in the Arctic Circle.</p> COLD WAR ECHOES <p>In total, more than 100 Russian diplomats are to be sent home from states ranging from Denmark to Australia, the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War.</p> <p>Moscow has denied being behind the attack on the Skripals and says its adversaries are using it to whip up a campaign of &#8220;Russophobia.&#8221;</p> <p>Skripal, 66, a double agent who was swapped in a spy exchange deal in 2010 and went to live in England, and Yulia Skripal, 33, were found unconscious on a public bench in a shopping center in Salisbury on March 4. They remain critically ill in hospital from the attack in which, British authorities say, a Soviet-era nerve toxin called Novichok was used.</p> <p>Russia has already expelled 23 British diplomats, a tit-for-tat response to Britain&#8217;s expulsion of the same number of staff at the Russian embassy in London.</p> <p>Adding to a drum beat of tough rhetoric coming from Moscow and London, the Russian foreign ministry raised the prospect British intelligence services had poisoned Skripal and his daughter.</p> For the U.S., kicking out Russian spies may not be enough <p>&#8220;If convincing evidence to the contrary is not presented to the Russian side we will consider that we are dealing with an attempt on the lives of our citizens,&#8221; the ministry said in a statement.</p> <p>In Australia, whose government said on Tuesday it would expel two diplomats, the Russian ambassador, Grigory Loginov, told reporters the world will enter into a &#8220;Cold War situation&#8221; if the West persists with its bias against Russia.</p> <p>Two days after the United States announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats, there was still no sign of how exactly Russian planned to respond - an indication, perhaps, that the scale of the Western action caught Moscow off guard.</p> <p>Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying Moscow would assess the level of hostility in Washington and London before deciding how to retaliate.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Editing by Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Wintrust Financial Corp Reports Q4 Earnings Per Share $1.17 Trump pushes out Shulkin at VA, nominates Jackson as replacement Former Russian spy poisoned by nerve agent on door of home in England: police EU to hold line on Russia sanctions after diplomatic expulsions Russia says it will respond in kind to West's expulsions

https://reuters.com/article/brief-wintrust-financial-corp-reports-q4/brief-wintrust-financial-corp-reports-q4-earnings-per-share-117-idUSASB0C1SW

2018-01-22

2least

Jan 22 Reuters Wintrust Financial Corp ORATION REPORTS RECORD FOURTH QUARTER 2017 NET INCOME AN INCREASE OF 26 OVER PRIOR YEAR AND RECORD FULLYEAR 2017 NET INCOME OF 2577 MILLION AN INCREASE OF 25 OVER PRIOR YEAR Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE 117 Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW 113 8212 THOMSON REUTERS IBES QTRLY NET INTEREST INCOME 2191 MILLION VERSUS 1908 MILLION Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin on Wednesday in response to heavy criticism and nominated his personal physician Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson to replace him in the latest turnover among Trump8217s team FILE PHOTO Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin talks with US President Donald Trump during the signing of an executive order entitled Supporting our Veterans during their Transition from Uniformed Service to Civilian Life in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington US January 9 2018 REUTERSCarlos BarriaFiles White House officials speaking on condition of anonymity said Shulkin had become a distraction due to a constant wave of speculation about his future and said he would be leaving in the next day or two They said an undersecretary at the Department of Defense Robert Wilkie will be the acting secretary Shulkin had drawn fire for a damning report from the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs It found that during a trip to London and Denmark he improperly accepted tickets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament and his chief of staff made false statements so Shulkin8217s wife could travel at government expense One official said the criticism of Shulkin was 8220making it harder for him to carry out the duties of secretary of the VA which is something the president has made clear is a big priority for him8221 Jackson a rear admiral of the US Navy has been working as a presidential physician since the George W Bush administration and has been the lead doctor monitoring Trump8217s health since Trump became president Jackson gave Trump a clean bill of health early this year after giving the president a physical He put him on a diet to lose some weight and directed him to get some exercise Aides said Trump has been eating more fish and fewer cheeseburgers lately FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump listens as US Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin speaks during a Department of Veterans Affairs Telehealth event at the White House in Washington US August 3 2017 REUTERSJoshua RobertsFile Photo A Texas native who has been on active duty since 1995 Jackson served during the USled war in Iraq as an emergency medicine physician in Taqaddum Iraq 8220Admiral Jackson is highly trained and qualified and as a service member himself he has seen firsthand the tremendous sacrifice our veterans make and has a deep appreciation for the debt our great country owes them8221 Trump said A White House official said Trump warmed to Jackson and had been aware that Shulkin had sought to make Jackson the VA undersecretary last year 8220The president wants somebody who gives him the best possible care to go over and give that same care to the veterans That8217s how strongly he feels about getting them represented properly8221 the official said Trump said he appreciated Shulkin8217s work including passage of the VA Accountability Act8221He has been a great supporter of veterans across the country and I am grateful for his service8221 Trump said in a statement US Representative Phil Roe a Republican who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs said he hated to see Shulkin go but respected Trump8217s decision 8220At the end of the day cabinet secretaries serve at the pleasure of the president8221 he said Will Fischer director of government relations for the VoteVets lobby group said his group hopes Jackson will oppose any attempt to privatize the VA or its health services a concept that Republicans talk about occasionally Slideshow 3 Images 8220If Dr Jackson can do that immediately he will do a lot to help his chances at confirmation8221 Fischer said The VA oversees healthcare and benefits going to roughly 20 million US military veterans The Veterans Health Administration the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States provides care at more than 1200 facilities including 170 VA Medical Centers to more than 9 million veterans Trump praised Shulkin as 8220fantastic8221 when he chose him to head the VA in January 2017 Trump who promised improved veterans8217 care during his presidential campaign last year said the department had made 8220tremendous progress8221 under Shulkin But support for him at the White House eroded quickly in recent weeks as Trump grew weary of the drumbeat of negative headlines about him Shulkin said after the release of the inspector general8217s report that he would comply with its recommendations including reimbursing the government for his wife8217s 4312 airfare and paying his friend for the Wimbledon tickets The department announced two days after the report was issued that Shulkin8217s chief of staff Vivieca Wright Simpson would retire Shulkin joins a long list of senior officials who have either resigned or been fired since Trump took office in January 2017 Others include Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price FBI chief James Comey and FBI No 2 Andrew McCabe Trump8217s chief strategist Steve Bannon national security advisers HR McMaster and Michael Flynn White House chief of staff Reince Priebus communications directors Hope Hicks and Anthony Scaramucci and economic adviser Gary Cohn Reporting by Steve Holland Editing by Leslie Adler and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve toxin that had been left on the front door of their home in England British counterterrorism police said on Wednesday A police officer stands guard outside of the home of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury Britain March 6 2018 REUTERSToby Melville After the first known offensive use of a chemical weapon on European soil since World War Two Britain blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the attempted assassination and the West has expelled around 130 Russian diplomats Russia has denied any involvement in the attack and has said it suspects the British secret services of using the Novichok nerve agent which was developed by the Soviet military to frame Russia and stoke antiRussian hysteria 8220We believe the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent from their front door8221 said Dean Haydon Britain8217s8217 senior national coordinator for counter terrorism policing 8220Specialists have identified the highest concentration of the nerve agent todate as being on the front door of the address8221 Scotland Yard said in a statement Skripal and his 33yearold daughter Yulia have been in a critical condition since being found unconscious on a public bench in the English city of Salisbury on March 4 A British judge has said they may have suffered permanent brain damage The attempted murder of Skripal a 66yearold former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britain8217s MI6 spy service has plunged Moscow8217s relations with the West to a new postCold War low After Britain expelled 23 Russians it said were spies working under diplomatic cover Russia followed by throwing out 23 British diplomats The United States and other Western countries including most member states of the European Union and NATO expelled over 100 diplomats Police officers stand guard outside of the home of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury Britain March 6 2018REUTERSToby Melville 8220ENOUGH IS ENOUGH8221 British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the Kremlin had underestimated the Western response to the attack on Skripal and his daughter which also injured a British policeman Johnson told an audience of ambassadors in London that 27 countries have now moved to expel Russian diplomats over Moscow8217s suspected involvement which Russia denies 8220These expulsions represent a moment when a feeling has suddenly crystallized when years of vexation and provocation have worn the collective patience to breaking point and when across the world 8211 across three continents 8211 there are countries who are willing to say enough is enough8221 Johnson said 8220If they Russia believed that we had become so morally weakened so dependent on hydrocarbons so chronically risk averse and so fearful of Russia that we would not dare to respond then this is their answer8221 he added Putin who has been dealing with a deadly shopping center fire in Siberia has yet to respond though Moscow has threatened to take retaliatory action against the West 8220An analysis of all the circumstances leads us to think of the possible involvement in it the poisoning of the British intelligence services8221 the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday before the announcement by British police 8220If convincing evidence to the contrary is not presented to the Russian side we will consider that we are dealing with an attempt on the lives of our citizens as a result of a massive political provocation8221 A London court last week gave permission for blood samples to be taken from the Skripals for examination by chemical weapons inspectors to confirm a conclusion by Britain that the military nerve agent had been used An unidentified doctor who is treating the Skripals said they were both heavily sedated and unable to communicate and that it was not possible to assess when or to what extent either may regain mental capacity according to the court8217s ruling Slideshow 8 Images Skripal who was turned by British spies while in Spain ended up in Britain after a Cold Warstyle spy swap that brought 10 Russian spies captured in the United States back to Moscow in exchange for those accused by Moscow of spying for the West Since emerging from the John le Carre world of high espionage and betrayal Skripal lived modestly in the English cathedral city of Salisbury and kept out of the spotlight until he was found unconscious on March 4 His house in Salisbury which featured a goodluck horseshoe on the front door was bought for 260000 pounds 360000 in 2011 Skripal was listed at living there under his own name In the years since he found refuge in Britain Skripal lost both a wife and son The attack on Skripal has been likened in Britain to the killing of exKGB agent Alexander Litvinenko a critic of Putin who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium 210 Russia denied any involvement in that killing An inquiry led by senior British judge Robert Owen found that former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoy and another Russian Dmitry Kovtun carried out the killing as part of an operation probably directed by Russia8217s Federal Security Service FSB British police said they would continue to focus their enquiries around Skripal8217s home address as the investigation continued Writing by Richard Balmforth and Guy Faulconbridge Editing by Andrew Heavens David Stamp and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BRUSSELS Reuters After most European Union states expelled Russian diplomats over the Salisbury spy poisoning sources in Brussels expect the bloc to hold the line on Russia sanctions for now EU foreign ministers will discuss the bloc8217s troubled ties with Moscow on April 16 a broad debate planned long before a former Russian spy was found slumped on a public bench together with his daughter in the English town of Salisbury on March 4 But diplomats and officials said any appetite that might have been there at the turn of the year to soften the bloc8217s line and seek more 8220selective engagement8221 with Moscow has dissipated after the toxin attack which Britain followed by the rest of the EU blames on Moscow nL8N1R84DY 8220Just several weeks ago the Austrians were ready to join the traditional Russia doves in asking for more engagement with Russia Now that would not be possible8221 said a senior diplomat from a country traditionally hawkish on Moscow The West responded to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia by expelling more than 100 Russians as undercover spies including 60 sent home from the United States Nineteen of the EU8217s 28 states have told Russian diplomats to leave and three others recalled their own ambassadors Only Greece Bulgaria Cyprus Portugal Slovenia and Austria have not joined the coordinated action The biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War came days after the fourth anniversary of Moscow8217s military annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine Back then the EU responded by slapping sanctions on Russia which it stepped up as Moscow backed rebels in east Ukraine They include curbs on doing business and a blacklist of officials 8220The ball is now in Moscow8217s court we8217ll see if they respond by kicking out as many EU diplomats8221 said another senior EU person 8220We will discuss accordingly but there seems to be no appetite to reopen the economic sanctions8221 An EU official dealing with the matter said the expulsions already establish an EU 8220red line8221 meaning the bloc would not go any further for now The EU8217s economic sanctions which target Russia8217s energy defense and financial sectors are in place until the end of July any an extension requires unanimity of all 28 EU states Despite the bloc8217s traditional split on how to handle Russia most recently seen in a clash between two of the bloc8217s top officials on whether to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his fourth presidential term the sanctions have been extended every six months since first being imposed in mid2014 The sources said the bloc could consider smaller changes to the sanctions regime either looking at longer extensions of one year or adding a few names to the EU8217s blacklist over Russia8217s presidential elections earlier this month which were also held in the annexed Crimea Russia angry at boorish expulsion of diplomats But mostly they expected no substantial changes from the April meeting with another senior EU diplomat saying 8220We have sent a very clear and strong signal Now we sit and wait to see what happens next8221 Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska Editing by Peter Graff Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters Russia said on Wednesday it would respond in kind to the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by the West over the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury A general view shows the US embassy in Moscow Russia March 27 2018 REUTERSTatyana Makeyeva What began as a row between London and Moscow after Britain accused Russia of using a nerve agent to poison Skripal and his daughter has now snowballed into an international chorus of rebuke for the Kremlin with even some friendly governments ejecting Russian diplomats Adding to the list on Wednesday Slovakia Malta and Luxembourg each recalled their ambassador in Moscow for consultations while Montenegro said it would expel a Russian diplomat Slovakia and Montenegro while both members of the USled NATO alliance are traditionally close to Russia The biggest demarche came from the United States which on Monday said it was expelling 60 Russian diplomats That dented Russian President Vladimir Putin8217s hopes of forging a friendly relationship with US President Donald Trump Related Coverage Former Russian spy poisoned by nerve agent on door of home in England police Britains Johnson says Russia underestimated global response to nerve attack EU to hold line on Russia sanctions after diplomatic expulsions Valentina Matviyenko a Kremlin loyalist and speaker of the upper house of parliament said Russia would retaliate 8220Without a doubt Russia as is diplomatic practice will respond symmetrically and observe parity when it comes to the number of diplomats8221 RIA news agency quoted her as saying Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said a Russian military aircraft had for the first time since the Cold War conducted a training flight via the North Pole to North America RIA news agency reported There was no immediate indication that the flight was linked to Russia8217s standoff with the West The US navy is holding a fiveweek training exercise in the Arctic Circle COLD WAR ECHOES In total more than 100 Russian diplomats are to be sent home from states ranging from Denmark to Australia the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War Moscow has denied being behind the attack on the Skripals and says its adversaries are using it to whip up a campaign of 8220Russophobia8221 Skripal 66 a double agent who was swapped in a spy exchange deal in 2010 and went to live in England and Yulia Skripal 33 were found unconscious on a public bench in a shopping center in Salisbury on March 4 They remain critically ill in hospital from the attack in which British authorities say a Sovietera nerve toxin called Novichok was used Russia has already expelled 23 British diplomats a titfortat response to Britain8217s expulsion of the same number of staff at the Russian embassy in London Adding to a drum beat of tough rhetoric coming from Moscow and London the Russian foreign ministry raised the prospect British intelligence services had poisoned Skripal and his daughter For the US kicking out Russian spies may not be enough 8220If convincing evidence to the contrary is not presented to the Russian side we will consider that we are dealing with an attempt on the lives of our citizens8221 the ministry said in a statement In Australia whose government said on Tuesday it would expel two diplomats the Russian ambassador Grigory Loginov told reporters the world will enter into a 8220Cold War situation8221 if the West persists with its bias against Russia Two days after the United States announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats there was still no sign of how exactly Russian planned to respond an indication perhaps that the scale of the Western action caught Moscow off guard Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying Moscow would assess the level of hostility in Washington and London before deciding how to retaliate Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux Editing by Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>PAJU, South Korea Jan 19 (Reuters) - Canadian veteran Dennis Moore can hardly keep himself from smiling as he recounts the day he was plucked from the front lines of the Korean War to play ice hockey 66 years ago.</p> <p>Like fellow veteran Claude Charland sitting beside him, Moore carries deep scars and vivid memories from the 1950-53 conflict that saw more than 26,000 Canadian troops dispatched to fight under U.N. forces led by the United States.</p> <p>While the morale-boosting games on the frozen waters of the Imjin River brought only temporary respite from the fighting, for a few hours at least the troops were able to block out the noise of the nearby artillery and lose themselves in their national sport.</p> <p>&#8220;It was hard to comprehend when we were first notified that we were going to have this game of hockey,&#8221; Moore told reporters in Paju, just south of the heavily fortified border with North Korea, on Friday.</p> <p>It only became real when his acting company commander ordered him to come down from his position on the front and swap his rifle for an ice hockey stick.</p> <p>&#8220;He drove the jeep to the rink and it only took us about five minutes to get there,&#8221; the 87-year-old said. &#8220;So what I&#8217;m saying is, we weren&#8217;t too far away from the bad guys.</p> <p>&#8220;We got dressed in tents like we have here. And that brought back good memories when I walked into that dressing tent. I just felt like I was walking back into the tent in 1952.</p> <p>&#8220;And then when we got dressed and went out onto the ice, I was overwhelmed with pride.&#8221;</p> <p>Invited to South Korea to take part in an event organised by the Canadian Embassy and the city of Paju to commemorate the Imjin River games, Moore said: &#8220;In 1952, never in my wildest dreams did I think I&#8217;d be right here right now.&#8221;</p> &#8220;THIS GREAT GAME&#8221; <p>Moore was chosen to play for the Princess Patricia&#8217;s Canadian Light Infantry regiment, while Charland played for the Royal 22e Regiment, known as the Van Doos.</p> <p>For Charland, the memories of the games will never fade.</p> <p>&#8220;Ever since that time it has been with us, and we&#8217;ve lived with this souvenir ... all our lives as soldiers, as retired soldiers, and as veterans of the Korean War,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The 88-year-old, who carried the Olympic torch on Friday as part of its route to February&#8217;s Winter Games in Pyeongchang, added: &#8220;The big lesson from this is that friendship through sport is a great asset.&#8221;</p> <p>Yet the games could have become a forgotten piece of Canada&#8217;s wartime history had it not been for an old black and white photograph of the Imjin River rink hanging on the wall of a bar in Seoul.</p> <p>Owned by a Canadian, the bar also sponsored an expats&#8217; ice hockey team called the &#8216;Gecko&#8217;s Glaciers&#8217;.</p> <p>After learning of the history behind the photograph from a visiting Korean War veteran, the Glaciers decided to establish a tournament in honour of the troops and the &#8216;Imjin River Memorial Cup&#8217; was born.</p> <p>For years the tournament was played in rinks across Seoul before news of it reached the ears of Canadian Senator Yonah Martin.</p> <p>The first Canadian of Korean descent to serve in the senate, Martin pushed for a similar memorial game to be held in Ottawa and the inaugural &#8220;Imjin Classic&#8221; was played outdoors on the city&#8217;s Rideau Canal in 2013.</p> <p>It has since become an annual event, featuring members of the same Canadian regiments that played against each other during the war.</p> <p>While the two Koreas remain divided, both Moore and Charland said they hoped to see the day when the country is reunited.</p> <p>&#8220;My only wish is that I&#8217;ll be on this side of the grass when it happens,&#8221; said Moore. &#8220;Or maybe I should say, this side of the snow.&#8221; (Editing by Toby Davis)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>HUMBOLDT, Saskatchewan (Reuters) - Fifteen people were killed when a bus carrying a Canadian junior ice hockey team collided with a truck in Saskatchewan province, police said on Saturday, in one of the worst disasters to strike Canada&#8217;s sporting community.</p> <p>The tragedy sent shock waves through the hockey-loving country and engulfed the home of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team, a small farming town of fewer than 6,000 people, in grief. Fourteen survivors were still in hospital, with some in critical condition, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said.</p> <p>The accident occurred at about 5 p.m. on Friday near the Tisdale area, around 185 miles (300 km) north of Regina.</p> <p>&#8220;Our Broncos family is in shock as we try to come to grips with our incredible loss,&#8221; Kevin Garinger, the team&#8217;s president, said in a statement.</p> <p>The players had been on their way to compete in Game 5 of a playoff series against the Nipawin Hawks when the bus they were traveling in collided with a semi-trailer.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-canada-crash-icehockey/ice-hockey-world-shocked-by-fatal-junior-team-crash-in-canada-idUSKBN1HE0U6" type="external">Ice hockey world shocked by fatal junior team crash in Canada</a> <p>The Hawks&#8217; president, Darren Opp, told the Globe and Mail newspaper that the truck T-boned the players&#8217; bus. &#8220;It&#8217;s a horrible accident, my God,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s very, very bad.&#8221;</p> <p>The driver of the tractor trailer was not injured in the crash, RCMP Saskatchewan assistant commissioner Curtis Zablocki told a media conference. He said the driver was initially detained, but later released.</p> <p>Zablocki said it was too early to comment on the cause of the collision and that the RCMP is continuing its investigation, which will examine the road, weather and mechanical condition of both vehicles.</p> <p>Citing relatives, the Canadian Press reported that the Broncos&#8217; head coach Darcy Haugan and the team&#8217;s 20-year-old captain, Logan Schatz, were among those killed.</p> <p>Many social media users posted Haugan&#8217;s photograph alongside messages of shock and sympathy, and the hashtags #prayersforhumboldt and #humboldtstrong.</p> <p>&#8220;God bless Darcy Haugan for being an incredible mentor and coach to young hockey players and prayers for his family to help cope with their immense loss,&#8221; the Western Provinces Hockey Association wrote on Twitter.</p> <p>National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman said the NHL mourned the passing of those who died &#8220;and offers strength and comfort to those injured while traveling to play and be part of a game they loved.&#8221;</p> <p>Ice hockey teams around the world expressed shock and paid tribute to the Broncos.</p> &#8216;HEARTBROKEN&#8217; <p>A steady stream of people arrived at Humboldt&#8217;s Elgar Petersen sports arena on Saturday, consoling the grieving families and offering flowers. Counseling services for the victims&#8217; relatives were offered nearby.</p> <p>&#8220;We woke up to the reality of what happened last night,&#8221; Humboldt Mayor Rob Muench told Reuters. &#8220;It has been a tragedy nobody would have imagined. It&#8217;s very tough, but I have been trying to get the message out that we will get through this, we will see the light at the end of the tunnel.&#8221;</p> <p>Condolences poured in from both current and former players, sports organizations and political leaders.</p> <p>Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the entire country was in shock and mourning as the details of the tragedy emerged. Canada&#8217;s hockey family was a close one, he said.</p> The 2017-2018 Humboldt Broncos Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League team is pictured in this undated handout photo. Amanda Brochu/Handout via REUTERS <p>&#8220;We are heartbroken knowing many of those we lost had their entire lives in front of them,&#8221; he said in a statement.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Twitter post that he spoke with Trudeau &#8220;to pay my highest respect and condolences to the families of the terrible Humboldt Team tragedy. May God be with them all!&#8221;</p> <p>Pastor Jordan Gadsby of Nipawin&#8217;s Apostolic Church said hundreds of people, including parents and relatives of players on the bus, had gathered at the church late on Friday to seek information and solace.</p> <p>&#8220;The worst part of the night was watching parents waiting for news of their kids,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There&#8217;s not a lot we can do. It&#8217;s a terrible thing that happened.&#8221;</p> <p>For some, the tragedy revived painful memories of a bus crash in the province in December 1986 that killed four young players from the Swift Current Broncos ice hockey team.</p> Slideshow (20 Images) <p>An online fundraising campaign for the affected players and their families was set up late on Friday by the mother of a former Broncos teammate with an initial target of $10,000.</p> <p>By Saturday evening, it had raised more than $2.1 million. ( <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/funds-for-humboldt-broncos" type="external">here</a>)</p> <p>&#8220;Stay Hockey family strong,&#8221; wrote one donor on the GoFundMe site who said he was a coach from rural Saskatchewan.</p> <p>Reporting by Matt Smith in Humboldt; Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and Frank Pingue in Augusta, Georgia; Writing by Denny Thomas and Daniel Wallis; Editing by Tom Brown and G Crosse</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) - Rory McIlroy will get another chance to silence U.S. Ryder Cup star Patrick Reed with a place in the history books at stake for the Northern Irishman in Sunday&#8217;s final pairing at the Masters.</p> Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland looks back at the green while hitting out from amid the azaleas on the 13th hole during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S. April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar <p>McIlroy rolled in a 17-foot birdie putt at the 18th to cap a bogey-free third round of seven-under 65 at Augusta National on Saturday to sit three strokes behind Reed but still in with a shot at becoming the sixth man to complete a career grand slam.</p> <p>Needing a Green Jacket to round out his collection that includes a U.S. Open, British Open and two PGA Championships, the Briton will share the course with the man whom he waged a classic battle against at the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine.</p> <p>McIlroy, 28, can avenge a 1-up loss to Reed in that Ryder showdown and put to rest his nightmare collapse at the 2011 Masters when he carried a four-shot lead into the final round before soaring to an 80 and a tie for 15th.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been waiting for this chance. I&#8217;ve always said 2011 was a huge turning point in my career. I realised I wasn&#8217;t really ready to win major championships,&#8221; he told reporters.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not in the lead like I was going into that day. I&#8217;m not protecting a lead. There&#8217;s not as much pressure.&#8221;</p> <p>McIlroy needed to make a fast start on Saturday and he duly obliged, with birdies at three and four, and a tap-in at the par-three sixth, before holing a 70-foot chip shot for eagle at the par-five eighth to reach nine under par.</p> RODE HIS LUCK <p>Some good fortune buoyed him on the back nine as he sought to stay in touch with the surging Reed.</p> <p>He parred the 13th after digging deep into the azaleas on the left side of the green to find his ball, made birdie at the par-five 15th after a wayward drive into the trees, and got a favorable bounce off a tree on his way to the birdie on 18.</p> Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland celebrates his birdie on the 18th hole during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S. April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst <p>&#8220;I rode my luck a little bit,&#8221; he admitted. &#8220;Some days it&#8217;s with you and some days against you and today it was with me.</p> <p>&#8220;Now I&#8217;m in the final group and I have a chance to win another major.</p> <p>&#8220;I&amp;#160;feel like Patrick has a three-shot lead and all the pressure is on him. All the players chasing him are pretty big time players. He&#8217;s got that to sleep on tonight. I feel like I&#8217;ve got nothing to lose.&#8221;</p> <p>Reed will be going for his first major championship win, while McIlroy looks to join one of golf&#8217;s most exclusive clubs including career grand slam winners Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.</p> <p>&#8220;I&amp;#160;can&#8217;t imagine there is going to be much chat out there between us tomorrow,&#8221; McIlroy said about his Sunday playing partner. &#8220;We&#8217;re both trying to do something special.&#8221;</p> <p>Editing by John O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Ice hockey teams around the world expressed shock and paid tribute on Saturday to the Canadian junior team whose bus was involved in a crash that killed at least 15 people.</p> The Humboldt Broncos logo at centre ice at the Elgar Petersen Arena in Humboldt Saskatchewan, Canada April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Matt Smith <p>The Humboldt Broncos were on their way to compete in a playoff game against the Nipawin Hawks when their bus collided with a tractor trailer about 185 miles (300 km) north of Regina in Saskatchewan.</p> <p>Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock, who grew up nearby in Saskatoon and went on to steer the Canadian ice hockey team to back-to-back Olympic gold medals in 2010 and 2014, began a pre-game news conference fighting back tears.</p> <p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t even imagine being a parent, or the wife, or the kids at home, going through something like this,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;The hockey world is an unbelievable world. You can&#8217;t make up for loss, you just can&#8217;t. It&#8217;s going to rip the heart out of your chest. We pray for those families and think about them.&#8221;</p> <p>Sorrow was felt far beyond hockey-loving Canada: the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) carried the Humboldt Broncos logo on its website&#8217;s homepage and said a moment of silence was scheduled ahead of Saturday&#8217;s game between Poland and Estonia in Tallinn, Estonia&#8217;s capital.</p> <p>Another moment of silence will be observed before Sunday&#8217;s match-up between Latvia and Kazakhstan in Riga.</p> <p>&#8220;The international ice hockey community&amp;#160;extends its sincerest condolences to the families and friends of those involved,&#8221; IIHF president Rene Fasel said in a statement.</p> <p>National Hockey League coaches and players also expressed condolences. The Calgary Flames had a Broncos team photo up in their locker room. The Philadelphia Flyers held a moment of silence before their game against the New York Rangers.</p> <p>Babcock addressed the news conference in front of a backdrop that carried both the Maple Leafs and Broncos logos.</p> A Humboldt Broncos team jersey is seen among notes and flowers at a memorial for the Humboldt Broncos team leading into the Elgar Petersen Arena in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, Canada April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Matt Smith <p>He said he knew the highway where the accident took place pretty well: long road trips are part and parcel of youth and junior hockey life in the province.</p> <p>&#8220;You&#8217;re bonding on that bus and that&#8217;s when you spend the most time together,&#8221; said Damon Severson, a defenseman with the NHL&#8217;s New Jersey Devils who grew up in the area.</p> <p>Established in 1970, the Broncos are in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL), which is for players aged 16 to 20.</p> <p>&#8220;The league is what we used to call in the old days, Tier 2 junior. It&#8217;s high-level hockey,&#8221; said David Gregory, an NHL scout. &#8220;These are kids committed to the game, and Humboldt was in their playoffs and are all on the way to what they hope is a championship.&#8221;</p> <p>The coach of the NHL&#8217;s Washington Capitals, Barry Trotz, who played for Regina in the SJHL and then in the Western Hockey League, said every NHL player could relate to the Broncos on the bus.</p> <p>&#8220;Those young men were chasing a dream,&#8221; Trotz said. &#8220;Because a lot of our players in this league were chasing that same dream and being on the same buses on the way.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Gene Cherry; writing by Daniel Wallis, editing by G Crosse and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MANAMA (Reuters) - Pierre Gasly was as stunned as anyone after qualifying his Honda-powered Toro Rosso in sixth place for Sunday&#8217;s Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix.</p> Formula 1 F1 - Bahrain Grand Prix - Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain - April 7, 2018 Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly in action during practice REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed <p>&#8220;We thought it would be quite difficult to get into the top 10,&#8221; the 22-year-old, who will start fifth due to world champion Lewis Hamilton having a five-place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change, told reporters.</p> <p>&#8220;We expected to be close to the top 10, not to be sixth and start fifth for the race tomorrow.&#8221;</p> <p>Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso have teamed up with Honda as their engine partner this season, with some expecting plenty of frustration ahead.&amp;#160;</p> <p>The Japanese manufacturer endured a bruising three years with McLaren, marked by a lack of reliability and performance blamed chiefly on its engines by the former champions who have now switched to Renault.</p> <p>Instead, Toro Rosso have made a promising start after looking quick and reliable in pre-season testing even if Honda still have plenty of work to do to catch up with rivals on reliability and performance.</p> <p>Gasly&#8217;s performance on Saturday around the 5.4-km Sakhir desert circuit, which features four long straights, came as a shock.</p> <p>The Frenchman, in his first full season, qualified just one place behind Red Bull&#8217;s Daniel Ricciardo with an effort he described as his best lap so far in Formula One.&amp;#160;</p> <p>He said Toro Rosso, who have introduced minor upgrades to their car for this weekend, had found the right set up.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m especially happy for the team, because they are working really hard,&#8221; he said.&amp;#160;</p> <p>&#8220;Also for Honda, it&#8217;s good to show them that all the hard work is starting to pay off, and that they need to keep pushing and keep giving us some upgrades.&#8221;</p> <p>McLaren, who have the same engines that power Red Bull, failed to get either of their cars beyond the second phase of qualifying with Fernando Alonso 13th and Stoffel Vandoorne 14th.</p> <p>&#8220;There is a need for a big investigation,&#8221; the former champions&#8217; racing director Eric Boullier, who did not attend his regular Saturday media call with journalists as he was in an engineering debrief, told Sky Sports F1.</p> <p>&#8220;We need to find out what&#8217;s going on.&#8221;</p> <p>When asked if he had taken extra satisfaction from outqualifying both McLarens, Gasly laughed: &#8220;I didn&#8217;t say it on the radio, but yeah, for sure.&#8221;</p> <p>Editing by Alan Baldwin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Olympics-Canadian veterans return to Korea for wartime ice hockey memorial Canada grieves after junior hockey team bus crash leaves 15 dead McIlroy braced for Ryder Cup reunion in battle with Reed Ice hockey world shocked by fatal junior team crash in Canada Toro Rosso’s Gasly stunned by Bahrain qualifying heroics

https://reuters.com/article/olympics-2018-iceh-veterans/olympics-canadian-veterans-return-to-korea-for-wartime-ice-hockey-memorial-idUSL3N1NE3Q9

2018-01-19

2least

PAJU South Korea Jan 19 Reuters Canadian veteran Dennis Moore can hardly keep himself from smiling as he recounts the day he was plucked from the front lines of the Korean War to play ice hockey 66 years ago Like fellow veteran Claude Charland sitting beside him Moore carries deep scars and vivid memories from the 195053 conflict that saw more than 26000 Canadian troops dispatched to fight under UN forces led by the United States While the moraleboosting games on the frozen waters of the Imjin River brought only temporary respite from the fighting for a few hours at least the troops were able to block out the noise of the nearby artillery and lose themselves in their national sport 8220It was hard to comprehend when we were first notified that we were going to have this game of hockey8221 Moore told reporters in Paju just south of the heavily fortified border with North Korea on Friday It only became real when his acting company commander ordered him to come down from his position on the front and swap his rifle for an ice hockey stick 8220He drove the jeep to the rink and it only took us about five minutes to get there8221 the 87yearold said 8220So what I8217m saying is we weren8217t too far away from the bad guys 8220We got dressed in tents like we have here And that brought back good memories when I walked into that dressing tent I just felt like I was walking back into the tent in 1952 8220And then when we got dressed and went out onto the ice I was overwhelmed with pride8221 Invited to South Korea to take part in an event organised by the Canadian Embassy and the city of Paju to commemorate the Imjin River games Moore said 8220In 1952 never in my wildest dreams did I think I8217d be right here right now8221 8220THIS GREAT GAME8221 Moore was chosen to play for the Princess Patricia8217s Canadian Light Infantry regiment while Charland played for the Royal 22e Regiment known as the Van Doos For Charland the memories of the games will never fade 8220Ever since that time it has been with us and we8217ve lived with this souvenir all our lives as soldiers as retired soldiers and as veterans of the Korean War8221 he said The 88yearold who carried the Olympic torch on Friday as part of its route to February8217s Winter Games in Pyeongchang added 8220The big lesson from this is that friendship through sport is a great asset8221 Yet the games could have become a forgotten piece of Canada8217s wartime history had it not been for an old black and white photograph of the Imjin River rink hanging on the wall of a bar in Seoul Owned by a Canadian the bar also sponsored an expats8217 ice hockey team called the 8216Gecko8217s Glaciers8217 After learning of the history behind the photograph from a visiting Korean War veteran the Glaciers decided to establish a tournament in honour of the troops and the 8216Imjin River Memorial Cup8217 was born For years the tournament was played in rinks across Seoul before news of it reached the ears of Canadian Senator Yonah Martin The first Canadian of Korean descent to serve in the senate Martin pushed for a similar memorial game to be held in Ottawa and the inaugural 8220Imjin Classic8221 was played outdoors on the city8217s Rideau Canal in 2013 It has since become an annual event featuring members of the same Canadian regiments that played against each other during the war While the two Koreas remain divided both Moore and Charland said they hoped to see the day when the country is reunited 8220My only wish is that I8217ll be on this side of the grass when it happens8221 said Moore 8220Or maybe I should say this side of the snow8221 Editing by Toby Davis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles HUMBOLDT Saskatchewan Reuters Fifteen people were killed when a bus carrying a Canadian junior ice hockey team collided with a truck in Saskatchewan province police said on Saturday in one of the worst disasters to strike Canada8217s sporting community The tragedy sent shock waves through the hockeyloving country and engulfed the home of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team a small farming town of fewer than 6000 people in grief Fourteen survivors were still in hospital with some in critical condition the Royal Canadian Mounted Police RCMP said The accident occurred at about 5 pm on Friday near the Tisdale area around 185 miles 300 km north of Regina 8220Our Broncos family is in shock as we try to come to grips with our incredible loss8221 Kevin Garinger the team8217s president said in a statement The players had been on their way to compete in Game 5 of a playoff series against the Nipawin Hawks when the bus they were traveling in collided with a semitrailer Related Coverage Ice hockey world shocked by fatal junior team crash in Canada The Hawks8217 president Darren Opp told the Globe and Mail newspaper that the truck Tboned the players8217 bus 8220It8217s a horrible accident my God8221 he said 8220It8217s very very bad8221 The driver of the tractor trailer was not injured in the crash RCMP Saskatchewan assistant commissioner Curtis Zablocki told a media conference He said the driver was initially detained but later released Zablocki said it was too early to comment on the cause of the collision and that the RCMP is continuing its investigation which will examine the road weather and mechanical condition of both vehicles Citing relatives the Canadian Press reported that the Broncos8217 head coach Darcy Haugan and the team8217s 20yearold captain Logan Schatz were among those killed Many social media users posted Haugan8217s photograph alongside messages of shock and sympathy and the hashtags prayersforhumboldt and humboldtstrong 8220God bless Darcy Haugan for being an incredible mentor and coach to young hockey players and prayers for his family to help cope with their immense loss8221 the Western Provinces Hockey Association wrote on Twitter National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman said the NHL mourned the passing of those who died 8220and offers strength and comfort to those injured while traveling to play and be part of a game they loved8221 Ice hockey teams around the world expressed shock and paid tribute to the Broncos 8216HEARTBROKEN8217 A steady stream of people arrived at Humboldt8217s Elgar Petersen sports arena on Saturday consoling the grieving families and offering flowers Counseling services for the victims8217 relatives were offered nearby 8220We woke up to the reality of what happened last night8221 Humboldt Mayor Rob Muench told Reuters 8220It has been a tragedy nobody would have imagined It8217s very tough but I have been trying to get the message out that we will get through this we will see the light at the end of the tunnel8221 Condolences poured in from both current and former players sports organizations and political leaders Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the entire country was in shock and mourning as the details of the tragedy emerged Canada8217s hockey family was a close one he said The 20172018 Humboldt Broncos Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League team is pictured in this undated handout photo Amanda BrochuHandout via REUTERS 8220We are heartbroken knowing many of those we lost had their entire lives in front of them8221 he said in a statement US President Donald Trump said in a Twitter post that he spoke with Trudeau 8220to pay my highest respect and condolences to the families of the terrible Humboldt Team tragedy May God be with them all8221 Pastor Jordan Gadsby of Nipawin8217s Apostolic Church said hundreds of people including parents and relatives of players on the bus had gathered at the church late on Friday to seek information and solace 8220The worst part of the night was watching parents waiting for news of their kids8221 he said 8220There8217s not a lot we can do It8217s a terrible thing that happened8221 For some the tragedy revived painful memories of a bus crash in the province in December 1986 that killed four young players from the Swift Current Broncos ice hockey team Slideshow 20 Images An online fundraising campaign for the affected players and their families was set up late on Friday by the mother of a former Broncos teammate with an initial target of 10000 By Saturday evening it had raised more than 21 million here 8220Stay Hockey family strong8221 wrote one donor on the GoFundMe site who said he was a coach from rural Saskatchewan Reporting by Matt Smith in Humboldt Additional reporting by Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee and Frank Pingue in Augusta Georgia Writing by Denny Thomas and Daniel Wallis Editing by Tom Brown and G Crosse Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AUGUSTA Ga Reuters Rory McIlroy will get another chance to silence US Ryder Cup star Patrick Reed with a place in the history books at stake for the Northern Irishman in Sunday8217s final pairing at the Masters Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland looks back at the green while hitting out from amid the azaleas on the 13th hole during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 7 2018 REUTERSMike Segar McIlroy rolled in a 17foot birdie putt at the 18th to cap a bogeyfree third round of sevenunder 65 at Augusta National on Saturday to sit three strokes behind Reed but still in with a shot at becoming the sixth man to complete a career grand slam Needing a Green Jacket to round out his collection that includes a US Open British Open and two PGA Championships the Briton will share the course with the man whom he waged a classic battle against at the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine McIlroy 28 can avenge a 1up loss to Reed in that Ryder showdown and put to rest his nightmare collapse at the 2011 Masters when he carried a fourshot lead into the final round before soaring to an 80 and a tie for 15th 8220I8217ve been waiting for this chance I8217ve always said 2011 was a huge turning point in my career I realised I wasn8217t really ready to win major championships8221 he told reporters 8220I8217m not in the lead like I was going into that day I8217m not protecting a lead There8217s not as much pressure8221 McIlroy needed to make a fast start on Saturday and he duly obliged with birdies at three and four and a tapin at the parthree sixth before holing a 70foot chip shot for eagle at the parfive eighth to reach nine under par RODE HIS LUCK Some good fortune buoyed him on the back nine as he sought to stay in touch with the surging Reed He parred the 13th after digging deep into the azaleas on the left side of the green to find his ball made birdie at the parfive 15th after a wayward drive into the trees and got a favorable bounce off a tree on his way to the birdie on 18 Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland celebrates his birdie on the 18th hole during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 7 2018 REUTERSJonathan Ernst 8220I rode my luck a little bit8221 he admitted 8220Some days it8217s with you and some days against you and today it was with me 8220Now I8217m in the final group and I have a chance to win another major 8220Iamp160feel like Patrick has a threeshot lead and all the pressure is on him All the players chasing him are pretty big time players He8217s got that to sleep on tonight I feel like I8217ve got nothing to lose8221 Reed will be going for his first major championship win while McIlroy looks to join one of golf8217s most exclusive clubs including career grand slam winners Gene Sarazen Ben Hogan Gary Player Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods 8220Iamp160can8217t imagine there is going to be much chat out there between us tomorrow8221 McIlroy said about his Sunday playing partner 8220We8217re both trying to do something special8221 Editing by John OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Ice hockey teams around the world expressed shock and paid tribute on Saturday to the Canadian junior team whose bus was involved in a crash that killed at least 15 people The Humboldt Broncos logo at centre ice at the Elgar Petersen Arena in Humboldt Saskatchewan Canada April 7 2018 REUTERSMatt Smith The Humboldt Broncos were on their way to compete in a playoff game against the Nipawin Hawks when their bus collided with a tractor trailer about 185 miles 300 km north of Regina in Saskatchewan Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock who grew up nearby in Saskatoon and went on to steer the Canadian ice hockey team to backtoback Olympic gold medals in 2010 and 2014 began a pregame news conference fighting back tears 8220I can8217t even imagine being a parent or the wife or the kids at home going through something like this8221 he said 8220The hockey world is an unbelievable world You can8217t make up for loss you just can8217t It8217s going to rip the heart out of your chest We pray for those families and think about them8221 Sorrow was felt far beyond hockeyloving Canada the International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF carried the Humboldt Broncos logo on its website8217s homepage and said a moment of silence was scheduled ahead of Saturday8217s game between Poland and Estonia in Tallinn Estonia8217s capital Another moment of silence will be observed before Sunday8217s matchup between Latvia and Kazakhstan in Riga 8220The international ice hockey communityamp160extends its sincerest condolences to the families and friends of those involved8221 IIHF president Rene Fasel said in a statement National Hockey League coaches and players also expressed condolences The Calgary Flames had a Broncos team photo up in their locker room The Philadelphia Flyers held a moment of silence before their game against the New York Rangers Babcock addressed the news conference in front of a backdrop that carried both the Maple Leafs and Broncos logos A Humboldt Broncos team jersey is seen among notes and flowers at a memorial for the Humboldt Broncos team leading into the Elgar Petersen Arena in Humboldt Saskatchewan Canada April 7 2018 REUTERSMatt Smith He said he knew the highway where the accident took place pretty well long road trips are part and parcel of youth and junior hockey life in the province 8220You8217re bonding on that bus and that8217s when you spend the most time together8221 said Damon Severson a defenseman with the NHL8217s New Jersey Devils who grew up in the area Established in 1970 the Broncos are in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League SJHL which is for players aged 16 to 20 8220The league is what we used to call in the old days Tier 2 junior It8217s highlevel hockey8221 said David Gregory an NHL scout 8220These are kids committed to the game and Humboldt was in their playoffs and are all on the way to what they hope is a championship8221 The coach of the NHL8217s Washington Capitals Barry Trotz who played for Regina in the SJHL and then in the Western Hockey League said every NHL player could relate to the Broncos on the bus 8220Those young men were chasing a dream8221 Trotz said 8220Because a lot of our players in this league were chasing that same dream and being on the same buses on the way8221 Additional reporting by Gene Cherry writing by Daniel Wallis editing by G Crosse and Sandra Maler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MANAMA Reuters Pierre Gasly was as stunned as anyone after qualifying his Hondapowered Toro Rosso in sixth place for Sunday8217s Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix Formula 1 F1 Bahrain Grand Prix Bahrain International Circuit Sakhir Bahrain April 7 2018 Toro Rossos Pierre Gasly in action during practice REUTERSHamad I Mohammed 8220We thought it would be quite difficult to get into the top 108221 the 22yearold who will start fifth due to world champion Lewis Hamilton having a fiveplace grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change told reporters 8220We expected to be close to the top 10 not to be sixth and start fifth for the race tomorrow8221 Red Bullowned Toro Rosso have teamed up with Honda as their engine partner this season with some expecting plenty of frustration aheadamp160 The Japanese manufacturer endured a bruising three years with McLaren marked by a lack of reliability and performance blamed chiefly on its engines by the former champions who have now switched to Renault Instead Toro Rosso have made a promising start after looking quick and reliable in preseason testing even if Honda still have plenty of work to do to catch up with rivals on reliability and performance Gasly8217s performance on Saturday around the 54km Sakhir desert circuit which features four long straights came as a shock The Frenchman in his first full season qualified just one place behind Red Bull8217s Daniel Ricciardo with an effort he described as his best lap so far in Formula Oneamp160 He said Toro Rosso who have introduced minor upgrades to their car for this weekend had found the right set up 8220I8217m especially happy for the team because they are working really hard8221 he saidamp160 8220Also for Honda it8217s good to show them that all the hard work is starting to pay off and that they need to keep pushing and keep giving us some upgrades8221 McLaren who have the same engines that power Red Bull failed to get either of their cars beyond the second phase of qualifying with Fernando Alonso 13th and Stoffel Vandoorne 14th 8220There is a need for a big investigation8221 the former champions8217 racing director Eric Boullier who did not attend his regular Saturday media call with journalists as he was in an engineering debrief told Sky Sports F1 8220We need to find out what8217s going on8221 When asked if he had taken extra satisfaction from outqualifying both McLarens Gasly laughed 8220I didn8217t say it on the radio but yeah for sure8221 Editing by Alan Baldwin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>The&amp;#160;New York Times&amp;#160;recently ran a&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/world/europe/monarchy-us-advantage.html" type="external">fascinating article</a>&amp;#160;by Leslie Wayne putting forth arguments from the&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.monarchyinternational.net/" type="external">International Monarchist League</a>. Summarizing them, Wayne wrote, &#8220;Their core arguments: Countries with monarchies are better off because royal families act as a unifying force and a powerful symbol; monarchies rise above politics; and nations with royalty are generally richer and more stable.&#8221;</p> <p>What the author misses is that we already have an aristocracy here in the United States: rule by the rich. In fact, much of American history is the story of the battle between the interests of the &#8220;general welfare&#8221; of our citizens, and the interests of the #MorbidlyRich.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s where we are right now:</p> <p>It&#8217;s been this way before in American history, though not in our lifetimes. The last time the morbidly rich had this much power in American politics was the 1920s, when an orgy of tax-cutting and deregulation of banking led to the Republican Great Depression.</p> <p /> <p>Franklin Delano Roosevelt stepped up to challenge those he called the Economic Royalists, explicitly&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15314" type="external">calling them out</a>. In 1936, FDR said:</p> <p>&#8220;For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital&#8212;all undreamed of by the Fathers&#8212;the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.</p> <p>&#8220;There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit&#8230;</p> <p>&#8220;It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself.</p> <p>&#8220;They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property.</p> <p>&#8220;And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.&#8221;</p> <p>Roosevelt, then the president of the United States, even explicitly called for the &#8220;overthrow of this kind of power&#8221;:</p> <p>&#8220;These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.</p> <p>&#8220;Our allegiance to American institutions&amp;#160;requires&amp;#160;the overthrow of this kind of power.</p> <p>&#8220;In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for.</p> <p>&#8220;Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.&#8221;</p> <p>The American people overwhelmingly agreed with FDR, particularly after they&#8217;d seen how badly &#8220;dictatorship by the over-privileged&#8221; worked out for us in 1929. The result was that from 1932 until 1980 American politicians knew how important it was for government, representing the best interests of both our nation and&amp;#160;all&amp;#160;of its people, to hold back the political power that the morbidly rich could marshal with their great wealth.</p> <p>This was such conventional wisdom in both parties that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower&amp;#160; <a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-edgar-newton-eisenhower/" type="external">wrote to his brother Edgar</a>&amp;#160;in 1956:</p> <p>&#8220;Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.</p> <p>&#8220;There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.&#8221;</p> <p>And business knew it, too. Big corporations and wealthy businesspeople largely stayed away from politics from the 1930s onward, not wanting to draw the ire of the American people.</p> <p>Until 1971. In August of that year, Lewis Powell, a lawyer who largely defended tobacco and the interests of the Virginia&#8217;s upper classes, wrote an apocalyptic&amp;#160; <a href="https://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemorandumTypescript.pdf" type="external">memo</a>&amp;#160;to his neighbor and friend who was the head of the US Chamber of Commerce. In it, he suggested that America itself was under attack from &#8220;leftists&#8221; and people on &#8220;college campuses.&#8221;</p> <p>The solution, Powell proposed, was for a small group of very, very wealthy people to reshape American public opinion through think tanks, funding of universities and schools, and an all-out assault on the media. Take over the courts and at least one of the political parties, he suggested, and wrest control of our economy away from government regulation.</p> <p>As I noted in&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Crash-2016-Plot-Destroy-America/dp/0446584827/ref=thomhartmann" type="external">The Crash of 2016</a>:</p> <p>Powell&#8217;s most indelible mark on the nation was not to be his fifteen-year tenure as a Supreme Court Justice, but instead that memo, which served as a declaration of war&#8212;a war by the Economic Royalists against both democracy and what they saw as an overgrown middle class. It would be a final war, a&amp;#160;bellum omnium contra omnes, against everything the New Deal and the Great Society had accomplished.</p> <p>It wasn&#8217;t until September 1972, 10 months after the Senate confirmed Powell to the Supreme Court, that the public first found out about the Powell Memo (the actual written document had the word &#8220;Confidential&#8221; stamped on it&#8212;a sign that Powell himself hoped it would never see daylight outside of the rarified circles of his rich friends). Although by then, however, it had already found its way to the desks of CEOs all across the nation and was, with millions in corporate and billionaire money, already being turned into real actions, policies, and institutions.</p> <p>During its investigation into Powell as part of the nomination process, the FBI never found the memo, but investigative journalist Jack Anderson did, and he exposed it in a September 28th, 1972, column titled, &#8220; <a href="https://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/P%20Disk/Powell%20Lewis%20F/Item%2028.pdf" type="external">Powell&#8217;s Lesson to Business Aired</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>Anderson wrote, &#8220;Shortly before his appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. urged business leaders in a confidential memo to use the courts as a &#8216;social, economic, and political&#8217; instrument.&#8221;</p> <p>Pointing out that how the memo wasn&#8217;t discovered until after Powell was confirmed by the Senate, Anderson wrote, &#8220;Senators&#8230;never got a chance to ask Powell whether he might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice and to influence the court in behalf of business interests.&#8221;</p> <p>This was an explosive charge being leveled at the nation&#8217;s rookie Supreme Court Justice, a man entrusted with interpreting the nation&#8217;s laws with complete impartiality.</p> <p>But Jack Anderson was no stranger to taking on American authority, and no stranger to the consequences of his journalism. He&#8217;d exposed scandals from the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and later the Reagan administrations. He was a true investigative journalist.</p> <p>In his report on the memo, Anderson wrote, &#8220;[Powell] recommended a militant political action program, ranging from the courts to the campuses.&#8221;</p> <p>Back in 1936, Franklin Roosevelt had declared war on his generation&#8217;s Economic Royalists and booted the worst of them out of the nation&#8217;s political, economic, and cultural institutions. But now, two generations later, Lewis Powell was speaking of another war.</p> <p>Powell&#8217;s memo was both a direct response to Roosevelt&#8217;s battle cry decades earlier, and a response to the tumult of the 1960&#8217;s.</p> <p>He wrote, &#8220;No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack.&#8221;</p> <p>When Sydnor and the Chamber received the Powell Memo, corporations were growing tired of their second-class status in America.</p> <p>Even though the previous 40 years had been a time of great growth and strength for the American economy and America&#8217;s middle- class workers &#8211; and a time of sure and steady growth and increases of profits for corporations &#8211; CEOs felt something was missing.</p> <p>If only they could find a way to wiggle back into the people&#8217;s minds (who were just beginning to forget the Royalists&#8217; previous exploits of the 1920s), then they could get their tax cuts back; they could trash the &#8220;burdensome&#8221; regulations that were keeping the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat safe; and the banksters among them could inflate another massive economic bubble to make themselves all mind-bogglingly rich. It could, if done right, be a return to the &#8220;Roaring 20s.&#8221;</p> <p>But how could they do this? How could they convince Americans to take another shot at what was widely considered a dangerous free-market ideology and economic framework and that Americans once knew preceded each Great Crash and war?</p> <p>Lewis Powell had an answer, and he reached out to the Chamber of Commerce&#8212;the hub of corporate power in America&#8212;to lay out a strategy to reclaim their power with a strategy.</p> <p>As Powell wrote, &#8220;Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.&#8221; Thus, Powell said, &#8220;The role of the National Chamber of Commerce is therefore vital.&#8221;</p> <p>In the nearly-6000-word memo, Powell called on corporate leaders to launch an economic and ideological assault on college and high school campuses, the media, the courts, and Capitol Hill.</p> <p>The objective was simple: The revival of a Royalist-controlled so-called &#8220;free market&#8221; system.</p> <p>Or, as Powell put it, using Royalist rhetoric, &#8220;[T]he ultimate issue&#8230;[is the] survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people.&#8221;</p> <p>The first area of attack Powell encouraged the Chamber to focus on was the education system. &#8220;[A] priority task of business&#8212;and organizations such as the Chamber&#8212;is to address the campus origin of this hostility [to big business],&#8221; Powell wrote.</p> <p>What worried Powell was the new generation of young Americans growing up to resent corporate culture. He believed colleges were filled with &#8220;Marxist professors,&#8221; and that the pro-business agenda of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover had fallen into disrepute since the Great Depression. He knew that winning this war of economic ideology in America required spoon-feeding the next generation of leaders the doctrines of a free-market theology, from high school all the way through graduate and business school.</p> <p>At the time, college campuses were rallying points for the progressive activism sweeping the nation, as young people demonstrated against poverty, the Vietnam War, and in support of Civil Rights.</p> <p>So Powell put forward a laundry list of ways the Chamber could re-retake the higher-education system. First, create an army of corporate-friendly think tanks that could influence education. &#8220;The Chamber should consider establishing a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system,&#8221; he wrote.</p> <p>Then, go after the textbooks. &#8220;The staff of scholars,&#8221; Powell wrote, &#8220;should evaluate social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science and sociology&#8230;This would include assurance of fair and factual treatment of our system of government and our enterprise system, its accomplishments, its basic relationship to individual rights and freedoms, and comparisons with the systems of socialism, fascism and communism.&#8221;</p> <p>Powell argued that the Civil Rights movement and the Labor movement were already in the process of re-rewriting textbooks.</p> <p>&#8220;We have seen the civil rights movement insist on re-writing many of the textbooks in our universities and schools. The labor unions likewise insist that textbooks be fair to the viewpoints of organized labor.&#8221; Powell was concerned the Chamber of Commerce was not doing enough to stop this growing progressive influence and replace it with a pro-plutocratic perspective.</p> <p>&#8220;Perhaps the most fundamental problem is the imbalance of many faculties,&#8221; Powell pointed out. &#8220;Correcting this is indeed a long-range and difficult project. Yet, it should be undertaken as a part of an overall program. This would mean the urging of the need for faculty balance upon university administrators and boards of trustees.&#8221;&amp;#160; As in, the Chamber needs to infiltrate university boards in charge of hiring faculty to make sure only corporate-friendly professors are hired.</p> <p>But Powell&#8217;s recommendations weren&#8217;t exclusive to college campuses; he targeted high schools as well.</p> <p>&#8220;While the first priority should be at the college level, the trends mentioned above are increasingly evidenced in the high schools. Action programs, tailored to the high schools and similar to those mentioned, should be considered,&#8221; he urged.</p> <p>Next, Powell turned the corporate dogs on the media. As Powell instructed, &#8220;Reaching the campus and the secondary schools is vital for the long-term. Reaching the public generally may be more important for the shorter term.&#8221;</p> <p>Powell added, &#8220;It will&#8230;be essential to have staff personnel who are thoroughly familiar with the media, and how most effectively to communicate with the public.&#8221;</p> <p>He then went on to advocate that same system used for the monitoring of college textbooks be applied to television and radio networks. &#8220;This applies not merely to so-called educational programs&#8230;but to the daily &#8216;news analysis&#8217; which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system.&#8221;</p> <p>This was not, of course, the first time that American oligarchs and their supplicants plotted to subvert American democracy in favor of a harsh capitalist-controlled &#8220;free enterprise&#8221; system that handed virtually all the spoils of business over to a wealthy few.</p> <p>In the early 1880s, railroad barons funded six major attempts at the US Supreme Court to create, from the 14th Amendment, a &#8220;right of corporate personhood.&#8221; In 1886, although the Court rejected their theory for the last and final time,&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/375-unequal-protection-the-deciding-moment" type="external">the Clerk of the Court, John Chandler Bancroft Davis</a>, inserted into the not-legally-binding headnote of the&amp;#160;Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad&amp;#160;case that the Chief Justice had, offhandedly, certified corporate personhood.</p> <p>Reacting to that and the general rise of the men then called robber barons, Democratic President Grover Cleveland, in his&amp;#160; <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland%2527s_Fourth_State_of_the_Union_Address" type="external">1888 State of the Union address</a>, said:</p> <p>&#8220;The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor.</p> <p>&#8220;As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel.</p> <p>&#8220;Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people&#8217;s masters.&#8221;</p> <p>From President Cleveland&#8217;s comments, you can draw a straight line to the trust busting and inheritance tax of progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt in the first decade of the 20th century.</p> <p>But the oligarchs fought back and, in the election of 1920, regained the power to cut taxes and regulations sufficiently that the rich got explosively richer, while the entire economy was set up for the Great Crash. (Warren Harding ran for president with two slogans &#8211; &#8220;More business in government, less government in business&#8221; [privatize and deregulate], and cutting the top tax rate from 90% to 25%&#8230;both of which he did.)</p> <p>And Lewis Powell&#8217;s contribution to today&#8217;s problems is easily found in the 1976&amp;#160;Buckley v Valeo&amp;#160;decision, which struck down many of the campaign finance laws that had been passed in the wake of the Nixon scandals. Money transferred from billionaires to politicians, he and his conservative friends on the court ruled, wasn&#8217;t &#8220;money&#8221; &#8211; instead, it was Constitutionally-protected First Amendment Free Speech.</p> <p>Just in time for the Reagan Revolution, the morbidly rich could again own individual politicians, and with the 2013 McCutcheon case, the Court ruled that morbidly rich individuals could own a virtually unlimited number of politicians. Citizens United, in 2010, radically expanded corporate personhood and the rights of billionaires and corporations to influence politics.</p> <p>Thus, here we are again.</p> <p>We have a billionaire oligarch in the White House.</p> <p>We have a man as VP who&#8217;s such a toady to oligarchs he actually promoted the idea in 2000 that tobacco doesn&#8217;t cause cancer,&amp;#160;and today denies climate science on behalf of the petrobillionaires who have funded much of his political career.</p> <p>We have an entire Republican Party that&#8217;s been captured by toxic-emissions corporations, petro-billionaires, and others among the morbidly rich. On the left, thanks to the&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/03/23/america_has_abandoned_the_90_percent_partner/" type="external">DLC and its heirs</a>, substantial parts of the Democratic Party are beholden to the banking, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries (although the&amp;#160; <a href="https://cpc-grijalva.house.gov/" type="external">Congressional Progressive Caucus</a>&amp;#160;is working to change this).</p> <p>The Washington Post recently ran an&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/01/05/were-seeing-institutions-start-to-waver-as-constraints-to-trumps-impulses/" type="external">article</a>&amp;#160;about how the very institutions of America are beginning to break down under the sustained assault of the oligarchs (although the Post doesn&#8217;t use that word). The main point of the article is that Donald Trump actually believes that both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, committed major crimes, and that the attorney general and others in the Department of Justice covered up those crimes.</p> <p>Where did Trump get such a wild idea? It seems certain that he got it from billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch&#8217;s Fox News. And because he actually believes that previous presidents got away with committing major crimes both to win elections and to stay in office, he apparently thinks he should be able to as well.</p> <p>It&#8217;s perhaps amusing to well-informed Americans when their friends and relatives spout the billionaire-enabling propaganda that Fox dishes out every day. But there&#8217;s nothing amusing about a president of the United States believing, based on what he learns in right-wing media, that he can easily get away with breaking the law. This is the result of the billionaire capture of our public spaces, driving a &#8220;profits over democracy&#8221; mentality.</p> <p>To save our republic, we must acknowledge that the American aristocracy of the morbidly rich is destroying our country. And then overturn ( <a href="https://movetoamend.org/" type="external">via constitutional amendment</a>) the twin policies of right-wingers on our Supreme Court that say that billionaires can own their own personal politicians, and that corporations are &#8220;persons&#8221; with human rights.</p> <p>Once we reject America&#8217;s new self-appointed royalty, with their billionaire and corporate money fouling our system, our elected officials can restore protections for working people &#8211; and we can once again see our wages begin to rise like they did for 40 straight years before the advent of Reaganism.</p> <p>Only then can we bring back rules to keep the oligarch&#8217;s poisonous money out of our political system, and begin to break up their control of American business and media so that small- and medium-sized businesses, unions, and local media can once again thrive. And, with them, we can return to something resembling a democracy.</p>

Time to Bring a Monarchy to the U.S., or Time to End One?

https://truthdig.com/articles/time-bring-monarchy-u-s-time-end-one/

2018-01-10

4left

Theamp160New York Timesamp160recently ran aamp160 fascinating articleamp160by Leslie Wayne putting forth arguments from theamp160 International Monarchist League Summarizing them Wayne wrote 8220Their core arguments Countries with monarchies are better off because royal families act as a unifying force and a powerful symbol monarchies rise above politics and nations with royalty are generally richer and more stable8221 What the author misses is that we already have an aristocracy here in the United States rule by the rich In fact much of American history is the story of the battle between the interests of the 8220general welfare8221 of our citizens and the interests of the MorbidlyRich Here8217s where we are right now It8217s been this way before in American history though not in our lifetimes The last time the morbidly rich had this much power in American politics was the 1920s when an orgy of taxcutting and deregulation of banking led to the Republican Great Depression Franklin Delano Roosevelt stepped up to challenge those he called the Economic Royalists explicitlyamp160 calling them out In 1936 FDR said 8220For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things Through new uses of corporations banks and securities new machinery of industry and agriculture of labor and capital8212all undreamed of by the Fathers8212the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service 8220There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit8230 8220It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties thirsting for power reached out for control over Government itself 8220They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people their labor and their property 8220And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man8221 Roosevelt then the president of the United States even explicitly called for the 8220overthrow of this kind of power8221 8220These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power 8220Our allegiance to American institutionsamp160requiresamp160the overthrow of this kind of power 8220In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for 8220Now as always they stand for democracy not tyranny for freedom not subjection and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the overprivileged alike8221 The American people overwhelmingly agreed with FDR particularly after they8217d seen how badly 8220dictatorship by the overprivileged8221 worked out for us in 1929 The result was that from 1932 until 1980 American politicians knew how important it was for government representing the best interests of both our nation andamp160allamp160of its people to hold back the political power that the morbidly rich could marshal with their great wealth This was such conventional wisdom in both parties that Republican President Dwight D Eisenhoweramp160 wrote to his brother Edgaramp160in 1956 8220Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history 8220There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things Among them are H L Hunt you possibly know his background a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas Their number is negligible and they are stupid8221 And business knew it too Big corporations and wealthy businesspeople largely stayed away from politics from the 1930s onward not wanting to draw the ire of the American people Until 1971 In August of that year Lewis Powell a lawyer who largely defended tobacco and the interests of the Virginia8217s upper classes wrote an apocalypticamp160 memoamp160to his neighbor and friend who was the head of the US Chamber of Commerce In it he suggested that America itself was under attack from 8220leftists8221 and people on 8220college campuses8221 The solution Powell proposed was for a small group of very very wealthy people to reshape American public opinion through think tanks funding of universities and schools and an allout assault on the media Take over the courts and at least one of the political parties he suggested and wrest control of our economy away from government regulation As I noted inamp160 The Crash of 2016 Powell8217s most indelible mark on the nation was not to be his fifteenyear tenure as a Supreme Court Justice but instead that memo which served as a declaration of war8212a war by the Economic Royalists against both democracy and what they saw as an overgrown middle class It would be a final war aamp160bellum omnium contra omnes against everything the New Deal and the Great Society had accomplished It wasn8217t until September 1972 10 months after the Senate confirmed Powell to the Supreme Court that the public first found out about the Powell Memo the actual written document had the word 8220Confidential8221 stamped on it8212a sign that Powell himself hoped it would never see daylight outside of the rarified circles of his rich friends Although by then however it had already found its way to the desks of CEOs all across the nation and was with millions in corporate and billionaire money already being turned into real actions policies and institutions During its investigation into Powell as part of the nomination process the FBI never found the memo but investigative journalist Jack Anderson did and he exposed it in a September 28th 1972 column titled 8220 Powell8217s Lesson to Business Aired8221 Anderson wrote 8220Shortly before his appointment to the Supreme Court Justice Lewis F Powell Jr urged business leaders in a confidential memo to use the courts as a 8216social economic and political8217 instrument8221 Pointing out that how the memo wasn8217t discovered until after Powell was confirmed by the Senate Anderson wrote 8220Senators8230never got a chance to ask Powell whether he might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice and to influence the court in behalf of business interests8221 This was an explosive charge being leveled at the nation8217s rookie Supreme Court Justice a man entrusted with interpreting the nation8217s laws with complete impartiality But Jack Anderson was no stranger to taking on American authority and no stranger to the consequences of his journalism He8217d exposed scandals from the Truman Eisenhower Nixon and later the Reagan administrations He was a true investigative journalist In his report on the memo Anderson wrote 8220Powell recommended a militant political action program ranging from the courts to the campuses8221 Back in 1936 Franklin Roosevelt had declared war on his generation8217s Economic Royalists and booted the worst of them out of the nation8217s political economic and cultural institutions But now two generations later Lewis Powell was speaking of another war Powell8217s memo was both a direct response to Roosevelt8217s battle cry decades earlier and a response to the tumult of the 19608217s He wrote 8220No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack8221 When Sydnor and the Chamber received the Powell Memo corporations were growing tired of their secondclass status in America Even though the previous 40 years had been a time of great growth and strength for the American economy and America8217s middle class workers 8211 and a time of sure and steady growth and increases of profits for corporations 8211 CEOs felt something was missing If only they could find a way to wiggle back into the people8217s minds who were just beginning to forget the Royalists8217 previous exploits of the 1920s then they could get their tax cuts back they could trash the 8220burdensome8221 regulations that were keeping the air we breathe the water we drink and the food we eat safe and the banksters among them could inflate another massive economic bubble to make themselves all mindbogglingly rich It could if done right be a return to the 8220Roaring 20s8221 But how could they do this How could they convince Americans to take another shot at what was widely considered a dangerous freemarket ideology and economic framework and that Americans once knew preceded each Great Crash and war Lewis Powell had an answer and he reached out to the Chamber of Commerce8212the hub of corporate power in America8212to lay out a strategy to reclaim their power with a strategy As Powell wrote 8220Strength lies in organization in careful longrange planning and implementation in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years in the scale of financing available only through joint effort and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations8221 Thus Powell said 8220The role of the National Chamber of Commerce is therefore vital8221 In the nearly6000word memo Powell called on corporate leaders to launch an economic and ideological assault on college and high school campuses the media the courts and Capitol Hill The objective was simple The revival of a Royalistcontrolled socalled 8220free market8221 system Or as Powell put it using Royalist rhetoric 8220The ultimate issue8230is the survival of what we call the free enterprise system and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people8221 The first area of attack Powell encouraged the Chamber to focus on was the education system 8220A priority task of business8212and organizations such as the Chamber8212is to address the campus origin of this hostility to big business8221 Powell wrote What worried Powell was the new generation of young Americans growing up to resent corporate culture He believed colleges were filled with 8220Marxist professors8221 and that the probusiness agenda of Harding Coolidge and Hoover had fallen into disrepute since the Great Depression He knew that winning this war of economic ideology in America required spoonfeeding the next generation of leaders the doctrines of a freemarket theology from high school all the way through graduate and business school At the time college campuses were rallying points for the progressive activism sweeping the nation as young people demonstrated against poverty the Vietnam War and in support of Civil Rights So Powell put forward a laundry list of ways the Chamber could reretake the highereducation system First create an army of corporatefriendly think tanks that could influence education 8220The Chamber should consider establishing a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system8221 he wrote Then go after the textbooks 8220The staff of scholars8221 Powell wrote 8220should evaluate social science textbooks especially in economics political science and sociology8230This would include assurance of fair and factual treatment of our system of government and our enterprise system its accomplishments its basic relationship to individual rights and freedoms and comparisons with the systems of socialism fascism and communism8221 Powell argued that the Civil Rights movement and the Labor movement were already in the process of rerewriting textbooks 8220We have seen the civil rights movement insist on rewriting many of the textbooks in our universities and schools The labor unions likewise insist that textbooks be fair to the viewpoints of organized labor8221 Powell was concerned the Chamber of Commerce was not doing enough to stop this growing progressive influence and replace it with a proplutocratic perspective 8220Perhaps the most fundamental problem is the imbalance of many faculties8221 Powell pointed out 8220Correcting this is indeed a longrange and difficult project Yet it should be undertaken as a part of an overall program This would mean the urging of the need for faculty balance upon university administrators and boards of trustees8221amp160 As in the Chamber needs to infiltrate university boards in charge of hiring faculty to make sure only corporatefriendly professors are hired But Powell8217s recommendations weren8217t exclusive to college campuses he targeted high schools as well 8220While the first priority should be at the college level the trends mentioned above are increasingly evidenced in the high schools Action programs tailored to the high schools and similar to those mentioned should be considered8221 he urged Next Powell turned the corporate dogs on the media As Powell instructed 8220Reaching the campus and the secondary schools is vital for the longterm Reaching the public generally may be more important for the shorter term8221 Powell added 8220It will8230be essential to have staff personnel who are thoroughly familiar with the media and how most effectively to communicate with the public8221 He then went on to advocate that same system used for the monitoring of college textbooks be applied to television and radio networks 8220This applies not merely to socalled educational programs8230but to the daily 8216news analysis8217 which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system8221 This was not of course the first time that American oligarchs and their supplicants plotted to subvert American democracy in favor of a harsh capitalistcontrolled 8220free enterprise8221 system that handed virtually all the spoils of business over to a wealthy few In the early 1880s railroad barons funded six major attempts at the US Supreme Court to create from the 14th Amendment a 8220right of corporate personhood8221 In 1886 although the Court rejected their theory for the last and final timeamp160 the Clerk of the Court John Chandler Bancroft Davis inserted into the notlegallybinding headnote of theamp160Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroadamp160case that the Chief Justice had offhandedly certified corporate personhood Reacting to that and the general rise of the men then called robber barons Democratic President Grover Cleveland in hisamp160 1888 State of the Union address said 8220The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening and classes are rapidly forming one comprising the very rich and powerful while in another are found the toiling poor 8220As we view the achievements of aggregated capital we discover the existence of trusts combinations and monopolies while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel 8220Corporations which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people are fast becoming the people8217s masters8221 From President Cleveland8217s comments you can draw a straight line to the trust busting and inheritance tax of progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt in the first decade of the 20th century But the oligarchs fought back and in the election of 1920 regained the power to cut taxes and regulations sufficiently that the rich got explosively richer while the entire economy was set up for the Great Crash Warren Harding ran for president with two slogans 8211 8220More business in government less government in business8221 privatize and deregulate and cutting the top tax rate from 90 to 258230both of which he did And Lewis Powell8217s contribution to today8217s problems is easily found in the 1976amp160Buckley v Valeoamp160decision which struck down many of the campaign finance laws that had been passed in the wake of the Nixon scandals Money transferred from billionaires to politicians he and his conservative friends on the court ruled wasn8217t 8220money8221 8211 instead it was Constitutionallyprotected First Amendment Free Speech Just in time for the Reagan Revolution the morbidly rich could again own individual politicians and with the 2013 McCutcheon case the Court ruled that morbidly rich individuals could own a virtually unlimited number of politicians Citizens United in 2010 radically expanded corporate personhood and the rights of billionaires and corporations to influence politics Thus here we are again We have a billionaire oligarch in the White House We have a man as VP who8217s such a toady to oligarchs he actually promoted the idea in 2000 that tobacco doesn8217t cause canceramp160and today denies climate science on behalf of the petrobillionaires who have funded much of his political career We have an entire Republican Party that8217s been captured by toxicemissions corporations petrobillionaires and others among the morbidly rich On the left thanks to theamp160 DLC and its heirs substantial parts of the Democratic Party are beholden to the banking insurance and pharmaceutical industries although theamp160 Congressional Progressive Caucusamp160is working to change this The Washington Post recently ran anamp160 articleamp160about how the very institutions of America are beginning to break down under the sustained assault of the oligarchs although the Post doesn8217t use that word The main point of the article is that Donald Trump actually believes that both Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama committed major crimes and that the attorney general and others in the Department of Justice covered up those crimes Where did Trump get such a wild idea It seems certain that he got it from billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch8217s Fox News And because he actually believes that previous presidents got away with committing major crimes both to win elections and to stay in office he apparently thinks he should be able to as well It8217s perhaps amusing to wellinformed Americans when their friends and relatives spout the billionaireenabling propaganda that Fox dishes out every day But there8217s nothing amusing about a president of the United States believing based on what he learns in rightwing media that he can easily get away with breaking the law This is the result of the billionaire capture of our public spaces driving a 8220profits over democracy8221 mentality To save our republic we must acknowledge that the American aristocracy of the morbidly rich is destroying our country And then overturn via constitutional amendment the twin policies of rightwingers on our Supreme Court that say that billionaires can own their own personal politicians and that corporations are 8220persons8221 with human rights Once we reject America8217s new selfappointed royalty with their billionaire and corporate money fouling our system our elected officials can restore protections for working people 8211 and we can once again see our wages begin to rise like they did for 40 straight years before the advent of Reaganism Only then can we bring back rules to keep the oligarch8217s poisonous money out of our political system and begin to break up their control of American business and media so that small and mediumsized businesses unions and local media can once again thrive And with them we can return to something resembling a democracy

Theamp160New/PROPN York/PROPN Timesamp160recently/ADV ran/VERB aamp160/PUNCT fascinating/ADJ articleamp160by/NOUN Leslie/PROPN Wayne/PROPN putting/VERB forth/ADP arguments/NOUN from/ADP theamp160/PROPN International/PROPN Monarchist/PROPN League/PROPN Summarizing/PROPN them/PRON Wayne/PROPN wrote/VERB 8220Their/NUM core/NOUN arguments/NOUN Countries/PROPN with/ADP monarchies/NOUN are/AUX better/ADJ off/ADP because/SCONJ royal/ADJ families/NOUN act/VERB as/ADP a/DET unifying/ADJ force/NOUN and/CCONJ a/DET powerful/ADJ symbol/NOUN monarchies/NOUN rise/VERB above/ADP politics/NOUN and/CCONJ nations/NOUN with/ADP royalty/NOUN are/AUX generally/ADV richer/ADJ and/CCONJ more/ADJ stable8221/PROPN What/PRON the/DET author/NOUN misses/NOUN is/AUX that/SCONJ we/PRON already/ADV have/VERB an/DET aristocracy/NOUN here/ADV in/ADP the/DET United/PROPN States/PROPN rule/NOUN by/ADP the/DET rich/ADJ In/ADP fact/NOUN much/ADJ of/ADP American/ADJ history/NOUN is/AUX the/DET story/NOUN of/ADP the/DET 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<p>The Trump administration is holding talks on providing nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia &#8212; a move that critics say could upend decades of U.S. policy and lead to an arms race in the Middle East.</p> <p>The Saudi government wants nuclear power to free up more oil for export, but current and former American officials suspect the country&#8217;s leaders also want to keep up with the enrichment capabilities of their rival, Iran.</p> <p>Saudi Arabia needs approval from the U.S. in order to receive sensitive American technology. Past negotiations broke down because the Saudi government wouldn&#8217;t commit to certain safeguards against eventually using the technology for weapons.</p> <p>Now the Trump administration has reopened those talks and might not insist on the same precautions. At a Senate hearing on Nov. 28, Christopher Ford, the National Security Council&#8217;s senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation, disclosed that the U.S. is discussing the issue with the Saudi government. He called the safeguards a &#8220;desired outcome&#8221; but didn&#8217;t commit to them.</p> <p /> <p>Abandoning the safeguards would set up a showdown with powerful skeptics in Congress. &#8220;It could be a hell of a fight,&#8221; one senior Democratic congressional aide said.</p> <p>The idea of sharing nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia took an unlikely path to the highest levels of government. An eccentric inventor and a murky group of retired military brass &#8212; most of them with plenty of medals but no experience in commercial nuclear energy &#8212; have peddled various incarnations of the plan for years.</p> <p>Many U.S. officials didn&#8217;t think the idea was serious, reputable or in the national interest. &#8220;It smelled so bad I said I never wanted to be anywhere close to that,&#8221; one former White House official said. But the proponents persisted, and finally found an opening in the chaotic early days of the Trump administration, when advisers Michael Flynn and Tom Barrack championed the idea.</p> <p>The Saudis have a legitimate reason to want nuclear power: Their domestic energy demand is growing rapidly, and burning crude oil is an expensive and inefficient way to generate electricity.</p> <p>There&#8217;s also an obvious political motive. Many experts believe the Saudis aren&#8217;t currently trying to develop a nuclear bomb but want to lay the groundwork to do so in case Iran develops one. &#8220;There&#8217;s no question: Why do you have a nuclear reactor in the Persian Gulf? Because you want to have some kind of nuclear contingency capability,&#8221; said Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.</p> <p>A Saudi spokesperson provided a written statement noting that the country&#8217;s electricity needs have grown &#8220;due to our population and industrial growth.&#8221; The statement noted that &#8220;The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, hence is diversifying its energy mix to serve its domestic needs in accordance with international laws and standards. The Kingdom has been actively exploring diverse energy sources for nearly the last decade to meet growing domestic demand.&#8221;</p> <p>The technology for nuclear weapons is different from that for nuclear energy, but there is some overlap. The fuel for a power plant can be used for a bomb if it&#8217;s enriched to a much higher level. Also, the waste from a power plant can be reprocessed into weapons grade material. That&#8217;s why nonproliferation experts generally prefer that countries that use nuclear power buy fuel on the international market instead of doing their own enrichment and reprocessing.</p> <p>In 2008, the Saudi government made a nonbinding commitment not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing. They then entered negotiations with the U.S. for a pact on peaceful nuclear cooperation, known as a 123 agreement, after a section of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. A 123 agreement is a prerequisite for receiving American technology.</p> <p>The talks stalled a few years later because the Saudi government backed away from its pledge not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing, according to current and former officials. &#8220;They wouldn&#8217;t commit, and it was a sticking point,&#8221; said Max Bergmann, a former special assistant to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security at the time those negotiations occurred.</p> <p>U.S. officials feared a domino effect. Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt restrict those countries from receiving the most sensitive technologies unless the U.S. allows them in another Middle Eastern country. &#8220;If we accepted that from the Saudis, nobody else will give us legally binding commitment,&#8221; a former State Department official said.</p> <p>During that same period, the Obama administration was pursuing an agreement to stop Iran&#8217;s progress toward building a nuclear bomb while letting the country keep some domestic enrichment capabilities it had already achieved. The Saudi government publicly supported the Iran deal but privately made clear they wanted to match Iran&#8217;s technology. A former official summarized the Saudi position as, &#8220;We&#8217;re going to develop this kind of technology if they have this kind of technology.&#8221;</p> <p>The Obama administration held firm with the Saudis because it&#8217;s one thing to cap nuclear technology where it already exists, but it&#8217;s longstanding U.S. policy not to spread the technology to new countries. As Saudi Arabia and Iran &#8212; ideological and religious opponents &#8212; increasingly squared off in a battle for political sway in the Middle East, Republicans argued that the Obama administration had it backwards: It was enshrining hostile Iran&#8217;s ability to enrich uranium while denying the same to America&#8217;s ally Saudi Arabia.</p> <p>One such critic of Obama&#8217;s Iran policy was Michael Flynn, a lieutenant general who was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014. Flynn quickly took up a variety of consulting assignments and joined some corporate boards. One of the former was an advisory position for a company called ACU Strategic Partners, which, according to a later financial disclosure, paid Flynn more than $5,000.</p> <p>Flynn was one of many retired military officers whom ACU recruited. ACU&#8217;s chief was a man named Alex Copson, who is most often described in press accounts as a &#8220;colorful British-American dealmaker.&#8221; Copson reportedly made a fortune inventing a piece of diving equipment, may or may not have been a bass player in the band Iron Butterfly, and has been touting wildly ambitious nuclear-power plans since the 1980s. (He didn&#8217;t answer repeated requests for comment.)</p> <p>By 2015, Copson was telling people he had a group of U.S., European, Arab and Russian companies that would build as many as 40 nuclear reactors in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Copson&#8217;s company pitched the Obama administration, but officials figured he didn&#8217;t really have the backers he claimed. &#8220;They would say &#8216;We have Rolls-Royce on board,&#8217; and then someone would ask Rolls-Royce and they would say, &#8216;No, we took a meeting and nothing happened,&#8217;&#8221; recalled a then-White House official.</p> <p>In his role with ACU, Flynn flew to Egypt to convince officials there to hold off on a Russian offer (this one unrelated to ACU) to build nuclear power plants. Flynn tried to persuade the Egyptian government to consider Copson&#8217;s proposal instead, according to documents released by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Flynn also tried to persuade the Israeli government to support the plan and spoke at a conference in Saudi Arabia. (The trip would later present legal problems for Flynn because he didn&#8217;t report contacts with foreign officials on his application to renew his security clearance, according to Cummings. Cummings referred the information to Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Trump&#8217;s associates and Russia&#8217;s interference in the 2016 election. Flynn&#8217;s lawyer declined to comment.)</p> <p>Copson&#8217;s outfit eventually splintered. A retired admiral named Michael Hewitt, who was to head up the security services part of the project, struck out on his own in mid-2016. Flynn went with him.</p> <p>Hewitt&#8217;s new company is called IP3 International, which is short for &#8220;International Peace Power &amp;amp; Prosperity.&#8221; IP3 signed up other prominent national security alumni including Gens. Keith Alexander, Jack Keane and James Cartwright, former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, Bush Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend, and Reagan National Security adviser Robert &#8220;Bud&#8221; McFarlane.</p> <p>IP3&#8217;s idea was a variation on ACU&#8217;s. Hewitt swapped out one notional foreign partner for another (Russia was out, China was in), then later shifted to an all-American approach. That idea resonated with the U.S. nuclear-construction industry, which never recovered from the Three Mile Island disaster in the 1970s and was looking to new markets overseas.</p> <p>But nuclear exports are tightly controlled because the technology is potentially so dangerous. A 123 agreement is only the first step for a foreign country that wants to employ U.S. nuclear-power technology. In addition, the Energy Department has to approve the transfer of technology related to nuclear reactors and fuel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses reactor equipment, and the Commerce Department reviews exports for equipment throughout the rest of the power plant.</p> <p>IP3 &#8212; whose sole project to date is the Saudi nuclear plan &#8212; never went through those normal channels. Instead, the company went straight to the top.</p> <p>At the start of the Trump administration, IP3 found an ally in Tom Barrack, the new president&#8217;s close friend and informal adviser and an ultra-wealthy investor in his own right. During the campaign, Barrack wrote a series of white papers proposing a new approach to the Middle East in which economic cooperation would theoretically reduce the conditions for breeding terrorism and lead to improved relations.</p> <p>Barrack wasn&#8217;t familiar with nuclear power as an option for the Middle East until he heard from Bud McFarlane. McFarlane, 80, is most remembered for his role in the defining scandal of the Reagan years: secretly selling arms to Iran and using the money to support Nicaraguan rebels. He pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress but was pardoned by George H.W. Bush.</p> <p>Nevertheless, Barrack was dazzled by McFarlane and his IP3 colleagues. &#8220;I was like a kid in a candy shop &#8212; these guys were all generals and admirals,&#8221; Barrack said in an interview. &#8220;They found an advocate in me in saying I was keen on trying to establish a realignment of U.S. business interests with the Gulf&#8217;s business interests.&#8221;</p> <p>McFarlane followed up the meeting by emailing Flynn in late January, according to six people who read the message or were told about it. McFarlane attached two documents. One outlined IP3&#8217;s plan, describing it as consistent with Trump&#8217;s philosophy. The second was a draft memo for the president to sign that would officially endorse the plan and instruct his cabinet secretaries to implement it. Barrack would take charge of the project as the interagency coordinator. Barrack had discussions about becoming ambassador to Egypt or a special envoy to the Middle East but never committed to such a role. (McFarlane disputed that account but repeatedly declined to specify any inaccuracies. IP3 declined to comment on the memos.)</p> <p>Flynn, now on the receiving end of IP3&#8217;s lobbying, told his staff to put together a formal proposal to present to Trump for his signature, according to current and former officials.</p> <p>The seeming end run sparked alarm. National Security Council staff brought the proposal to the attention of the agency&#8217;s lawyers, five people said, because they were concerned about the plan and how it was being advanced. Ordinarily, before presenting such a sensitive proposal to the president, NSC staff would consult with experts throughout government about practical and legal concerns. Bypassing those procedures raised the risks that private interests might use the White House to their own advantage, former officials said. &#8220;Circumventing that process has the ability not only to invite decisions that aren&#8217;t fully vetted but that are potentially unwise and have the potential to put our interests and our people at risk,&#8221; said Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and NSC spokesman.</p> <p>Even after those concerns were raised, Derek Harvey, then the NSC&#8217;s senior director for the Middle East, continued discussing the IP3 proposal with Barrack and his representative, Rick Gates, according to two people. Gates, a longtime associate of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, worked for Barrack on Trump&#8217;s inaugural committee and then for Barrack&#8217;s investment company, Colony NorthStar.</p> <p>By then, Barrack was no longer considering a government position. Instead, he and Gates were seeking investment ideas based on the administration&#8217;s Middle East policy. Barrack pondered the notion, for example, of buying a piece of Westinghouse, the bankrupt U.S. manufacturer of nuclear reactors. (Harvey, now on the staff of the House intelligence committee, declined to comment through a spokesman. In October, Mueller charged Manafort and Gates with 12 counts including conspiracy against the U.S., unregistered foreign lobbying, and money laundering. They both pleaded not guilty. Gates&#8217; spokesman didn&#8217;t answer requests for comment.)</p> <p>Ultimately, it wasn&#8217;t the NSC staff&#8217;s concerns that stalled IP3&#8217;s momentum. Rather, Jared Kushner, the president&#8217;s son-in-law and senior aide tasked with reviving a Middle East peace process, wanted to table the nuclear question in favor of simpler alliance-building measures with the Saudis, centered on Trump&#8217;s visit in May, according to a person familiar with the discussions. (A spokesperson for Kushner, asked for comment, had not provided one at the time this article was published; we&#8217;ll update the article if he provides one later.)</p> <p>In recent months, the proposal has stirred back to life as the Saudi government kicked off a formal process to solicit bids for their first reactors. In October, the Saudis sent a request for information to the U.S., France, South Korea, Russia and China &#8212; the strongest signal yet that they&#8217;re serious about nuclear power.</p> <p>The Saudi solicitation also gave IP3 the problem its solution was searching for. The company pivoted again, narrowing its pitch to organizing a consortium of U.S. companies to compete for the Saudi tender. IP3 won&#8217;t say which companies it has signed up. IP3 also won&#8217;t discuss the fees it hopes to receive if it were part of a Saudi nuclear plan, but it&#8217;s vying to supply cyber and physical site security for the plants. &#8220;IP3 has communicated its strategy to multiple government entities and policy makers in both the Obama and Trump administrations,&#8221; the company said in a statement. &#8220;We view these meetings and any documents relating to them as private, and we won&#8217;t discuss them.&#8221;</p> <p>The Saudi steps lit a fire under administration officials. Leading the charge is Rick Perry, the energy secretary who famously proposed eliminating the department and then admitted he didn&#8217;t understand its function. (It includes dealing with nuclear power and weapons.) Perry had also heard IP3&#8217;s pitch, a person familiar with the situation said. In September, Perry met with Saudi delegates to an international atomic energy conference and discussed energy cooperation, according to a photo posted on his Facebook page. Perry&#8217;s spokeswoman didn&#8217;t answer requests for comment.</p> <p>Other steps followed. Soon after, a senior State Department official flew to Riyadh to restart formal 123 negotiations, according to an industry source. (A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.) In November, Energy and State Department officials joined a&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/2017/NEI-Helps-Showcase-US-Nuclear-Industry-at-Abu-Dhab" type="external">commercial delegation</a>&amp;#160;to Abu Dhabi led by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry&#8217;s main lobby in Washington. Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Edward McGinnis said the administration wants to revitalize the U.S. nuclear energy industry, including by pursuing exports to Saudi Arabia. The Department of Commerce&#8217;s International Trade Administration and the Energy Department are organizing another industry visit in December to meet with Saudi officials, according to a notice obtained by ProPublica. And in the days before Thanksgiving, senior U.S. officials from several agencies met at the White House to discuss the policy, according to current and former officials.</p> <p>The Trump administration hasn&#8217;t stated a position on whether it will let the Saudis have enrichment and reprocessing technology. An NSC spokesman declined to comment. But administration officials have begun sounding out advisers on how Congress might react to a deal that gives the Saudis enrichment and reprocessing, a person familiar with the discussions said.</p> <p>Senators have started demanding answers. At the Nov. 28&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/nominations-112817" type="external">hearing</a> before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ford, the NSC nonproliferation official who has been nominated to lead the State Department&#8217;s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, testified that preliminary talks with the Saudis are underway but declined to discuss the details in public. As noted, Ford wouldn&#8217;t commit to barring the Saudi government from obtaining enrichment and reprocessing technology. &#8220;It remains U.S. policy, as it has been for some time, to seek the strongest possible nonproliferation protections in every instance,&#8221; he told the senators. &#8220;It is not a legal requirement. It is a desired outcome.&#8221; Ford added that the Iran deal makes it harder to insist on limiting other countries&#8217; capabilities.</p> <p>Sen. Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who led the questioning of Ford on this topic, seemed highly resistant to the idea of the U.S. helping Saudi Arabia get nuclear technology. &#8220;If we continue down this pathway,&#8221; he said, &#8220;then there&#8217;s a recipe for disaster which we are absolutely creating ourselves.&#8221; Markey also accused the administration of neglecting its statutory obligation to brief the committee on the negotiations. (The White House declined to comment.)</p> <p>Any agreement, in this case with Saudi Arabia, would not require Senate approval. However, should an agreement be reached, Congress could kill the deal. The two houses would have 90 days to pass a joint resolution disapproving it. The committee&#8217;s ranking Democrat, Ben Cardin, suggested they wouldn&#8217;t accept a deal that lacked the same protections as the ones in the UAE&#8217;s agreement. &#8220;If we don&#8217;t draw a line in the Middle East, it&#8217;s going to be all-out proliferation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We need to maintain the UAE&#8217;s standards in our 123 agreements. There&#8217;s just too many other countries that could start proliferating issues that could be against our national interest.&#8221;</p> <p>Bob Corker, the committee&#8217;s chairman, has been a stickler on nonproliferation in the past; he criticized the Obama administration for not being tough enough. Corker isn&#8217;t running for reelection and has criticized Trump for being immature and reckless in foreign affairs, so he&#8217;s unlikely to shy away from a fight. (A spokesman declined to comment.) &#8220;The absence of a consistent policy weakens our nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and sends a mixed message to those nations we seek to prevent from gaining or enhancing such capability,&#8221; Corker said at a hearing in 2014. &#8220;Which standards can we expect the administration to reach for negotiating new agreements with Jordan or Saudi Arabia?&#8221;</p>

White House Might Share Nuclear Power Technology With Saudis

https://truthdig.com/articles/white-house-may-share-nuclear-power-technology-saudi-arabia/

2017-12-03

4left

The Trump administration is holding talks on providing nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia 8212 a move that critics say could upend decades of US policy and lead to an arms race in the Middle East The Saudi government wants nuclear power to free up more oil for export but current and former American officials suspect the country8217s leaders also want to keep up with the enrichment capabilities of their rival Iran Saudi Arabia needs approval from the US in order to receive sensitive American technology Past negotiations broke down because the Saudi government wouldn8217t commit to certain safeguards against eventually using the technology for weapons Now the Trump administration has reopened those talks and might not insist on the same precautions At a Senate hearing on Nov 28 Christopher Ford the National Security Council8217s senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation disclosed that the US is discussing the issue with the Saudi government He called the safeguards a 8220desired outcome8221 but didn8217t commit to them Abandoning the safeguards would set up a showdown with powerful skeptics in Congress 8220It could be a hell of a fight8221 one senior Democratic congressional aide said The idea of sharing nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia took an unlikely path to the highest levels of government An eccentric inventor and a murky group of retired military brass 8212 most of them with plenty of medals but no experience in commercial nuclear energy 8212 have peddled various incarnations of the plan for years Many US officials didn8217t think the idea was serious reputable or in the national interest 8220It smelled so bad I said I never wanted to be anywhere close to that8221 one former White House official said But the proponents persisted and finally found an opening in the chaotic early days of the Trump administration when advisers Michael Flynn and Tom Barrack championed the idea The Saudis have a legitimate reason to want nuclear power Their domestic energy demand is growing rapidly and burning crude oil is an expensive and inefficient way to generate electricity There8217s also an obvious political motive Many experts believe the Saudis aren8217t currently trying to develop a nuclear bomb but want to lay the groundwork to do so in case Iran develops one 8220There8217s no question Why do you have a nuclear reactor in the Persian Gulf Because you want to have some kind of nuclear contingency capability8221 said Anthony Cordesman a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies A Saudi spokesperson provided a written statement noting that the country8217s electricity needs have grown 8220due to our population and industrial growth8221 The statement noted that 8220The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the NonProliferation Treaty hence is diversifying its energy mix to serve its domestic needs in accordance with international laws and standards The Kingdom has been actively exploring diverse energy sources for nearly the last decade to meet growing domestic demand8221 The technology for nuclear weapons is different from that for nuclear energy but there is some overlap The fuel for a power plant can be used for a bomb if it8217s enriched to a much higher level Also the waste from a power plant can be reprocessed into weapons grade material That8217s why nonproliferation experts generally prefer that countries that use nuclear power buy fuel on the international market instead of doing their own enrichment and reprocessing In 2008 the Saudi government made a nonbinding commitment not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing They then entered negotiations with the US for a pact on peaceful nuclear cooperation known as a 123 agreement after a section of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 A 123 agreement is a prerequisite for receiving American technology The talks stalled a few years later because the Saudi government backed away from its pledge not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing according to current and former officials 8220They wouldn8217t commit and it was a sticking point8221 said Max Bergmann a former special assistant to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security at the time those negotiations occurred US officials feared a domino effect Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt restrict those countries from receiving the most sensitive technologies unless the US allows them in another Middle Eastern country 8220If we accepted that from the Saudis nobody else will give us legally binding commitment8221 a former State Department official said During that same period the Obama administration was pursuing an agreement to stop Iran8217s progress toward building a nuclear bomb while letting the country keep some domestic enrichment capabilities it had already achieved The Saudi government publicly supported the Iran deal but privately made clear they wanted to match Iran8217s technology A former official summarized the Saudi position as 8220We8217re going to develop this kind of technology if they have this kind of technology8221 The Obama administration held firm with the Saudis because it8217s one thing to cap nuclear technology where it already exists but it8217s longstanding US policy not to spread the technology to new countries As Saudi Arabia and Iran 8212 ideological and religious opponents 8212 increasingly squared off in a battle for political sway in the Middle East Republicans argued that the Obama administration had it backwards It was enshrining hostile Iran8217s ability to enrich uranium while denying the same to America8217s ally Saudi Arabia One such critic of Obama8217s Iran policy was Michael Flynn a lieutenant general who was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 Flynn quickly took up a variety of consulting assignments and joined some corporate boards One of the former was an advisory position for a company called ACU Strategic Partners which according to a later financial disclosure paid Flynn more than 5000 Flynn was one of many retired military officers whom ACU recruited ACU8217s chief was a man named Alex Copson who is most often described in press accounts as a 8220colorful BritishAmerican dealmaker8221 Copson reportedly made a fortune inventing a piece of diving equipment may or may not have been a bass player in the band Iron Butterfly and has been touting wildly ambitious nuclearpower plans since the 1980s He didn8217t answer repeated requests for comment By 2015 Copson was telling people he had a group of US European Arab and Russian companies that would build as many as 40 nuclear reactors in Egypt Jordan and Saudi Arabia Copson8217s company pitched the Obama administration but officials figured he didn8217t really have the backers he claimed 8220They would say 8216We have RollsRoyce on board8217 and then someone would ask RollsRoyce and they would say 8216No we took a meeting and nothing happened82178221 recalled a thenWhite House official In his role with ACU Flynn flew to Egypt to convince officials there to hold off on a Russian offer this one unrelated to ACU to build nuclear power plants Flynn tried to persuade the Egyptian government to consider Copson8217s proposal instead according to documents released by Rep Elijah Cummings the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Flynn also tried to persuade the Israeli government to support the plan and spoke at a conference in Saudi Arabia The trip would later present legal problems for Flynn because he didn8217t report contacts with foreign officials on his application to renew his security clearance according to Cummings Cummings referred the information to Robert Mueller the special counsel investigating Trump8217s associates and Russia8217s interference in the 2016 election Flynn8217s lawyer declined to comment Copson8217s outfit eventually splintered A retired admiral named Michael Hewitt who was to head up the security services part of the project struck out on his own in mid2016 Flynn went with him Hewitt8217s new company is called IP3 International which is short for 8220International Peace Power ampamp Prosperity8221 IP3 signed up other prominent national security alumni including Gens Keith Alexander Jack Keane and James Cartwright former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross Bush Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend and Reagan National Security adviser Robert 8220Bud8221 McFarlane IP38217s idea was a variation on ACU8217s Hewitt swapped out one notional foreign partner for another Russia was out China was in then later shifted to an allAmerican approach That idea resonated with the US nuclearconstruction industry which never recovered from the Three Mile Island disaster in the 1970s and was looking to new markets overseas But nuclear exports are tightly controlled because the technology is potentially so dangerous A 123 agreement is only the first step for a foreign country that wants to employ US nuclearpower technology In addition the Energy Department has to approve the transfer of technology related to nuclear reactors and fuel The Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses reactor equipment and the Commerce Department reviews exports for equipment throughout the rest of the power plant IP3 8212 whose sole project to date is the Saudi nuclear plan 8212 never went through those normal channels Instead the company went straight to the top At the start of the Trump administration IP3 found an ally in Tom Barrack the new president8217s close friend and informal adviser and an ultrawealthy investor in his own right During the campaign Barrack wrote a series of white papers proposing a new approach to the Middle East in which economic cooperation would theoretically reduce the conditions for breeding terrorism and lead to improved relations Barrack wasn8217t familiar with nuclear power as an option for the Middle East until he heard from Bud McFarlane McFarlane 80 is most remembered for his role in the defining scandal of the Reagan years secretly selling arms to Iran and using the money to support Nicaraguan rebels He pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress but was pardoned by George HW Bush Nevertheless Barrack was dazzled by McFarlane and his IP3 colleagues 8220I was like a kid in a candy shop 8212 these guys were all generals and admirals8221 Barrack said in an interview 8220They found an advocate in me in saying I was keen on trying to establish a realignment of US business interests with the Gulf8217s business interests8221 McFarlane followed up the meeting by emailing Flynn in late January according to six people who read the message or were told about it McFarlane attached two documents One outlined IP38217s plan describing it as consistent with Trump8217s philosophy The second was a draft memo for the president to sign that would officially endorse the plan and instruct his cabinet secretaries to implement it Barrack would take charge of the project as the interagency coordinator Barrack had discussions about becoming ambassador to Egypt or a special envoy to the Middle East but never committed to such a role McFarlane disputed that account but repeatedly declined to specify any inaccuracies IP3 declined to comment on the memos Flynn now on the receiving end of IP38217s lobbying told his staff to put together a formal proposal to present to Trump for his signature according to current and former officials The seeming end run sparked alarm National Security Council staff brought the proposal to the attention of the agency8217s lawyers five people said because they were concerned about the plan and how it was being advanced Ordinarily before presenting such a sensitive proposal to the president NSC staff would consult with experts throughout government about practical and legal concerns Bypassing those procedures raised the risks that private interests might use the White House to their own advantage former officials said 8220Circumventing that process has the ability not only to invite decisions that aren8217t fully vetted but that are potentially unwise and have the potential to put our interests and our people at risk8221 said Ned Price a former CIA analyst and NSC spokesman Even after those concerns were raised Derek Harvey then the NSC8217s senior director for the Middle East continued discussing the IP3 proposal with Barrack and his representative Rick Gates according to two people Gates a longtime associate of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort worked for Barrack on Trump8217s inaugural committee and then for Barrack8217s investment company Colony NorthStar By then Barrack was no longer considering a government position Instead he and Gates were seeking investment ideas based on the administration8217s Middle East policy Barrack pondered the notion for example of buying a piece of Westinghouse the bankrupt US manufacturer of nuclear reactors Harvey now on the staff of the House intelligence committee declined to comment through a spokesman In October Mueller charged Manafort and Gates with 12 counts including conspiracy against the US unregistered foreign lobbying and money laundering They both pleaded not guilty Gates8217 spokesman didn8217t answer requests for comment Ultimately it wasn8217t the NSC staff8217s concerns that stalled IP38217s momentum Rather Jared Kushner the president8217s soninlaw and senior aide tasked with reviving a Middle East peace process wanted to table the nuclear question in favor of simpler alliancebuilding measures with the Saudis centered on Trump8217s visit in May according to a person familiar with the discussions A spokesperson for Kushner asked for comment had not provided one at the time this article was published we8217ll update the article if he provides one later In recent months the proposal has stirred back to life as the Saudi government kicked off a formal process to solicit bids for their first reactors In October the Saudis sent a request for information to the US France South Korea Russia and China 8212 the strongest signal yet that they8217re serious about nuclear power The Saudi solicitation also gave IP3 the problem its solution was searching for The company pivoted again narrowing its pitch to organizing a consortium of US companies to compete for the Saudi tender IP3 won8217t say which companies it has signed up IP3 also won8217t discuss the fees it hopes to receive if it were part of a Saudi nuclear plan but it8217s vying to supply cyber and physical site security for the plants 8220IP3 has communicated its strategy to multiple government entities and policy makers in both the Obama and Trump administrations8221 the company said in a statement 8220We view these meetings and any documents relating to them as private and we won8217t discuss them8221 The Saudi steps lit a fire under administration officials Leading the charge is Rick Perry the energy secretary who famously proposed eliminating the department and then admitted he didn8217t understand its function It includes dealing with nuclear power and weapons Perry had also heard IP38217s pitch a person familiar with the situation said In September Perry met with Saudi delegates to an international atomic energy conference and discussed energy cooperation according to a photo posted on his Facebook page Perry8217s spokeswoman didn8217t answer requests for comment Other steps followed Soon after a senior State Department official flew to Riyadh to restart formal 123 negotiations according to an industry source A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment In November Energy and State Department officials joined aamp160 commercial delegationamp160to Abu Dhabi led by the Nuclear Energy Institute the industry8217s main lobby in Washington Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Edward McGinnis said the administration wants to revitalize the US nuclear energy industry including by pursuing exports to Saudi Arabia The Department of Commerce8217s International Trade Administration and the Energy Department are organizing another industry visit in December to meet with Saudi officials according to a notice obtained by ProPublica And in the days before Thanksgiving senior US officials from several agencies met at the White House to discuss the policy according to current and former officials The Trump administration hasn8217t stated a position on whether it will let the Saudis have enrichment and reprocessing technology An NSC spokesman declined to comment But administration officials have begun sounding out advisers on how Congress might react to a deal that gives the Saudis enrichment and reprocessing a person familiar with the discussions said Senators have started demanding answers At the Nov 28amp160 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ford the NSC nonproliferation official who has been nominated to lead the State Department8217s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation testified that preliminary talks with the Saudis are underway but declined to discuss the details in public As noted Ford wouldn8217t commit to barring the Saudi government from obtaining enrichment and reprocessing technology 8220It remains US policy as it has been for some time to seek the strongest possible nonproliferation protections in every instance8221 he told the senators 8220It is not a legal requirement It is a desired outcome8221 Ford added that the Iran deal makes it harder to insist on limiting other countries8217 capabilities Sen Ed Markey the Massachusetts Democrat who led the questioning of Ford on this topic seemed highly resistant to the idea of the US helping Saudi Arabia get nuclear technology 8220If we continue down this pathway8221 he said 8220then there8217s a recipe for disaster which we are absolutely creating ourselves8221 Markey also accused the administration of neglecting its statutory obligation to brief the committee on the negotiations The White House declined to comment Any agreement in this case with Saudi Arabia would not require Senate approval However should an agreement be reached Congress could kill the deal The two houses would have 90 days to pass a joint resolution disapproving it The committee8217s ranking Democrat Ben Cardin suggested they wouldn8217t accept a deal that lacked the same protections as the ones in the UAE8217s agreement 8220If we don8217t draw a line in the Middle East it8217s going to be allout proliferation8221 he said 8220We need to maintain the UAE8217s standards in our 123 agreements There8217s just too many other countries that could start proliferating issues that could be against our national interest8221 Bob Corker the committee8217s chairman has been a stickler on nonproliferation in the past he criticized the Obama administration for not being tough enough Corker isn8217t running for reelection and has criticized Trump for being immature and reckless in foreign affairs so he8217s unlikely to shy away from a fight A spokesman declined to comment 8220The absence of a consistent policy weakens our nuclear nonproliferation efforts and sends a mixed message to those nations we seek to prevent from gaining or enhancing such capability8221 Corker said at a hearing in 2014 8220Which standards can we expect the administration to reach for negotiating new agreements with Jordan or Saudi Arabia8221

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<p>From the start, Zionist thought has been divided into two main schools. On the one hand we have the heavy-handed school, which favours military solutions to any conflict. The revisionist leader Ze&#8217;ev Jabotinsky was the founder of this school. In 1923 he published an article entitled &#8216;The Iron Wall&#8217; in which he argued that Arabs would never accept a Jewish state and so the Jews must &#8220;erect an iron wall of Jewish military force&#8221;. Zionists must thus have an overwhelmingly superior base of power to deal with any Arabic tendency to resist.</p> <p>The other school is the school of reconciliation adhered to by moderate Zionists like Moshe Sharet. It believes that all the regional regimes and political powers can accept the existence of a Jewish state and all available diplomatic efforts should be made to achieve reconciliation with the Arab World.</p> <p>These two conflicting ideologies have been apparent since the early day so Zionism. After the declaration of the State of Israel, they lead to harsh political debate. In practise, Ben Gurion, the first Israeli PM adopted Jabotinsky&#8217;s &#8216;Iron Wall&#8217; philosophy. This at first seems a bizarre move politically as Jabotinsky&#8217;s philosophy is in opposition to Ben Gurion&#8217;s own party&#8217;s policies. However Israeli manoeuvres and operations in the 1948 war give a clear picture of their endorsement of a military option together with a denial of any possible diplomatic solution.</p> <p>Ben Gurion instructed the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) to follow an offensive military strategy, to show Israel&#8217;s military superiority. His instructions were as follows: 1. Any confrontation between Arab and Israeli must take place on Arab land&#8211;any Israeli offensive must bring the battle to the Arab territories before it even starts; 2. Because of limited Israeli funds, any battle must bring victory quickly&#8211;the Israeli army must inflict devastating damage on Arab enemies.</p> <p>The Israeli military and political leaders soon defined the criterion by which to measure success&#8211;the IDF &#8216;force of deterrence&#8217;. It is a scale that determines the Arabic unwillingness to fight: the greater the unwillingness, the higher the &#8216;force of deterrence&#8217;.</p> <p>For Ben Gurion and his followers it was crucial the Arab world clearly understood that Israel preferred a military solution. Any given battle should end with a clear-cut Israeli victory. More importantly still was that the Arabs should know that any confrontation would inevitably lead to their defeat. Success of the Israeli offensive strategy was measured by the extent to which the Arab willingness to fight decreased. This pattern was already evident in the early stages of the 1948 war, a war in which the Israelis violated the human rights of Palestinian civilians. The war created more than 700,000 Palestinian refugees and led to an armistice between Israel and its neighbours, an armistice that Arabs regarded as a clear defeat.</p> <p>By the early Fifties Israel had managed further to refine this offensive doctrine. According to Ben Gurion, any loss of Jewish life must be compensated for in a disproportionate way. Arabs had to learn that Jewish blood was of far higher value than their own. To achieve the best possible results a young, assertive, aggressive and ambitious commander named Ariel Sharon was called upon. He was asked to form a small special commando unit whose role was to show the Arab enemy the extent of Israel&#8217;s determination to win under any circumstances.</p> <p>In 1953, Palestinians crossed the Israeli border near the Jordanian village of Quibya and murdered a Jewish mother and her two children. Sharon and his commando unit, now called the &#8216;101&#8217;, were called to action. They were ordered to enter the village, to blow up the houses, and inflict as much damage on their inhabitants as possible. Sharon was very much the right man for the job. The raid was a complete success. Similar to the recent violence in the Jenin refugee camp where homes were destroyed with their inhabitants inside, Quibya was reduced to a pile of rubble. More than fifty houses were destroyed, and 61 civilians mostly women and children were killed. A UN observer visiting the site concluded that the villagers had been forced to stay in their houses, which were then blown up. The Quibya massacre was internationally condemned. In an Israeli parliamentary debate, Moshe Sharet, the moderate foreign minister, called for an official statement of regret for the action. Ben Gurion thought differently. During a radio broadcast the next day, he denied IDF involvement in the raid and blamed it on retaliating Israeli villagers pushed beyond endurance. As we know, Sharon&#8217;s military career did not suffer, quite the opposite. Sharon and the &#8216;101&#8217; became the role model for the new Hebrew military man, a soldier who murders, attacks beyond enemy lines, who goes far beyond orders even if it means disregarding all concept of humanity. Not only did Sharon&#8217;s career not suffer, he was seen as the most promising young Israeli officer and he was swiftly promoted within army ranks, inspiring other young officers to follow in his footsteps. Historically the Quibya massacre was the first in a chain of retaliation raids carried out by the Israeli army. These raids shaped Israeli offensive strategy into a new form of murderous art. A way of thinking that not only led to endless confrontation with the Arab world but also created an ever growing ignorance within Israeli society. A society concerned solely with its own interests while denying anyone else&#8217;s.</p> <p>Looking at it from an Israeli perspective, the offensive doctrine enjoys two major advantages. Firstly, it communicates with Arabs in the only language they understand&#8211;violence. Secondly, it provokes condemnation from the international community, something that Israelis translate into immediate political gain.</p> <p>It is hard to believe but most Israelis believe that Arabs only understand violence. Throughout Israel&#8217;s history, there is very little evidence of diplomacy towards Arabs. Even the Oslo Accord is rooted in specific historical circumstances: the PLO was in political and financial ruin (following their support of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War). And then, from the very beginning of the supposed implementation of the Oslo Accord, Israel used military threats to pressurise the Palestinians. The vast majority of Israeli cabinet members past and present are ex-military men. Only a state that has decided to live by the sword and firmly believes in military solutions, would put so many generals in its government.</p> <p>Israeli Prime Ministers actually love to be condemned by the international community. Any foreign criticism of Israel is interpreted as &#8216;the pathological anti-semitic behaviour of gentiles&#8217;. Israeli politician learn to use this tool early in their careers. Ben Gurion laid down the pattern: &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t matter what the gentile says, what matters is what the Jews do.&#8221; With this statement that legendary PM managed to instantly remind his voters of the history of Jewish persecution, pushing the Jewish people deeper into their safe-haven of segregation, to denial of the outside world. Since in Hebrew the world for gentile&#8211;&#8216;goy&#8217;&#8211;is derogatory, Ben Gurion&#8217;s directive to ignore the gentile allows Israelis to celebrate their superiority to the rest of mankind. Ben Gurion&#8217;s statement is a call for Israelis to unite behind their leadership and reject any form of foreign criticism. In the Israeli case, the offensive doctrine leaves the international community powerless. On the one hand, lack of criticism is taken by the Israeli public as approval or as a sign of weakness. On the other, any international condemnation leads to increased public support for the political leadership. This may explain the continuous shift to the right in Israeli politics. It also explains the international community&#8217;s lack of means to deal with Israeli oppression and atrocities.</p> <p>Sharon&#8217;s military and political career shows that he follows his mentor Ben Gurion religiously. Sharon adopted the offensive doctrine in political life and in military terms. He was the leading figure in the forming and shaping of Israeli retaliation raids and commando attacks. This strategy led the Israelis deep into the Sinai desert in the &#8216;Suez Operation&#8217; (1956). Following Colonel Sharon&#8217;s orders Israeli paratroopers landed in the &#8216;Mitle Pass&#8217; in the heart of the Sinai desert with the objective to cause heavy losses to the Egyptian army. In practice the battle cost too many Israeli lives and within a short space of time Israel had to pull its forces out of the Sinai. The operation was regarded as a waste of human life. In the &#8217;73 war, General Sharon led his brigade across the Suez Canal. Again the battle costs too many Israeli lives. Sharon refused to let his higher command show restraint, he believed the sight of an Israeli soldier on the western bank of the Suez Canal would bring the Egyptians to their knees. Egypt brought in some heavy international pressure and Israel had to withdraw its forces. Furthermore, the cease-fire talks led to peace talks (1977) in which Israel &#8216;lost&#8217; the Sinai forever.</p> <p>In the Lebanon War (1982), Sharon, now Minister for Defence, led the cabinet to believe that the Palestinian issue could be silenced forever by a military assault against the PLO in Lebanon. He was determined to generate a light conflict, a mini war with Syria in order to wipe their forces out of southern Lebanon. The Israeli offensive doctrine does not dissociate between Arabs. From the perspective of the &#8216;Iron Wall&#8217;, all Arabs are the same. From the very early stages of the Lebanese campaign it was evident that Israel was being drawn into a vicious civil war between the different Lebanese ethnic and religious groups. As predicted by some Israeli intelligence experts, shortly after the invasion of Lebanon, the most terrible massacres of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila took place. The Christian militias who carried out the massacres, received approval from Israeli high command to enter the camps. While Israeli forces were not directly involved in the massacres themselves, Israel was regarded as responsible for the atrocities taking place within its invaded territory. The massacres were condemned by the international community. In Israel, the leftwing movement &#8216;Peace Now&#8217; managed to bring thousands of people into the streets to demonstrate against the government. In a speech to the Israeli parliament, reflecting on the left&#8217;s opposition to the Lebanese campaign, Menachem Begin, the then Prime Minister complained that &#8220;gentiles kill gentiles and the Jews are blaming each other&#8221;. This again follows the Israeli right-wing pattern, using the international outrage to de-legitimise the Israeli left. Begin blamed the Israeli left for collaborating with the gentile anti-semites against the Jewish Sharon. So again international outrage generated by an Israeli offensive was used within Israel as a political weapon against any opposition. Menachen Begin eventually agreed to a public inquiry into the massacre and the committee lead by supreme justice Achoen found Sharon unfit for ministerial duty. In the short term, Sharon&#8217;s conviction was regarded as a victory for sense. In the long term, the conviction was taken by the right wing as proof of Sharon&#8217;s devotion to the &#8216;Iron Wall&#8217; philosophy. In other words it made him the ideal Israeli Prime Minister when the time came.</p> <p>The result of the Lebanon war is not yet clear as the war is not completely over. What is clear is that it took Israeli forces almost twenty years to get out of Lebanon. While being in Lebanon the Israeli army has managed to lose its &#8216;power of deterrence&#8217;. The Israeli army&#8211;the best-equipped army in the Middle East&#8211;found itself totally defeated by the Hizbulah, a small, devoted group of guerilla fighters. In the shadow of the Israeli defeat in Lebanon, the Palestinian people within the occupied territories started to redevelop their nationalistic aspirations. In 1987 this aspiration matured into the first Palestinian uprising, the first Intifada.</p> <p>Since the Lebanon war, the Israeli &#8216;power of deterrence&#8217; has continued to deteriorate. The IDF has not managed to develop the fighting skills to overcome Lebanese civil resistance. On top of this, following the Oslo Accord, the Israeli civilian population has faced a growing threat of terror inside Israel. For the first time in Israeli history, the civil population found itself within a war zone. This is an important point. In the Israeli world-view it is Arabs who are supposed to die, not Israelis. There are two main reasons: 1. it calls to mind (and takes as its justification) the holocaust in which Jews were dying just because they were Jews; 2. it goes directly against the idea of &#8216;offensive doctrine&#8217;. Israelis had become used to the fact that any confrontation with the Arab world took place on Arab land. Suddenly the confrontation was starting to take place in the centre of Israeli cities&#8211;a catastrophe and totally unacceptable. In the light of Palestinian terror, a strong right wing slogan appeared: &#8220;Let the IDF win&#8221;, meaning: Let us once again erect the Iron Wall. Who is the right man for the job? Without doubt Ariel Sharon: the master of the offensive doctrine, and Israel&#8217;s most celebrated war criminal; the man who proved to know no mercy. And the Israelis were right. It took Sharon just one year in office to commit the massacre in Jenin.</p> <p>The operation in the Jenin refugee camp was, more or less, the embodiment of what the offensive doctrine is all about. It was taking place, more or less, on enemy land. It was, more or less, fast, and it was, more or less, a &#8216;clear cut&#8217; victory. The &#8216;more or less&#8217; is crucial. Jenin is not really on enemy land, it is territory invaded by Israel. It looks as if the Israeli colonial forces are the first colonialists to destroy and demolish their own colonies. It took the Israelis a little too long to declare that the battle in Jenin was over, the might of the Israeli armed forces was not enough to break the spirit of the few determined Palestinian freedom fighters. Lastly, if it was a clear victory, it is not entirely clear who won. The Israelis? As T. Larson, the UN envoy to the Middle East, put it &#8220;in Jenin, Israel has lost its moral high-ground&#8221;. For this statement Mr Larson became persona non grata in the Jewish state. If anything is clear it is that, after Jenin, the Palestinians are determined to fight and do what ever it takes to achieve their freedom.</p> <p>Analysing the Jenin battle and the Israeli decision making process in the light of the offensive doctrine gives us the following: on the morning of April 3, Israeli ground forces enter into the Jenin refugee camp. From the start they encounter some fierce Palestinian fighting. Naturally the Israeli High Command provides more support, and more tanks and helicopter gun-ships move in. It is unusual to use tanks and helicopter gun-ships in highly populated areas but within the IDF offensive doctrine, the end (victory) is far more important than the means (war crimes). In the mean time, Israeli commanders on the ground are coming under severe pressure to complete their mission. They use heavier weaponry, air-to-ground missiles as well as tanks, and they care less and less about who is getting killed as long as they are Arabs. As a result more civilians get hit: the scene on the ground starts to look wantonly destructive. The Israeli High Command decides to seal the area. Press and rescue forces are not allowed in. Now the forces on the ground are working against time. They must provide a clear-cut conclusion. So they decide to wipe out the centre of the camp suspected to be a &#8216;pocket of resistance&#8217;. In doing so they kill many civilians, mainly old and disabled people who could not run away. When the battle is over Jenin is a slaughterhouse; the streets show the most terrifying scenes imaginable. Civilian corpses all over the place, the many Palestinian wounded bleeding to death. Still the Israelis show no mercy, still the Red Cross and rescue forces are not allowed in. The Israelis must decide whether to show mercy, to save those who can be saved or whether to try to conceal the evidence of shocking crimes against humanity. Naturally, following Sharon&#8217;s history of crimes against humanity, the decision is fairly simple. The Israelis decide to bulldoze the centre of the Jenin refugee camp. They turn the Jenin camp into a &#8216;Palestinian Ground Zero&#8217;. Occupied houses are blown up with their inhabitants inside, like the Quibya massacre fifty years earlier.</p> <p>But, although the similarities are obvious, there are important differences. In Quibya, Sharon was a platoon commander, in Jenin he is an elected Prime Minister. He commits his crime in the name of all the Israeli people. As expected, as soon as international criticism is voiced, Sharon defines the current battle as the &#8216;war for the existence of the Jewish nation&#8217;. So, according to Sharon, the massacre in Jenin was carried out not only in the name of all Israelis but in the name of all Jewish people. And if this was not enough, Sharon declares that, like George Bush, he is conducting a holy war on terror. This kind of talk is directed at the American people. Sharon becomes an American messenger or, at least, an American platoon commander. As we have seen both the Jewish world and American administrations have restrained from criticising Sharon publicly. We can conclude that Sharon is committing his war crimes both in the name of the Jewish people and the American nation unless proved differently. Unless some major Rabbis stand up and firmly denounce Sharon&#8217;s atrocities; unless the American administration decides to stop supporting the Jewish state; unless these two happen soon, Sharon will seem to be acting in the name both of the Jewish people and the American nation.</p> <p>Clearly, seen through Israeli eyes, Sharon is the right man for the job. He is the embodiment of everything Israel is about. He is offensive, murderous and righteous. Sharon has proved once again that he acts as a self-sufficient Iron Wall. The only real question remaining is whether we want to live in a world in which Israel, a criminally offensive state, is accepted amongst nations.</p> <p>Gilad Atzmon is an acclaimed jazz musician (saxophonist/clarinettist), the top selling jazz musician in the UK. His group is the Orient House Ensemble. He is also the author of a novel, Guide to the Perplexed, just published in Israel to great acclaim.</p>

Ariel Sharon and the Iron Wall Strategy

https://counterpunch.org/2002/08/13/ariel-sharon-and-the-iron-wall-strategy/

2002-08-13

4left

From the start Zionist thought has been divided into two main schools On the one hand we have the heavyhanded school which favours military solutions to any conflict The revisionist leader Ze8217ev Jabotinsky was the founder of this school In 1923 he published an article entitled 8216The Iron Wall8217 in which he argued that Arabs would never accept a Jewish state and so the Jews must 8220erect an iron wall of Jewish military force8221 Zionists must thus have an overwhelmingly superior base of power to deal with any Arabic tendency to resist The other school is the school of reconciliation adhered to by moderate Zionists like Moshe Sharet It believes that all the regional regimes and political powers can accept the existence of a Jewish state and all available diplomatic efforts should be made to achieve reconciliation with the Arab World These two conflicting ideologies have been apparent since the early day so Zionism After the declaration of the State of Israel they lead to harsh political debate In practise Ben Gurion the first Israeli PM adopted Jabotinsky8217s 8216Iron Wall8217 philosophy This at first seems a bizarre move politically as Jabotinsky8217s philosophy is in opposition to Ben Gurion8217s own party8217s policies However Israeli manoeuvres and operations in the 1948 war give a clear picture of their endorsement of a military option together with a denial of any possible diplomatic solution Ben Gurion instructed the IDF Israel Defence Forces to follow an offensive military strategy to show Israel8217s military superiority His instructions were as follows 1 Any confrontation between Arab and Israeli must take place on Arab land8211any Israeli offensive must bring the battle to the Arab territories before it even starts 2 Because of limited Israeli funds any battle must bring victory quickly8211the Israeli army must inflict devastating damage on Arab enemies The Israeli military and political leaders soon defined the criterion by which to measure success8211the IDF 8216force of deterrence8217 It is a scale that determines the Arabic unwillingness to fight the greater the unwillingness the higher the 8216force of deterrence8217 For Ben Gurion and his followers it was crucial the Arab world clearly understood that Israel preferred a military solution Any given battle should end with a clearcut Israeli victory More importantly still was that the Arabs should know that any confrontation would inevitably lead to their defeat Success of the Israeli offensive strategy was measured by the extent to which the Arab willingness to fight decreased This pattern was already evident in the early stages of the 1948 war a war in which the Israelis violated the human rights of Palestinian civilians The war created more than 700000 Palestinian refugees and led to an armistice between Israel and its neighbours an armistice that Arabs regarded as a clear defeat By the early Fifties Israel had managed further to refine this offensive doctrine According to Ben Gurion any loss of Jewish life must be compensated for in a disproportionate way Arabs had to learn that Jewish blood was of far higher value than their own To achieve the best possible results a young assertive aggressive and ambitious commander named Ariel Sharon was called upon He was asked to form a small special commando unit whose role was to show the Arab enemy the extent of Israel8217s determination to win under any circumstances In 1953 Palestinians crossed the Israeli border near the Jordanian village of Quibya and murdered a Jewish mother and her two children Sharon and his commando unit now called the 82161018217 were called to action They were ordered to enter the village to blow up the houses and inflict as much damage on their inhabitants as possible Sharon was very much the right man for the job The raid was a complete success Similar to the recent violence in the Jenin refugee camp where homes were destroyed with their inhabitants inside Quibya was reduced to a pile of rubble More than fifty houses were destroyed and 61 civilians mostly women and children were killed A UN observer visiting the site concluded that the villagers had been forced to stay in their houses which were then blown up The Quibya massacre was internationally condemned In an Israeli parliamentary debate Moshe Sharet the moderate foreign minister called for an official statement of regret for the action Ben Gurion thought differently During a radio broadcast the next day he denied IDF involvement in the raid and blamed it on retaliating Israeli villagers pushed beyond endurance As we know Sharon8217s military career did not suffer quite the opposite Sharon and the 82161018217 became the role model for the new Hebrew military man a soldier who murders attacks beyond enemy lines who goes far beyond orders even if it means disregarding all concept of humanity Not only did Sharon8217s career not suffer he was seen as the most promising young Israeli officer and he was swiftly promoted within army ranks inspiring other young officers to follow in his footsteps Historically the Quibya massacre was the first in a chain of retaliation raids carried out by the Israeli army These raids shaped Israeli offensive strategy into a new form of murderous art A way of thinking that not only led to endless confrontation with the Arab world but also created an ever growing ignorance within Israeli society A society concerned solely with its own interests while denying anyone else8217s Looking at it from an Israeli perspective the offensive doctrine enjoys two major advantages Firstly it communicates with Arabs in the only language they understand8211violence Secondly it provokes condemnation from the international community something that Israelis translate into immediate political gain It is hard to believe but most Israelis believe that Arabs only understand violence Throughout Israel8217s history there is very little evidence of diplomacy towards Arabs Even the Oslo Accord is rooted in specific historical circumstances the PLO was in political and financial ruin following their support of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War And then from the very beginning of the supposed implementation of the Oslo Accord Israel used military threats to pressurise the Palestinians The vast majority of Israeli cabinet members past and present are exmilitary men Only a state that has decided to live by the sword and firmly believes in military solutions would put so many generals in its government Israeli Prime Ministers actually love to be condemned by the international community Any foreign criticism of Israel is interpreted as 8216the pathological antisemitic behaviour of gentiles8217 Israeli politician learn to use this tool early in their careers Ben Gurion laid down the pattern 8220It doesn8217t matter what the gentile says what matters is what the Jews do8221 With this statement that legendary PM managed to instantly remind his voters of the history of Jewish persecution pushing the Jewish people deeper into their safehaven of segregation to denial of the outside world Since in Hebrew the world for gentile82118216goy82178211is derogatory Ben Gurion8217s directive to ignore the gentile allows Israelis to celebrate their superiority to the rest of mankind Ben Gurion8217s statement is a call for Israelis to unite behind their leadership and reject any form of foreign criticism In the Israeli case the offensive doctrine leaves the international community powerless On the one hand lack of criticism is taken by the Israeli public as approval or as a sign of weakness On the other any international condemnation leads to increased public support for the political leadership This may explain the continuous shift to the right in Israeli politics It also explains the international community8217s lack of means to deal with Israeli oppression and atrocities Sharon8217s military and political career shows that he follows his mentor Ben Gurion religiously Sharon adopted the offensive doctrine in political life and in military terms He was the leading figure in the forming and shaping of Israeli retaliation raids and commando attacks This strategy led the Israelis deep into the Sinai desert in the 8216Suez Operation8217 1956 Following Colonel Sharon8217s orders Israeli paratroopers landed in the 8216Mitle Pass8217 in the heart of the Sinai desert with the objective to cause heavy losses to the Egyptian army In practice the battle cost too many Israeli lives and within a short space of time Israel had to pull its forces out of the Sinai The operation was regarded as a waste of human life In the 821773 war General Sharon led his brigade across the Suez Canal Again the battle costs too many Israeli lives Sharon refused to let his higher command show restraint he believed the sight of an Israeli soldier on the western bank of the Suez Canal would bring the Egyptians to their knees Egypt brought in some heavy international pressure and Israel had to withdraw its forces Furthermore the ceasefire talks led to peace talks 1977 in which Israel 8216lost8217 the Sinai forever In the Lebanon War 1982 Sharon now Minister for Defence led the cabinet to believe that the Palestinian issue could be silenced forever by a military assault against the PLO in Lebanon He was determined to generate a light conflict a mini war with Syria in order to wipe their forces out of southern Lebanon The Israeli offensive doctrine does not dissociate between Arabs From the perspective of the 8216Iron Wall8217 all Arabs are the same From the very early stages of the Lebanese campaign it was evident that Israel was being drawn into a vicious civil war between the different Lebanese ethnic and religious groups As predicted by some Israeli intelligence experts shortly after the invasion of Lebanon the most terrible massacres of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila took place The Christian militias who carried out the massacres received approval from Israeli high command to enter the camps While Israeli forces were not directly involved in the massacres themselves Israel was regarded as responsible for the atrocities taking place within its invaded territory The massacres were condemned by the international community In Israel the leftwing movement 8216Peace Now8217 managed to bring thousands of people into the streets to demonstrate against the government In a speech to the Israeli parliament reflecting on the left8217s opposition to the Lebanese campaign Menachem Begin the then Prime Minister complained that 8220gentiles kill gentiles and the Jews are blaming each other8221 This again follows the Israeli rightwing pattern using the international outrage to delegitimise the Israeli left Begin blamed the Israeli left for collaborating with the gentile antisemites against the Jewish Sharon So again international outrage generated by an Israeli offensive was used within Israel as a political weapon against any opposition Menachen Begin eventually agreed to a public inquiry into the massacre and the committee lead by supreme justice Achoen found Sharon unfit for ministerial duty In the short term Sharon8217s conviction was regarded as a victory for sense In the long term the conviction was taken by the right wing as proof of Sharon8217s devotion to the 8216Iron Wall8217 philosophy In other words it made him the ideal Israeli Prime Minister when the time came The result of the Lebanon war is not yet clear as the war is not completely over What is clear is that it took Israeli forces almost twenty years to get out of Lebanon While being in Lebanon the Israeli army has managed to lose its 8216power of deterrence8217 The Israeli army8211the bestequipped army in the Middle East8211found itself totally defeated by the Hizbulah a small devoted group of guerilla fighters In the shadow of the Israeli defeat in Lebanon the Palestinian people within the occupied territories started to redevelop their nationalistic aspirations In 1987 this aspiration matured into the first Palestinian uprising the first Intifada Since the Lebanon war the Israeli 8216power of deterrence8217 has continued to deteriorate The IDF has not managed to develop the fighting skills to overcome Lebanese civil resistance On top of this following the Oslo Accord the Israeli civilian population has faced a growing threat of terror inside Israel For the first time in Israeli history the civil population found itself within a war zone This is an important point In the Israeli worldview it is Arabs who are supposed to die not Israelis There are two main reasons 1 it calls to mind and takes as its justification the holocaust in which Jews were dying just because they were Jews 2 it goes directly against the idea of 8216offensive doctrine8217 Israelis had become used to the fact that any confrontation with the Arab world took place on Arab land Suddenly the confrontation was starting to take place in the centre of Israeli cities8211a catastrophe and totally unacceptable In the light of Palestinian terror a strong right wing slogan appeared 8220Let the IDF win8221 meaning Let us once again erect the Iron Wall Who is the right man for the job Without doubt Ariel Sharon the master of the offensive doctrine and Israel8217s most celebrated war criminal the man who proved to know no mercy And the Israelis were right It took Sharon just one year in office to commit the massacre in Jenin The operation in the Jenin refugee camp was more or less the embodiment of what the offensive doctrine is all about It was taking place more or less on enemy land It was more or less fast and it was more or less a 8216clear cut8217 victory The 8216more or less8217 is crucial Jenin is not really on enemy land it is territory invaded by Israel It looks as if the Israeli colonial forces are the first colonialists to destroy and demolish their own colonies It took the Israelis a little too long to declare that the battle in Jenin was over the might of the Israeli armed forces was not enough to break the spirit of the few determined Palestinian freedom fighters Lastly if it was a clear victory it is not entirely clear who won The Israelis As T Larson the UN envoy to the Middle East put it 8220in Jenin Israel has lost its moral highground8221 For this statement Mr Larson became persona non grata in the Jewish state If anything is clear it is that after Jenin the Palestinians are determined to fight and do what ever it takes to achieve their freedom Analysing the Jenin battle and the Israeli decision making process in the light of the offensive doctrine gives us the following on the morning of April 3 Israeli ground forces enter into the Jenin refugee camp From the start they encounter some fierce Palestinian fighting Naturally the Israeli High Command provides more support and more tanks and helicopter gunships move in It is unusual to use tanks and helicopter gunships in highly populated areas but within the IDF offensive doctrine the end victory is far more important than the means war crimes In the mean time Israeli commanders on the ground are coming under severe pressure to complete their mission They use heavier weaponry airtoground missiles as well as tanks and they care less and less about who is getting killed as long as they are Arabs As a result more civilians get hit the scene on the ground starts to look wantonly destructive The Israeli High Command decides to seal the area Press and rescue forces are not allowed in Now the forces on the ground are working against time They must provide a clearcut conclusion So they decide to wipe out the centre of the camp suspected to be a 8216pocket of resistance8217 In doing so they kill many civilians mainly old and disabled people who could not run away When the battle is over Jenin is a slaughterhouse the streets show the most terrifying scenes imaginable Civilian corpses all over the place the many Palestinian wounded bleeding to death Still the Israelis show no mercy still the Red Cross and rescue forces are not allowed in The Israelis must decide whether to show mercy to save those who can be saved or whether to try to conceal the evidence of shocking crimes against humanity Naturally following Sharon8217s history of crimes against humanity the decision is fairly simple The Israelis decide to bulldoze the centre of the Jenin refugee camp They turn the Jenin camp into a 8216Palestinian Ground Zero8217 Occupied houses are blown up with their inhabitants inside like the Quibya massacre fifty years earlier But although the similarities are obvious there are important differences In Quibya Sharon was a platoon commander in Jenin he is an elected Prime Minister He commits his crime in the name of all the Israeli people As expected as soon as international criticism is voiced Sharon defines the current battle as the 8216war for the existence of the Jewish nation8217 So according to Sharon the massacre in Jenin was carried out not only in the name of all Israelis but in the name of all Jewish people And if this was not enough Sharon declares that like George Bush he is conducting a holy war on terror This kind of talk is directed at the American people Sharon becomes an American messenger or at least an American platoon commander As we have seen both the Jewish world and American administrations have restrained from criticising Sharon publicly We can conclude that Sharon is committing his war crimes both in the name of the Jewish people and the American nation unless proved differently Unless some major Rabbis stand up and firmly denounce Sharon8217s atrocities unless the American administration decides to stop supporting the Jewish state unless these two happen soon Sharon will seem to be acting in the name both of the Jewish people and the American nation Clearly seen through Israeli eyes Sharon is the right man for the job He is the embodiment of everything Israel is about He is offensive murderous and righteous Sharon has proved once again that he acts as a selfsufficient Iron Wall The only real question remaining is whether we want to live in a world in which Israel a criminally offensive state is accepted amongst nations Gilad Atzmon is an acclaimed jazz musician saxophonistclarinettist the top selling jazz musician in the UK His group is the Orient House Ensemble He is also the author of a novel Guide to the Perplexed just published in Israel to great acclaim

From/ADP the/DET start/NOUN Zionist/ADJ thought/NOUN has/AUX been/AUX divided/VERB into/ADP two/NUM main/ADJ schools/NOUN On/ADP the/DET one/NUM hand/NOUN we/PRON have/VERB the/DET heavyhanded/VERB school/NOUN which/PRON favours/VERB military/ADJ solutions/NOUN to/ADP any/DET conflict/NOUN The/DET revisionist/NOUN leader/NOUN Ze8217ev/PROPN Jabotinsky/PROPN was/AUX the/DET founder/NOUN of/ADP this/DET school/NOUN In/ADP 1923/NUM he/PRON published/VERB an/DET article/NOUN entitled/VERB 8216The/PROPN Iron/PROPN Wall8217/PROPN in/ADP which/PRON he/PRON argued/VERB that/SCONJ Arabs/PROPN would/AUX never/ADV accept/VERB a/DET Jewish/ADJ state/NOUN and/CCONJ so/ADV the/DET Jews/PROPN must/AUX 8220erect/VERB an/DET iron/NOUN wall/NOUN of/ADP Jewish/ADJ military/NOUN force8221/PROPN Zionists/PROPN must/AUX thus/ADV have/VERB an/DET overwhelmingly/ADV superior/ADJ base/NOUN of/ADP power/NOUN to/PART deal/VERB with/ADP any/DET Arabic/ADJ tendency/NOUN to/PART resist/VERB The/DET other/ADJ school/NOUN is/AUX the/DET school/NOUN of/ADP reconciliation/NOUN adhered/VERB to/ADP by/ADP moderate/ADJ Zionists/PROPN like/ADP Moshe/PROPN Sharet/PROPN It/PRON believes/VERB that/SCONJ all/DET the/DET regional/ADJ regimes/NOUN and/CCONJ political/ADJ powers/NOUN can/AUX accept/VERB the/DET existence/NOUN of/ADP a/DET Jewish/ADJ state/NOUN and/CCONJ all/DET available/ADJ diplomatic/ADJ efforts/NOUN should/AUX be/AUX made/VERB to/PART achieve/VERB reconciliation/NOUN with/ADP the/DET Arab/PROPN World/PROPN These/DET two/NUM conflicting/VERB ideologies/NOUN have/AUX been/AUX apparent/ADJ since/SCONJ the/DET early/ADJ day/NOUN so/ADV Zionism/PROPN After/ADP the/DET declaration/NOUN of/ADP the/DET State/PROPN of/ADP Israel/PROPN they/PRON lead/VERB to/ADP harsh/ADJ political/ADJ debate/NOUN In/ADP practise/NOUN Ben/PROPN Gurion/PROPN the/DET first/ADJ Israeli/ADJ PM/NOUN adopted/VERB Jabotinsky8217s/PROPN 8216Iron/PROPN Wall8217/PROPN philosophy/NOUN This/PRON at/ADP first/ADV seems/VERB a/DET bizarre/ADJ move/NOUN politically/ADV as/SCONJ Jabotinsky8217s/PROPN philosophy/NOUN is/AUX in/ADP opposition/NOUN to/ADP Ben/PROPN Gurion8217s/PROPN own/VERB party8217s/PROPN policies/NOUN However/ADV Israeli/ADJ manoeuvres/NOUN and/CCONJ operations/NOUN in/ADP the/DET 1948/NUM war/NOUN give/VERB a/DET clear/ADJ picture/NOUN of/ADP their/PRON endorsement/NOUN of/ADP a/DET military/ADJ option/NOUN together/ADV with/ADP a/DET denial/NOUN of/ADP any/DET possible/ADJ diplomatic/ADJ solution/NOUN Ben/PROPN Gurion/PROPN instructed/VERB the/DET IDF/PROPN Israel/PROPN Defence/PROPN Forces/PROPN to/PART follow/VERB an/DET offensive/ADJ military/ADJ strategy/NOUN to/PART show/VERB Israel8217s/PROPN military/ADJ superiority/NOUN His/PRON instructions/NOUN were/AUX as/SCONJ follows/VERB 1/NUM Any/DET confrontation/NOUN between/ADP Arab/ADJ and/CCONJ Israeli/ADJ must/AUX take/VERB place/NOUN on/ADP Arab/ADJ land8211any/NOUN Israeli/ADJ offensive/NOUN must/AUX bring/VERB the/DET battle/NOUN to/ADP the/DET Arab/ADJ territories/NOUN before/SCONJ it/PRON even/ADV starts/VERB 2/NUM Because/SCONJ of/ADP limited/ADJ Israeli/ADJ funds/NOUN any/DET battle/NOUN must/AUX bring/VERB victory/NOUN quickly8211the/DET Israeli/ADJ army/NOUN must/AUX inflict/VERB devastating/ADJ damage/NOUN on/ADP Arab/ADJ enemies/NOUN The/DET Israeli/ADJ military/ADJ and/CCONJ political/ADJ leaders/NOUN soon/ADV defined/VERB the/DET criterion/NOUN by/ADP which/PRON to/PART measure/VERB success8211the/DET IDF/PROPN 8216force/NOUN of/ADP deterrence8217/PROPN It/PRON is/AUX a/DET scale/NOUN that/PRON determines/VERB the/DET Arabic/ADJ unwillingness/NOUN to/PART fight/VERB the/DET greater/ADJ the/DET unwillingness/NOUN the/PRON higher/ADJ the/DET 8216force/NOUN of/ADP deterrence8217/PROPN For/ADP Ben/PROPN Gurion/PROPN and/CCONJ his/PRON followers/NOUN it/PRON was/AUX crucial/ADJ the/DET Arab/ADJ world/NOUN clearly/ADV understood/VERB that/SCONJ Israel/PROPN preferred/VERB a/DET military/ADJ solution/NOUN 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Arabs/PROPN regarded/VERB as/ADP a/DET clear/ADJ defeat/NOUN By/ADP the/DET early/ADJ Fifties/PROPN Israel/PROPN had/AUX managed/VERB further/ADV to/PART refine/VERB this/DET offensive/ADJ doctrine/NOUN According/VERB to/ADP Ben/PROPN Gurion/PROPN any/DET loss/NOUN of/ADP Jewish/ADJ life/NOUN must/AUX be/AUX compensated/VERB for/ADP in/ADP a/DET disproportionate/ADJ way/NOUN Arabs/PROPN had/VERB to/PART learn/VERB that/SCONJ Jewish/ADJ blood/NOUN was/AUX of/ADP far/ADV higher/ADJ value/NOUN than/ADP their/PRON own/ADJ To/PART achieve/VERB the/DET best/ADJ possible/ADJ results/NOUN a/DET young/ADJ assertive/ADJ aggressive/ADJ and/CCONJ ambitious/ADJ commander/NOUN named/VERB Ariel/PROPN Sharon/PROPN was/AUX called/VERB upon/SCONJ He/PRON was/AUX asked/VERB to/PART form/VERB a/DET small/ADJ special/ADJ commando/NOUN unit/NOUN whose/DET role/NOUN was/AUX to/PART show/VERB the/DET Arab/ADJ enemy/NOUN the/DET extent/NOUN of/ADP Israel8217s/ADJ determination/NOUN to/PART win/VERB under/ADP any/DET circumstances/NOUN In/ADP 1953/NUM Palestinians/PROPN crossed/VERB the/DET Israeli/ADJ border/NOUN near/ADP the/DET Jordanian/ADJ village/NOUN of/ADP Quibya/PROPN and/CCONJ murdered/VERB a/DET Jewish/ADJ mother/NOUN and/CCONJ her/PRON two/NUM children/NOUN Sharon/PROPN and/CCONJ his/PRON commando/NOUN unit/NOUN now/ADV called/VERB the/DET 82161018217/NUM were/AUX called/VERB to/ADP action/NOUN They/PRON were/AUX ordered/VERB to/PART enter/VERB the/DET village/NOUN to/PART blow/VERB up/ADP the/DET houses/NOUN and/CCONJ inflict/VERB as/ADV much/ADJ damage/NOUN on/ADP their/PRON inhabitants/NOUN as/ADP possible/ADJ Sharon/PROPN was/AUX very/ADV much/ADV the/DET right/ADJ man/NOUN for/ADP the/DET job/NOUN The/DET raid/NOUN was/AUX a/DET complete/ADJ success/NOUN Similar/ADJ to/ADP the/DET recent/ADJ violence/NOUN in/ADP the/DET Jenin/PROPN refugee/NOUN camp/NOUN where/SCONJ homes/NOUN were/AUX destroyed/VERB with/ADP their/PRON inhabitants/NOUN inside/ADP Quibya/PROPN was/AUX reduced/VERB to/ADP a/DET pile/NOUN of/ADP rubble/NOUN More/ADJ than/ADP fifty/NUM houses/NOUN were/AUX destroyed/VERB and/CCONJ 61/NUM civilians/NOUN mostly/ADV women/NOUN and/CCONJ children/NOUN were/AUX killed/VERB A/DET UN/PROPN observer/NOUN visiting/VERB the/DET site/NOUN concluded/VERB that/SCONJ the/DET villagers/NOUN had/AUX been/AUX forced/VERB to/PART stay/VERB in/ADP their/PRON houses/NOUN which/PRON were/AUX then/ADV blown/VERB up/ADP The/DET Quibya/PROPN massacre/NOUN was/AUX internationally/ADV condemned/VERB In/ADP an/DET Israeli/ADJ parliamentary/ADJ debate/NOUN Moshe/PROPN Sharet/PROPN the/DET moderate/ADJ foreign/ADJ minister/NOUN called/VERB for/ADP an/DET official/ADJ statement/NOUN of/ADP regret/NOUN for/ADP the/DET action/NOUN Ben/PROPN Gurion/PROPN thought/VERB differently/ADV During/ADP a/DET radio/NOUN broadcast/VERB the/DET next/ADJ day/NOUN he/PRON denied/VERB IDF/PROPN involvement/NOUN in/ADP the/DET raid/NOUN and/CCONJ blamed/VERB it/PRON on/ADP retaliating/VERB Israeli/ADJ villagers/NOUN pushed/VERB beyond/ADP endurance/NOUN As/SCONJ we/PRON know/VERB Sharon8217s/PROPN military/ADJ career/NOUN did/AUX not/PART suffer/VERB quite/DET the/DET opposite/ADJ Sharon/PROPN and/CCONJ the/DET 82161018217/NUM became/VERB the/DET role/NOUN model/NOUN for/ADP the/DET new/ADJ Hebrew/PROPN military/ADJ man/NOUN a/DET soldier/NOUN who/PRON murders/VERB attacks/NOUN beyond/ADP enemy/NOUN lines/NOUN who/PRON goes/VERB far/ADV beyond/ADP orders/NOUN even/ADV if/SCONJ it/PRON means/VERB disregarding/VERB all/DET concept/NOUN of/ADP humanity/NOUN Not/PART only/ADV did/AUX Sharon8217s/PROPN career/NOUN not/PART suffer/VERB he/PRON was/AUX seen/VERB as/ADP the/DET most/ADV promising/ADJ young/ADJ Israeli/ADJ officer/NOUN and/CCONJ he/PRON was/AUX swiftly/ADV promoted/VERB within/ADP army/NOUN ranks/VERB inspiring/VERB other/ADJ young/ADJ officers/NOUN to/PART follow/VERB in/ADP his/PRON footsteps/NOUN Historically/ADV the/DET Quibya/PROPN massacre/NOUN was/AUX the/DET first/ADJ in/ADP a/DET chain/NOUN of/ADP retaliation/NOUN raids/NOUN carried/VERB out/ADP by/ADP the/DET Israeli/ADJ army/NOUN These/DET raids/NOUN shaped/VERB Israeli/ADJ offensive/ADJ strategy/NOUN into/ADP a/DET new/ADJ form/NOUN of/ADP murderous/ADJ art/NOUN A/DET way/NOUN of/ADP thinking/NOUN that/SCONJ not/PART only/ADV led/VERB to/ADP endless/ADJ confrontation/NOUN with/ADP the/DET Arab/ADJ world/NOUN but/CCONJ also/ADV created/VERB an/DET ever/ADV growing/VERB ignorance/NOUN within/ADP Israeli/ADJ society/NOUN A/DET society/NOUN concerned/VERB solely/ADV with/ADP its/PRON own/ADJ interests/NOUN while/SCONJ denying/VERB anyone/PRON else8217s/PRON Looking/VERB at/ADP it/PRON from/ADP an/DET Israeli/ADJ perspective/NOUN the/DET offensive/ADJ doctrine/NOUN enjoys/VERB two/NUM major/ADJ advantages/NOUN Firstly/ADV it/PRON communicates/VERB with/ADP Arabs/PROPN in/ADP the/DET only/ADJ language/NOUN they/PRON understand8211violence/VERB Secondly/ADV 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<p>MILAN (AP) &#8212; With social and political crises unsettling the globe, Milan Fashion Week was all about slogans this season. "Time For Change" has been a particularly dominant catchphrase, one the fashion world can expect to see branded across sweatshirts, waistbands and accessories next fall and winter.</p> <p>The ubiquity of the expression does not necessarily denote consensus around the message it's designed to convey. For some, it means back to roots. Others intend it as a call for respect.</p> <p>But the overall implication seems to be a rejection of the status quo, which really isn't surprising in fashion.</p> <p>Naturally, Miuccia Prada is the outlier. Prada eschewed words because they have become empty. Where they appeared on prints in her new looks, words were meaningless.</p> <p>The second day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear previews for Fall-Winter 2018-19 opened with youthful designers focused on urban street wear that tries to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial consumers.</p> <p>Here are some highlights from Sunday's shows, including Prada, Dirk Bikkembergs, MSGM and DSquared2:</p> <p>___</p> <p>PRADA'S STRANGE PACKAGES</p> <p>In challenging times, it is not unusual to seek the familiar. For Miuccia Prada, there is comfort in black nylon.</p> <p>The designer generously employs her favored material in her pieces for the next cold weather season, padding them and applying them in protective layers.</p> <p>The boxy shapes for men and women appear to conceal the wearer in a unisex vein, but it is all for naught: Identity badges suggested a form of surveillance in the runway scenario. That sense of excessive control transforms into a political statement once the garments are on the rack and available to consumers.</p> <p>"I think we are in a moment when these aspects of control are very relevant," the designer said after the show.</p> <p>Despite the collection's utilitarian nature creating a sort of uniform of anoraks, jackets, caps, straight trousers and skirts, Prada said she also wanted to convey elegance.</p> <p>Beyond the dystopian looks, she included tourist-grade short-sleeved knits, or wild print short-shirt combos for men, and slit-skirt suits in bright tones paired with open-toe heels and long leather gloves for women.</p> <p>Prada enlisted architects to design new accessories, including a padded front pack that could stand in as a form of body amour, and a utility tool apron. Artists came up with the prints, including burning bananas and meaningless strings of words.</p> <p>"Now they no longer represent concepts, but they are pure decoration," she said.</p> <p>The runway show was in a newly repurposed industrial building near the Prada Foundation contemporary art space. Unusually shaped and labeled crates were stacked along the walls. Prada promised they concealed strange things "that are preparing for some strange transformation."</p> <p>The narrow aisles created a sense of disorientation as the fashionistas struggled to find their seats. That seemed an apt metaphor for the state of the world.</p> <p>"We don't know where we are going, which is of course scary, of course interesting. Because I feel big changes are happening," the designer said. "Some people say beauty will save the world. I think the world will be saved by intelligence, humanity and generosity. And possibly love. But of course the aesthetic can help, a little help, if you can afford it."</p> <p>___</p> <p>MSGM GOES TO BACK TO BASICS</p> <p>Milan university students served as both models and inspiration for the new MSGM collection. Taking their cue, brand founder Massimo Giorgetti found himself making an unexpected turn toward the dapper with hints of classic Milanese styling.</p> <p>"I studied the attitude of these guys, and it is less street wear than usual without losing modernity," Giorgetti said. "Some are very, very elegant. The concept of elegant Milan, Italy, needs to be restudied also by a brand like mine. There's an evolution going on."</p> <p>The silhouette veered toward the everyday, neither too slim nor oversized. Looks included snazzy suits with zip-up jackets in pink or red worn with ties, as well as plaid trousers paired with cardigans and jumpsuits. Giorgetti collaborated with Eastpak on a series of graphic printed backpacks and travel bags.</p> <p>The designer emblazoned the collection with phrases of graffiti he collected from the desks, tables and restrooms of Milan's universities. They included "Tempo per cambiare," Italian for "Time for Change," along with the Italian phonetic rendering of "I love you" as "hailoveiu."</p> <p>Here, "Time for Change" clearly meant honoring roots and not looking abroad for validation.</p> <p>"They are very serious, very clever and very positive," the designer said of the Milan students he worked with. "And they love their country."</p> <p>___</p> <p>DUTCH MUSINGS AT DIRK BIKKEMBERGS</p> <p>Dutch style, painting and design were all reflected in Lee Wood's latest collection for Belgian label Dirk Bikkembergs.</p> <p>And in keeping with the down-to-earth Dutch nature, the collection was full of necessary items. A rain-resistant technical down coat was worn with tailored pants for an urban look merging sportswear with sartorial tradition.</p> <p>"A man needs to be authentic," Woods said backstage. "We have a thousand things to do and life goes on. They are not heavy garments. They are basics, things we need."</p> <p>The dark palette of navy blue, black and gray was inspired by paintings in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and included contrasts of deep cerulean blue, vermillion red and saffron yellow. The mixing of materials, such as in a nylon parka with a wool back panel and knit waistband, drew from a Rotterdam architectural institute. Straps on pockets echoed the ones on leather footwear.</p> <p>Wood said he was drawn to the Netherlands by coincidence. The models he was selecting came from there and the music a DJ played at casting sessions was Dutch.</p> <p>"I said I think I have to go, and visit this world," he said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>WESTERN DOINGS AT DSQUARED2</p> <p>Model Bella Hadid bookended the runway show for DSquared2, the label of Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten, opening as a cowgirl in plaid over denim and closing as a chic hippie in a tiered handkerchief gown worn with a big fur coat.</p> <p>DSquared2 adhered to the recent Milan trend of combining the men's and women's shows, scheduling theirs during the less hectic January round focusing on menswear.</p> <p>Red plaid emerged as the prevailing print in the Western-themed collection. The mood ranged from a little bit country to a little bit rockabilly to a little bit hippie chic. Oversized knitwear served as tableaus for western scenes.</p> <p>Any classic cowboy would feel at ease in the suede coat with sheepskin linings, while leather vests layered over flowing white peasant shirts for men or dresses for women gave an edge to the usual boho styling.</p> <p>The accessories of the season: big Double-D belt buckles and sequin neck scarves for men, or shiny sequin cuffs for him or her.</p> <p>____</p> <p>MEDITATIVE DESIGNS AT SARTORIAL MONK</p> <p>Sabato Russo isn't your usual designer making his Milan runway debut, supported by the Italian Fashion Chamber. He has decades of experience behind him, first as a model, and then working in the fashion industry in Japan and New York.</p> <p>"I was tired of making money and making clothes," Russo said backstage. After taking time off to reflect, he returned to the business with his own brand, Sartorial Monk. In keeping with the name, his Milan debut collection can aptly be described as meditative.</p> <p>The looks appear simple to the eye, but are full of detail like Middle Eastern draping, that belie a complexity. The pieces seemed to envelop the models.</p> <p>The show opened in silence, with a model, the actress Violeta Sanchez, walking deliberately in high heels clicking on the runway, wearing a long camel coat over a printed silk velvet dress. The models that followed walked barefoot, giving a Zen sense to the simple flowing pieces: a slate double-breasted jacket over wide, pleated cotton trousers for him, or cropped tailored jackets worn with long clinging skirts for her. While the first half of the collection was more sartorial, the second part was more relaxed and loungey, with long, cozy knitwear and soft velvets.</p> <p>"It is simple, but it is never simple," Russo said. "I think somebody who has personality can wear this. I don't try to embellish."</p> <p>___</p> <p>AMERICAN GOTHIC AT PALM ANGELS</p> <p>The fashion crowd is this trusting. They filed up a narrow staircase in an apparently abandoned building, then down several levels, past the sort of laser lighting that jewel thieves navigate to their booty, and into a dark barren basement.</p> <p>It was there that Francesco Ragazzi unveiled his latest looks for Palm Angels. And the fashionistas nary batted an eye at the first look: a red plaid shirt with jeans and parka made alarming by the black facemask with nails sticking out. The accessory was calmly described as "studded baclavas" in the notes, but if it is any comfort, they are more likely a runway gimmick than a commercial proposition.</p> <p>Tartan and spikes clashed with Western themes and prints of the Grant Wood painting "American Gothic," as punk clashed with Middle American values.</p> <p>"Palm Angels takes iconic American tropes and puts them out of context, fertilizes them with unexpected insertions, lets them grow and calls the result Neo Classic America," the brand said in notes.</p> <p>MILAN (AP) &#8212; With social and political crises unsettling the globe, Milan Fashion Week was all about slogans this season. "Time For Change" has been a particularly dominant catchphrase, one the fashion world can expect to see branded across sweatshirts, waistbands and accessories next fall and winter.</p> <p>The ubiquity of the expression does not necessarily denote consensus around the message it's designed to convey. For some, it means back to roots. Others intend it as a call for respect.</p> <p>But the overall implication seems to be a rejection of the status quo, which really isn't surprising in fashion.</p> <p>Naturally, Miuccia Prada is the outlier. Prada eschewed words because they have become empty. Where they appeared on prints in her new looks, words were meaningless.</p> <p>The second day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear previews for Fall-Winter 2018-19 opened with youthful designers focused on urban street wear that tries to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial consumers.</p> <p>Here are some highlights from Sunday's shows, including Prada, Dirk Bikkembergs, MSGM and DSquared2:</p> <p>___</p> <p>PRADA'S STRANGE PACKAGES</p> <p>In challenging times, it is not unusual to seek the familiar. For Miuccia Prada, there is comfort in black nylon.</p> <p>The designer generously employs her favored material in her pieces for the next cold weather season, padding them and applying them in protective layers.</p> <p>The boxy shapes for men and women appear to conceal the wearer in a unisex vein, but it is all for naught: Identity badges suggested a form of surveillance in the runway scenario. That sense of excessive control transforms into a political statement once the garments are on the rack and available to consumers.</p> <p>"I think we are in a moment when these aspects of control are very relevant," the designer said after the show.</p> <p>Despite the collection's utilitarian nature creating a sort of uniform of anoraks, jackets, caps, straight trousers and skirts, Prada said she also wanted to convey elegance.</p> <p>Beyond the dystopian looks, she included tourist-grade short-sleeved knits, or wild print short-shirt combos for men, and slit-skirt suits in bright tones paired with open-toe heels and long leather gloves for women.</p> <p>Prada enlisted architects to design new accessories, including a padded front pack that could stand in as a form of body amour, and a utility tool apron. Artists came up with the prints, including burning bananas and meaningless strings of words.</p> <p>"Now they no longer represent concepts, but they are pure decoration," she said.</p> <p>The runway show was in a newly repurposed industrial building near the Prada Foundation contemporary art space. Unusually shaped and labeled crates were stacked along the walls. Prada promised they concealed strange things "that are preparing for some strange transformation."</p> <p>The narrow aisles created a sense of disorientation as the fashionistas struggled to find their seats. That seemed an apt metaphor for the state of the world.</p> <p>"We don't know where we are going, which is of course scary, of course interesting. Because I feel big changes are happening," the designer said. "Some people say beauty will save the world. I think the world will be saved by intelligence, humanity and generosity. And possibly love. But of course the aesthetic can help, a little help, if you can afford it."</p> <p>___</p> <p>MSGM GOES TO BACK TO BASICS</p> <p>Milan university students served as both models and inspiration for the new MSGM collection. Taking their cue, brand founder Massimo Giorgetti found himself making an unexpected turn toward the dapper with hints of classic Milanese styling.</p> <p>"I studied the attitude of these guys, and it is less street wear than usual without losing modernity," Giorgetti said. "Some are very, very elegant. The concept of elegant Milan, Italy, needs to be restudied also by a brand like mine. There's an evolution going on."</p> <p>The silhouette veered toward the everyday, neither too slim nor oversized. Looks included snazzy suits with zip-up jackets in pink or red worn with ties, as well as plaid trousers paired with cardigans and jumpsuits. Giorgetti collaborated with Eastpak on a series of graphic printed backpacks and travel bags.</p> <p>The designer emblazoned the collection with phrases of graffiti he collected from the desks, tables and restrooms of Milan's universities. They included "Tempo per cambiare," Italian for "Time for Change," along with the Italian phonetic rendering of "I love you" as "hailoveiu."</p> <p>Here, "Time for Change" clearly meant honoring roots and not looking abroad for validation.</p> <p>"They are very serious, very clever and very positive," the designer said of the Milan students he worked with. "And they love their country."</p> <p>___</p> <p>DUTCH MUSINGS AT DIRK BIKKEMBERGS</p> <p>Dutch style, painting and design were all reflected in Lee Wood's latest collection for Belgian label Dirk Bikkembergs.</p> <p>And in keeping with the down-to-earth Dutch nature, the collection was full of necessary items. A rain-resistant technical down coat was worn with tailored pants for an urban look merging sportswear with sartorial tradition.</p> <p>"A man needs to be authentic," Woods said backstage. "We have a thousand things to do and life goes on. They are not heavy garments. They are basics, things we need."</p> <p>The dark palette of navy blue, black and gray was inspired by paintings in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and included contrasts of deep cerulean blue, vermillion red and saffron yellow. The mixing of materials, such as in a nylon parka with a wool back panel and knit waistband, drew from a Rotterdam architectural institute. Straps on pockets echoed the ones on leather footwear.</p> <p>Wood said he was drawn to the Netherlands by coincidence. The models he was selecting came from there and the music a DJ played at casting sessions was Dutch.</p> <p>"I said I think I have to go, and visit this world," he said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>WESTERN DOINGS AT DSQUARED2</p> <p>Model Bella Hadid bookended the runway show for DSquared2, the label of Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten, opening as a cowgirl in plaid over denim and closing as a chic hippie in a tiered handkerchief gown worn with a big fur coat.</p> <p>DSquared2 adhered to the recent Milan trend of combining the men's and women's shows, scheduling theirs during the less hectic January round focusing on menswear.</p> <p>Red plaid emerged as the prevailing print in the Western-themed collection. The mood ranged from a little bit country to a little bit rockabilly to a little bit hippie chic. Oversized knitwear served as tableaus for western scenes.</p> <p>Any classic cowboy would feel at ease in the suede coat with sheepskin linings, while leather vests layered over flowing white peasant shirts for men or dresses for women gave an edge to the usual boho styling.</p> <p>The accessories of the season: big Double-D belt buckles and sequin neck scarves for men, or shiny sequin cuffs for him or her.</p> <p>____</p> <p>MEDITATIVE DESIGNS AT SARTORIAL MONK</p> <p>Sabato Russo isn't your usual designer making his Milan runway debut, supported by the Italian Fashion Chamber. He has decades of experience behind him, first as a model, and then working in the fashion industry in Japan and New York.</p> <p>"I was tired of making money and making clothes," Russo said backstage. After taking time off to reflect, he returned to the business with his own brand, Sartorial Monk. In keeping with the name, his Milan debut collection can aptly be described as meditative.</p> <p>The looks appear simple to the eye, but are full of detail like Middle Eastern draping, that belie a complexity. The pieces seemed to envelop the models.</p> <p>The show opened in silence, with a model, the actress Violeta Sanchez, walking deliberately in high heels clicking on the runway, wearing a long camel coat over a printed silk velvet dress. The models that followed walked barefoot, giving a Zen sense to the simple flowing pieces: a slate double-breasted jacket over wide, pleated cotton trousers for him, or cropped tailored jackets worn with long clinging skirts for her. While the first half of the collection was more sartorial, the second part was more relaxed and loungey, with long, cozy knitwear and soft velvets.</p> <p>"It is simple, but it is never simple," Russo said. "I think somebody who has personality can wear this. I don't try to embellish."</p> <p>___</p> <p>AMERICAN GOTHIC AT PALM ANGELS</p> <p>The fashion crowd is this trusting. They filed up a narrow staircase in an apparently abandoned building, then down several levels, past the sort of laser lighting that jewel thieves navigate to their booty, and into a dark barren basement.</p> <p>It was there that Francesco Ragazzi unveiled his latest looks for Palm Angels. And the fashionistas nary batted an eye at the first look: a red plaid shirt with jeans and parka made alarming by the black facemask with nails sticking out. The accessory was calmly described as "studded baclavas" in the notes, but if it is any comfort, they are more likely a runway gimmick than a commercial proposition.</p> <p>Tartan and spikes clashed with Western themes and prints of the Grant Wood painting "American Gothic," as punk clashed with Middle American values.</p> <p>"Palm Angels takes iconic American tropes and puts them out of context, fertilizes them with unexpected insertions, lets them grow and calls the result Neo Classic America," the brand said in notes.</p>

For Prada, black nylon is a safe haven in a storm

https://apnews.com/amp/5806fbaf52b649309fe1951d85c93974

2018-01-15

2least

MILAN AP 8212 With social and political crises unsettling the globe Milan Fashion Week was all about slogans this season Time For Change has been a particularly dominant catchphrase one the fashion world can expect to see branded across sweatshirts waistbands and accessories next fall and winter The ubiquity of the expression does not necessarily denote consensus around the message its designed to convey For some it means back to roots Others intend it as a call for respect But the overall implication seems to be a rejection of the status quo which really isnt surprising in fashion Naturally Miuccia Prada is the outlier Prada eschewed words because they have become empty Where they appeared on prints in her new looks words were meaningless The second day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear previews for FallWinter 201819 opened with youthful designers focused on urban street wear that tries to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial consumers Here are some highlights from Sundays shows including Prada Dirk Bikkembergs MSGM and DSquared2 ___ PRADAS STRANGE PACKAGES In challenging times it is not unusual to seek the familiar For Miuccia Prada there is comfort in black nylon The designer generously employs her favored material in her pieces for the next cold weather season padding them and applying them in protective layers The boxy shapes for men and women appear to conceal the wearer in a unisex vein but it is all for naught Identity badges suggested a form of surveillance in the runway scenario That sense of excessive control transforms into a political statement once the garments are on the rack and available to consumers I think we are in a moment when these aspects of control are very relevant the designer said after the show Despite the collections utilitarian nature creating a sort of uniform of anoraks jackets caps straight trousers and skirts Prada said she also wanted to convey elegance Beyond the dystopian looks she included touristgrade shortsleeved knits or wild print shortshirt combos for men and slitskirt suits in bright tones paired with opentoe heels and long leather gloves for women Prada enlisted architects to design new accessories including a padded front pack that could stand in as a form of body amour and a utility tool apron Artists came up with the prints including burning bananas and meaningless strings of words Now they no longer represent concepts but they are pure decoration she said The runway show was in a newly repurposed industrial building near the Prada Foundation contemporary art space Unusually shaped and labeled crates were stacked along the walls Prada promised they concealed strange things that are preparing for some strange transformation The narrow aisles created a sense of disorientation as the fashionistas struggled to find their seats That seemed an apt metaphor for the state of the world We dont know where we are going which is of course scary of course interesting Because I feel big changes are happening the designer said Some people say beauty will save the world I think the world will be saved by intelligence humanity and generosity And possibly love But of course the aesthetic can help a little help if you can afford it ___ MSGM GOES TO BACK TO BASICS Milan university students served as both models and inspiration for the new MSGM collection Taking their cue brand founder Massimo Giorgetti found himself making an unexpected turn toward the dapper with hints of classic Milanese styling I studied the attitude of these guys and it is less street wear than usual without losing modernity Giorgetti said Some are very very elegant The concept of elegant Milan Italy needs to be restudied also by a brand like mine Theres an evolution going on The silhouette veered toward the everyday neither too slim nor oversized Looks included snazzy suits with zipup jackets in pink or red worn with ties as well as plaid trousers paired with cardigans and jumpsuits Giorgetti collaborated with Eastpak on a series of graphic printed backpacks and travel bags The designer emblazoned the collection with phrases of graffiti he collected from the desks tables and restrooms of Milans universities They included Tempo per cambiare Italian for Time for Change along with the Italian phonetic rendering of I love you as hailoveiu Here Time for Change clearly meant honoring roots and not looking abroad for validation They are very serious very clever and very positive the designer said of the Milan students he worked with And they love their country ___ DUTCH MUSINGS AT DIRK BIKKEMBERGS Dutch style painting and design were all reflected in Lee Woods latest collection for Belgian label Dirk Bikkembergs And in keeping with the downtoearth Dutch nature the collection was full of necessary items A rainresistant technical down coat was worn with tailored pants for an urban look merging sportswear with sartorial tradition A man needs to be authentic Woods said backstage We have a thousand things to do and life goes on They are not heavy garments They are basics things we need The dark palette of navy blue black and gray was inspired by paintings in Amsterdams Rijksmuseum and included contrasts of deep cerulean blue vermillion red and saffron yellow The mixing of materials such as in a nylon parka with a wool back panel and knit waistband drew from a Rotterdam architectural institute Straps on pockets echoed the ones on leather footwear Wood said he was drawn to the Netherlands by coincidence The models he was selecting came from there and the music a DJ played at casting sessions was Dutch I said I think I have to go and visit this world he said ___ WESTERN DOINGS AT DSQUARED2 Model Bella Hadid bookended the runway show for DSquared2 the label of Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten opening as a cowgirl in plaid over denim and closing as a chic hippie in a tiered handkerchief gown worn with a big fur coat DSquared2 adhered to the recent Milan trend of combining the mens and womens shows scheduling theirs during the less hectic January round focusing on menswear Red plaid emerged as the prevailing print in the Westernthemed collection The mood ranged from a little bit country to a little bit rockabilly to a little bit hippie chic Oversized knitwear served as tableaus for western scenes Any classic cowboy would feel at ease in the suede coat with sheepskin linings while leather vests layered over flowing white peasant shirts for men or dresses for women gave an edge to the usual boho styling The accessories of the season big DoubleD belt buckles and sequin neck scarves for men or shiny sequin cuffs for him or her ____ MEDITATIVE DESIGNS AT SARTORIAL MONK Sabato Russo isnt your usual designer making his Milan runway debut supported by the Italian Fashion Chamber He has decades of experience behind him first as a model and then working in the fashion industry in Japan and New York I was tired of making money and making clothes Russo said backstage After taking time off to reflect he returned to the business with his own brand Sartorial Monk In keeping with the name his Milan debut collection can aptly be described as meditative The looks appear simple to the eye but are full of detail like Middle Eastern draping that belie a complexity The pieces seemed to envelop the models The show opened in silence with a model the actress Violeta Sanchez walking deliberately in high heels clicking on the runway wearing a long camel coat over a printed silk velvet dress The models that followed walked barefoot giving a Zen sense to the simple flowing pieces a slate doublebreasted jacket over wide pleated cotton trousers for him or cropped tailored jackets worn with long clinging skirts for her While the first half of the collection was more sartorial the second part was more relaxed and loungey with long cozy knitwear and soft velvets It is simple but it is never simple Russo said I think somebody who has personality can wear this I dont try to embellish ___ AMERICAN GOTHIC AT PALM ANGELS The fashion crowd is this trusting They filed up a narrow staircase in an apparently abandoned building then down several levels past the sort of laser lighting that jewel thieves navigate to their booty and into a dark barren basement It was there that Francesco Ragazzi unveiled his latest looks for Palm Angels And the fashionistas nary batted an eye at the first look a red plaid shirt with jeans and parka made alarming by the black facemask with nails sticking out The accessory was calmly described as studded baclavas in the notes but if it is any comfort they are more likely a runway gimmick than a commercial proposition Tartan and spikes clashed with Western themes and prints of the Grant Wood painting American Gothic as punk clashed with Middle American values Palm Angels takes iconic American tropes and puts them out of context fertilizes them with unexpected insertions lets them grow and calls the result Neo Classic America the brand said in notes MILAN AP 8212 With social and political crises unsettling the globe Milan Fashion Week was all about slogans this season Time For Change has been a particularly dominant catchphrase one the fashion world can expect to see branded across sweatshirts waistbands and accessories next fall and winter The ubiquity of the expression does not necessarily denote consensus around the message its designed to convey For some it means back to roots Others intend it as a call for respect But the overall implication seems to be a rejection of the status quo which really isnt surprising in fashion Naturally Miuccia Prada is the outlier Prada eschewed words because they have become empty Where they appeared on prints in her new looks words were meaningless The second day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear previews for FallWinter 201819 opened with youthful designers focused on urban street wear that tries to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial consumers Here are some highlights from Sundays shows including Prada Dirk Bikkembergs MSGM and DSquared2 ___ PRADAS STRANGE PACKAGES In challenging times it is not unusual to seek the familiar For Miuccia Prada there is comfort in black nylon The designer generously employs her favored material in her pieces for the next cold weather season padding them and applying them in protective layers The boxy shapes for men and women appear to conceal the wearer in a unisex vein but it is all for naught Identity badges suggested a form of surveillance in the runway scenario That sense of excessive control transforms into a political statement once the garments are on the rack and available to consumers I think we are in a moment when these aspects of control are very relevant the designer said after the show Despite the collections utilitarian nature creating a sort of uniform of anoraks jackets caps straight trousers and skirts Prada said she also wanted to convey elegance Beyond the dystopian looks she included touristgrade shortsleeved knits or wild print shortshirt combos for men and slitskirt suits in bright tones paired with opentoe heels and long leather gloves for women Prada enlisted architects to design new accessories including a padded front pack that could stand in as a form of body amour and a utility tool apron Artists came up with the prints including burning bananas and meaningless strings of words Now they no longer represent concepts but they are pure decoration she said The runway show was in a newly repurposed industrial building near the Prada Foundation contemporary art space Unusually shaped and labeled crates were stacked along the walls Prada promised they concealed strange things that are preparing for some strange transformation The narrow aisles created a sense of disorientation as the fashionistas struggled to find their seats That seemed an apt metaphor for the state of the world We dont know where we are going which is of course scary of course interesting Because I feel big changes are happening the designer said Some people say beauty will save the world I think the world will be saved by intelligence humanity and generosity And possibly love But of course the aesthetic can help a little help if you can afford it ___ MSGM GOES TO BACK TO BASICS Milan university students served as both models and inspiration for the new MSGM collection Taking their cue brand founder Massimo Giorgetti found himself making an unexpected turn toward the dapper with hints of classic Milanese styling I studied the attitude of these guys and it is less street wear than usual without losing modernity Giorgetti said Some are very very elegant The concept of elegant Milan Italy needs to be restudied also by a brand like mine Theres an evolution going on The silhouette veered toward the everyday neither too slim nor oversized Looks included snazzy suits with zipup jackets in pink or red worn with ties as well as plaid trousers paired with cardigans and jumpsuits Giorgetti collaborated with Eastpak on a series of graphic printed backpacks and travel bags The designer emblazoned the collection with phrases of graffiti he collected from the desks tables and restrooms of Milans universities They included Tempo per cambiare Italian for Time for Change along with the Italian phonetic rendering of I love you as hailoveiu Here Time for Change clearly meant honoring roots and not looking abroad for validation They are very serious very clever and very positive the designer said of the Milan students he worked with And they love their country ___ DUTCH MUSINGS AT DIRK BIKKEMBERGS Dutch style painting and design were all reflected in Lee Woods latest collection for Belgian label Dirk Bikkembergs And in keeping with the downtoearth Dutch nature the collection was full of necessary items A rainresistant technical down coat was worn with tailored pants for an urban look merging sportswear with sartorial tradition A man needs to be authentic Woods said backstage We have a thousand things to do and life goes on They are not heavy garments They are basics things we need The dark palette of navy blue black and gray was inspired by paintings in Amsterdams Rijksmuseum and included contrasts of deep cerulean blue vermillion red and saffron yellow The mixing of materials such as in a nylon parka with a wool back panel and knit waistband drew from a Rotterdam architectural institute Straps on pockets echoed the ones on leather footwear Wood said he was drawn to the Netherlands by coincidence The models he was selecting came from there and the music a DJ played at casting sessions was Dutch I said I think I have to go and visit this world he said ___ WESTERN DOINGS AT DSQUARED2 Model Bella Hadid bookended the runway show for DSquared2 the label of Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten opening as a cowgirl in plaid over denim and closing as a chic hippie in a tiered handkerchief gown worn with a big fur coat DSquared2 adhered to the recent Milan trend of combining the mens and womens shows scheduling theirs during the less hectic January round focusing on menswear Red plaid emerged as the prevailing print in the Westernthemed collection The mood ranged from a little bit country to a little bit rockabilly to a little bit hippie chic Oversized knitwear served as tableaus for western scenes Any classic cowboy would feel at ease in the suede coat with sheepskin linings while leather vests layered over flowing white peasant shirts for men or dresses for women gave an edge to the usual boho styling The accessories of the season big DoubleD belt buckles and sequin neck scarves for men or shiny sequin cuffs for him or her ____ MEDITATIVE DESIGNS AT SARTORIAL MONK Sabato Russo isnt your usual designer making his Milan runway debut supported by the Italian Fashion Chamber He has decades of experience behind him first as a model and then working in the fashion industry in Japan and New York I was tired of making money and making clothes Russo said backstage After taking time off to reflect he returned to the business with his own brand Sartorial Monk In keeping with the name his Milan debut collection can aptly be described as meditative The looks appear simple to the eye but are full of detail like Middle Eastern draping that belie a complexity The pieces seemed to envelop the models The show opened in silence with a model the actress Violeta Sanchez walking deliberately in high heels clicking on the runway wearing a long camel coat over a printed silk velvet dress The models that followed walked barefoot giving a Zen sense to the simple flowing pieces a slate doublebreasted jacket over wide pleated cotton trousers for him or cropped tailored jackets worn with long clinging skirts for her While the first half of the collection was more sartorial the second part was more relaxed and loungey with long cozy knitwear and soft velvets It is simple but it is never simple Russo said I think somebody who has personality can wear this I dont try to embellish ___ AMERICAN GOTHIC AT PALM ANGELS The fashion crowd is this trusting They filed up a narrow staircase in an apparently abandoned building then down several levels past the sort of laser lighting that jewel thieves navigate to their booty and into a dark barren basement It was there that Francesco Ragazzi unveiled his latest looks for Palm Angels And the fashionistas nary batted an eye at the first look a red plaid shirt with jeans and parka made alarming by the black facemask with nails sticking out The accessory was calmly described as studded baclavas in the notes but if it is any comfort they are more likely a runway gimmick than a commercial proposition Tartan and spikes clashed with Western themes and prints of the Grant Wood painting American Gothic as punk clashed with Middle American values Palm Angels takes iconic American tropes and puts them out of context fertilizes them with unexpected insertions lets them grow and calls the result Neo Classic America the brand said in notes

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<p>MILAN (AP) &#8212; With social and political crises unsettling the globe, Milan Fashion Week was all about slogans this season. &#8220;Time For Change&#8221; has been a particularly dominant catchphrase, one the fashion world can expect to see branded across sweatshirts, waistbands and accessories next fall and winter.</p> <p>The ubiquity of the expression does not necessarily denote consensus around the message it&#8217;s designed to convey. For some, it means back to roots. Others intend it as a call for respect.</p> <p>But the overall implication seems to be a rejection of the status quo, which really isn&#8217;t surprising in fashion.</p> <p>Naturally, Miuccia Prada is the outlier. Prada eschewed words because they have become empty. Where they appeared on prints in her new looks, words were meaningless.</p> <p>The second day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear previews for Fall-Winter 2018-19 opened with youthful designers focused on urban street wear that tries to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial consumers.</p> <p>Here are some highlights from Sunday&#8217;s shows, including Prada, Dirk Bikkembergs, MSGM and DSquared2:</p> <p>___</p> <p>PRADA&#8217;S STRANGE PACKAGES</p> <p>In challenging times, it is not unusual to seek the familiar. For Miuccia Prada, there is comfort in black nylon.</p> <p>The designer generously employs her favored material in her pieces for the next cold weather season, padding them and applying them in protective layers.</p> <p>The boxy shapes for men and women appear to conceal the wearer in a unisex vein, but it is all for naught: Identity badges suggested a form of surveillance in the runway scenario. That sense of excessive control transforms into a political statement once the garments are on the rack and available to consumers.</p> <p>&#8220;I think we are in a moment when these aspects of control are very relevant,&#8221; the designer said after the show.</p> <p>Despite the collection&#8217;s utilitarian nature creating a sort of uniform of anoraks, jackets, caps, straight trousers and skirts, Prada said she also wanted to convey elegance.</p> <p>Beyond the dystopian looks, she included tourist-grade short-sleeved knits, or wild print short-shirt combos for men, and slit-skirt suits in bright tones paired with open-toe heels and long leather gloves for women.</p> <p>Prada enlisted architects to design new accessories, including a padded front pack that could stand in as a form of body amour, and a utility tool apron. Artists came up with the prints, including burning bananas and meaningless strings of words.</p> <p>&#8220;Now they no longer represent concepts, but they are pure decoration,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>The runway show was in a newly repurposed industrial building near the Prada Foundation contemporary art space. Unusually shaped and labeled crates were stacked along the walls. Prada promised they concealed strange things &#8220;that are preparing for some strange transformation.&#8221;</p> <p>The narrow aisles created a sense of disorientation as the fashionistas struggled to find their seats. That seemed an apt metaphor for the state of the world.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know where we are going, which is of course scary, of course interesting. Because I feel big changes are happening,&#8221; the designer said. &#8220;Some people say beauty will save the world. I think the world will be saved by intelligence, humanity and generosity. And possibly love. But of course the aesthetic can help, a little help, if you can afford it.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>MSGM GOES TO BACK TO BASICS</p> <p>Milan university students served as both models and inspiration for the new MSGM collection. Taking their cue, brand founder Massimo Giorgetti found himself making an unexpected turn toward the dapper with hints of classic Milanese styling.</p> <p>&#8220;I studied the attitude of these guys, and it is less street wear than usual without losing modernity,&#8221; Giorgetti said. &#8220;Some are very, very elegant. The concept of elegant Milan, Italy, needs to be restudied also by a brand like mine. There&#8217;s an evolution going on.&#8221;</p> <p>The silhouette veered toward the everyday, neither too slim nor oversized. Looks included snazzy suits with zip-up jackets in pink or red worn with ties, as well as plaid trousers paired with cardigans and jumpsuits. Giorgetti collaborated with Eastpak on a series of graphic printed backpacks and travel bags.</p> <p>The designer emblazoned the collection with phrases of graffiti he collected from the desks, tables and restrooms of Milan&#8217;s universities. They included &#8220;Tempo per cambiare,&#8221; Italian for &#8220;Time for Change,&#8221; along with the Italian phonetic rendering of &#8220;I love you&#8221; as &#8220;hailoveiu.&#8221;</p> <p>Here, &#8220;Time for Change&#8221; clearly meant honoring roots and not looking abroad for validation.</p> <p>&#8220;They are very serious, very clever and very positive,&#8221; the designer said of the Milan students he worked with. &#8220;And they love their country.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>DUTCH MUSINGS AT DIRK BIKKEMBERGS</p> <p>Dutch style, painting and design were all reflected in Lee Wood&#8217;s latest collection for Belgian label Dirk Bikkembergs.</p> <p>And in keeping with the down-to-earth Dutch nature, the collection was full of necessary items. A rain-resistant technical down coat was worn with tailored pants for an urban look merging sportswear with sartorial tradition.</p> <p>&#8220;A man needs to be authentic,&#8221; Woods said backstage. &#8220;We have a thousand things to do and life goes on. They are not heavy garments. They are basics, things we need.&#8221;</p> <p>The dark palette of navy blue, black and gray was inspired by paintings in Amsterdam&#8217;s Rijksmuseum and included contrasts of deep cerulean blue, vermillion red and saffron yellow. The mixing of materials, such as in a nylon parka with a wool back panel and knit waistband, drew from a Rotterdam architectural institute. Straps on pockets echoed the ones on leather footwear.</p> <p>Wood said he was drawn to the Netherlands by coincidence. The models he was selecting came from there and the music a DJ played at casting sessions was Dutch.</p> <p>&#8220;I said I think I have to go, and visit this world,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>WESTERN DOINGS AT DSQUARED2</p> <p>Model Bella Hadid bookended the runway show for DSquared2, the label of Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten, opening as a cowgirl in plaid over denim and closing as a chic hippie in a tiered handkerchief gown worn with a big fur coat.</p> <p>DSquared2 adhered to the recent Milan trend of combining the men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s shows, scheduling theirs during the less hectic January round focusing on menswear.</p> <p>Red plaid emerged as the prevailing print in the Western-themed collection. The mood ranged from a little bit country to a little bit rockabilly to a little bit hippie chic. Oversized knitwear served as tableaus for western scenes.</p> <p>Any classic cowboy would feel at ease in the suede coat with sheepskin linings, while leather vests layered over flowing white peasant shirts for men or dresses for women gave an edge to the usual boho styling.</p> <p>The accessories of the season: big Double-D belt buckles and sequin neck scarves for men, or shiny sequin cuffs for him or her.</p> <p>____</p> <p>MEDITATIVE DESIGNS AT SARTORIAL MONK</p> <p>Sabato Russo isn&#8217;t your usual designer making his Milan runway debut, supported by the Italian Fashion Chamber. He has decades of experience behind him, first as a model, and then working in the fashion industry in Japan and New York.</p> <p>&#8220;I was tired of making money and making clothes,&#8221; Russo said backstage. After taking time off to reflect, he returned to the business with his own brand, Sartorial Monk. In keeping with the name, his Milan debut collection can aptly be described as meditative.</p> <p>The looks appear simple to the eye, but are full of detail like Middle Eastern draping, that belie a complexity. The pieces seemed to envelop the models.</p> <p>The show opened in silence, with a model, the actress Violeta Sanchez, walking deliberately in high heels clicking on the runway, wearing a long camel coat over a printed silk velvet dress. The models that followed walked barefoot, giving a Zen sense to the simple flowing pieces: a slate double-breasted jacket over wide, pleated cotton trousers for him, or cropped tailored jackets worn with long clinging skirts for her. While the first half of the collection was more sartorial, the second part was more relaxed and loungey, with long, cozy knitwear and soft velvets.</p> <p>&#8220;It is simple, but it is never simple,&#8221; Russo said. &#8220;I think somebody who has personality can wear this. I don&#8217;t try to embellish.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>AMERICAN GOTHIC AT PALM ANGELS</p> <p>The fashion crowd is this trusting. They filed up a narrow staircase in an apparently abandoned building, then down several levels, past the sort of laser lighting that jewel thieves navigate to their booty, and into a dark barren basement.</p> <p>It was there that Francesco Ragazzi unveiled his latest looks for Palm Angels. And the fashionistas nary batted an eye at the first look: a red plaid shirt with jeans and parka made alarming by the black facemask with nails sticking out. The accessory was calmly described as &#8220;studded baclavas&#8221; in the notes, but if it is any comfort, they are more likely a runway gimmick than a commercial proposition.</p> <p>Tartan and spikes clashed with Western themes and prints of the Grant Wood painting &#8220;American Gothic,&#8221; as punk clashed with Middle American values.</p> <p>&#8220;Palm Angels takes iconic American tropes and puts them out of context, fertilizes them with unexpected insertions, lets them grow and calls the result Neo Classic America,&#8221; the brand said in notes.</p> <p>MILAN (AP) &#8212; With social and political crises unsettling the globe, Milan Fashion Week was all about slogans this season. &#8220;Time For Change&#8221; has been a particularly dominant catchphrase, one the fashion world can expect to see branded across sweatshirts, waistbands and accessories next fall and winter.</p> <p>The ubiquity of the expression does not necessarily denote consensus around the message it&#8217;s designed to convey. For some, it means back to roots. Others intend it as a call for respect.</p> <p>But the overall implication seems to be a rejection of the status quo, which really isn&#8217;t surprising in fashion.</p> <p>Naturally, Miuccia Prada is the outlier. Prada eschewed words because they have become empty. Where they appeared on prints in her new looks, words were meaningless.</p> <p>The second day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear previews for Fall-Winter 2018-19 opened with youthful designers focused on urban street wear that tries to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial consumers.</p> <p>Here are some highlights from Sunday&#8217;s shows, including Prada, Dirk Bikkembergs, MSGM and DSquared2:</p> <p>___</p> <p>PRADA&#8217;S STRANGE PACKAGES</p> <p>In challenging times, it is not unusual to seek the familiar. For Miuccia Prada, there is comfort in black nylon.</p> <p>The designer generously employs her favored material in her pieces for the next cold weather season, padding them and applying them in protective layers.</p> <p>The boxy shapes for men and women appear to conceal the wearer in a unisex vein, but it is all for naught: Identity badges suggested a form of surveillance in the runway scenario. That sense of excessive control transforms into a political statement once the garments are on the rack and available to consumers.</p> <p>&#8220;I think we are in a moment when these aspects of control are very relevant,&#8221; the designer said after the show.</p> <p>Despite the collection&#8217;s utilitarian nature creating a sort of uniform of anoraks, jackets, caps, straight trousers and skirts, Prada said she also wanted to convey elegance.</p> <p>Beyond the dystopian looks, she included tourist-grade short-sleeved knits, or wild print short-shirt combos for men, and slit-skirt suits in bright tones paired with open-toe heels and long leather gloves for women.</p> <p>Prada enlisted architects to design new accessories, including a padded front pack that could stand in as a form of body amour, and a utility tool apron. Artists came up with the prints, including burning bananas and meaningless strings of words.</p> <p>&#8220;Now they no longer represent concepts, but they are pure decoration,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>The runway show was in a newly repurposed industrial building near the Prada Foundation contemporary art space. Unusually shaped and labeled crates were stacked along the walls. Prada promised they concealed strange things &#8220;that are preparing for some strange transformation.&#8221;</p> <p>The narrow aisles created a sense of disorientation as the fashionistas struggled to find their seats. That seemed an apt metaphor for the state of the world.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know where we are going, which is of course scary, of course interesting. Because I feel big changes are happening,&#8221; the designer said. &#8220;Some people say beauty will save the world. I think the world will be saved by intelligence, humanity and generosity. And possibly love. But of course the aesthetic can help, a little help, if you can afford it.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>MSGM GOES TO BACK TO BASICS</p> <p>Milan university students served as both models and inspiration for the new MSGM collection. Taking their cue, brand founder Massimo Giorgetti found himself making an unexpected turn toward the dapper with hints of classic Milanese styling.</p> <p>&#8220;I studied the attitude of these guys, and it is less street wear than usual without losing modernity,&#8221; Giorgetti said. &#8220;Some are very, very elegant. The concept of elegant Milan, Italy, needs to be restudied also by a brand like mine. There&#8217;s an evolution going on.&#8221;</p> <p>The silhouette veered toward the everyday, neither too slim nor oversized. Looks included snazzy suits with zip-up jackets in pink or red worn with ties, as well as plaid trousers paired with cardigans and jumpsuits. Giorgetti collaborated with Eastpak on a series of graphic printed backpacks and travel bags.</p> <p>The designer emblazoned the collection with phrases of graffiti he collected from the desks, tables and restrooms of Milan&#8217;s universities. They included &#8220;Tempo per cambiare,&#8221; Italian for &#8220;Time for Change,&#8221; along with the Italian phonetic rendering of &#8220;I love you&#8221; as &#8220;hailoveiu.&#8221;</p> <p>Here, &#8220;Time for Change&#8221; clearly meant honoring roots and not looking abroad for validation.</p> <p>&#8220;They are very serious, very clever and very positive,&#8221; the designer said of the Milan students he worked with. &#8220;And they love their country.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>DUTCH MUSINGS AT DIRK BIKKEMBERGS</p> <p>Dutch style, painting and design were all reflected in Lee Wood&#8217;s latest collection for Belgian label Dirk Bikkembergs.</p> <p>And in keeping with the down-to-earth Dutch nature, the collection was full of necessary items. A rain-resistant technical down coat was worn with tailored pants for an urban look merging sportswear with sartorial tradition.</p> <p>&#8220;A man needs to be authentic,&#8221; Woods said backstage. &#8220;We have a thousand things to do and life goes on. They are not heavy garments. They are basics, things we need.&#8221;</p> <p>The dark palette of navy blue, black and gray was inspired by paintings in Amsterdam&#8217;s Rijksmuseum and included contrasts of deep cerulean blue, vermillion red and saffron yellow. The mixing of materials, such as in a nylon parka with a wool back panel and knit waistband, drew from a Rotterdam architectural institute. Straps on pockets echoed the ones on leather footwear.</p> <p>Wood said he was drawn to the Netherlands by coincidence. The models he was selecting came from there and the music a DJ played at casting sessions was Dutch.</p> <p>&#8220;I said I think I have to go, and visit this world,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>WESTERN DOINGS AT DSQUARED2</p> <p>Model Bella Hadid bookended the runway show for DSquared2, the label of Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten, opening as a cowgirl in plaid over denim and closing as a chic hippie in a tiered handkerchief gown worn with a big fur coat.</p> <p>DSquared2 adhered to the recent Milan trend of combining the men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s shows, scheduling theirs during the less hectic January round focusing on menswear.</p> <p>Red plaid emerged as the prevailing print in the Western-themed collection. The mood ranged from a little bit country to a little bit rockabilly to a little bit hippie chic. Oversized knitwear served as tableaus for western scenes.</p> <p>Any classic cowboy would feel at ease in the suede coat with sheepskin linings, while leather vests layered over flowing white peasant shirts for men or dresses for women gave an edge to the usual boho styling.</p> <p>The accessories of the season: big Double-D belt buckles and sequin neck scarves for men, or shiny sequin cuffs for him or her.</p> <p>____</p> <p>MEDITATIVE DESIGNS AT SARTORIAL MONK</p> <p>Sabato Russo isn&#8217;t your usual designer making his Milan runway debut, supported by the Italian Fashion Chamber. He has decades of experience behind him, first as a model, and then working in the fashion industry in Japan and New York.</p> <p>&#8220;I was tired of making money and making clothes,&#8221; Russo said backstage. After taking time off to reflect, he returned to the business with his own brand, Sartorial Monk. In keeping with the name, his Milan debut collection can aptly be described as meditative.</p> <p>The looks appear simple to the eye, but are full of detail like Middle Eastern draping, that belie a complexity. The pieces seemed to envelop the models.</p> <p>The show opened in silence, with a model, the actress Violeta Sanchez, walking deliberately in high heels clicking on the runway, wearing a long camel coat over a printed silk velvet dress. The models that followed walked barefoot, giving a Zen sense to the simple flowing pieces: a slate double-breasted jacket over wide, pleated cotton trousers for him, or cropped tailored jackets worn with long clinging skirts for her. While the first half of the collection was more sartorial, the second part was more relaxed and loungey, with long, cozy knitwear and soft velvets.</p> <p>&#8220;It is simple, but it is never simple,&#8221; Russo said. &#8220;I think somebody who has personality can wear this. I don&#8217;t try to embellish.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>AMERICAN GOTHIC AT PALM ANGELS</p> <p>The fashion crowd is this trusting. They filed up a narrow staircase in an apparently abandoned building, then down several levels, past the sort of laser lighting that jewel thieves navigate to their booty, and into a dark barren basement.</p> <p>It was there that Francesco Ragazzi unveiled his latest looks for Palm Angels. And the fashionistas nary batted an eye at the first look: a red plaid shirt with jeans and parka made alarming by the black facemask with nails sticking out. The accessory was calmly described as &#8220;studded baclavas&#8221; in the notes, but if it is any comfort, they are more likely a runway gimmick than a commercial proposition.</p> <p>Tartan and spikes clashed with Western themes and prints of the Grant Wood painting &#8220;American Gothic,&#8221; as punk clashed with Middle American values.</p> <p>&#8220;Palm Angels takes iconic American tropes and puts them out of context, fertilizes them with unexpected insertions, lets them grow and calls the result Neo Classic America,&#8221; the brand said in notes.</p>

For Prada, black nylon is a safe haven in a storm

https://apnews.com/5806fbaf52b649309fe1951d85c93974

2018-01-15

2least

MILAN AP 8212 With social and political crises unsettling the globe Milan Fashion Week was all about slogans this season 8220Time For Change8221 has been a particularly dominant catchphrase one the fashion world can expect to see branded across sweatshirts waistbands and accessories next fall and winter The ubiquity of the expression does not necessarily denote consensus around the message it8217s designed to convey For some it means back to roots Others intend it as a call for respect But the overall implication seems to be a rejection of the status quo which really isn8217t surprising in fashion Naturally Miuccia Prada is the outlier Prada eschewed words because they have become empty Where they appeared on prints in her new looks words were meaningless The second day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear previews for FallWinter 201819 opened with youthful designers focused on urban street wear that tries to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial consumers Here are some highlights from Sunday8217s shows including Prada Dirk Bikkembergs MSGM and DSquared2 ___ PRADA8217S STRANGE PACKAGES In challenging times it is not unusual to seek the familiar For Miuccia Prada there is comfort in black nylon The designer generously employs her favored material in her pieces for the next cold weather season padding them and applying them in protective layers The boxy shapes for men and women appear to conceal the wearer in a unisex vein but it is all for naught Identity badges suggested a form of surveillance in the runway scenario That sense of excessive control transforms into a political statement once the garments are on the rack and available to consumers 8220I think we are in a moment when these aspects of control are very relevant8221 the designer said after the show Despite the collection8217s utilitarian nature creating a sort of uniform of anoraks jackets caps straight trousers and skirts Prada said she also wanted to convey elegance Beyond the dystopian looks she included touristgrade shortsleeved knits or wild print shortshirt combos for men and slitskirt suits in bright tones paired with opentoe heels and long leather gloves for women Prada enlisted architects to design new accessories including a padded front pack that could stand in as a form of body amour and a utility tool apron Artists came up with the prints including burning bananas and meaningless strings of words 8220Now they no longer represent concepts but they are pure decoration8221 she said The runway show was in a newly repurposed industrial building near the Prada Foundation contemporary art space Unusually shaped and labeled crates were stacked along the walls Prada promised they concealed strange things 8220that are preparing for some strange transformation8221 The narrow aisles created a sense of disorientation as the fashionistas struggled to find their seats That seemed an apt metaphor for the state of the world 8220We don8217t know where we are going which is of course scary of course interesting Because I feel big changes are happening8221 the designer said 8220Some people say beauty will save the world I think the world will be saved by intelligence humanity and generosity And possibly love But of course the aesthetic can help a little help if you can afford it8221 ___ MSGM GOES TO BACK TO BASICS Milan university students served as both models and inspiration for the new MSGM collection Taking their cue brand founder Massimo Giorgetti found himself making an unexpected turn toward the dapper with hints of classic Milanese styling 8220I studied the attitude of these guys and it is less street wear than usual without losing modernity8221 Giorgetti said 8220Some are very very elegant The concept of elegant Milan Italy needs to be restudied also by a brand like mine There8217s an evolution going on8221 The silhouette veered toward the everyday neither too slim nor oversized Looks included snazzy suits with zipup jackets in pink or red worn with ties as well as plaid trousers paired with cardigans and jumpsuits Giorgetti collaborated with Eastpak on a series of graphic printed backpacks and travel bags The designer emblazoned the collection with phrases of graffiti he collected from the desks tables and restrooms of Milan8217s universities They included 8220Tempo per cambiare8221 Italian for 8220Time for Change8221 along with the Italian phonetic rendering of 8220I love you8221 as 8220hailoveiu8221 Here 8220Time for Change8221 clearly meant honoring roots and not looking abroad for validation 8220They are very serious very clever and very positive8221 the designer said of the Milan students he worked with 8220And they love their country8221 ___ DUTCH MUSINGS AT DIRK BIKKEMBERGS Dutch style painting and design were all reflected in Lee Wood8217s latest collection for Belgian label Dirk Bikkembergs And in keeping with the downtoearth Dutch nature the collection was full of necessary items A rainresistant technical down coat was worn with tailored pants for an urban look merging sportswear with sartorial tradition 8220A man needs to be authentic8221 Woods said backstage 8220We have a thousand things to do and life goes on They are not heavy garments They are basics things we need8221 The dark palette of navy blue black and gray was inspired by paintings in Amsterdam8217s Rijksmuseum and included contrasts of deep cerulean blue vermillion red and saffron yellow The mixing of materials such as in a nylon parka with a wool back panel and knit waistband drew from a Rotterdam architectural institute Straps on pockets echoed the ones on leather footwear Wood said he was drawn to the Netherlands by coincidence The models he was selecting came from there and the music a DJ played at casting sessions was Dutch 8220I said I think I have to go and visit this world8221 he said ___ WESTERN DOINGS AT DSQUARED2 Model Bella Hadid bookended the runway show for DSquared2 the label of Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten opening as a cowgirl in plaid over denim and closing as a chic hippie in a tiered handkerchief gown worn with a big fur coat DSquared2 adhered to the recent Milan trend of combining the men8217s and women8217s shows scheduling theirs during the less hectic January round focusing on menswear Red plaid emerged as the prevailing print in the Westernthemed collection The mood ranged from a little bit country to a little bit rockabilly to a little bit hippie chic Oversized knitwear served as tableaus for western scenes Any classic cowboy would feel at ease in the suede coat with sheepskin linings while leather vests layered over flowing white peasant shirts for men or dresses for women gave an edge to the usual boho styling The accessories of the season big DoubleD belt buckles and sequin neck scarves for men or shiny sequin cuffs for him or her ____ MEDITATIVE DESIGNS AT SARTORIAL MONK Sabato Russo isn8217t your usual designer making his Milan runway debut supported by the Italian Fashion Chamber He has decades of experience behind him first as a model and then working in the fashion industry in Japan and New York 8220I was tired of making money and making clothes8221 Russo said backstage After taking time off to reflect he returned to the business with his own brand Sartorial Monk In keeping with the name his Milan debut collection can aptly be described as meditative The looks appear simple to the eye but are full of detail like Middle Eastern draping that belie a complexity The pieces seemed to envelop the models The show opened in silence with a model the actress Violeta Sanchez walking deliberately in high heels clicking on the runway wearing a long camel coat over a printed silk velvet dress The models that followed walked barefoot giving a Zen sense to the simple flowing pieces a slate doublebreasted jacket over wide pleated cotton trousers for him or cropped tailored jackets worn with long clinging skirts for her While the first half of the collection was more sartorial the second part was more relaxed and loungey with long cozy knitwear and soft velvets 8220It is simple but it is never simple8221 Russo said 8220I think somebody who has personality can wear this I don8217t try to embellish8221 ___ AMERICAN GOTHIC AT PALM ANGELS The fashion crowd is this trusting They filed up a narrow staircase in an apparently abandoned building then down several levels past the sort of laser lighting that jewel thieves navigate to their booty and into a dark barren basement It was there that Francesco Ragazzi unveiled his latest looks for Palm Angels And the fashionistas nary batted an eye at the first look a red plaid shirt with jeans and parka made alarming by the black facemask with nails sticking out The accessory was calmly described as 8220studded baclavas8221 in the notes but if it is any comfort they are more likely a runway gimmick than a commercial proposition Tartan and spikes clashed with Western themes and prints of the Grant Wood painting 8220American Gothic8221 as punk clashed with Middle American values 8220Palm Angels takes iconic American tropes and puts them out of context fertilizes them with unexpected insertions lets them grow and calls the result Neo Classic America8221 the brand said in notes MILAN AP 8212 With social and political crises unsettling the globe Milan Fashion Week was all about slogans this season 8220Time For Change8221 has been a particularly dominant catchphrase one the fashion world can expect to see branded across sweatshirts waistbands and accessories next fall and winter The ubiquity of the expression does not necessarily denote consensus around the message it8217s designed to convey For some it means back to roots Others intend it as a call for respect But the overall implication seems to be a rejection of the status quo which really isn8217t surprising in fashion Naturally Miuccia Prada is the outlier Prada eschewed words because they have become empty Where they appeared on prints in her new looks words were meaningless The second day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear previews for FallWinter 201819 opened with youthful designers focused on urban street wear that tries to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial consumers Here are some highlights from Sunday8217s shows including Prada Dirk Bikkembergs MSGM and DSquared2 ___ PRADA8217S STRANGE PACKAGES In challenging times it is not unusual to seek the familiar For Miuccia Prada there is comfort in black nylon The designer generously employs her favored material in her pieces for the next cold weather season padding them and applying them in protective layers The boxy shapes for men and women appear to conceal the wearer in a unisex vein but it is all for naught Identity badges suggested a form of surveillance in the runway scenario That sense of excessive control transforms into a political statement once the garments are on the rack and available to consumers 8220I think we are in a moment when these aspects of control are very relevant8221 the designer said after the show Despite the collection8217s utilitarian nature creating a sort of uniform of anoraks jackets caps straight trousers and skirts Prada said she also wanted to convey elegance Beyond the dystopian looks she included touristgrade shortsleeved knits or wild print shortshirt combos for men and slitskirt suits in bright tones paired with opentoe heels and long leather gloves for women Prada enlisted architects to design new accessories including a padded front pack that could stand in as a form of body amour and a utility tool apron Artists came up with the prints including burning bananas and meaningless strings of words 8220Now they no longer represent concepts but they are pure decoration8221 she said The runway show was in a newly repurposed industrial building near the Prada Foundation contemporary art space Unusually shaped and labeled crates were stacked along the walls Prada promised they concealed strange things 8220that are preparing for some strange transformation8221 The narrow aisles created a sense of disorientation as the fashionistas struggled to find their seats That seemed an apt metaphor for the state of the world 8220We don8217t know where we are going which is of course scary of course interesting Because I feel big changes are happening8221 the designer said 8220Some people say beauty will save the world I think the world will be saved by intelligence humanity and generosity And possibly love But of course the aesthetic can help a little help if you can afford it8221 ___ MSGM GOES TO BACK TO BASICS Milan university students served as both models and inspiration for the new MSGM collection Taking their cue brand founder Massimo Giorgetti found himself making an unexpected turn toward the dapper with hints of classic Milanese styling 8220I studied the attitude of these guys and it is less street wear than usual without losing modernity8221 Giorgetti said 8220Some are very very elegant The concept of elegant Milan Italy needs to be restudied also by a brand like mine There8217s an evolution going on8221 The silhouette veered toward the everyday neither too slim nor oversized Looks included snazzy suits with zipup jackets in pink or red worn with ties as well as plaid trousers paired with cardigans and jumpsuits Giorgetti collaborated with Eastpak on a series of graphic printed backpacks and travel bags The designer emblazoned the collection with phrases of graffiti he collected from the desks tables and restrooms of Milan8217s universities They included 8220Tempo per cambiare8221 Italian for 8220Time for Change8221 along with the Italian phonetic rendering of 8220I love you8221 as 8220hailoveiu8221 Here 8220Time for Change8221 clearly meant honoring roots and not looking abroad for validation 8220They are very serious very clever and very positive8221 the designer said of the Milan students he worked with 8220And they love their country8221 ___ DUTCH MUSINGS AT DIRK BIKKEMBERGS Dutch style painting and design were all reflected in Lee Wood8217s latest collection for Belgian label Dirk Bikkembergs And in keeping with the downtoearth Dutch nature the collection was full of necessary items A rainresistant technical down coat was worn with tailored pants for an urban look merging sportswear with sartorial tradition 8220A man needs to be authentic8221 Woods said backstage 8220We have a thousand things to do and life goes on They are not heavy garments They are basics things we need8221 The dark palette of navy blue black and gray was inspired by paintings in Amsterdam8217s Rijksmuseum and included contrasts of deep cerulean blue vermillion red and saffron yellow The mixing of materials such as in a nylon parka with a wool back panel and knit waistband drew from a Rotterdam architectural institute Straps on pockets echoed the ones on leather footwear Wood said he was drawn to the Netherlands by coincidence The models he was selecting came from there and the music a DJ played at casting sessions was Dutch 8220I said I think I have to go and visit this world8221 he said ___ WESTERN DOINGS AT DSQUARED2 Model Bella Hadid bookended the runway show for DSquared2 the label of Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten opening as a cowgirl in plaid over denim and closing as a chic hippie in a tiered handkerchief gown worn with a big fur coat DSquared2 adhered to the recent Milan trend of combining the men8217s and women8217s shows scheduling theirs during the less hectic January round focusing on menswear Red plaid emerged as the prevailing print in the Westernthemed collection The mood ranged from a little bit country to a little bit rockabilly to a little bit hippie chic Oversized knitwear served as tableaus for western scenes Any classic cowboy would feel at ease in the suede coat with sheepskin linings while leather vests layered over flowing white peasant shirts for men or dresses for women gave an edge to the usual boho styling The accessories of the season big DoubleD belt buckles and sequin neck scarves for men or shiny sequin cuffs for him or her ____ MEDITATIVE DESIGNS AT SARTORIAL MONK Sabato Russo isn8217t your usual designer making his Milan runway debut supported by the Italian Fashion Chamber He has decades of experience behind him first as a model and then working in the fashion industry in Japan and New York 8220I was tired of making money and making clothes8221 Russo said backstage After taking time off to reflect he returned to the business with his own brand Sartorial Monk In keeping with the name his Milan debut collection can aptly be described as meditative The looks appear simple to the eye but are full of detail like Middle Eastern draping that belie a complexity The pieces seemed to envelop the models The show opened in silence with a model the actress Violeta Sanchez walking deliberately in high heels clicking on the runway wearing a long camel coat over a printed silk velvet dress The models that followed walked barefoot giving a Zen sense to the simple flowing pieces a slate doublebreasted jacket over wide pleated cotton trousers for him or cropped tailored jackets worn with long clinging skirts for her While the first half of the collection was more sartorial the second part was more relaxed and loungey with long cozy knitwear and soft velvets 8220It is simple but it is never simple8221 Russo said 8220I think somebody who has personality can wear this I don8217t try to embellish8221 ___ AMERICAN GOTHIC AT PALM ANGELS The fashion crowd is this trusting They filed up a narrow staircase in an apparently abandoned building then down several levels past the sort of laser lighting that jewel thieves navigate to their booty and into a dark barren basement It was there that Francesco Ragazzi unveiled his latest looks for Palm Angels And the fashionistas nary batted an eye at the first look a red plaid shirt with jeans and parka made alarming by the black facemask with nails sticking out The accessory was calmly described as 8220studded baclavas8221 in the notes but if it is any comfort they are more likely a runway gimmick than a commercial proposition Tartan and spikes clashed with Western themes and prints of the Grant Wood painting 8220American Gothic8221 as punk clashed with Middle American values 8220Palm Angels takes iconic American tropes and puts them out of context fertilizes them with unexpected insertions lets them grow and calls the result Neo Classic America8221 the brand said in notes

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<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - Shaanxi International Trust Co Ltd :</p> <p>* SAYS PRELIM 2017 NET PROFIT DOWN 26.1 PERCENT Y/Y AT 381.0 MILLION YUAN ($60.29 million) Source text in Chinese: <a href="http://bit.ly/2ndOvqy" type="external">bit.ly/2ndOvqy</a> Further company coverage: ($1 = 6.3196 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May&#8217;s response to Russia after a nerve agent attack on British soil is unlikely to trouble Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin unduly, despite the expression of outrage that greeted it in Moscow.</p> Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street, in London, March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville <p>After the first known use of a military-grade nerve toxin on British soil since World War Two, May expelled 23 Russian spies using diplomatic cover and promised to freeze Russian State assets if they were used to threaten British interests.</p> <p>May also said Britain would work on new powers to defend against hostile state activity, beef up counter espionage powers and cut back official participation in the soccer World Cup. Other measures may be considered, she said.</p> <p>But her announcement, just days before an election in which Putin, a former KGB officer, is expected to coast to a fourth term, gave no examples of Russian officials or companies that would be targeted or barred from London&#8217;s financial center.</p> <p>London remains open to Russian investment, albeit with a political chill. Other than the expulsions, May went no further than current EU sanctions which include travel restrictions and asset freezes against 150 people and 38 companies.</p> <p>&#8220;The Kremlin will understand this as a very mild response,&#8221; said Mathieu Boul&#232;gue, a Russia expert at Chatham House think-tank in London. &#8220;Putin is unlikely to be worried by this.&#8221;</p> <p>A senior British government official said further options remained on the table: &#8220;Economic, diplomatic, legislative, and our security capabilities can all be brought to bear if needed.&#8221;</p> <p>But after days of full-volume rhetoric from London about the suspected Russian attack and a midnight deadline that Moscow scorned, May has shown just how little appetite Britain has for a fight on the eve of Brexit.</p> <p>While the United States and European Union joined criticism of Moscow - albeit with a delayed response from U.S. President Donald Trump - there was little evidence of appetite in Paris, Berlin or Washington for anything beyond a scolding.</p> Russian president Vladimir Putin addresses the audience during a rally marking the fourth anniversary of Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, Crimea, March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov <p>Russia denied any involvement in the attack and simply declined to say anything about how a Soviet-era nerve toxin ended up striking down a former double agent on the normally genteel streets of the English city of Salisbury.</p> <p>The foreign ministry described May&#8217;s measures as a flagrant provocation and promised a speedy response.</p> <p>If Russia - or Russians - were behind the nerve attack, some of their aims may have been achieved: Britain has shown just how little power it is willing to exercise while every Kremlin opponent will be more nervous about retribution.</p> <p>For many Russian experts, the attack on Sergei Skripal, a former GRU military intelligence officer who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to MI6, was a test for Britain after years of turning a blind eye to the reality of modern Russia.</p> <p>Part of that policy is due to money.</p> <p>One of the biggest exports since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union was money and London, as one of the top two financial capitals in the world, is a major beneficiary.</p> <p>London, or Londongrad as it is sometimes dubbed, is the Western capital of choice for the oligarchs and Russian officials who flaunt their wealth across Europe&#8217;s most luxurious destinations.</p> <p>France, with its own business ties to Russia, has been more muted on the issue of Russian involvement in the attack on Skripal than Germany or the United States.</p> <p>&#8220;Britain has tied itself up in knots,&#8221; said a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s had a very open policy on Russian private investment and &#233;migr&#233;s for years and now it wants European to offer support in taking steps against Moscow. This is for them (Britain) to respond to. It&#8217;s shocking that it happened, but ultimately it&#8217;s up to Britain.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Luke Baker in Paris and Elizabeth Piper in London; editing by Philippa Fletcher</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>CANONSBURG, Pa./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans sounded alarm bells on Wednesday after Democrats claimed victory in a Pennsylvania congressional election seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump&#8217;s performance, although the final vote result remained officially too close to call.</p> <p>In an ominous sign for Trump&#8217;s Republicans eight months before national midterm elections, moderate Democrat Conor Lamb led conservative Republican Rick Saccone by a fraction of a percentage point in the race for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The final result may not be available until Friday.</p> <p>The election should have been a shoo-in for Republicans. Trump actively campaigned for Saccone, who started the race well ahead of Lamb in a district Trump won by almost 20 points in the 2016 presidential election.</p> <p>Republican Speaker Paul Ryan called the election a &#8220;wakeup call&#8221; in a meeting with Republican House members on Wednesday and pushed them to raise more campaign funding. He also urged them to do more to highlight tax cuts approved by the Republican-dominated Congress and signed by Trump.</p> <p>Lamb led Saccone by 516 votes on Wednesday after absentee ballots were counted. Counting of provisional ballots - those cast by voters whose registration requires extra confirmation - was to begin on Friday.</p> <p>Republicans have not conceded the race and were not ruling out a recount or other legal action, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee said. Provisional ballots will not be counted until Friday.</p> <p>House Republicans called the race unique, noting Lamb, 33, a U.S. Marines veteran, had distanced himself from his party&#8217;s leaders and staked out positions to the right of many Democrats.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;ll see another candidate like Lamb,&#8221; said Republican Representative Chris Collins of New York.</p> <p>Representative Mike Kelly, who represents Pennsylvania&#8217;s 3rd District, said Lamb was &#8220;more like a Republican.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I thought Conor Lamb ran a very good race because he ran on the Trump agenda,&#8221; Kelly said.</p> U.S. Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb is greeted by supporters during his election night rally in Pennsylvania's 18th U.S. Congressional district special election against Republican candidate and State Rep. Rick Saccone, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid &#8216;TRUMP BEFORE TRUMP WAS TRUMP&#8217; <p>The patchwork of small towns, farms and Pittsburgh suburbs that make up Pennsylvania&#8217;s 18th congressional district is so Republican that Democrats did not even field candidates in the previous two U.S. House elections.</p> <p>Saccone, 60, a former Air Force counter-intelligence officer, had described himself as &#8220;Trump before Trump was Trump,&#8221; and led the race by more than 10 percentage points in January.</p> <p>Trump held two events in the district during the campaign, including a high-profile rally on Saturday. Last week, he announced tariffs on imported steel that had been expected to appeal to voters in a state known for its steel industry.</p> <p>The election, held to replace a Republican who resigned amid a scandal last year, was the latest good electoral showing for the Democrats, who also won a governor&#8217;s race in Virginia and scored a U.S. Senate upset in conservative Alabama.</p> Slideshow (17 Images) <p>Lamb&#8217;s strong showing could buoy Democrats nationally as they seek to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives from Republicans in the November elections. Democrats see 118 Republican-held districts in play. If they flip 24 seats, they could reclaim a majority in the House.</p> <p>Republican donors and strategists have been anxious about high levels of enthusiasm on the Democratic side and have emphasized the need to motivate Republican voters to turn out to retain the party&#8217;s grip on the U.S. Senate and House.</p> <p>U.S. Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Republican from Florida, said the Pennsylvania race showed that lawmakers should be willing to buck their own leadership on certain issues or work across the aisle.</p> <p>&#8220;I do it all the time. I hear Conor Lamb speak and I say, &#8216;That kind of sounds like me,&#8217;&#8221; said Curbelo, a moderate who has urged his party&#8217;s leaders to bring gun control measures up for votes and also worked with Democrats on immigration issues.</p> <p>A Lamb win could vindicate a strategy Democrats are using in some races to enlist candidates whose positions and ideologies are well suited to the district even while conflicting in significant ways with the positions of the Democratic leadership in Washington.</p> <p>Lamb advocated for gun rights and said Representative Nancy Pelosi should be replaced as House Democratic leader, making it harder than expected for Republicans to attack some of his positions. It may be seen as a template for the Democrats to flip certain Republican seats that went for Trump.</p> <p>Saccone&#8217;s poor performance is worrying for Republicans who were sure that tax cuts, the party&#8217;s only major legislative achievement under Trump, would be a vote winner this year.</p> <p>But that sweeping overhaul did little to energize local voters, some of whom dismissed it as a giveaway to the wealthy.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Susan Heavey in Washington and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Alistair Bell and Roberta Rampton; Editing by John Stonestreet and Bill Trott</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines said on Wednesday it is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC) due to what President Rodrigo Duterte called &#8220;outrageous&#8221; attacks by U.N. officials and violations of due process by the ICC.</p> FILE PHOTO: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte points to photographers during an awarding ceremony for outstanding government workers, at the Malacanang Palace in Manila, Philippines December 19, 2016. REUTERS/Ezra Acayan/File Photo <p>The decision marks a stunning about-face by Duterte, who has repeatedly dared the ICC to indict him and said he was willing to &#8220;rot in jail&#8221; or go on trial to defend a war on drugs that has killed thousands of his own people.</p> <p>The mercurial former mayor had initially welcomed last month&#8217;s announcement by the ICC of its preliminary examination into a complaint filed by a Philippine lawyer accusing Duterte and top officials of crimes against humanity.</p> <p>But in a 15-page statement, dated March 13, Duterte said he was withdrawing from the ICC&#8217;s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, because of &#8220;baseless, unprecedented and outrageous attacks&#8221; by U.N. officials, and ICC actions that he said failed to follow due process and presumption of innocence.</p> <p>&#8220;There appears to be a concerted effort on the part of the U.N. special rapporteurs to paint me as a ruthless and heartless violator of human rights who allegedly caused thousands of extrajudicial killings,&#8221; Duterte said.</p> <p>The ICC&#8217;s examination was premature, he added, and &#8220;effectively created the impression that I am to be charged ... for serious crimes falling under its jurisdiction.&#8221;</p> <p>He made no mention of the withdrawal in a speech on Wednesday.</p> <p>Duterte&#8217;s chief critics said the move was a U-turn that showed the tough-talking leader was now in panic mode.</p> <p>&#8220;This is an embarrassing attempt to create legal cover, and a self-serving effort to avoid accountability and place himself above Philippine and international law,&#8221; said Sam Zarifi, Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists.</p> <p>The London-based rights group Amnesty International called the withdrawal &#8220;misguided&#8221; and &#8220;cowardly&#8221;.</p> <p>Human Rights Watch called it &#8220;a barefaced attempt to shield him and high-ranking officials&#8221;, noting that withdrawal took a year and the ICC could still prosecute international crimes committed while the Philippines was a member.</p> <p>An ICC spokesman referred most questions to the court&#8217;s prosecutors, who could not immediately be reached.</p> FILE PHOTO: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announces the disbandment of police operations against illegal drugs at the Malacanang palace in Manila, Philippines early January 30, 2017. REUTERS/Ezra Acayan/File Photo INTERNATIONAL ALARM <p>Duterte&#8217;s bloody campaign has caused international alarm and fierce criticism from some U.N. representatives, including High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra&#8217;ad al-Hussein, who on Friday said Duterte should submit himself for a psychiatric examination.</p> <p>Duterte&#8217;s defiance is among the traits that make him wildly popular in the Philippines, where his crackdown has broad support. He has refused to accept some police may be systematically executing suspected dealers, as activists say.</p> <p>Police deny allegations of murder and cover-ups and say they killed about 4,100 drug dealers in shootouts, but have nothing to do with an estimated 2,300 largely unsolved drug-related homicides.</p> <p>Last month, he indicated he would cooperate with the ICC examination and even said he would prefer a firing squad to prison.</p> <p>But he soon changed his tune, telling security forces not to cooperate in any international investigation, and that &#8220;not in a million years&#8221; would the ICC have jurisdiction.</p> <p>Jude Sabio, the lawyer who filed the ICC complaint last year, said Duterte&#8217;s move was predictable, futile and designed to appeal to his support base.</p> <p>&#8220;Looks like they are really afraid. Why? They feel that this will proceed to an investigation,&#8221; Sabio told Reuters, adding the withdrawal &#8220;will have no binding legal effect&#8221;.</p> <p>The ICC can only intervene when a member state is unable or unwilling to carry out investigations and prosecute suspected perpetrators. The Philippines says that is far from the case.</p> <p>The ICC&#8217;s examination seeks to establish whether crimes have taken place, and such a process typically takes years.</p> <p>Duterte&#8217;s spokesman, Harry Roque, said the ICC was &#8220;siding with the enemies of the president&#8221;, while Duterte&#8217;s legal counsel Salvador Panelo said the accession to the Rome Statute in 2011 was never announced in the Philippines official gazette, thus did not apply.</p> <p>Panelo insisted Duterte was not afraid, but objected to the ICC becoming &#8220;a political tool to harass a particular country, like ours&#8221;.</p> <p>Duterte&#8217;s critics argued otherwise. Senator Risa Hontiveros said Duterte was desperate and &#8220;may have unwittingly displayed his fear of being proven guilty&#8221;.</p> <p>Senator Antonio Trillanes said Duterte was withdrawing &#8220;because he knows that there is no way out for him in the ICC&#8221;.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in AMSTERDAM and Tom Miles in GENEVA; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Robert Birsel</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BERLIN (Reuters) - German lawmakers on Wednesday re-elected Angela Merkel as chancellor for a fourth, and likely final, term that may prove her most challenging yet as she takes charge of a fragile coalition with her personal standing diminished.</p> <p>Lawmakers voted by 364 to 315, with nine abstentions, in favor of re-electing Merkel, a humbling start as the coalition of her conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) has 399 votes in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.</p> <p>&#8220;I accept the vote,&#8221; a beaming Merkel, 63, told lawmakers before being sworn in by Bundestag President Wolfgang Schaeuble.</p> <p>She later told broadcaster the ruling parties would focus on taking support away from far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which hurt them in last September&#8217;s national election.</p> <p>&#8220;That is our aim - that we make them (AfD) smaller and get them out of the Bundestag again insofar as is possible,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We want a coalition that appeals to all people in the country.&#8221;</p> <p>In office since 2005, Merkel has dominated Germany&#8217;s political landscape and steered the European Union through economic crisis.</p> <p>But her authority was dented by her decision in 2015 to commit Germany to an open-door policy on refugees, resulting in an influx of more than one million people that laid bare deep divisions within the EU over migration and fueled the AfD.</p> <p>While also being locked in a trade stand-off with the United States, Merkel must now juggle competing domestic demands from within her coalition.</p> <p>Her conservative CDU/CSU alliance only turned to the SPD to prolong the &#8216;grand coalition&#8217; that has governed Germany since 2013 out of desperation, after talks on a three-way alliance with two smaller parties collapsed in November.</p> <p>&#8220;It will not be an easy coalition, we have some difficult tasks ahead,&#8221; said Volker Kauder, parliamentary leader of the conservative bloc.</p> <p>Ministers, younger and more diverse than the last cabinet, take up their posts almost six months after last September&#8217;s national election.</p> German Finance Minister and vice-chancellor Olaf Scholz, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chancellery's Chief of Staff Helge Braun attend the first cabinet meeting in Berlin, Germany, March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch <p>&#8220;I have the feeling that nothing good is going to be done for the country in this legislature period,&#8221; said Alice Weidel, the AfD&#8217;s leader in parliament. &#8220;It will probably be Angela Merkel&#8217;s last term and at some point it will be enough.&#8221;</p> FULL INBOX <p>Merkel starts work with a full inbox.</p> <p>Abroad she faces the trade tensions with Washington, pressure from France to reform Europe, and from Britain to stand up to Russia.</p> Slideshow (26 Images) <p>President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said it was &#8220;high time for a new government&#8221; to go to work.</p> <p>Merkel&#8217;s spokesman said she would head to France on Friday to discuss bilateral, European and international topics with President Emmanuel Macron.</p> <p>Macron congratulated Merkel in a tweet, adding: &#8220;Let&#8217;s act together to take Europe forward, faster and more strongly.&#8221;</p> <p>On Tuesday, Merkel&#8217;s spokesman said she spoke by phone with British Prime Minister Theresa May and condemned a nerve agent attack on an ex-Russian spy in England for which May held Moscow responsible.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-germany-agriculture-minister/julia-kloeckner-takes-over-as-german-farm-minister-in-new-government-idUSKCN1GQ1T1" type="external">Julia Kloeckner takes over as German farm minister in new government</a> <p>Merkel later said the EU would present a common stance on Russia, adding: &#8220;Nonetheless, I say we can&#8217;t break off all contacts now.&#8221;</p> <p>Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Merkel on her re-election in a telegram and emphasized the importance of further developing bilateral ties, the Kremlin said.</p> <p>At home, the pressure is on both sides of the coalition to deliver for their rank and file. Their deal includes a clause that envisages a review of the government&#8217;s progress after two years, giving each the opportunity to pull out then if it is not working for them.</p> <p>Fault lines have emerged in the new government even before its first cabinet meeting, with tensions evident over the sequencing and extent of reforms.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Editing by John Stonestreet and Andrew Heavens</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Shaanxi International Trust's Prelim 2017 Net Profit Down 26.1 Percent Y/Y British PM May expels 23 Russian spies but stops well short of bothering Putin In warning for Trump, Democrats claim win in Pennsylvania Duterte to withdraw Philippines from ICC after 'outrageous attacks' Weakened Merkel begins fourth term beset by challenges

https://reuters.com/article/brief-shaanxi-international-trusts-preli/brief-shaanxi-international-trusts-prelim-2017-net-profit-down-261-percent-y-y-idUSH9N1PE02F

2018-01-25

2least

Jan 25 Reuters Shaanxi International Trust Co Ltd SAYS PRELIM 2017 NET PROFIT DOWN 261 PERCENT YY AT 3810 MILLION YUAN 6029 million Source text in Chinese bitly2ndOvqy Further company coverage 1 63196 Chinese yuan renminbi Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Prime Minister Theresa May8217s response to Russia after a nerve agent attack on British soil is unlikely to trouble Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin unduly despite the expression of outrage that greeted it in Moscow Britains Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street in London March 13 2018 REUTERSToby Melville After the first known use of a militarygrade nerve toxin on British soil since World War Two May expelled 23 Russian spies using diplomatic cover and promised to freeze Russian State assets if they were used to threaten British interests May also said Britain would work on new powers to defend against hostile state activity beef up counter espionage powers and cut back official participation in the soccer World Cup Other measures may be considered she said But her announcement just days before an election in which Putin a former KGB officer is expected to coast to a fourth term gave no examples of Russian officials or companies that would be targeted or barred from London8217s financial center London remains open to Russian investment albeit with a political chill Other than the expulsions May went no further than current EU sanctions which include travel restrictions and asset freezes against 150 people and 38 companies 8220The Kremlin will understand this as a very mild response8221 said Mathieu Boul232gue a Russia expert at Chatham House thinktank in London 8220Putin is unlikely to be worried by this8221 A senior British government official said further options remained on the table 8220Economic diplomatic legislative and our security capabilities can all be brought to bear if needed8221 But after days of fullvolume rhetoric from London about the suspected Russian attack and a midnight deadline that Moscow scorned May has shown just how little appetite Britain has for a fight on the eve of Brexit While the United States and European Union joined criticism of Moscow albeit with a delayed response from US President Donald Trump there was little evidence of appetite in Paris Berlin or Washington for anything beyond a scolding Russian president Vladimir Putin addresses the audience during a rally marking the fourth anniversary of Russias annexation of Ukraines Crimea region in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol Crimea March 14 2018 REUTERSMaxim Shemetov Russia denied any involvement in the attack and simply declined to say anything about how a Sovietera nerve toxin ended up striking down a former double agent on the normally genteel streets of the English city of Salisbury The foreign ministry described May8217s measures as a flagrant provocation and promised a speedy response If Russia or Russians were behind the nerve attack some of their aims may have been achieved Britain has shown just how little power it is willing to exercise while every Kremlin opponent will be more nervous about retribution For many Russian experts the attack on Sergei Skripal a former GRU military intelligence officer who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to MI6 was a test for Britain after years of turning a blind eye to the reality of modern Russia Part of that policy is due to money One of the biggest exports since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union was money and London as one of the top two financial capitals in the world is a major beneficiary London or Londongrad as it is sometimes dubbed is the Western capital of choice for the oligarchs and Russian officials who flaunt their wealth across Europe8217s most luxurious destinations France with its own business ties to Russia has been more muted on the issue of Russian involvement in the attack on Skripal than Germany or the United States 8220Britain has tied itself up in knots8221 said a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity 8220It8217s had a very open policy on Russian private investment and 233migr233s for years and now it wants European to offer support in taking steps against Moscow This is for them Britain to respond to It8217s shocking that it happened but ultimately it8217s up to Britain8221 Additional reporting by Luke Baker in Paris and Elizabeth Piper in London editing by Philippa Fletcher Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles CANONSBURG PaWASHINGTON Reuters Republicans sounded alarm bells on Wednesday after Democrats claimed victory in a Pennsylvania congressional election seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump8217s performance although the final vote result remained officially too close to call In an ominous sign for Trump8217s Republicans eight months before national midterm elections moderate Democrat Conor Lamb led conservative Republican Rick Saccone by a fraction of a percentage point in the race for the seat in the US House of Representatives The final result may not be available until Friday The election should have been a shooin for Republicans Trump actively campaigned for Saccone who started the race well ahead of Lamb in a district Trump won by almost 20 points in the 2016 presidential election Republican Speaker Paul Ryan called the election a 8220wakeup call8221 in a meeting with Republican House members on Wednesday and pushed them to raise more campaign funding He also urged them to do more to highlight tax cuts approved by the Republicandominated Congress and signed by Trump Lamb led Saccone by 516 votes on Wednesday after absentee ballots were counted Counting of provisional ballots those cast by voters whose registration requires extra confirmation was to begin on Friday Republicans have not conceded the race and were not ruling out a recount or other legal action a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee said Provisional ballots will not be counted until Friday House Republicans called the race unique noting Lamb 33 a US Marines veteran had distanced himself from his party8217s leaders and staked out positions to the right of many Democrats 8220I don8217t think you8217ll see another candidate like Lamb8221 said Republican Representative Chris Collins of New York Representative Mike Kelly who represents Pennsylvania8217s 3rd District said Lamb was 8220more like a Republican8221 8220I thought Conor Lamb ran a very good race because he ran on the Trump agenda8221 Kelly said US Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb is greeted by supporters during his election night rally in Pennsylvanias 18th US Congressional district special election against Republican candidate and State Rep Rick Saccone in Canonsburg Pennsylvania March 13 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid 8216TRUMP BEFORE TRUMP WAS TRUMP8217 The patchwork of small towns farms and Pittsburgh suburbs that make up Pennsylvania8217s 18th congressional district is so Republican that Democrats did not even field candidates in the previous two US House elections Saccone 60 a former Air Force counterintelligence officer had described himself as 8220Trump before Trump was Trump8221 and led the race by more than 10 percentage points in January Trump held two events in the district during the campaign including a highprofile rally on Saturday Last week he announced tariffs on imported steel that had been expected to appeal to voters in a state known for its steel industry The election held to replace a Republican who resigned amid a scandal last year was the latest good electoral showing for the Democrats who also won a governor8217s race in Virginia and scored a US Senate upset in conservative Alabama Slideshow 17 Images Lamb8217s strong showing could buoy Democrats nationally as they seek to win control of the US House of Representatives from Republicans in the November elections Democrats see 118 Republicanheld districts in play If they flip 24 seats they could reclaim a majority in the House Republican donors and strategists have been anxious about high levels of enthusiasm on the Democratic side and have emphasized the need to motivate Republican voters to turn out to retain the party8217s grip on the US Senate and House US Representative Carlos Curbelo a Republican from Florida said the Pennsylvania race showed that lawmakers should be willing to buck their own leadership on certain issues or work across the aisle 8220I do it all the time I hear Conor Lamb speak and I say 8216That kind of sounds like me82178221 said Curbelo a moderate who has urged his party8217s leaders to bring gun control measures up for votes and also worked with Democrats on immigration issues A Lamb win could vindicate a strategy Democrats are using in some races to enlist candidates whose positions and ideologies are well suited to the district even while conflicting in significant ways with the positions of the Democratic leadership in Washington Lamb advocated for gun rights and said Representative Nancy Pelosi should be replaced as House Democratic leader making it harder than expected for Republicans to attack some of his positions It may be seen as a template for the Democrats to flip certain Republican seats that went for Trump Saccone8217s poor performance is worrying for Republicans who were sure that tax cuts the party8217s only major legislative achievement under Trump would be a vote winner this year But that sweeping overhaul did little to energize local voters some of whom dismissed it as a giveaway to the wealthy Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Susan Heavey in Washington and Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee Writing by Alistair Bell and Roberta Rampton Editing by John Stonestreet and Bill Trott Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MANILA Reuters The Philippines said on Wednesday it is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court ICC due to what President Rodrigo Duterte called 8220outrageous8221 attacks by UN officials and violations of due process by the ICC FILE PHOTO Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte points to photographers during an awarding ceremony for outstanding government workers at the Malacanang Palace in Manila Philippines December 19 2016 REUTERSEzra AcayanFile Photo The decision marks a stunning aboutface by Duterte who has repeatedly dared the ICC to indict him and said he was willing to 8220rot in jail8221 or go on trial to defend a war on drugs that has killed thousands of his own people The mercurial former mayor had initially welcomed last month8217s announcement by the ICC of its preliminary examination into a complaint filed by a Philippine lawyer accusing Duterte and top officials of crimes against humanity But in a 15page statement dated March 13 Duterte said he was withdrawing from the ICC8217s founding treaty the Rome Statute because of 8220baseless unprecedented and outrageous attacks8221 by UN officials and ICC actions that he said failed to follow due process and presumption of innocence 8220There appears to be a concerted effort on the part of the UN special rapporteurs to paint me as a ruthless and heartless violator of human rights who allegedly caused thousands of extrajudicial killings8221 Duterte said The ICC8217s examination was premature he added and 8220effectively created the impression that I am to be charged for serious crimes falling under its jurisdiction8221 He made no mention of the withdrawal in a speech on Wednesday Duterte8217s chief critics said the move was a Uturn that showed the toughtalking leader was now in panic mode 8220This is an embarrassing attempt to create legal cover and a selfserving effort to avoid accountability and place himself above Philippine and international law8221 said Sam Zarifi Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists The Londonbased rights group Amnesty International called the withdrawal 8220misguided8221 and 8220cowardly8221 Human Rights Watch called it 8220a barefaced attempt to shield him and highranking officials8221 noting that withdrawal took a year and the ICC could still prosecute international crimes committed while the Philippines was a member An ICC spokesman referred most questions to the court8217s prosecutors who could not immediately be reached FILE PHOTO Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announces the disbandment of police operations against illegal drugs at the Malacanang palace in Manila Philippines early January 30 2017 REUTERSEzra AcayanFile Photo INTERNATIONAL ALARM Duterte8217s bloody campaign has caused international alarm and fierce criticism from some UN representatives including High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra8217ad alHussein who on Friday said Duterte should submit himself for a psychiatric examination Duterte8217s defiance is among the traits that make him wildly popular in the Philippines where his crackdown has broad support He has refused to accept some police may be systematically executing suspected dealers as activists say Police deny allegations of murder and coverups and say they killed about 4100 drug dealers in shootouts but have nothing to do with an estimated 2300 largely unsolved drugrelated homicides Last month he indicated he would cooperate with the ICC examination and even said he would prefer a firing squad to prison But he soon changed his tune telling security forces not to cooperate in any international investigation and that 8220not in a million years8221 would the ICC have jurisdiction Jude Sabio the lawyer who filed the ICC complaint last year said Duterte8217s move was predictable futile and designed to appeal to his support base 8220Looks like they are really afraid Why They feel that this will proceed to an investigation8221 Sabio told Reuters adding the withdrawal 8220will have no binding legal effect8221 The ICC can only intervene when a member state is unable or unwilling to carry out investigations and prosecute suspected perpetrators The Philippines says that is far from the case The ICC8217s examination seeks to establish whether crimes have taken place and such a process typically takes years Duterte8217s spokesman Harry Roque said the ICC was 8220siding with the enemies of the president8221 while Duterte8217s legal counsel Salvador Panelo said the accession to the Rome Statute in 2011 was never announced in the Philippines official gazette thus did not apply Panelo insisted Duterte was not afraid but objected to the ICC becoming 8220a political tool to harass a particular country like ours8221 Duterte8217s critics argued otherwise Senator Risa Hontiveros said Duterte was desperate and 8220may have unwittingly displayed his fear of being proven guilty8221 Senator Antonio Trillanes said Duterte was withdrawing 8220because he knows that there is no way out for him in the ICC8221 Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in AMSTERDAM and Tom Miles in GENEVA Writing by Martin Petty Editing by Robert Birsel Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BERLIN Reuters German lawmakers on Wednesday reelected Angela Merkel as chancellor for a fourth and likely final term that may prove her most challenging yet as she takes charge of a fragile coalition with her personal standing diminished Lawmakers voted by 364 to 315 with nine abstentions in favor of reelecting Merkel a humbling start as the coalition of her conservatives and the centerleft Social Democrats SPD has 399 votes in the Bundestag lower house of parliament 8220I accept the vote8221 a beaming Merkel 63 told lawmakers before being sworn in by Bundestag President Wolfgang Schaeuble She later told broadcaster the ruling parties would focus on taking support away from farright Alternative for Germany AfD party which hurt them in last September8217s national election 8220That is our aim that we make them AfD smaller and get them out of the Bundestag again insofar as is possible8221 she said 8220We want a coalition that appeals to all people in the country8221 In office since 2005 Merkel has dominated Germany8217s political landscape and steered the European Union through economic crisis But her authority was dented by her decision in 2015 to commit Germany to an opendoor policy on refugees resulting in an influx of more than one million people that laid bare deep divisions within the EU over migration and fueled the AfD While also being locked in a trade standoff with the United States Merkel must now juggle competing domestic demands from within her coalition Her conservative CDUCSU alliance only turned to the SPD to prolong the 8216grand coalition8217 that has governed Germany since 2013 out of desperation after talks on a threeway alliance with two smaller parties collapsed in November 8220It will not be an easy coalition we have some difficult tasks ahead8221 said Volker Kauder parliamentary leader of the conservative bloc Ministers younger and more diverse than the last cabinet take up their posts almost six months after last September8217s national election German Finance Minister and vicechancellor Olaf Scholz Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chancellerys Chief of Staff Helge Braun attend the first cabinet meeting in Berlin Germany March 14 2018 REUTERSFabrizio Bensch 8220I have the feeling that nothing good is going to be done for the country in this legislature period8221 said Alice Weidel the AfD8217s leader in parliament 8220It will probably be Angela Merkel8217s last term and at some point it will be enough8221 FULL INBOX Merkel starts work with a full inbox Abroad she faces the trade tensions with Washington pressure from France to reform Europe and from Britain to stand up to Russia Slideshow 26 Images President FrankWalter Steinmeier said it was 8220high time for a new government8221 to go to work Merkel8217s spokesman said she would head to France on Friday to discuss bilateral European and international topics with President Emmanuel Macron Macron congratulated Merkel in a tweet adding 8220Let8217s act together to take Europe forward faster and more strongly8221 On Tuesday Merkel8217s spokesman said she spoke by phone with British Prime Minister Theresa May and condemned a nerve agent attack on an exRussian spy in England for which May held Moscow responsible Related Coverage Julia Kloeckner takes over as German farm minister in new government Merkel later said the EU would present a common stance on Russia adding 8220Nonetheless I say we can8217t break off all contacts now8221 Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Merkel on her reelection in a telegram and emphasized the importance of further developing bilateral ties the Kremlin said At home the pressure is on both sides of the coalition to deliver for their rank and file Their deal includes a clause that envisages a review of the government8217s progress after two years giving each the opportunity to pull out then if it is not working for them Fault lines have emerged in the new government even before its first cabinet meeting with tensions evident over the sequencing and extent of reforms Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs in Moscow Editing by John Stonestreet and Andrew Heavens Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Kindergarten teacher Kate Durham of Chicago International Charter School in Bucktown pulls out files and starts reading out loud information about her students&#8217; previous educational experience.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Seven of the children never went to preschool. Some attended preschool at one of a dizzying array of elementary schools&#8212;McAuliffe, Yates, Henry, Belmont-Cragin, Mozart, Cameron, Burbank and Schubert. Other children went to one of at least nine different child care centers or community-based Head Start programs.</p> <p>All in all, the children&#8217;s experiences are so varied that there&#8217;s no way for Durham to become familiar with each of them. &#8220;A lot of times, I don&#8217;t really pay attention because I&#8217;m not from here, so I&#8217;m not really familiar with [the school] names,&#8221; she says.</p> <p>Many kindergarten teachers face a similar conundrum each year. Faced with getting to know families and children for the first time, they have little information on children&#8217;s learning backgrounds and how well-prepared they are for the critical first year of formal schooling.</p> <p>The notion that kindergarten should be better-aligned with preschool isn&#8217;t new. It was touted in a National Education Goals Panel report, among others, in the 1990s, as well as in a 1988 National Association of State Boards of Education report, &#8220;Right from the Start.&#8221; But the idea is gaining more traction with early childhood experts and policymakers, who stress the need to help children transition smoothly to kindergarten and the primary grades to set a firm foundation for success.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Yet a number of hurdles stand in the way. As in Durham&#8217;s class, kindergarteners come from a wide variety of backgrounds&#8212;from Head Start to state-funded preschool, private preschool, child care centers or home care&#8212;and there&#8217;s no system in place to make sure that teachers and schools get information from these institutions that would help them ease the transition.</p> <p>School choice has made it more challenging for some schools to know exactly who will be enrolling in kindergarten from year to year. The district has no money specifically targeted toward transition activities. And not every kindergarten teacher has training in early childhood development, although experts believe it would be helpful.</p> <p>As schools and policymakers take steps to bridge the divide, their goal is to sustain the learning momentum of preschool and prevent &#8220;fade-out,&#8221; a phenomenon in which the academic advantage gained in preschool disappears after a couple of years.</p> <p>&#8220;Some people have the idea that early-childhood education programs are a vaccination,&#8221; says Barbara Bowman, the head of the Office of Early Childhood Education at CPS. &#8220;[They think] if we just have this when you&#8217;re 3 and 4 years old, you need never go to a good school, you need never have a good teacher again.&#8221;</p> <p>Teachers say that as students start kindergarten, many have trouble adapting to structure and meeting behavior expectations, such as the length of time they are expected to sit in one place.</p> <p>Sometimes teachers&#8217; expectations aren&#8217;t developmentally appropriate. But often the sheer newness of the environment can throw children for a loop, and the lack of continuity can cause more than disoriented students. University of Minnesota researcher Arthur Reynolds theorizes that it might contribute to fade-out.</p> <p>The district&#8217;s Kindergarten Readiness Tool is designed to give kindergarten teachers information about children&#8217;s preschool learning and help make ease the transition. But its impact has been spotty so far. On the ground, many kindergarten teachers did not notice that information from the tool was available. Others said that their own assessments, done after summer break, provided a better picture of student learning.</p> <p>At a state level, Illinois State Board of Education Superintendent Christopher Koch says that the implementation of the national Common Core Standards&#8212;Illinois has signed on to the project&#8212;and the assessments that will accompany them will make it even more important for information to be shared across the preschool-kindergarten divide (although the standards are already drawing fire from some educators who feel they are not developmentally appropriate for young children).</p> <p>&#8220;We have a bridge to build,&#8221; Koch says. &#8220;The standards expect educators to know not just what the standards are for their level, but for the level before and the level after.&#8221;</p> <p>A new state assessment for kindergarteners could be piloted as early as fall 2012. It will likely be based on teacher observations of student behavior and learning.</p> <p>At Belding Elementary in Irving Park, school-level activities aim to smooth the transition.</p> <p>Principal Heather Yutzy says the area office doled out money last summer for teachers to come to the school in August and assess incoming students. Kindergarten teacher Leon Schrauben assessed 20 of his 24 students, making it easier for him to plan lessons. Plus, he adds, &#8220;they got to see the classroom; they got to meet me.&#8221;</p> <p>Yutzy has also developed Project On Target, which lists specific milestones every student should be able to meet four times a year. Next, the kindergarten targets will be used to set guidelines for preschool.</p> <p>Belding has also added more indicators to the district&#8217;s Kindergarten Report Card. &#8220;We felt like the reading [requirement] was a little weak,&#8221; Yutzy says. She is planning to launch a parents&#8217; website, with links to online educational games, and wants to give primary parents educational flashcards to use with their children to build their skills.</p> <p>&#8220;Our hope for preschool is that we meet with the parents and say, &#8216;This is where we want your kid to be,&#8217;&#8221; Yutzy says. &#8220;Our school, as diverse as it is, there are vastly different parent expectations about what kids should be able to do.&#8221;</p> <p>At the end of this year, teachers will use professional development days to meet with each other, in pairs, about the students they are handing off to the next grade level. Students&#8217; Response to Intervention documents&#8212;detailed plans to help them with their trouble areas&#8212;will be passed along and explained.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re working on a one-page summary for each child,&#8221; Yutzy says. The idea is to save teachers from having to hunt for information among the three different CPS data systems.</p> <p>On a wider scale, a more comprehensive effort by the Erikson Institute stretches beyond kindergarten to the primary grades: the New Schools Project, now in place in six schools. While the number is down from 11 last year because of funding constraints, the Project hopes to add more schools in the fall.</p> <p>Over the last decade (the Project was launched in 2002), about 20 schools have participated, with teachers receiving a wide range of training. An instructional coach spends one to three days a week at the school, leading workshops on topics such as independent reading time for children and giving teachers feedback on their teaching.</p> <p>Other activities include having coaches model lessons for teachers; school-level meetings among teachers at the same grade level and across grades, including preschool; coaching to help primary-grades teachers spend more time on math, science and social studies so that teaching focuses less on &#8220;the facts&#8221; and more on helping students develop inquiry and critical-thinking skills; consulting with principals; and meetings that bring together teachers from different schools to share ideas. Teachers can also take advantage of professional development events at the Erikson Institute.</p> <p>Preschool through 3rd-grade teachers work together to examine their expectations for entering students, as well as &#8220;the teaching strategies they use, the curriculum, to make sure what happens in kindergarten really builds upon pre-K so it&#8217;s not an abrupt change for children,&#8221; says Chris Maxwell, the Project&#8217;s director.</p> <p>Preschool teachers are enlisted to introduce families to kindergarten teachers, sharing their insights so that kindergarten teachers aren&#8217;t &#8220;reinventing the wheel,&#8221; Maxwell says.</p> <p>In turn, kindergarten teachers are encouraged to do face-to-face outreach to families who haven&#8217;t been to preschool, and to have open houses before school starts so children can start getting comfortable in the classroom.</p> <p>Among teachers who participated in the New Schools Project in 2009-10, 93 percent rated the coaching as &#8220;valuable&#8221; or &#8220;extremely valuable,&#8221; according to an Erikson Institute survey.</p> <p>As with many smaller programs, lack of money, time and other barriers make it difficult to scale up. Maxwell estimates that the total cost of the New Schools Project is around $50,000 per school per year, of which schools generally contribute between $10,000 and $15,000 out of their own budget. Other costs are covered by foundations, the Erikson Institute, and in some cases, the district.</p> <p>Some schools have solved the time dilemma with creative scheduling or asking teachers to stay after school&#8212;not always for pay. &#8220;Unfortunately, sometimes it&#8217;s more piecemeal than they would like because of budget constraints,&#8221; Maxwell adds.</p> <p>Accountability is another barrier. Maxwell says the emphasis on 3rd-grade test scores has filtered down, affecting curricula and how young children are assessed early on. As a result, administrators tend to focus on bringing older children up to speed, ignoring the need for &#8220;a solid foundation that in the long run could really prevent some of the remediation problems they have later on,&#8221; Maxwell says.</p> <p>Erikson Institute Director Sam Meisels said at a recent symposium that the Project&#8217;s approach works best when schools don&#8217;t have rigid grade-level structures, when teacher teams are given decision-making power, and when preschool programs and full-day kindergarten are available.</p> <p>The Academy for Urban School Leadership has adopted the Project&#8217;s approach. With the help of Erikson Institute staff, primary-grade teachers and administrators from AUSL&#8217;s network of turnaround schools have formed the Early Childhood Task Force. The Task Force recently began meeting to hammer out strategies to better align preschool, kindergarten and primary grade teaching and assessment, while making sure instruction is high-quality and appropriate to young children&#8217;s needs.</p> <p>Reynolds, for his part, advocates expanding the preschool-through-3rd-grade approach of Chicago&#8217;s child-parent centers, which offer preschool and kindergarten in the same location, parent engagement staff that focus on improving student attendance, and an aligned curriculum and lowered class sizes through 3rd grade.</p> <p>His decades-long study showed that the centers produced healthier, more successful students than a control project which just offered Head Start and full-day kindergarten classes. But now, many of the child-parent centers lack the full complement of health, mental health and parent involvement staff they once had.</p> <p>Eight of the district&#8217;s child-parent centers were closed in 2005. Today, 11 are in operation, and just 3 percent of the district&#8217;s Title I money goes to the centers.</p> <p>But as Reynolds points out, &#8220;It makes the implementation of [other] efforts so much easier when we have these models to build on.&#8221;</p> <p>Magnet and charter schools face a unique challenge when it comes to the preschool-to-kindergarten transition: Admission is governed by a lottery, which means schools often send away graduating preschoolers while bringing in kindergarten students who have never been to the school.</p> <p>Disney Magnet School Principal Kathleen Hagstrom says principal discretion used to provide a way for students who didn&#8217;t win the lottery to get into kindergarten at these schools. Disney admits 196 kindergarteners each year via the lottery, and graduates 60 preschoolers.</p> <p>But since principal discretion has been reined in by the district, &#8220;we have crying children, disgruntled parents, lots of complaints,&#8221; Hagstrom says. &#8220;They think it&#8217;s like a divorce. They think they&#8217;ve done something wrong to not be allowed to come to the school. We&#8217;ve developed such an outstanding program and to tell kids they can&#8217;t come to our kindergarten is just absurd.&#8221;</p> <p>The Ounce of Prevention Fund&#8217;s Educare early childhood center is working with North Kenwood-Oakland and Donoghue charter schools, run by the University of Chicago&#8217;s Urban Education Institute, on a solution: a &#8220;birth-to-college&#8221; pipeline.</p> <p>Starting this fall, parents who enroll their students as infants in Educare will get an opportunity to immediately reserve a slot in the charter schools. So far, 17 parents out of 24 new Educare families have completed the application process and will be guaranteed a slot when their child is ready for kindergarten.</p> <p>Demand for the option is evident: Nearly 50 preschoolers will complete Educare this spring, and 26 applied to the charters. Fewer than 10 got in.</p> <p>Parents have had the opportunity to go to family events at the charters, says Brenda Eiland-Williford, director of program and curriculum at the Educare Center. And Educare&#8217;s staff is glad to have schools they can recommend to parents so that children don&#8217;t end up in &#8220;a totally different world,&#8221; where they will be expected to spend large amounts of time doing seat-work rather than hands-on and exploratory learning.</p> <p>Eiland-Williford says parents struggle to help children complete a flurry of homework and worksheets&#8212;&#8220;more than what the child that particular age can handle.&#8221; Adjusting to seat work can be difficult, she says.</p> <p>Educare chose to work with the University of Chicago charter schools because of their reputation for high-quality instruction, student support and family engagement, which will help to prevent some of the transition difficulties.</p> <p>To strengthen the connection, staff from Educare and the charter schools will meet to set goals. Teachers will share techniques, use common assessments and share data. Having teachers work together will help prevent conflict that Eiland-Williford believes stems from a lack of understanding about what is age-appropriate for young children.</p> <p>&#8220;We want those conversations. It will be a learning opportunity,&#8221; Eiland-Williford says. Such learning opportunities could help solve perhaps the biggest challenge: the difference in teaching philosophies and training of early childhood and elementary educators.</p> <p>In Illinois, a majority of early elementary teachers have K-9 teaching certificates, which allow them more flexibility in teaching assignments and may be preferred by principals. But they are not required to have training in early childhood development, which would give them a better grounding in developmentally appropriate instruction.&amp;#160; (The CPS Office of Early Childhood said it does not have information on the number of kindergarten teachers with early childhood certificates.)</p> <p>A New America Foundation report on early-childhood teacher preparation, &#8220;Getting In Sync,&#8221; found that a majority of states have similar overlapping licensure issues, with many content courses for elementary teachers weighted heavily toward upper-grades instruction. Nationally, just 14 states require kindergarten teachers to get a certificate that is specific to early childhood.</p> <p>Preparation in birth to 3rd grade early childhood programs focuses more on learning processes, hands-on activities, family collaboration, literacy, and social-emotional learning, Maxwell says, while elementary preparation gives more weight to content knowledge and curriculum.</p> <p>&#8220;We have a lot to learn from each other,&#8221; Maxwell says. &#8220;We need to look at more balanced teacher preparation across the content areas. Early-childhood teachers very often get a lot of preparation in language arts, and literacy, but not in mathematics.&#8221;</p> <p>Results from the New Schools Project are beginning to convince people, from back-to-basics administrators to reluctant teachers, that better alignment is beneficial to students. Participating elementary schools, on average, experienced a three times higher increase in the percentage of 3rd-grade students meeting and exceeding ISAT standards in reading and math as compared to the district average.&amp;#160;</p> <p>&#8220;We can make progress school by school, but what we really need is to look at the systems and policies that provide the framework&#8221; for what Project schools do, Maxwell says.</p> <p>On a late August morning, not long after the start of the school year, Ashe Elementary kindergarten teacher Monica Hamilton is teaching her students how to sit on the carpet. It&#8217;s just one of several lessons in which she uses explicit, step-by-step explanations to help children adjust to the reality of school. Hamilton has an early childhood certificate, but did not study early childhood education in college; she earned the credential &#8220;in the trenches,&#8221; through a program that gave her credit for kindergarten teaching experience.</p> <p>&#8220;When we&#8217;re seated on the carpet we need to cross our legs Indian-style, and keep our hands folded. It helps us keep our hands to ourselves,&#8221; Hamilton says to the class. &#8220;All this is for a reason. It helps you to be disciplined. Being disciplined helps you do the right thing when you&#8217;re tempted to do the wrong thing.&#8221;</p> <p>Later, Hamilton leads the children in an arm-lifting game that reinforces the difference between right and left and requires them to listen for her direction on when to put an arm down. Then, it&#8217;s time for roll-call.</p> <p>&#8220;Fold your hands. Don&#8217;t put your hands in your mouth,&#8221; Hamilton tells a boy. &#8220;When I say your name, your response is, &#8216;I am here.&#8217;&#8221;</p> <p>There&#8217;s an air conditioner in the window, but it&#8217;s not operating properly and the room is sweltering. So Hamilton has the children line up to go across the hall, to a room with working air conditioner that is at least 10 degrees cooler, to cool off briefly. &#8220;Everybody&#8217;s shirt must be inside their pants,&#8221; she says.</p> <p>As the students stand in line for a few minutes in the borrowed classroom, Hamilton drills them on math and letters. &#8220;Show me how to make a &#8216;1&#8217; in the air,&#8221; she says, then does the same with the letter &#8220;m.&#8221; She writes the letter &#8220;m&#8221; and the letter &#8220;a&#8221; on the board and points alternately at them. &#8220;Tell me which one I&#8217;m touching,&#8221; she says.</p> <p>She asks them the meaning of plus and equal signs, then draws a series of triangles on the board. &#8220;When two and one get together, how many do we have?&#8221; she asks.</p> <p>When her students struggle to finish lunch in the few minutes allotted, she notes: &#8220;You think they already know [how to behave], but they don&#8217;t. That&#8217;s why kindergarten is so hard to teach.&#8221;</p> <p>Hamilton taught 2nd grade last year and explains why teaching kindergarten has been a readjustment for her. &#8220;You&#8217;re teaching a baby again,&#8221; she says. &#8220;They didn&#8217;t know how to walk in a straight line, and listen, and follow directions.&#8221;</p> <p>It&#8217;s made harder, she notes, when students arrive without knowledge of how to act in a school environment. &#8220;You have to tell them what you want. Nobody has told them what to expect before they come to school.&#8221;</p> <p>Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below, or email <a href="mailto:rharris@catalyst-chicago.org" type="external">rharris@catalyst-chicago.org</a></p> <p>A small shrine with photos of patient David Bahena&#8217;s children sits on the windowsill of his room of the intensive rehabilitation unit at The Salvation Army Harbor &#8234;Light center. &#8220;I tried to get clean before, but last year I ended up leaving the program because my girl was six months pregnant and I ended up using again when I was out,&#8221; said Bahena, whose primary motivation to stay sober are his children. Photo by Jonathan Gibby</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">permalink</a></p>

A bridge to build

http://chicagoreporter.com/bridge-build/

2011-06-07

3left-center

Kindergarten teacher Kate Durham of Chicago International Charter School in Bucktown pulls out files and starts reading out loud information about her students8217 previous educational experienceamp160 Seven of the children never went to preschool Some attended preschool at one of a dizzying array of elementary schools8212McAuliffe Yates Henry BelmontCragin Mozart Cameron Burbank and Schubert Other children went to one of at least nine different child care centers or communitybased Head Start programs All in all the children8217s experiences are so varied that there8217s no way for Durham to become familiar with each of them 8220A lot of times I don8217t really pay attention because I8217m not from here so I8217m not really familiar with the school names8221 she says Many kindergarten teachers face a similar conundrum each year Faced with getting to know families and children for the first time they have little information on children8217s learning backgrounds and how wellprepared they are for the critical first year of formal schooling The notion that kindergarten should be betteraligned with preschool isn8217t new It was touted in a National Education Goals Panel report among others in the 1990s as well as in a 1988 National Association of State Boards of Education report 8220Right from the Start8221 But the idea is gaining more traction with early childhood experts and policymakers who stress the need to help children transition smoothly to kindergarten and the primary grades to set a firm foundation for successamp160 Yet a number of hurdles stand in the way As in Durham8217s class kindergarteners come from a wide variety of backgrounds8212from Head Start to statefunded preschool private preschool child care centers or home care8212and there8217s no system in place to make sure that teachers and schools get information from these institutions that would help them ease the transition School choice has made it more challenging for some schools to know exactly who will be enrolling in kindergarten from year to year The district has no money specifically targeted toward transition activities And not every kindergarten teacher has training in early childhood development although experts believe it would be helpful As schools and policymakers take steps to bridge the divide their goal is to sustain the learning momentum of preschool and prevent 8220fadeout8221 a phenomenon in which the academic advantage gained in preschool disappears after a couple of years 8220Some people have the idea that earlychildhood education programs are a vaccination8221 says Barbara Bowman the head of the Office of Early Childhood Education at CPS 8220They think if we just have this when you8217re 3 and 4 years old you need never go to a good school you need never have a good teacher again8221 Teachers say that as students start kindergarten many have trouble adapting to structure and meeting behavior expectations such as the length of time they are expected to sit in one place Sometimes teachers8217 expectations aren8217t developmentally appropriate But often the sheer newness of the environment can throw children for a loop and the lack of continuity can cause more than disoriented students University of Minnesota researcher Arthur Reynolds theorizes that it might contribute to fadeout The district8217s Kindergarten Readiness Tool is designed to give kindergarten teachers information about children8217s preschool learning and help make ease the transition But its impact has been spotty so far On the ground many kindergarten teachers did not notice that information from the tool was available Others said that their own assessments done after summer break provided a better picture of student learning At a state level Illinois State Board of Education Superintendent Christopher Koch says that the implementation of the national Common Core Standards8212Illinois has signed on to the project8212and the assessments that will accompany them will make it even more important for information to be shared across the preschoolkindergarten divide although the standards are already drawing fire from some educators who feel they are not developmentally appropriate for young children 8220We have a bridge to build8221 Koch says 8220The standards expect educators to know not just what the standards are for their level but for the level before and the level after8221 A new state assessment for kindergarteners could be piloted as early as fall 2012 It will likely be based on teacher observations of student behavior and learning At Belding Elementary in Irving Park schoollevel activities aim to smooth the transition Principal Heather Yutzy says the area office doled out money last summer for teachers to come to the school in August and assess incoming students Kindergarten teacher Leon Schrauben assessed 20 of his 24 students making it easier for him to plan lessons Plus he adds 8220they got to see the classroom they got to meet me8221 Yutzy has also developed Project On Target which lists specific milestones every student should be able to meet four times a year Next the kindergarten targets will be used to set guidelines for preschool Belding has also added more indicators to the district8217s Kindergarten Report Card 8220We felt like the reading requirement was a little weak8221 Yutzy says She is planning to launch a parents8217 website with links to online educational games and wants to give primary parents educational flashcards to use with their children to build their skills 8220Our hope for preschool is that we meet with the parents and say 8216This is where we want your kid to be82178221 Yutzy says 8220Our school as diverse as it is there are vastly different parent expectations about what kids should be able to do8221 At the end of this year teachers will use professional development days to meet with each other in pairs about the students they are handing off to the next grade level Students8217 Response to Intervention documents8212detailed plans to help them with their trouble areas8212will be passed along and explained 8220We8217re working on a onepage summary for each child8221 Yutzy says The idea is to save teachers from having to hunt for information among the three different CPS data systems On a wider scale a more comprehensive effort by the Erikson Institute stretches beyond kindergarten to the primary grades the New Schools Project now in place in six schools While the number is down from 11 last year because of funding constraints the Project hopes to add more schools in the fall Over the last decade the Project was launched in 2002 about 20 schools have participated with teachers receiving a wide range of training An instructional coach spends one to three days a week at the school leading workshops on topics such as independent reading time for children and giving teachers feedback on their teaching Other activities include having coaches model lessons for teachers schoollevel meetings among teachers at the same grade level and across grades including preschool coaching to help primarygrades teachers spend more time on math science and social studies so that teaching focuses less on 8220the facts8221 and more on helping students develop inquiry and criticalthinking skills consulting with principals and meetings that bring together teachers from different schools to share ideas Teachers can also take advantage of professional development events at the Erikson Institute Preschool through 3rdgrade teachers work together to examine their expectations for entering students as well as 8220the teaching strategies they use the curriculum to make sure what happens in kindergarten really builds upon preK so it8217s not an abrupt change for children8221 says Chris Maxwell the Project8217s director Preschool teachers are enlisted to introduce families to kindergarten teachers sharing their insights so that kindergarten teachers aren8217t 8220reinventing the wheel8221 Maxwell says In turn kindergarten teachers are encouraged to do facetoface outreach to families who haven8217t been to preschool and to have open houses before school starts so children can start getting comfortable in the classroom Among teachers who participated in the New Schools Project in 200910 93 percent rated the coaching as 8220valuable8221 or 8220extremely valuable8221 according to an Erikson Institute survey As with many smaller programs lack of money time and other barriers make it difficult to scale up Maxwell estimates that the total cost of the New Schools Project is around 50000 per school per year of which schools generally contribute between 10000 and 15000 out of their own budget Other costs are covered by foundations the Erikson Institute and in some cases the district Some schools have solved the time dilemma with creative scheduling or asking teachers to stay after school8212not always for pay 8220Unfortunately sometimes it8217s more piecemeal than they would like because of budget constraints8221 Maxwell adds Accountability is another barrier Maxwell says the emphasis on 3rdgrade test scores has filtered down affecting curricula and how young children are assessed early on As a result administrators tend to focus on bringing older children up to speed ignoring the need for 8220a solid foundation that in the long run could really prevent some of the remediation problems they have later on8221 Maxwell says Erikson Institute Director Sam Meisels said at a recent symposium that the Project8217s approach works best when schools don8217t have rigid gradelevel structures when teacher teams are given decisionmaking power and when preschool programs and fullday kindergarten are available The Academy for Urban School Leadership has adopted the Project8217s approach With the help of Erikson Institute staff primarygrade teachers and administrators from AUSL8217s network of turnaround schools have formed the Early Childhood Task Force The Task Force recently began meeting to hammer out strategies to better align preschool kindergarten and primary grade teaching and assessment while making sure instruction is highquality and appropriate to young children8217s needs Reynolds for his part advocates expanding the preschoolthrough3rdgrade approach of Chicago8217s childparent centers which offer preschool and kindergarten in the same location parent engagement staff that focus on improving student attendance and an aligned curriculum and lowered class sizes through 3rd grade His decadeslong study showed that the centers produced healthier more successful students than a control project which just offered Head Start and fullday kindergarten classes But now many of the childparent centers lack the full complement of health mental health and parent involvement staff they once had Eight of the district8217s childparent centers were closed in 2005 Today 11 are in operation and just 3 percent of the district8217s Title I money goes to the centers But as Reynolds points out 8220It makes the implementation of other efforts so much easier when we have these models to build on8221 Magnet and charter schools face a unique challenge when it comes to the preschooltokindergarten transition Admission is governed by a lottery which means schools often send away graduating preschoolers while bringing in kindergarten students who have never been to the school Disney Magnet School Principal Kathleen Hagstrom says principal discretion used to provide a way for students who didn8217t win the lottery to get into kindergarten at these schools Disney admits 196 kindergarteners each year via the lottery and graduates 60 preschoolers But since principal discretion has been reined in by the district 8220we have crying children disgruntled parents lots of complaints8221 Hagstrom says 8220They think it8217s like a divorce They think they8217ve done something wrong to not be allowed to come to the school We8217ve developed such an outstanding program and to tell kids they can8217t come to our kindergarten is just absurd8221 The Ounce of Prevention Fund8217s Educare early childhood center is working with North KenwoodOakland and Donoghue charter schools run by the University of Chicago8217s Urban Education Institute on a solution a 8220birthtocollege8221 pipeline Starting this fall parents who enroll their students as infants in Educare will get an opportunity to immediately reserve a slot in the charter schools So far 17 parents out of 24 new Educare families have completed the application process and will be guaranteed a slot when their child is ready for kindergarten Demand for the option is evident Nearly 50 preschoolers will complete Educare this spring and 26 applied to the charters Fewer than 10 got in Parents have had the opportunity to go to family events at the charters says Brenda EilandWilliford director of program and curriculum at the Educare Center And Educare8217s staff is glad to have schools they can recommend to parents so that children don8217t end up in 8220a totally different world8221 where they will be expected to spend large amounts of time doing seatwork rather than handson and exploratory learning EilandWilliford says parents struggle to help children complete a flurry of homework and worksheets82128220more than what the child that particular age can handle8221 Adjusting to seat work can be difficult she says Educare chose to work with the University of Chicago charter schools because of their reputation for highquality instruction student support and family engagement which will help to prevent some of the transition difficulties To strengthen the connection staff from Educare and the charter schools will meet to set goals Teachers will share techniques use common assessments and share data Having teachers work together will help prevent conflict that EilandWilliford believes stems from a lack of understanding about what is ageappropriate for young children 8220We want those conversations It will be a learning opportunity8221 EilandWilliford says Such learning opportunities could help solve perhaps the biggest challenge the difference in teaching philosophies and training of early childhood and elementary educators In Illinois a majority of early elementary teachers have K9 teaching certificates which allow them more flexibility in teaching assignments and may be preferred by principals But they are not required to have training in early childhood development which would give them a better grounding in developmentally appropriate instructionamp160 The CPS Office of Early Childhood said it does not have information on the number of kindergarten teachers with early childhood certificates A New America Foundation report on earlychildhood teacher preparation 8220Getting In Sync8221 found that a majority of states have similar overlapping licensure issues with many content courses for elementary teachers weighted heavily toward uppergrades instruction Nationally just 14 states require kindergarten teachers to get a certificate that is specific to early childhood Preparation in birth to 3rd grade early childhood programs focuses more on learning processes handson activities family collaboration literacy and socialemotional learning Maxwell says while elementary preparation gives more weight to content knowledge and curriculum 8220We have a lot to learn from each other8221 Maxwell says 8220We need to look at more balanced teacher preparation across the content areas Earlychildhood teachers very often get a lot of preparation in language arts and literacy but not in mathematics8221 Results from the New Schools Project are beginning to convince people from backtobasics administrators to reluctant teachers that better alignment is beneficial to students Participating elementary schools on average experienced a three times higher increase in the percentage of 3rdgrade students meeting and exceeding ISAT standards in reading and math as compared to the district averageamp160 8220We can make progress school by school but what we really need is to look at the systems and policies that provide the framework8221 for what Project schools do Maxwell says On a late August morning not long after the start of the school year Ashe Elementary kindergarten teacher Monica Hamilton is teaching her students how to sit on the carpet It8217s just one of several lessons in which she uses explicit stepbystep explanations to help children adjust to the reality of school Hamilton has an early childhood certificate but did not study early childhood education in college she earned the credential 8220in the trenches8221 through a program that gave her credit for kindergarten teaching experience 8220When we8217re seated on the carpet we need to cross our legs Indianstyle and keep our hands folded It helps us keep our hands to ourselves8221 Hamilton says to the class 8220All this is for a reason It helps you to be disciplined Being disciplined helps you do the right thing when you8217re tempted to do the wrong thing8221 Later Hamilton leads the children in an armlifting game that reinforces the difference between right and left and requires them to listen for her direction on when to put an arm down Then it8217s time for rollcall 8220Fold your hands Don8217t put your hands in your mouth8221 Hamilton tells a boy 8220When I say your name your response is 8216I am here82178221 There8217s an air conditioner in the window but it8217s not operating properly and the room is sweltering So Hamilton has the children line up to go across the hall to a room with working air conditioner that is at least 10 degrees cooler to cool off briefly 8220Everybody8217s shirt must be inside their pants8221 she says As the students stand in line for a few minutes in the borrowed classroom Hamilton drills them on math and letters 8220Show me how to make a 821618217 in the air8221 she says then does the same with the letter 8220m8221 She writes the letter 8220m8221 and the letter 8220a8221 on the board and points alternately at them 8220Tell me which one I8217m touching8221 she says She asks them the meaning of plus and equal signs then draws a series of triangles on the board 8220When two and one get together how many do we have8221 she asks When her students struggle to finish lunch in the few minutes allotted she notes 8220You think they already know how to behave but they don8217t That8217s why kindergarten is so hard to teach8221 Hamilton taught 2nd grade last year and explains why teaching kindergarten has been a readjustment for her 8220You8217re teaching a baby again8221 she says 8220They didn8217t know how to walk in a straight line and listen and follow directions8221 It8217s made harder she notes when students arrive without knowledge of how to act in a school environment 8220You have to tell them what you want Nobody has told them what to expect before they come to school8221 Tell us what you think Leave a comment below or email rharriscatalystchicagoorg A small shrine with photos of patient David Bahena8217s children sits on the windowsill of his room of the intensive rehabilitation unit at The Salvation Army Harbor 8234Light center 8220I tried to get clean before but last year I ended up leaving the program because my girl was six months pregnant and I ended up using again when I was out8221 said Bahena whose primary motivation to stay sober are his children Photo by Jonathan Gibby permalink

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<p>Inanna I am Inanna. And this is my city. And this is our meeting Round, red and full. Here, some time ago, someone was asking for help shortly before his death. Houses were still here with their roofs, people, and noise. Palm trees were about to whisper something to me before they were beheaded like some foreigners in my country.</p> <p>&#8211;by the Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail, quoted in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1842777459/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Iraqi Women:&amp;#160;Untold stories from 1948 to the present</a> by Nadje Sadig Al-Ali</p> <p>Recently I summoned up &#8220;Electronic Iraq&#8221; on my computer to discover the following stories:</p> <p>A Shia woman in Southern Baghdad talks about a new program of house &#8220;swaps&#8221; in which Shi&#8217;i being forced by Sunni &#8220;militants&#8221; to leave Iraq are taking the homes of Sunnis forced out by Shia &#8220;militants.&#8221;</p> <p>Mass weddings are taking place in Baghdad to avoid the expense of single weddings and the &#8220;gauntlet of car bombs.&#8221;</p> <p>The government is taking measures to protect university professors &#8220;following an increase in the number of lecturers leaving the country because of violence. The initiative will also include providing university teaching staff with personal bodyguards.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Baghdad&#8217;s residents, especially taxi and bus drivers, are deploying their own tactics to protect themselves from Sunni or Shia militants . . . and setting up bogus checkpoints to capture members of [one or] the other sect.&#8221;</p> <p>At least some of this (not the taxi-driver and university body-guard items, but the others) begs comparison with the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, who ordered the expulsions of Shi&#8217;i during the Iran-Iraq War&#8211;a measure so horribly effective that the period was given a name &#8212; zamn al-tasfirat (the time of deportations.) After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, a 1921 census gave Iraqis the choice between declaring either Ottoman or Persian origin. Those who had chosen &#8220;Persian&#8221; found themselves expelled by a dictator who feared fifth columnists in Iraq&#8217;s midst.</p> <p>Mass weddings also took place during the latter part of Saddam&#8217;s rule&#8211;though not to avoid car bombings: at that time there was nothing like the chaos now dubbed, for want of a more descriptive term, &#8220;sectarianism.&#8221; Mass weddings under Saddam took place to promote a brand-new policy towards women and family: the war he&#8217;d so blithely engaged with Iran, thinking he&#8217;d win a quick victory, had turned into&#8211;this, too, begs comparison&#8211;a quagmire. So Saddam turned away from the earlier state-socialism program characterizing the first decade-plus of Ba&#8217;ath rule, during which women had been seen as (these are his own words from 1981) &#8220;one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.&#8221; [131]</p> <p>Starting in 1968 the Ba&#8217;ath regime promoted maternity leave and daycare, expanded access for women to university education and the professions, and initiated a literacy drive that targeted poor and rural women. (Of the book&#8217;s few photographs one of most moving shows women of all ages, with rapt, earnest faces, in a 1978 literacy class&#8211;most wear scarves and long sleeves, some the traditional long black coat or abaya.) In her chapter on the Ba&#8217;ath in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1842777459/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Iraqi Women:&amp;#160;Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present</a>, interviewees now living in the US and UK &#8220;said that they had found it much easier working while having children during the 1970s to the mid-1980s inside Iraq than coping with the conditions that working women living in Western societies face.&#8221; [134]) As the economy spiraled downward during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam did a hundred-eighty degree turn, urging women to produce more babies for the country (each was supposed to have five.) Early marriages were encouraged; the state forbade pharmacies to sell contraceptives; many women became widows. As for state propaganda, &#8220;[I]mages of women and men working side by side to develop a modern progressive nation [gave way to] images of men protecting the land assaulted by the enemy. And the land was invariably represented as a female whose honour might be taken away.&#8221; [153]</p> <p>Nadje Sadig Al-Ali is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, an activist, and a feminist (a participant in London&#8217;s Women in Black, in 2002 she co-founded Act Together: Women&#8217;s Action for Iraq.) Her new book, Iraqi Women, should be required reading for anyone who wants to get beyond the usual litanies of depression about the war and the stereotypes about Middle East women held even by &#8220;progressives.&#8221; It is a truism that ignorance of the past is a sure guarantee that its worst features will reappear. A premise of the book is that the multifaceted stories collected here will &#8220;relate directly to different attitudes towards the present and visions about the future of the new Iraq.&#8221; [4] Excerpts from a hundred interviews of Iraqi women stud the author&#8217;s narrative to yield a detailed, rich and contradictory &#8220;alternative history or histories&#8221; that begins with late-1940s post-colonial Iraq. The book encompasses the communist-driven 1958 revolution against the British-supported monarchy and proceeds through Iraq&#8217;s short-lived republic; the first and second Ba&#8217;th coups in 1963 and &#8217;68; the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and Saddam&#8217;s atrocities against Shi&#8217;i and Kurds; twelve years of US-imposed sanctions from 1991; and the US 2003 invasion and occupation.</p> <p>Some of Al-Ali&#8217;s interviewees are secular; others are religious. All come from urban backgrounds that &#8220;encouraged education and a degree of freedom [in] social lifetheir fathers were lawyers, doctors, or government employees.&#8221; [61] The limitation of her interviews to educated women is one she announces from the start; restricting herself to them seems smart in a book that juggles as much historical and social complexity as this one. In her introduction Al-Ali takes care to define her own feminism&#8211;a word she says is sure to be misunderstood&#8211;as engaging &#8220;the struggle against all inequalities, whether they are rooted in sexism, racism, class or Islamophobia, and the attempt to find non-hierarchical and non-violent ways of resisting.&#8221;[9] (This kind of cover-all-bases academic prose, which left this veteran of 1970s women&#8217;s studies and feminist activism at least bemused, leaves off in the body of the book, written clearly and, for the most part, with little academic lingo.)</p> <p>Iraqi Women has few &#8220;themes&#8221; as such, but one is the absence of religious and ethnic conflict through most of the time covered here: &#8220;More than being Sunni, Shi&#8217;i, Kurd, Christian, Mandean or Yazidi, and until the 1950s Jewish, it was social class that would be the main marker of differences and commonalities.&#8221; [65] Another reality invoked by author and interviewees alike is Iraqi women&#8217;s strength in their country&#8217;s most troubled times. An unavoidable limitation &#8212; Al-Ali teaches in Great Britain and hasn&#8217;t been able to return to Iraq since 1997 &#8212; is that all her research was done with women living outside the country (the US, the UK, and Jordan.) She herself has lived in diaspora all her life (her father is Iraqi, her mother, German), which no doubt gives her an advantage in writing about the country for Western readers. Sadig Al-Ali, the author&#8217;s father, active in the country&#8217;s 1950s left-wing student movement, studied in Germany in 1958, fell in love there, and married the author&#8217;s mother in 1966. By that time, however, the Ba&#8217;th had come to power, ruthlessly repressing, torturing, killing and jailing members of the Iraqi left (between three- and five-thousand communists were murdered.) Al-Ali grew up in Germany and got her university and graduate education in the UK, the US, and Egypt. Unlike many Iraqis living outside (the country&#8217;s history has been marked by the exodus of countless Iraqis: we hear some of their voices in an initial chapter, &#8220;Living in the Diaspora&#8221;) she grew to know the country from the inside since she visited her father&#8217;s family regularly. (It was safe for them to return on occasional visits: having left the country long before the Ba&#8217;th came to power&#8211;they held it briefly only for nine months in 1963&#8211;February to November, and then returned for thirty-five years in 1968 &#8211; Sadig Al-Ali wasn&#8217;t a target for their revenge.)</p> <p>Given the country&#8217;s nightmarish present a chapter I found at once poignant and fascinating was &#8220;Living with the Revolution,&#8221; dense with details of the country&#8217;s vibrant intellectual, literary and artistic ferment in the 1950s and 60s. Iraqi women&#8217;s participation in the country&#8217;s powerful Communist Party as well as in the Ba&#8217;ath, and their vital women&#8217;s movements, are explored here. (We learn about the Iraqi Women&#8217;s League: communist-inspired, it was the country&#8217;s most significant such organization until the Ba&#8217;th take-over. A poignant photograph shows young Iraqi League women marching with banners, bare legs, and what in the US used to be called &#8220;shirtwaist dresses&#8221; and knee-length &#8220;peasant skirts.&#8221; Another shows women in traditional and modern or &#8220;Western&#8221; dress alike marching in 1948 during the &#8220;Wathba&#8221; or &#8220;Leap&#8221; &#8212; a series of anti-monarchy protests in which students, workers, intellectuals, professionals and the poor took part.) We also learn about the progress of women&#8217;s education from the late 20s; differing family perspectives on dress, social life and marriage; women&#8217;s participation in the arts and professions (medicine, dentistry, architecture, and university teaching among others.) The 50s and 60s period was the heyday of Al-Ali&#8217;s father&#8217;s youth, a time for which she feels &#8220;romanticism and nostalgia for a past that I never lived myself but that seemed to hold so many possibilities, so much positive energy and so much hope.&#8221; [56]</p> <p>The author makes no explicit comparisons between the past sixteen years of US intervention and the years under Saddam. Nonetheless it becomes clear that however repressive and barbarous the Saddam years were, they were better than life after 1991&#8211;the start of US-imposed sanctions. Al-Ali is particularly bitter about that period during which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (among them 500,000 children) died of malnutrition and want of medicine. (She doesn&#8217;t engage in long fulminations against the US and the West here, which may disappoint some readers, but the judgment is implicit.) The country&#8217;s infrastructure, including its formerly excellent medical system, fell into decay. Al-Ali&#8217;s beloved Aunt Salima, one of two women to whom she dedicates the book (the other is Cynthia Nelson, who taught Al-Ali at the American University of Cairo), died of breast cancer during the sanctions period because she couldn&#8217;t get medicine or chemotherapy treatment. (The disease was also possibly caused, says Al-Ali, by the depleted uranium the US sowed during the Gulf War.)</p> <p>Before the sanctions, looting and crime in wartime didn&#8217;t take place; the country&#8217;s social fabric remained intact. Of the fate of her new art gallery in the Iran-Iraq War a 60-year-old art dealer in Amman says: &#8220;Just a month after I started my own gallery, a missile destroyed itbut no one stole anything, nobody touched anything. It was totally different from the last war in 2003. We just put pieces of wood to cover the window for the whole year, because I could not afford to replace the windows with new glass. People were depressed, but everyone rebuilt their own homesPeople were so helpful at the time and we were hopeful that things would get better once the war stopped.&#8221; [151]</p> <p>As for the sectarianism that now rends the country, it, too, seems to have been only sporadic during the sixty years traversed by the book. State efforts to instigate sectarian hatred seem to have failed:</p> <p>&#8220;When I left,&#8221; says Khadija, a dentist exiled to Iran during the 1980s (&#8220;the time of deportations&#8221; at the start of the Iraq-Iran war), &#8220;I had no ID, no luggage, nothing. When I was kicked out of my house and deported to Iran, they [the government] locked up my house. My sister-in-law and one of my sisters climbed through one of the windows and recovered some of my personal belongings and brought them to a neighbour. The neighbour said that she would keep everything for a long timeImagine, I went back last year, after twenty-four years, and she still had all my things in a bag. She cried when she saw me and said that she had been waiting for me all these years.&#8221; [158]</p> <p>And while the Iraqi state expelled most of its Jews after 1948, there is no sense here that the general population approved. &#8220;When I grew up in the late 1930s and 1940s,&#8221; says Siham, a Jewish woman who now lives in London, &#8220;I lived in a multi-cultural society. We had equal opportunities in school and with jobs. I never thought that being Jewish meant being differentWe were proud of being Iraqi and JewishEven in &#8217;48 when Israel was established, most Iraqi Jews refused to go.&#8221; [25] &#8220;We were all friends,&#8221; recalls Zenab B., anti-communist, a Shi&#8217;i sympathizer now living in Dearborn, Michigan. &#8220;We celebrated holidays together. When we had the celebration in commemoration of Imam Husayn, they came with us. Even Jews and Christians joined usIn schools, we had Jewish, Christian, Sunni and Kurdish classmates. There were no bad feelings towards anyone. I myself came from a very conservative family. We wore abaya and long dresses. But when I look at some family pictures, some of my cousins had sleeveless shirts and short skirts.&#8221; [25]</p> <p>Cast against such a past, the present seems all the more horrible. A final chapter on the US invasion and occupation makes clear that Iraqi daily life has shut down. Women fear going into labor at night: they are terrified they and their husbands will be killed on the way to hospital. Everyone fears going outside on the commonest of errands &#8212; so much that when people leave the house they say a final farewell: each time may well be the last. Women in particular fear venturing away from home because of frequent assaults by criminal and reactionary Islamic gangs, and by &#8220;militias.&#8221; Professionals&#8211;doctors, university professors&#8211;have been killed. Kidnapping for ransom is pandemic.</p> <p>At the close of a book that has shown us how rich and varied the country&#8217;s past has been, how accomplished its women, and how great their capacity for survival, the following quote is painfully elegiac:</p> <p>&#8220;The alarm clock woke me at 6.30 in the morning. There was no electricity. I wanted to take a shower but there was no water I took a jug and went to get water from the emergency tank, washed, gathered my things and went out. The air was cool, lovely&#8230;You see how simple things can make you happy? Suddenly I heard a loud car honk and spun around, fearfulwe&#8217;ve become used to things without an explanationWhat makes me very afraid on the streetsis hearinggunshots, which then move increasingly closer. Iask myself, &#8216;is this the gunfire of people chasing terrorists, or gunshots at a funeral procession, or something else entirely?&#8217; . . . I see queues of cars waiting to fill up with petrol, winding down one street after another, and I ask myself &#8216;will the petrol run out before the last queue gets to the station?&#8217; Ah, how patient you have to be, oh Iraq. No electricity, no water, no petrol. No peace, no security.&#8221; (247)</p> <p>The author&#8217;s Aunt Salima was blinded at age eight in 1948, year of the Wathba. No one in her family can say exactly why the little girl lost her sight. According to Al-Ali&#8217;s grandmother, a woman jealous of the little girl&#8217;s gorgeous black hair and eyes put a curse on her. Al-Ali&#8217;s father said Salima had been playing with children who were tossing lime at one another from a nearby building site: some if it struck her eyes. The author&#8217;s eldest uncle, Salem, a retired judge, recalled that an eye disease had blinded many children in the 40s. [3] Al-Ali rejects the evil-eye interpretation but won&#8217;t settle decisively on any other.</p> <p>The story hallmarks the book&#8217;s general premise &#8220;that all histories and memories are constructed;&#8221; no single account can be said to be &#8220;true.&#8221; Al-Ali does say she doesn&#8217;t want to fall &#8220;into the postmodern trap of nihilistic relativism,&#8221; but still she makes few value judgments in the book. The absence of any clear political stand apart from the author&#8217;s feminism often gives Iraqi Women a frustrating &#8220;on-the-one-and-on-the-other-hand&#8221; quality. For instance when Al-Ali evokes her nostalgia for the palmy time of her father&#8217;s activist youth, she counters with a caveat: &#8220;But even then, in &#8216;the good old days&#8217; there was repression people&#8217;s experiences differed radically, depending on their social classplace of residencefamily background andpolitical orientation.&#8221; [56] This is the character of the book: no one story is &#8220;privileged&#8221; over any other. There are certainly virtues in this, but in the constant to-and-fro with its feel of obligatory coverage of all bases, I sometimes longed for a simple story line. And while it&#8217;s admirable that the book attempts to cover so much historical terrain, negotiate so many arenas (political, social, cultural) and represent its interviewees&#8217; many allegiances, it is inevitable that it can read like a text book. The interviews aren&#8217;t consistently vivid; neither is its connective tissue. The historical narrative sometimes soldiers on dutifully and without animation. (Al-Ali&#8217;s own personal reminiscences, on the other hand, are always warm and vivid: at some point she would do well to write a memoir.)</p> <p>Still, this is an invaluable introduction to the country and its women, the only one of its kind available to American and British readers, who sorely need it. I found myself returning repeatedly to various sections for fresh reflection about the book&#8217;s manifold details and the questions they raise. For instance the long section on the rout of Iraq&#8217;s Jews in the initial &#8220;diaspora&#8221; chapter implies that the general population didn&#8217;t approve. But it does beg further exploration of what the general population felt. It will also prompt those who, like me, have read accounts describing the extent to which Zionist &#8220;dirty tricks&#8221; provoked the Iraqi state&#8217;s reaction, to search for other writing about this critical period.</p> <p>Another question implicitly raised is how much the flight of Iraq&#8217;s educated elite, which includes this book&#8217;s author and her sources, will slow the country&#8217;s recovery from its devastation. Al-Ali&#8217;s concluding comment, &#8220;I do feel that Iraqi women continue to carry and embody the seed of hope for a more secure, peaceful and dignified time,&#8221; is appealing, but not altogether convincing. It will be left to future writers to explore the rooms whose doors this hallmark new book has opened for us.</p> <p>ELLEN CANTAROW is a Boston-based musician and writer.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

The Untold Story of Iraqi Women

https://counterpunch.org/2007/07/16/the-untold-story-of-iraqi-women/

2007-07-16

4left

Inanna I am Inanna And this is my city And this is our meeting Round red and full Here some time ago someone was asking for help shortly before his death Houses were still here with their roofs people and noise Palm trees were about to whisper something to me before they were beheaded like some foreigners in my country 8211by the Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail quoted in Iraqi Womenamp160Untold stories from 1948 to the present by Nadje Sadig AlAli Recently I summoned up 8220Electronic Iraq8221 on my computer to discover the following stories A Shia woman in Southern Baghdad talks about a new program of house 8220swaps8221 in which Shi8217i being forced by Sunni 8220militants8221 to leave Iraq are taking the homes of Sunnis forced out by Shia 8220militants8221 Mass weddings are taking place in Baghdad to avoid the expense of single weddings and the 8220gauntlet of car bombs8221 The government is taking measures to protect university professors 8220following an increase in the number of lecturers leaving the country because of violence The initiative will also include providing university teaching staff with personal bodyguards8221 8220Baghdad8217s residents especially taxi and bus drivers are deploying their own tactics to protect themselves from Sunni or Shia militants and setting up bogus checkpoints to capture members of one or the other sect8221 At least some of this not the taxidriver and university bodyguard items but the others begs comparison with the tyranny of Saddam Hussein who ordered the expulsions of Shi8217i during the IranIraq War8211a measure so horribly effective that the period was given a name 8212 zamn altasfirat the time of deportations After the Ottoman Empire collapsed a 1921 census gave Iraqis the choice between declaring either Ottoman or Persian origin Those who had chosen 8220Persian8221 found themselves expelled by a dictator who feared fifth columnists in Iraq8217s midst Mass weddings also took place during the latter part of Saddam8217s rule8211though not to avoid car bombings at that time there was nothing like the chaos now dubbed for want of a more descriptive term 8220sectarianism8221 Mass weddings under Saddam took place to promote a brandnew policy towards women and family the war he8217d so blithely engaged with Iran thinking he8217d win a quick victory had turned into8211this too begs comparison8211a quagmire So Saddam turned away from the earlier statesocialism program characterizing the first decadeplus of Ba8217ath rule during which women had been seen as these are his own words from 1981 8220one half of society Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated enlightened and educated8221 131 Starting in 1968 the Ba8217ath regime promoted maternity leave and daycare expanded access for women to university education and the professions and initiated a literacy drive that targeted poor and rural women Of the book8217s few photographs one of most moving shows women of all ages with rapt earnest faces in a 1978 literacy class8211most wear scarves and long sleeves some the traditional long black coat or abaya In her chapter on the Ba8217ath in Iraqi Womenamp160Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present interviewees now living in the US and UK 8220said that they had found it much easier working while having children during the 1970s to the mid1980s inside Iraq than coping with the conditions that working women living in Western societies face8221 134 As the economy spiraled downward during the IranIraq War Saddam did a hundredeighty degree turn urging women to produce more babies for the country each was supposed to have five Early marriages were encouraged the state forbade pharmacies to sell contraceptives many women became widows As for state propaganda 8220Images of women and men working side by side to develop a modern progressive nation gave way to images of men protecting the land assaulted by the enemy And the land was invariably represented as a female whose honour might be taken away8221 153 Nadje Sadig AlAli is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter an activist and a feminist a participant in London8217s Women in Black in 2002 she cofounded Act Together Women8217s Action for Iraq Her new book Iraqi Women should be required reading for anyone who wants to get beyond the usual litanies of depression about the war and the stereotypes about Middle East women held even by 8220progressives8221 It is a truism that ignorance of the past is a sure guarantee that its worst features will reappear A premise of the book is that the multifaceted stories collected here will 8220relate directly to different attitudes towards the present and visions about the future of the new Iraq8221 4 Excerpts from a hundred interviews of Iraqi women stud the author8217s narrative to yield a detailed rich and contradictory 8220alternative history or histories8221 that begins with late1940s postcolonial Iraq The book encompasses the communistdriven 1958 revolution against the Britishsupported monarchy and proceeds through Iraq8217s shortlived republic the first and second Ba8217th coups in 1963 and 821768 the IranIraq war of the 1980s and Saddam8217s atrocities against Shi8217i and Kurds twelve years of USimposed sanctions from 1991 and the US 2003 invasion and occupation Some of AlAli8217s interviewees are secular others are religious All come from urban backgrounds that 8220encouraged education and a degree of freedom in social lifetheir fathers were lawyers doctors or government employees8221 61 The limitation of her interviews to educated women is one she announces from the start restricting herself to them seems smart in a book that juggles as much historical and social complexity as this one In her introduction AlAli takes care to define her own feminism8211a word she says is sure to be misunderstood8211as engaging 8220the struggle against all inequalities whether they are rooted in sexism racism class or Islamophobia and the attempt to find nonhierarchical and nonviolent ways of resisting82219 This kind of coverallbases academic prose which left this veteran of 1970s women8217s studies and feminist activism at least bemused leaves off in the body of the book written clearly and for the most part with little academic lingo Iraqi Women has few 8220themes8221 as such but one is the absence of religious and ethnic conflict through most of the time covered here 8220More than being Sunni Shi8217i Kurd Christian Mandean or Yazidi and until the 1950s Jewish it was social class that would be the main marker of differences and commonalities8221 65 Another reality invoked by author and interviewees alike is Iraqi women8217s strength in their country8217s most troubled times An unavoidable limitation 8212 AlAli teaches in Great Britain and hasn8217t been able to return to Iraq since 1997 8212 is that all her research was done with women living outside the country the US the UK and Jordan She herself has lived in diaspora all her life her father is Iraqi her mother German which no doubt gives her an advantage in writing about the country for Western readers Sadig AlAli the author8217s father active in the country8217s 1950s leftwing student movement studied in Germany in 1958 fell in love there and married the author8217s mother in 1966 By that time however the Ba8217th had come to power ruthlessly repressing torturing killing and jailing members of the Iraqi left between three and fivethousand communists were murdered AlAli grew up in Germany and got her university and graduate education in the UK the US and Egypt Unlike many Iraqis living outside the country8217s history has been marked by the exodus of countless Iraqis we hear some of their voices in an initial chapter 8220Living in the Diaspora8221 she grew to know the country from the inside since she visited her father8217s family regularly It was safe for them to return on occasional visits having left the country long before the Ba8217th came to power8211they held it briefly only for nine months in 19638211February to November and then returned for thirtyfive years in 1968 8211 Sadig AlAli wasn8217t a target for their revenge Given the country8217s nightmarish present a chapter I found at once poignant and fascinating was 8220Living with the Revolution8221 dense with details of the country8217s vibrant intellectual literary and artistic ferment in the 1950s and 60s Iraqi women8217s participation in the country8217s powerful Communist Party as well as in the Ba8217ath and their vital women8217s movements are explored here We learn about the Iraqi Women8217s League communistinspired it was the country8217s most significant such organization until the Ba8217th takeover A poignant photograph shows young Iraqi League women marching with banners bare legs and what in the US used to be called 8220shirtwaist dresses8221 and kneelength 8220peasant skirts8221 Another shows women in traditional and modern or 8220Western8221 dress alike marching in 1948 during the 8220Wathba8221 or 8220Leap8221 8212 a series of antimonarchy protests in which students workers intellectuals professionals and the poor took part We also learn about the progress of women8217s education from the late 20s differing family perspectives on dress social life and marriage women8217s participation in the arts and professions medicine dentistry architecture and university teaching among others The 50s and 60s period was the heyday of AlAli8217s father8217s youth a time for which she feels 8220romanticism and nostalgia for a past that I never lived myself but that seemed to hold so many possibilities so much positive energy and so much hope8221 56 The author makes no explicit comparisons between the past sixteen years of US intervention and the years under Saddam Nonetheless it becomes clear that however repressive and barbarous the Saddam years were they were better than life after 19918211the start of USimposed sanctions AlAli is particularly bitter about that period during which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis among them 500000 children died of malnutrition and want of medicine She doesn8217t engage in long fulminations against the US and the West here which may disappoint some readers but the judgment is implicit The country8217s infrastructure including its formerly excellent medical system fell into decay AlAli8217s beloved Aunt Salima one of two women to whom she dedicates the book the other is Cynthia Nelson who taught AlAli at the American University of Cairo died of breast cancer during the sanctions period because she couldn8217t get medicine or chemotherapy treatment The disease was also possibly caused says AlAli by the depleted uranium the US sowed during the Gulf War Before the sanctions looting and crime in wartime didn8217t take place the country8217s social fabric remained intact Of the fate of her new art gallery in the IranIraq War a 60yearold art dealer in Amman says 8220Just a month after I started my own gallery a missile destroyed itbut no one stole anything nobody touched anything It was totally different from the last war in 2003 We just put pieces of wood to cover the window for the whole year because I could not afford to replace the windows with new glass People were depressed but everyone rebuilt their own homesPeople were so helpful at the time and we were hopeful that things would get better once the war stopped8221 151 As for the sectarianism that now rends the country it too seems to have been only sporadic during the sixty years traversed by the book State efforts to instigate sectarian hatred seem to have failed 8220When I left8221 says Khadija a dentist exiled to Iran during the 1980s 8220the time of deportations8221 at the start of the IraqIran war 8220I had no ID no luggage nothing When I was kicked out of my house and deported to Iran they the government locked up my house My sisterinlaw and one of my sisters climbed through one of the windows and recovered some of my personal belongings and brought them to a neighbour The neighbour said that she would keep everything for a long timeImagine I went back last year after twentyfour years and she still had all my things in a bag She cried when she saw me and said that she had been waiting for me all these years8221 158 And while the Iraqi state expelled most of its Jews after 1948 there is no sense here that the general population approved 8220When I grew up in the late 1930s and 1940s8221 says Siham a Jewish woman who now lives in London 8220I lived in a multicultural society We had equal opportunities in school and with jobs I never thought that being Jewish meant being differentWe were proud of being Iraqi and JewishEven in 821748 when Israel was established most Iraqi Jews refused to go8221 25 8220We were all friends8221 recalls Zenab B anticommunist a Shi8217i sympathizer now living in Dearborn Michigan 8220We celebrated holidays together When we had the celebration in commemoration of Imam Husayn they came with us Even Jews and Christians joined usIn schools we had Jewish Christian Sunni and Kurdish classmates There were no bad feelings towards anyone I myself came from a very conservative family We wore abaya and long dresses But when I look at some family pictures some of my cousins had sleeveless shirts and short skirts8221 25 Cast against such a past the present seems all the more horrible A final chapter on the US invasion and occupation makes clear that Iraqi daily life has shut down Women fear going into labor at night they are terrified they and their husbands will be killed on the way to hospital Everyone fears going outside on the commonest of errands 8212 so much that when people leave the house they say a final farewell each time may well be the last Women in particular fear venturing away from home because of frequent assaults by criminal and reactionary Islamic gangs and by 8220militias8221 Professionals8211doctors university professors8211have been killed Kidnapping for ransom is pandemic At the close of a book that has shown us how rich and varied the country8217s past has been how accomplished its women and how great their capacity for survival the following quote is painfully elegiac 8220The alarm clock woke me at 630 in the morning There was no electricity I wanted to take a shower but there was no water I took a jug and went to get water from the emergency tank washed gathered my things and went out The air was cool lovely8230You see how simple things can make you happy Suddenly I heard a loud car honk and spun around fearfulwe8217ve become used to things without an explanationWhat makes me very afraid on the streetsis hearinggunshots which then move increasingly closer Iask myself 8216is this the gunfire of people chasing terrorists or gunshots at a funeral procession or something else entirely8217 I see queues of cars waiting to fill up with petrol winding down one street after another and I ask myself 8216will the petrol run out before the last queue gets to the station8217 Ah how patient you have to be oh Iraq No electricity no water no petrol No peace no security8221 247 The author8217s Aunt Salima was blinded at age eight in 1948 year of the Wathba No one in her family can say exactly why the little girl lost her sight According to AlAli8217s grandmother a woman jealous of the little girl8217s gorgeous black hair and eyes put a curse on her AlAli8217s father said Salima had been playing with children who were tossing lime at one another from a nearby building site some if it struck her eyes The author8217s eldest uncle Salem a retired judge recalled that an eye disease had blinded many children in the 40s 3 AlAli rejects the evileye interpretation but won8217t settle decisively on any other The story hallmarks the book8217s general premise 8220that all histories and memories are constructed8221 no single account can be said to be 8220true8221 AlAli does say she doesn8217t want to fall 8220into the postmodern trap of nihilistic relativism8221 but still she makes few value judgments in the book The absence of any clear political stand apart from the author8217s feminism often gives Iraqi Women a frustrating 8220ontheoneandontheotherhand8221 quality For instance when AlAli evokes her nostalgia for the palmy time of her father8217s activist youth she counters with a caveat 8220But even then in 8216the good old days8217 there was repression people8217s experiences differed radically depending on their social classplace of residencefamily background andpolitical orientation8221 56 This is the character of the book no one story is 8220privileged8221 over any other There are certainly virtues in this but in the constant toandfro with its feel of obligatory coverage of all bases I sometimes longed for a simple story line And while it8217s admirable that the book attempts to cover so much historical terrain negotiate so many arenas political social cultural and represent its interviewees8217 many allegiances it is inevitable that it can read like a text book The interviews aren8217t consistently vivid neither is its connective tissue The historical narrative sometimes soldiers on dutifully and without animation AlAli8217s own personal reminiscences on the other hand are always warm and vivid at some point she would do well to write a memoir Still this is an invaluable introduction to the country and its women the only one of its kind available to American and British readers who sorely need it I found myself returning repeatedly to various sections for fresh reflection about the book8217s manifold details and the questions they raise For instance the long section on the rout of Iraq8217s Jews in the initial 8220diaspora8221 chapter implies that the general population didn8217t approve But it does beg further exploration of what the general population felt It will also prompt those who like me have read accounts describing the extent to which Zionist 8220dirty tricks8221 provoked the Iraqi state8217s reaction to search for other writing about this critical period Another question implicitly raised is how much the flight of Iraq8217s educated elite which includes this book8217s author and her sources will slow the country8217s recovery from its devastation AlAli8217s concluding comment 8220I do feel that Iraqi women continue to carry and embody the seed of hope for a more secure peaceful and dignified time8221 is appealing but not altogether convincing It will be left to future writers to explore the rooms whose doors this hallmark new book has opened for us ELLEN CANTAROW is a Bostonbased musician and writer amp160 amp160

Inanna/PROPN I/PRON am/AUX Inanna/PROPN And/CCONJ this/PRON is/AUX my/PRON city/NOUN And/CCONJ this/PRON is/AUX our/PRON meeting/VERB Round/ADJ red/ADJ and/CCONJ full/ADJ Here/ADV some/DET time/NOUN ago/ADV someone/PRON was/AUX asking/VERB for/ADP help/NOUN shortly/ADV before/SCONJ his/PRON death/NOUN Houses/NOUN were/AUX still/ADV here/ADV with/ADP their/PRON roofs/NOUN people/NOUN and/CCONJ noise/NOUN Palm/PROPN trees/NOUN were/AUX about/ADJ to/PART whisper/VERB something/PRON to/ADP me/PRON before/SCONJ they/PRON were/AUX beheaded/VERB like/ADP some/DET foreigners/NOUN in/ADP my/PRON country/NOUN 8211by/VERB the/DET Iraqi/ADJ poet/NOUN Dunya/PROPN Mikhail/PROPN quoted/VERB in/ADP Iraqi/ADJ Womenamp160Untold/ADJ stories/NOUN from/ADP 1948/NUM to/ADP the/DET present/NOUN by/ADP Nadje/PROPN Sadig/PROPN AlAli/PROPN Recently/ADV I/PRON summoned/VERB up/ADP 8220Electronic/NUM Iraq8221/PROPN on/ADP my/PRON computer/NOUN to/PART discover/VERB the/DET following/VERB stories/NOUN A/DET 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<p>Some have already forgotten it. Some are relieved to be able to forget it. What was it? CIA plot that got snuffed, as the Supreme Leader put it supremely deceptively? Was it an aberration? A blip?</p> <p>It was a reminder that time is short, and life is precious: A one-week flash flood of protests by Iranian poor-and-fed-up people across the country, in 80 cities, towns and even some very small towns; these protests voiced grievances that have only one way of being heard: in the streets.</p> <p>Western &#8216;anti-imperialist&#8217; and conspiracy-oriented left, European powers with lucrative deals either lined-up or ongoing, international financial centers, and President Rouhani and the whole herd of the so-called reformist and pragmatist factions of the regime, along with their expat mouthpieces, whose collective complicity was exposed unequivocally by this latest uprising of the people &#8211; they all can relax. The security forces and the hardliners did what they do best, so everybody can relax.</p> <p>This latest wave of people&#8217;s movement is in fact the continuation of a century-long struggle, though it may have burst onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere. This last episode of people&#8217;s resistance to dictatorship that started on Dec. 28 of last year, auspiciously ringing in the new year, lasted a mere week or so, yet we see how this flash movement came as an earthquake that shook the Iranian state out of its self-assured slumber, and opened up more deeply a crack, that deep-seated contradiction, that has been at the foundation of this theocracy.</p> <p>As short as it was in its lifespan, this latest social upheaval has compelled everybody to get busy providing summations: analysis and evaluation of &#8216;what happened&#8217;, views on the current situation, and how to proceed forward.</p> <p>International financial institutions had been issuing their recommendations and approvals to the Iranian regime for a long time. The World Bank has approved of the current regime of neoliberalism and austerity that the Iranian government has been instituting in systematic and progressive steps since the 1990s. The IMF has issued its recommendations for reforms of the banking system, and it has warned about the troublesome ramifications of the totally unregulated banking sector that has been operating at an industrial scale in Iran stealing precious little or not-so-little savings people might have put away. The proportion of the bank holdings that stole people&#8217;s savings and are insolvent is estimated at 40%.</p> <p>The so-called Reformist faction of the ruling class in Iran, our equivalent of the Democratic Party in the U.S., had already reached its conclusions years before this latest uprising, and is now in overdrive pushing thread-bare advice, telling people not to be in a rush, be calm and, most importantly, do not resort to any defensive violence, don&#8217;t destroy any property, but do depend on the Reformists to look out for the people and protect them from those nasty fundamentalist extremist conservatives who won&#8217;t let the Reformists do anything for the people.</p> <p>But, their game was exposed. They had up to now pretended to have been the protectors of the people, but people saw that their leaked budgets, like the good neoliberals that they are, protected the already-privileged, the state-run foundations, the religious foundations, and the security forces, while the budget decreased the miserly little help that was previously provided for the neediest.</p> <p>Further, as we witnessed especially in 2016, people have seen Rouhani&#8217;s government executing thousands for drug dealing charges, yet god knows how many were simply addicts, or worse, how many journalists, bloggers and political prisoners were thrown into the mix. People are certainly aware of the dire situation of the political prisoner and their mass hunger strike.</p> <p>People have, on top of all the regular misery they are condemned to suffer, seen that, since the lifting of the sanctions, most of the benefits of the economic growth have gone mostly to the rich and the connected. And it doesn&#8217;t help that the rich in Iran, just like the rich in the U.S., really like to throw it in your face about how sweet they got it. These are the people who&#8217;ve got it good in Iran, not the majority. So, if you&#8217;re supporting the Islamic Republic, these rich kids are the people you&#8217;re supporting.</p> <p>In terms of political actions to be taken by the people, Reformists&#8217; advice to the people was mostly this: Of course, you have a right to protest and voice your grievances. But, If the regime&#8217;s thugs and security forces kill you with impunity, arrest thousands of you with no due process, harass and torment the families of those they killed and force them to read out prepared statements written by security forces on national TV to the effect that their son was not killed by the security forces, if they torture you in jail to get a &#8216;confession&#8217; for crimes you never committed, if they kill you in detention and say you committed suicide &#8230; turn the other cheek.</p> <p>Our Reformists are true disciples of Jesus.</p> <p>As for the foreign &#8216;interveners&#8217;, the western powers displayed a clear division in their tactical responses to the Iranian people&#8217;s uprising. While the detestable Trump administration&#8217;s lackeys were full of hollow and hypocritical pronouncements in support of the Iranian people&#8217;s protests (despite having classified Iranian people as potential terrorists through their travel and immigration bans), the European powers were swift in their &#8216;level-headedness&#8217;. Macron sounded just like our own &#8216;Reformists&#8217;, advising all sides to refrain from rash acts (and this, while the regime was busy killing people with impunity, and arresting peaceful protesters by the thousands with no due process), pushing the viewpoint that the best way to protect human rights in Iran is to support and dialogue with the very state that has been denying us any rights and condemning the Iranian people to ruination and political and social abject misery for forty years.</p> <p>It is of course natural for the French president, a natural-born neoliberal, to come to the aid of fellow neoliberals in Iran. After all, Renault&#8217;s production levels in Iran just hit a record high in 2017 ( <a href="" type="internal">see here</a>.). The French car company Peugeot also produces cars in Iran.</p> <p>***</p> <p>Then there is the summation by the people in the streets.</p> <p>From its head to the smallest bones in its toes, this regime is steeped in violence, thievery and deception. And the working classes know it. To comply with global neo-liberal demands for intensified capital accumulation, an effort that took a giant leap with Ahmadinejad&#8217;s second term (2009-2013), state subsidies for basic goods and fuel saw a steep drop, and concurrent &#8216;privatization&#8217; of state assets transferred increasingly larger portions of the economy to &#8230; institutions run by the regime institutions, or their cronies.</p> <p>One enterprise that has been gobbling up all that was to be privatized is the Revolution Guards, to the tune of now owning a third of the Iranian economy. Besides having complete control over all military-industrial network of production, the &#8216;privatized&#8217; telecommunication industry was also &#8216;bought&#8217; by the Revolution Guards; the same with the radio and television broadcasting system; the same with considerable shares in the auto industry, which are run as joint ventures (with France&#8217;s Peugeot or Renault, for example); import/export licenses almost exclusively go to the Revolution Guards or &#8220;Khodi&#8221; people (those who actively support the theocracy); cronies, basically. The Revolution Guards also run and operate financial institutions. And just like all other governments that need a secret budget, aside from the traditional smuggling communities local to the border regions of Iran (especially in Baluchistan, in the southeast corner of Iran), the state also has a monopoly on smuggled goods (both into and out of Iran), including cigarettes, drugs and alcoholic beverages, all of which can literally be delivered to your house if you have the means.</p> <p>One effect of the recent uprising of the destitute and the super-exploited was the signal it sent to all the layers of the theocracy. The movement shook the regime to such an extent that even the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has issued statements advising the Revolution Guards to relinquish some of their vast economic holdings so that a few other local capitalists can breathe and expand the regime&#8217;s positive hegemony by that much. Back only a couple of years ago, the Revolution Guards were eyeing to gobble up even more of the economy, but now they have to realize that there is such a thing as &#8216;too greedy&#8217; even for an organization playing body guard for a clerical class that is the definition of &#8216;leech-like&#8217;, as we call them in Persian (zaloo-sefat).</p> <p>The economic and trade sanctions that were imposed by western powers in fact strengthened the regime&#8217;s hold on power, while at the same time impoverishing the working classes. As a result, holding two to three jobs to make ends meet has become an increasingly widespread necessity; as has sales of body organs and blood as ways of making ends meet; as has prostitution. Social misery also registers itself in the number of addicts to hard drugs, such as heroin, crack cocaine and opium. As reported in The Guardian back in 2014, the interior minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, announced the number of those afflicted with drug addiction to be six million. Today, we most likely have close to seven to eight million addicts in a country of 80 million.</p> <p>Poverty in Iran is suffered by almost half the population; the youth comprise half of the population, and youth unemployment is estimated at 40%; the numbers of homeless have tripled in the past decade, and the homeless crisis has become so severe that some homeless people in Tehran have taken to sleeping in pre-dug graves in some cemeteries. The images of these grave-dwellers caused a huge outcry in Iran last year.</p> <p>Iran is a society rich in resources and with incomes from oil, gas and petrochemical sales worth tens upon tens of billions of dollars in the past two years (since the nuclear deal was struck). The state has enough wealth to recruit, train, send and support a constant supply of mercenaries serving in foreign lands dying in thousands, killing in tens of thousands for the past six years, just so a dictator and his family can maintain absolute control over Syria; yet so little is done to help out the most desperate of the people in Iran.</p> <p>The very &#8220;mostaz&#8217;afaan&#8221;, the wretched of the earth, the downtrodden, in regime&#8217;s own language, the very people regime&#8217;s ideologues claim to be the intended beneficiaries of the revolution &#8212; these wretched of the earth are the ones who just rose up to shout their hatred and disgust at the entire regime.</p> <p>And that is the qualitative difference between this latest unrest and that of the 2009. The social contradictions that have sent Iranian people onto the streets on a regular basis, in different sizes, and initiated by different segments of the population, are deepening and finding a sharper class character.</p> <p>***</p> <p>Those hopeful that this monstrous theocracy suffocating our people is going to last forever may be catching their breaths right now, happy that the people&#8217;s upheaval was crushed.</p> <p>But we have happy (for us) news for them. It was not crushed. I cannot be crushed. Not for long; in any given decade, or two or three, we have risen up again and again since 1905; all of those major upheavals were also marked by smaller upheavals and recurrent unrest dispersed in between. Those in charge claim fantasies of having crushed the &#8216;sedition&#8217;, but that&#8217;s just hopeful thinking made into statements that history shreds on a regular basis.</p> <p>Since the Constitutional Revolution of more than a century ago in Iran (1905-1911), the people of Iran have not stopped attacking our equivalent of the French Bastille &#8211; our traditional ruling classes. For thousands of years, the traditional ruling classes in Iran, just like in Europe, had been a joint venture of what in Persian we call &#8220;Shah-o-Sheikh&#8221; (monarchy and clergy). Now the ruling class is comprised solely of the clergy and their assortment of security forces and paramilitary support systems. Their economic structure is, like the Shah&#8217;s regime, capitalist; only, this one is of the extremist neoliberal type with a theocratic superstructure: The worst of the worst kind of capitalism you can get forced into.</p> <p>Those who consider themselves to be of the leftist tradition of the Enlightenment and the left wing of the French Revolution and supporters of the Russian Revolution, and at the same time support this medieval theocratic regime, must simply have left all reason and rationality behind.</p> <p>The western left must take account of the fact that the Iranian regime is the victory of the counterrevolution in Iran in the wake of the revolutionary movement that swept the Shah and monarchy out of power in 1979.</p> <p>Some in the western left, as well as the Reformist wing of the regime, claim that a revolutionary movement in Iran is something to be afraid of since it can only end Iran up like Iraq or Syria. This line of thinking does not take into account the fact that the Islamic Republic, just as much as the U.S. is responsible for spreading violence and instability across the greater Middle East, from Afghanistan to Lebanon.</p> <p>This is not just State Department propaganda. This is the reality of the power status in the Middle East. The State Department would naturally have a say about this reality. But it is a reality. It is a reality experienced and hated by the Arab masses who are being slaughtered by Iranian-organized militias ravaging their communities; just as Vietnamese peasants and fighters hated the ravaging and violence brought onto their communities, villages, towns and cities by the U.S. forces.</p> <p>If we look at the actual demands raised in the 1979 revolution in Iran, we realize that all those demands are still not realized and have repeatedly been brought to the streets: economic justice, freedom and independence from imperialist powers (including Russia and China). The same social conflicts and contradictions are still present, and have in fact intensified ten-fold under the suffocating social conditions this theocracy has imposed on society for almost forty years.</p> <p>The social demands of the next revolutionary movement in Iran are not something that can be ignored by resorting to political-strategic calculations to do with power moves by outside players. The people of Iran have a natural right to demand what&#8217;s justly their basic rights as humans, and they will fight for those rights regardless of what outside powers may or may not wish to do. Did the Cuban people in late 19th century give up their fight to gain independence from Spain just because the American government at the time got involved in that fight?</p> <p>***</p> <p>The latest protests in Iran were many things. They were &#8216;street intelligence&#8217; throwing a wrench in the wheels of the ruling theocracy and challenging its neoliberalism at home and its regional imperialism; a loud rejection of a sham &#8216;legitimacy&#8217; being forced down people&#8217;s throats, a shout of people&#8217;s disgust transmitted to the world; it was a social oppositional awareness expressing itself spontaneously on a mass scale; and it was an exhibit of formerly repressed social grievances voiced out loud. Those who didn&#8217;t take to the streets in the last wave of protests back in 2009 have been thinking and dreaming about this moment. This time they came out, and they came out more articulately.</p> <p>Many observers have contrasted this latest upheaval with the much more protracted Green Movement of the 2009, which lasted in effect for just over seven months. A significant factor in the shaping of the 2009 movement was that the movement found its initial impetus from challenging the results of the rigged June 2009 elections. So, its most vociferous demand was to challenge the official results of an election. This meant that, fundamentally, it was submitting to the legitimacy of one faction of the regime, the &#8216;Reformists&#8217;.</p> <p>During these latest protests, however, the most prominent slogan was, &#8220;Bread, Jobs, Liberty!&#8221; while all other slogans pointed either to the looting of the national wealth by the clerical classes and their cronies, or else they focused on negating Iranian regime&#8217;s expansionist policies in the region. Here we can see a clear and unambiguous deepening of the publicly-mass-expressed awareness of the working classes confronting the whole regime.</p> <p>Historically, people make their moves one step at a time, and as they can, but in the case of this latest step the Iranian people took, we can see a deepening of the demands they bring to the battle in each successive stage of their long struggle for achieving social justice for all. So, we can see the collective political subjectivity of the masses taking a significant and conscious step on the path to becoming a &#8220;class for itself&#8221;.</p> <p>Iranians are no exception to the general rules of human social developmental laws that govern other nations. We have our own circumstances, our own historical rhythms, but we have the same universal problems as the rest of humanity. And as we go through our cycles of struggle against deep structural injustices woven into our economic and political structures, we learn and proceed forward. Any fundamental social transformation is the work of generations, not a one-time-event.</p> <p>Consider this historical fact: the three pillars of the French Revolution&#8217;s (1789) main slogan were, &#8220;Liberty, Equality, Fraternity&#8221;. Liberty from an absolutist monarchy was achieved, of course. An actual legal end to the privileges of a monarchial type of governance, however, was not achieved until the Third Republic (1870); that&#8217;s 81 years. Equality of genders in terms of political rights &#8212; voting rights &#8212; took until 1945 to be achieved; that is, 156 years for legal gender equality to become a reality in a country we consider &#8216;progressive&#8217;, First World, currently imperialist, formerly colonialist power with colonies across the globe, bringing them their special sauce of &#8216;mission civilisatrice&#8217;. And that&#8217;s just one aspect of equality. Eradication of classes has obviously not been achieved in France, and in fact class inequalities are deepening more than ever; so, no fraternity either.</p> <p>Iranian socialists rejoice in the people&#8217;s efforts to take the struggle one step further, giving the class conflict in Iran a sharper definition; we salute our people&#8217;s fighting spirit!</p>

As Class Conflict Sharpens in Iran

https://counterpunch.org/2018/01/29/as-class-conflict-sharpens-in-iran/

2018-01-29

4left

Some have already forgotten it Some are relieved to be able to forget it What was it CIA plot that got snuffed as the Supreme Leader put it supremely deceptively Was it an aberration A blip It was a reminder that time is short and life is precious A oneweek flash flood of protests by Iranian poorandfedup people across the country in 80 cities towns and even some very small towns these protests voiced grievances that have only one way of being heard in the streets Western 8216antiimperialist8217 and conspiracyoriented left European powers with lucrative deals either linedup or ongoing international financial centers and President Rouhani and the whole herd of the socalled reformist and pragmatist factions of the regime along with their expat mouthpieces whose collective complicity was exposed unequivocally by this latest uprising of the people 8211 they all can relax The security forces and the hardliners did what they do best so everybody can relax This latest wave of people8217s movement is in fact the continuation of a centurylong struggle though it may have burst onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere This last episode of people8217s resistance to dictatorship that started on Dec 28 of last year auspiciously ringing in the new year lasted a mere week or so yet we see how this flash movement came as an earthquake that shook the Iranian state out of its selfassured slumber and opened up more deeply a crack that deepseated contradiction that has been at the foundation of this theocracy As short as it was in its lifespan this latest social upheaval has compelled everybody to get busy providing summations analysis and evaluation of 8216what happened8217 views on the current situation and how to proceed forward International financial institutions had been issuing their recommendations and approvals to the Iranian regime for a long time The World Bank has approved of the current regime of neoliberalism and austerity that the Iranian government has been instituting in systematic and progressive steps since the 1990s The IMF has issued its recommendations for reforms of the banking system and it has warned about the troublesome ramifications of the totally unregulated banking sector that has been operating at an industrial scale in Iran stealing precious little or notsolittle savings people might have put away The proportion of the bank holdings that stole people8217s savings and are insolvent is estimated at 40 The socalled Reformist faction of the ruling class in Iran our equivalent of the Democratic Party in the US had already reached its conclusions years before this latest uprising and is now in overdrive pushing threadbare advice telling people not to be in a rush be calm and most importantly do not resort to any defensive violence don8217t destroy any property but do depend on the Reformists to look out for the people and protect them from those nasty fundamentalist extremist conservatives who won8217t let the Reformists do anything for the people But their game was exposed They had up to now pretended to have been the protectors of the people but people saw that their leaked budgets like the good neoliberals that they are protected the alreadyprivileged the staterun foundations the religious foundations and the security forces while the budget decreased the miserly little help that was previously provided for the neediest Further as we witnessed especially in 2016 people have seen Rouhani8217s government executing thousands for drug dealing charges yet god knows how many were simply addicts or worse how many journalists bloggers and political prisoners were thrown into the mix People are certainly aware of the dire situation of the political prisoner and their mass hunger strike People have on top of all the regular misery they are condemned to suffer seen that since the lifting of the sanctions most of the benefits of the economic growth have gone mostly to the rich and the connected And it doesn8217t help that the rich in Iran just like the rich in the US really like to throw it in your face about how sweet they got it These are the people who8217ve got it good in Iran not the majority So if you8217re supporting the Islamic Republic these rich kids are the people you8217re supporting In terms of political actions to be taken by the people Reformists8217 advice to the people was mostly this Of course you have a right to protest and voice your grievances But If the regime8217s thugs and security forces kill you with impunity arrest thousands of you with no due process harass and torment the families of those they killed and force them to read out prepared statements written by security forces on national TV to the effect that their son was not killed by the security forces if they torture you in jail to get a 8216confession8217 for crimes you never committed if they kill you in detention and say you committed suicide 8230 turn the other cheek Our Reformists are true disciples of Jesus As for the foreign 8216interveners8217 the western powers displayed a clear division in their tactical responses to the Iranian people8217s uprising While the detestable Trump administration8217s lackeys were full of hollow and hypocritical pronouncements in support of the Iranian people8217s protests despite having classified Iranian people as potential terrorists through their travel and immigration bans the European powers were swift in their 8216levelheadedness8217 Macron sounded just like our own 8216Reformists8217 advising all sides to refrain from rash acts and this while the regime was busy killing people with impunity and arresting peaceful protesters by the thousands with no due process pushing the viewpoint that the best way to protect human rights in Iran is to support and dialogue with the very state that has been denying us any rights and condemning the Iranian people to ruination and political and social abject misery for forty years It is of course natural for the French president a naturalborn neoliberal to come to the aid of fellow neoliberals in Iran After all Renault8217s production levels in Iran just hit a record high in 2017 see here The French car company Peugeot also produces cars in Iran Then there is the summation by the people in the streets From its head to the smallest bones in its toes this regime is steeped in violence thievery and deception And the working classes know it To comply with global neoliberal demands for intensified capital accumulation an effort that took a giant leap with Ahmadinejad8217s second term 20092013 state subsidies for basic goods and fuel saw a steep drop and concurrent 8216privatization8217 of state assets transferred increasingly larger portions of the economy to 8230 institutions run by the regime institutions or their cronies One enterprise that has been gobbling up all that was to be privatized is the Revolution Guards to the tune of now owning a third of the Iranian economy Besides having complete control over all militaryindustrial network of production the 8216privatized8217 telecommunication industry was also 8216bought8217 by the Revolution Guards the same with the radio and television broadcasting system the same with considerable shares in the auto industry which are run as joint ventures with France8217s Peugeot or Renault for example importexport licenses almost exclusively go to the Revolution Guards or 8220Khodi8221 people those who actively support the theocracy cronies basically The Revolution Guards also run and operate financial institutions And just like all other governments that need a secret budget aside from the traditional smuggling communities local to the border regions of Iran especially in Baluchistan in the southeast corner of Iran the state also has a monopoly on smuggled goods both into and out of Iran including cigarettes drugs and alcoholic beverages all of which can literally be delivered to your house if you have the means One effect of the recent uprising of the destitute and the superexploited was the signal it sent to all the layers of the theocracy The movement shook the regime to such an extent that even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has issued statements advising the Revolution Guards to relinquish some of their vast economic holdings so that a few other local capitalists can breathe and expand the regime8217s positive hegemony by that much Back only a couple of years ago the Revolution Guards were eyeing to gobble up even more of the economy but now they have to realize that there is such a thing as 8216too greedy8217 even for an organization playing body guard for a clerical class that is the definition of 8216leechlike8217 as we call them in Persian zaloosefat The economic and trade sanctions that were imposed by western powers in fact strengthened the regime8217s hold on power while at the same time impoverishing the working classes As a result holding two to three jobs to make ends meet has become an increasingly widespread necessity as has sales of body organs and blood as ways of making ends meet as has prostitution Social misery also registers itself in the number of addicts to hard drugs such as heroin crack cocaine and opium As reported in The Guardian back in 2014 the interior minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli announced the number of those afflicted with drug addiction to be six million Today we most likely have close to seven to eight million addicts in a country of 80 million Poverty in Iran is suffered by almost half the population the youth comprise half of the population and youth unemployment is estimated at 40 the numbers of homeless have tripled in the past decade and the homeless crisis has become so severe that some homeless people in Tehran have taken to sleeping in predug graves in some cemeteries The images of these gravedwellers caused a huge outcry in Iran last year Iran is a society rich in resources and with incomes from oil gas and petrochemical sales worth tens upon tens of billions of dollars in the past two years since the nuclear deal was struck The state has enough wealth to recruit train send and support a constant supply of mercenaries serving in foreign lands dying in thousands killing in tens of thousands for the past six years just so a dictator and his family can maintain absolute control over Syria yet so little is done to help out the most desperate of the people in Iran The very 8220mostaz8217afaan8221 the wretched of the earth the downtrodden in regime8217s own language the very people regime8217s ideologues claim to be the intended beneficiaries of the revolution 8212 these wretched of the earth are the ones who just rose up to shout their hatred and disgust at the entire regime And that is the qualitative difference between this latest unrest and that of the 2009 The social contradictions that have sent Iranian people onto the streets on a regular basis in different sizes and initiated by different segments of the population are deepening and finding a sharper class character Those hopeful that this monstrous theocracy suffocating our people is going to last forever may be catching their breaths right now happy that the people8217s upheaval was crushed But we have happy for us news for them It was not crushed I cannot be crushed Not for long in any given decade or two or three we have risen up again and again since 1905 all of those major upheavals were also marked by smaller upheavals and recurrent unrest dispersed in between Those in charge claim fantasies of having crushed the 8216sedition8217 but that8217s just hopeful thinking made into statements that history shreds on a regular basis Since the Constitutional Revolution of more than a century ago in Iran 19051911 the people of Iran have not stopped attacking our equivalent of the French Bastille 8211 our traditional ruling classes For thousands of years the traditional ruling classes in Iran just like in Europe had been a joint venture of what in Persian we call 8220ShahoSheikh8221 monarchy and clergy Now the ruling class is comprised solely of the clergy and their assortment of security forces and paramilitary support systems Their economic structure is like the Shah8217s regime capitalist only this one is of the extremist neoliberal type with a theocratic superstructure The worst of the worst kind of capitalism you can get forced into Those who consider themselves to be of the leftist tradition of the Enlightenment and the left wing of the French Revolution and supporters of the Russian Revolution and at the same time support this medieval theocratic regime must simply have left all reason and rationality behind The western left must take account of the fact that the Iranian regime is the victory of the counterrevolution in Iran in the wake of the revolutionary movement that swept the Shah and monarchy out of power in 1979 Some in the western left as well as the Reformist wing of the regime claim that a revolutionary movement in Iran is something to be afraid of since it can only end Iran up like Iraq or Syria This line of thinking does not take into account the fact that the Islamic Republic just as much as the US is responsible for spreading violence and instability across the greater Middle East from Afghanistan to Lebanon This is not just State Department propaganda This is the reality of the power status in the Middle East The State Department would naturally have a say about this reality But it is a reality It is a reality experienced and hated by the Arab masses who are being slaughtered by Iranianorganized militias ravaging their communities just as Vietnamese peasants and fighters hated the ravaging and violence brought onto their communities villages towns and cities by the US forces If we look at the actual demands raised in the 1979 revolution in Iran we realize that all those demands are still not realized and have repeatedly been brought to the streets economic justice freedom and independence from imperialist powers including Russia and China The same social conflicts and contradictions are still present and have in fact intensified tenfold under the suffocating social conditions this theocracy has imposed on society for almost forty years The social demands of the next revolutionary movement in Iran are not something that can be ignored by resorting to politicalstrategic calculations to do with power moves by outside players The people of Iran have a natural right to demand what8217s justly their basic rights as humans and they will fight for those rights regardless of what outside powers may or may not wish to do Did the Cuban people in late 19th century give up their fight to gain independence from Spain just because the American government at the time got involved in that fight The latest protests in Iran were many things They were 8216street intelligence8217 throwing a wrench in the wheels of the ruling theocracy and challenging its neoliberalism at home and its regional imperialism a loud rejection of a sham 8216legitimacy8217 being forced down people8217s throats a shout of people8217s disgust transmitted to the world it was a social oppositional awareness expressing itself spontaneously on a mass scale and it was an exhibit of formerly repressed social grievances voiced out loud Those who didn8217t take to the streets in the last wave of protests back in 2009 have been thinking and dreaming about this moment This time they came out and they came out more articulately Many observers have contrasted this latest upheaval with the much more protracted Green Movement of the 2009 which lasted in effect for just over seven months A significant factor in the shaping of the 2009 movement was that the movement found its initial impetus from challenging the results of the rigged June 2009 elections So its most vociferous demand was to challenge the official results of an election This meant that fundamentally it was submitting to the legitimacy of one faction of the regime the 8216Reformists8217 During these latest protests however the most prominent slogan was 8220Bread Jobs Liberty8221 while all other slogans pointed either to the looting of the national wealth by the clerical classes and their cronies or else they focused on negating Iranian regime8217s expansionist policies in the region Here we can see a clear and unambiguous deepening of the publiclymassexpressed awareness of the working classes confronting the whole regime Historically people make their moves one step at a time and as they can but in the case of this latest step the Iranian people took we can see a deepening of the demands they bring to the battle in each successive stage of their long struggle for achieving social justice for all So we can see the collective political subjectivity of the masses taking a significant and conscious step on the path to becoming a 8220class for itself8221 Iranians are no exception to the general rules of human social developmental laws that govern other nations We have our own circumstances our own historical rhythms but we have the same universal problems as the rest of humanity And as we go through our cycles of struggle against deep structural injustices woven into our economic and political structures we learn and proceed forward Any fundamental social transformation is the work of generations not a onetimeevent Consider this historical fact the three pillars of the French Revolution8217s 1789 main slogan were 8220Liberty Equality Fraternity8221 Liberty from an absolutist monarchy was achieved of course An actual legal end to the privileges of a monarchial type of governance however was not achieved until the Third Republic 1870 that8217s 81 years Equality of genders in terms of political rights 8212 voting rights 8212 took until 1945 to be achieved that is 156 years for legal gender equality to become a reality in a country we consider 8216progressive8217 First World currently imperialist formerly colonialist power with colonies across the globe bringing them their special sauce of 8216mission civilisatrice8217 And that8217s just one aspect of equality Eradication of classes has obviously not been achieved in France and in fact class inequalities are deepening more than ever so no fraternity either Iranian socialists rejoice in the people8217s efforts to take the struggle one step further giving the class conflict in Iran a sharper definition we salute our people8217s fighting spirit

Some/PRON have/AUX already/ADV forgotten/VERB it/PRON Some/PRON are/AUX relieved/VERB to/PART be/AUX able/ADJ to/PART forget/VERB it/PRON What/PRON was/AUX it/PRON CIA/PROPN plot/NOUN that/PRON got/AUX snuffed/VERB as/SCONJ the/DET Supreme/PROPN Leader/PROPN put/VERB it/PRON supremely/ADV deceptively/ADV Was/AUX it/PRON an/DET aberration/NOUN A/DET blip/NOUN It/PRON was/AUX a/DET reminder/NOUN that/PRON time/NOUN is/AUX short/ADJ and/CCONJ life/NOUN is/AUX precious/ADJ A/DET oneweek/ADJ flash/NOUN flood/NOUN of/ADP protests/NOUN by/ADP Iranian/ADJ poorandfedup/ADJ people/NOUN across/ADP the/DET country/NOUN in/ADP 80/NUM cities/NOUN towns/NOUN and/CCONJ even/ADV some/DET very/ADV small/ADJ towns/NOUN these/DET protests/NOUN voiced/VERB grievances/NOUN that/PRON have/VERB only/ADV one/NUM way/NOUN of/ADP being/AUX heard/VERB in/ADP the/DET streets/NOUN Western/ADJ 8216antiimperialist8217/NUM and/CCONJ conspiracyoriented/VERB left/VERB European/ADJ powers/NOUN with/ADP lucrative/ADJ 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<p>Two recent articles in the New York Times by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Jim Yardley draw attention to the mounting <a href="" type="internal">political crisis in Nepal</a>. &amp;#160;They point out that the fundamental problem is &#8220;the unresolved task of merging the two enemy armies&#8221; mandated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by the Maoists and the government in November 2006.</p> <p>Yardley <a href="" type="internal">notes</a> that the interim constitution composed in January 2007 will expire on May 28, when a new one authored by the Constituent Assembly is supposed to go into effect. But the writing of the new constitution has not been completed, and the peace agreement may fall by the wayside in a few months.</p> <p>Yardley indicates that both parties are at fault for the impasse. &#8220;Many analysts,&#8221; he writes (without citing any names), &#8220;say the Maoists have maneuvered to keep their army intact as a bargaining chip to influence the constitutional negotiations. At the same time, the Nepalese Army, which before 2006 answered to the king, now deposed, has grudgingly succumbed to civilian control. In January, the defense minister announced that the army was not obligated to accept Maoist soldiers and should be included in civilian negotiations over integration &#8212; comments rejected by the prime minister and seized upon by Maoists as evidence of bad faith by the government.&#8221;</p> <p>While superficially &#8220;balanced&#8221; (there&#8217;s no way the New York Times is going to take the Maoists&#8217; side here, and yet it&#8217;s impossible for anyone familiar with the recent history to assign them entire responsibility for the gridlock) these articles actually imply that the Maoists bear principle responsibility. By treating the PLA&#8217;s continued existence as a mere political &#8220;maneuver&#8221; Yardley ignores the fact that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement explicitely provides for the the Maoists to keep their army intact pending &#8220;integration.&#8221; &amp;#160;More importantly it avoids what should be obvious: had the Maoists not fought a decade-long People&#8217;s War before deciding to suspend it and make the deal with the mainstream political parties in 2006 there would have been no toppling of the monarchy, no proclamation of the republic, no convening of the Constituent Assembly.</p> <p>Since Yardley provides a very partial, skewed view of the historical context, it&#8217;s worth reviewing that history now as Nepal becomes front-page news.</p> <p>We should first of all wonder why it hasn&#8217;t been front-page news for years, because something quite amazing is happening in that country. Something that isn&#8217;t supposed to be happening. Conventional wisdom has it that communism died with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It failed, according to some interpretations, because of its misunderstanding of &#8220;human nature&#8221; (the positive value of greed in driving economies, and the inherent need for religion), and/or was defeated by the valiant brinksmanship of U.S. statesmen from Harry Truman to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. &#8220;Even the Chinese communists&#8221; it&#8217;s argued, have come to realize the superiority of capitalism.</p> <p>But events in Nepal embarrass the theory that communism is dead. (So do events in India, where Maoist-led forces have gained control of huge swathes of territory.) From 1996 to 2006 the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)&#8212;now the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)&#8212;waged a People&#8217;s War against the Nepalese government, applying Mao Zedong&#8217;s principles of guerrilla warfare. Confronting the weak state apparatus, targeting local elites guilty of abuses, organizing women and lower castes to challenge their oppression, the Maoists gained substantial control over about 80 percent of the country&#8217;s territory by 2006.</p> <p>This was generally reported in the western press as a movement of thuggish ideologues employing terror and intimidation to realize an antiquated, discredited utopian dream. These Maoists (like Peru&#8217;s &#8220;Shining Path&#8221; before them) were likened to Cambodia&#8217;s Khmer Rouge (who actually weren&#8217;t Maoists at all) as the embodiment of a far-left savagery that should have disappeared, now that communism was in the dustbin of history.</p> <p>But the communist movement in its most militant form was really very much alive in the Himalayas. Twice, in late 2001 and summer 2003, the Maoists declared cease-fires from a position of strength and negotiated with the government. Their main demands were an end to the Hindu monarchy (which had been absolute up to 1990), and its replacement with a republic; and the convening of a Constituent Assembly to draw up a new constitution. These needless to say are not specifically &#8220;communist&#8221; demands but demands for mere modernity. When they were rejected the Maoists returned to the battlefield, where they inflicted shocking defeats on the RNA.</p> <p>In February 2005 King Gyanendra, frustrated with his government&#8217;s inability to crush the rebels, dismissed the parliament and cabinet, arrested leading politicians, declared martial law and assumed full executive powers. The king was already highly unpopular, in part because of the antics of his vicious son Prince Paras, in part due to suspicion that he played a role in the sensational killings of his predecessor and brother and his wife and children. Now he became more hated.</p> <p>The parliamentary parties, the largest being the Nepal Congress Party and the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) (over half the many political parties in Nepal call themselves &#8220;communist&#8221; although the Maoists will say they are most certainly not that) had opposed the People&#8217;s War and&amp;#160; denounced its leaders. But in the new situation the Maoists did something unexpected, and in the history of the communist movement, quite innovative.</p> <p>They were poised to attack Katmandu Valley. Classic Maoist strategy is to surround the cities from the countryside, and they had done that. But rather than continue to build for an attack, they offered the political parties now alienated from the king a series of proposals. If the parties would join with the Maoists in organizing street agitation in the capital to bring down the newly-revived absolute monarchy, and agree to elections for a Constituent Assembly to discuss the possibility of proclaiming a republic, the CPN(M) and its PLA would end the People&#8217;s War, and place their combatants in cantonments under UN supervision pending the merger of the two armies.</p> <p>That was the Deal</p> <p>The Maoists were, in the eyes of supporters around the world who&#8217;d been inspired by their success&#8212;by the (valid) perception that they were &#8220;keeping the Red Flag flying&#8221;&#8212;taking a big risk. Maybe even blowing the opportunity to seize state power. Criticism from the fraternal Communist Party of India (Maoist) has been substantive, while the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (long the main supporter of Nepal&#8217;s Maoists in this country) has denounced the abandonment of armed struggle as capitulation. (The Nepali Maoists have responded politely that their foreign critics don&#8217;t understand Nepal&#8217;s circumstances but are merely dogmatically citing Marxist texts pertaining to past revolutions.)</p> <p>As things worked out, the mass movement (andolan) of 2006 brought down the king. The Maoists, able organizers, brought in some of their people to agitate and to join others struggling for their own reasons to end Gyanendra&#8217;s dictatorship. They used the opportunity to expand their political base in the city, among its workers and middle class.</p> <p>The &#8220;Prachanda Path&#8221; outlined by party leader Prachanda (Pushpa Kamal Dahal) has for some years posited that the revolution in Nepal will combine the two great twentieth century revolutionary models: the People&#8217;s War of China, and the October Revolution of Russia. There will have to be a general urban insurrection in Katmandu. The party has hinted that it assessed there was inadequate basis for that four years ago, but that by forming a strategic alliance with the parliamentary parties against the king it could massively increase its presence in the valley and develop that basis.</p> <p>The king was in fact forced in the wake of massive protests to rescind martial law and restore power to parliament. There was an election for a constituent assembly in the spring of 2008 and shortly afterwards Gyanendra was unceremoniously deposed, ending the 239-year old monarchy.</p> <p>The elections for the assembly, replacing the parliament, were internationally monitored (pronounced free and fair by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter among others). &amp;#160;The Maoists won twice as many votes as their nearest rivals. They won fully half the directly-elected seats and 30% of those elected proportionately and wound up with 40% of the total seats. (Yardley merely notes that they &#8220;took control of the government.&#8221;)</p> <p>Party chair Prachanda became Prime Minister, while a Nepal Congress Party politician became President. As debate over the constitution continued between August 2008 and May 2009, Prachanda explored the limits of his authority as head of government. The Maoists were very conscious of the fact they had not seized state power, in the Marxist-Leninist sense; they had indeed entered a power structure that they might use towards their revolutionary goals, but it was one not entirely amenable to their objectives.</p> <p>The Comprehensive Agreement had stated that the two armies must be integrated. That was really its core. Political power really does grow out of the barrel of a gun, and Maoist guns (and the judicial suspension of their use guided by politics) had produced the current situation.</p> <p>The officer corps of the Royal Nepali Army (simply the Nepali Army after May 2008) have not been happy campers in this revolutionary period. They were not party to the 2006 Agreement, and have expressed opposition to the integration of &#8220;indoctrinated&#8221; troops into their professional national force. Most are themselves of high caste, many intermarried with the royal family, indoctrinated with their own ideology of loyalty to the King, avatar of&amp;#160; the god Vishnu. They have violated the terms of the Comprehensive Agreement, recruiting new soldiers since 2006 and importing arms. The United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) has confirmed this and protested to the Nepalese government.</p> <p>Prime Minister Prachanda tried to fire the Army chief in May 2009 for insubordination, due to his unwillingness to comply with the terms of the agreement. The president, however, with likely backing from New Delhi, backed the Army chief. Thereupon the Maoists once again made a surprising move: Prachanda resigned.</p> <p>Well aware that he was the most popular figure in the country, and that his message would be heard sympathetically, Prachanda addressed the nation. He explained that he was unable, as head of government, to force out the head of the military. He called for &#8220;civilian supremacy&#8221; versus &#8220;military supremacy.&#8221; (Again, needless to say, this is not a specifically &#8220;communist&#8221; demand but a populist and commonsense one.) He intimated that India (widely suspected in Nepal of having expansionist designs on the country) and the India-aligned Congress Party were working against the 2006 agreement. Leaving government he vowed to take the struggle back to the streets, where it has been with a passion ever since.</p> <p>Yardley doesn&#8217;t quite capture the context when he writes, &#8220;the <a href="" type="internal">Maoists withdrew from the government</a> after the president overruled the Maoist prime minister&#8217;s firing of the army chief&#8230;&#8221; He&#8217;s accurate in observing that they&#8217;ve &#8220;spent the ensuing months trying to destabilize the coalition government that replaced them.&#8221; But he might point out that they are trying to bring it down precisely because it&#8217;s reneging on the agreement about integration of the PLA and being swayed by the political influence of the Nepali Army. The Maoists call the current regime illegitimate because it reflects military supremacy.</p> <p>&#8220;Now,&#8221; writes Yardley, &#8220;the Maoists want to replace the country&#8217;s existing parliamentary-style democracy and produce a constitution based on a directly elected, powerful executive. Rival parties say the Maoists oppose a true multiparty democracy and are trying to insert elements of a Communist system into the Constitution.&#8221;</p> <p>It actually wouldn&#8217;t be surprising if real communists were trying to insert elements of a &#8220;Communist system&#8221; into a constitution that&#8217;s being written because of their own hard-earned efforts, in a Constituent Assembly they dominate because they won the vote. But what is &#8220;a Communist system&#8221; that might be politically &#8220;inserted&#8221; into the Constitution? The directly elected, powerful executive is a feature of the U.S., French and other bourgeois-democratic systems and has nothing to do per se with &#8220;communism.&#8221;</p> <p>Really what the Maoists are trying to do&#8212;and they seem very flexible about the means&#8212;is to lead a country steeped in what we might loosely call &#8220;feudal&#8221; institutions and practices, with rudimentary industry and only a nascent industrial working class, into a new period in which it won&#8217;t be a satrapy of imperialist powers, its development dictated by the requirements of multinational corporations, but enjoy genuine independence allowing for economic growth producing benefits for ordinary people.</p> <p>The Maoists debate among themselves the applicability of&amp;#160; Chairman Mao&#8217;s concept of &#8220;New Democracy&#8221; in China right after the revolution of 1949, which involved an alliance of workers, peasants, petty-bourgeoisie and nationalist capitalists. It is one option. The goal&#8212;as it has always been for communists, back to the Manifesto of 1848, and for that matter (as the French philosopher Alain Badiou points out) back to Plato&#8212;is social equality, which you may find a profoundly inspiring or deeply disturbing ideal, depending on who you are in this world.</p> <p>The timing for the transition from the present semi-feudal system to a socialist system integrating a lot of private enterprise, to a system in which private profit ceases to drive economic activity (as posited by Marxist theory as the real &#8220;end of history&#8221;)&#8212;this is a matter for discussion among the people. &amp;#160;And left out of the discussion for ages, the people are rallying to the Maoist cause.</p> <p>The Maoists are not calling at this point for &#8220;all power to the workers&#8217; and peasants&#8217; soviets&#8221; or drawing unimaginatively on the poetry of past communist-led revolutions. They&#8217;re talking about civilian sovereignty and respect for the 2006 agreement which enjoys widespread support. But insistence on such modest points alone may well bring them to power. They have already won a war and an election. Now (perhaps&#8212;I&#8217;m merely viewing from afar) for the urban insurrection.</p> <p>Andolan III (following the mass movements of 1990 and 2006) began in November with a massive march on the capital, surrounding the Singha Durbar, the seat of (illegitimate) government, paralyzing activity. It was preceded by an evening torch-lit procession.&amp;#160; There were some clashes with police but the demonstrators stood their ground; there was a dramatic confrontation between number two Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai captured on video. He and those he led pressed past the police.</p> <p>Prachanda spoke to the crowd. He cited the recent report of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon noting that the Nepalese government wasn&#8217;t observing the 2006 agreement with respect to the integration of the two armies. He wasn&#8217;t calling for communist revolution but simply for implementation of the agreement. And (again) some international communists, or those who see themselves as such, are criticizing his party for dwelling on this narrow legal issue rather than the grand issue of revolutionary seizure of power &#224; la 1917 or 1949.</p> <p>Maybe such critics gesticulating from the sidelines don&#8217;t get it. Every revolution is different. If it succeeds, it does because it responds to concrete conditions.</p> <p>When the Maoists laid down their arms in 2006, they told the world: we&#8217;re confident we can move on from here, using these tactics, to plant the red flag of real people&#8217;s power over Mt. Everest. They forced their foes into an agreement that the latter are now reneging on. The Maoists probably expected that. Meanwhile the PLA has not been wasting time but (as Yardley documents) training, politically and militarily&#8212;either for integration into a truly national army accountable to the people, or for renewed confrontation with the army. (I&#8217;d imagine some Maoists are also volunteering the army,&amp;#160; about 100,000 strong, as it recruits new troops in violation of the accord, in order to influence it and undermine it. The Maoists meanwhile express indignation that in a&amp;#160; poor country of Nepal&#8217;s size such a large army even exists and advocate its replacement by a popular militia.)</p> <p>There is a crisis. The government has shown bad faith. It has not asserted civilian supremacy over the military and been unable to implement the 2006 agreement. Because power really does grow out of the barrel of a gun, and the army hasn&#8217;t in fact despite Yardley&#8217;s contention &#8220;grudgingly succumbed to civilian control.&#8221; &amp;#160;And while the Maoists have shown they can both fight on the battlefield, and win an election, in the end they may need to resort to violent means again. This time on an urban battlefield, with masses in the streets, while the PLA stands by attentively, country-wide, ready to serve the cause.</p> <p>The most thoughtful communists in the world today have put an awful lot of thought into their unfolding strategy. Those on the outside looking in, persuaded this can&#8217;t be happening, scratch their heads and come up with explanations for the Maoists&#8217; &#8220;maneuverings.&#8221; As though the Maoists were U.S. politicians, deviously seeking to maintain or acquire power by trading votes on this or that. As though they were opportunists, asking for anything other that was is theirs following the People&#8217;s War, the 2006 Peace Agreement, the 2008 election, proclamation of the republic, abolition of the monarchy, convening of the Constituent Assembly&#8212;all due, let us repeat, to their efforts.</p> <p>They asked that the People&#8217;s Liberation Army be united with the national army, the former Royal Nepalese Army, to end the war. They&#8217;ve also made it clear all along that if that project is thwarted they&#8217;re prepared to resume the war. Their recent mass demonstrations in Katmandu, and proclamation of autonomous provinces within a federal Nepal, and even the postponed plans to shut down the international airport, indicate that they are serious about demonstrating their power among the masses and challenging their opponents to muster forces against them.</p> <p>Both the Maoists and their opponents think they&#8217;re right, and as Marx once wrote, &#8220;Between equal rights force decides.&#8221; We will see. But our vision of what&#8217;s happening will be clouded as much as clarified by the New York Times.</p> <p>GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Religion. He is the author of <a href="" type="internal">Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan</a>; <a href="" type="internal">Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan</a>; and <a href="" type="internal">Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900</a>. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch&#8217;s merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Imperial Crusades</a>. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:gleupp@granite.tufts.edu" type="external">gleupp@granite.tufts.edu</a></p>

Skewing the Himalayan Revolution

https://counterpunch.org/2010/02/12/skewing-the-himalayan-revolution/

2010-02-12

4left

Two recent articles in the New York Times by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Jim Yardley draw attention to the mounting political crisis in Nepal amp160They point out that the fundamental problem is 8220the unresolved task of merging the two enemy armies8221 mandated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by the Maoists and the government in November 2006 Yardley notes that the interim constitution composed in January 2007 will expire on May 28 when a new one authored by the Constituent Assembly is supposed to go into effect But the writing of the new constitution has not been completed and the peace agreement may fall by the wayside in a few months Yardley indicates that both parties are at fault for the impasse 8220Many analysts8221 he writes without citing any names 8220say the Maoists have maneuvered to keep their army intact as a bargaining chip to influence the constitutional negotiations At the same time the Nepalese Army which before 2006 answered to the king now deposed has grudgingly succumbed to civilian control In January the defense minister announced that the army was not obligated to accept Maoist soldiers and should be included in civilian negotiations over integration 8212 comments rejected by the prime minister and seized upon by Maoists as evidence of bad faith by the government8221 While superficially 8220balanced8221 there8217s no way the New York Times is going to take the Maoists8217 side here and yet it8217s impossible for anyone familiar with the recent history to assign them entire responsibility for the gridlock these articles actually imply that the Maoists bear principle responsibility By treating the PLA8217s continued existence as a mere political 8220maneuver8221 Yardley ignores the fact that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement explicitely provides for the the Maoists to keep their army intact pending 8220integration8221 amp160More importantly it avoids what should be obvious had the Maoists not fought a decadelong People8217s War before deciding to suspend it and make the deal with the mainstream political parties in 2006 there would have been no toppling of the monarchy no proclamation of the republic no convening of the Constituent Assembly Since Yardley provides a very partial skewed view of the historical context it8217s worth reviewing that history now as Nepal becomes frontpage news We should first of all wonder why it hasn8217t been frontpage news for years because something quite amazing is happening in that country Something that isn8217t supposed to be happening Conventional wisdom has it that communism died with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 It failed according to some interpretations because of its misunderstanding of 8220human nature8221 the positive value of greed in driving economies and the inherent need for religion andor was defeated by the valiant brinksmanship of US statesmen from Harry Truman to John F Kennedy to Ronald Reagan 8220Even the Chinese communists8221 it8217s argued have come to realize the superiority of capitalism But events in Nepal embarrass the theory that communism is dead So do events in India where Maoistled forces have gained control of huge swathes of territory From 1996 to 2006 the Communist Party of Nepal Maoist8212now the Unified Communist Party of Nepal Maoist8212waged a People8217s War against the Nepalese government applying Mao Zedong8217s principles of guerrilla warfare Confronting the weak state apparatus targeting local elites guilty of abuses organizing women and lower castes to challenge their oppression the Maoists gained substantial control over about 80 percent of the country8217s territory by 2006 This was generally reported in the western press as a movement of thuggish ideologues employing terror and intimidation to realize an antiquated discredited utopian dream These Maoists like Peru8217s 8220Shining Path8221 before them were likened to Cambodia8217s Khmer Rouge who actually weren8217t Maoists at all as the embodiment of a farleft savagery that should have disappeared now that communism was in the dustbin of history But the communist movement in its most militant form was really very much alive in the Himalayas Twice in late 2001 and summer 2003 the Maoists declared ceasefires from a position of strength and negotiated with the government Their main demands were an end to the Hindu monarchy which had been absolute up to 1990 and its replacement with a republic and the convening of a Constituent Assembly to draw up a new constitution These needless to say are not specifically 8220communist8221 demands but demands for mere modernity When they were rejected the Maoists returned to the battlefield where they inflicted shocking defeats on the RNA In February 2005 King Gyanendra frustrated with his government8217s inability to crush the rebels dismissed the parliament and cabinet arrested leading politicians declared martial law and assumed full executive powers The king was already highly unpopular in part because of the antics of his vicious son Prince Paras in part due to suspicion that he played a role in the sensational killings of his predecessor and brother and his wife and children Now he became more hated The parliamentary parties the largest being the Nepal Congress Party and the Communist Party of Nepal United MarxistLeninist over half the many political parties in Nepal call themselves 8220communist8221 although the Maoists will say they are most certainly not that had opposed the People8217s War andamp160 denounced its leaders But in the new situation the Maoists did something unexpected and in the history of the communist movement quite innovative They were poised to attack Katmandu Valley Classic Maoist strategy is to surround the cities from the countryside and they had done that But rather than continue to build for an attack they offered the political parties now alienated from the king a series of proposals If the parties would join with the Maoists in organizing street agitation in the capital to bring down the newlyrevived absolute monarchy and agree to elections for a Constituent Assembly to discuss the possibility of proclaiming a republic the CPNM and its PLA would end the People8217s War and place their combatants in cantonments under UN supervision pending the merger of the two armies That was the Deal The Maoists were in the eyes of supporters around the world who8217d been inspired by their success8212by the valid perception that they were 8220keeping the Red Flag flying82218212taking a big risk Maybe even blowing the opportunity to seize state power Criticism from the fraternal Communist Party of India Maoist has been substantive while the Revolutionary Communist Party USA long the main supporter of Nepal8217s Maoists in this country has denounced the abandonment of armed struggle as capitulation The Nepali Maoists have responded politely that their foreign critics don8217t understand Nepal8217s circumstances but are merely dogmatically citing Marxist texts pertaining to past revolutions As things worked out the mass movement andolan of 2006 brought down the king The Maoists able organizers brought in some of their people to agitate and to join others struggling for their own reasons to end Gyanendra8217s dictatorship They used the opportunity to expand their political base in the city among its workers and middle class The 8220Prachanda Path8221 outlined by party leader Prachanda Pushpa Kamal Dahal has for some years posited that the revolution in Nepal will combine the two great twentieth century revolutionary models the People8217s War of China and the October Revolution of Russia There will have to be a general urban insurrection in Katmandu The party has hinted that it assessed there was inadequate basis for that four years ago but that by forming a strategic alliance with the parliamentary parties against the king it could massively increase its presence in the valley and develop that basis The king was in fact forced in the wake of massive protests to rescind martial law and restore power to parliament There was an election for a constituent assembly in the spring of 2008 and shortly afterwards Gyanendra was unceremoniously deposed ending the 239year old monarchy The elections for the assembly replacing the parliament were internationally monitored pronounced free and fair by former US President Jimmy Carter among others amp160The Maoists won twice as many votes as their nearest rivals They won fully half the directlyelected seats and 30 of those elected proportionately and wound up with 40 of the total seats Yardley merely notes that they 8220took control of the government8221 Party chair Prachanda became Prime Minister while a Nepal Congress Party politician became President As debate over the constitution continued between August 2008 and May 2009 Prachanda explored the limits of his authority as head of government The Maoists were very conscious of the fact they had not seized state power in the MarxistLeninist sense they had indeed entered a power structure that they might use towards their revolutionary goals but it was one not entirely amenable to their objectives The Comprehensive Agreement had stated that the two armies must be integrated That was really its core Political power really does grow out of the barrel of a gun and Maoist guns and the judicial suspension of their use guided by politics had produced the current situation The officer corps of the Royal Nepali Army simply the Nepali Army after May 2008 have not been happy campers in this revolutionary period They were not party to the 2006 Agreement and have expressed opposition to the integration of 8220indoctrinated8221 troops into their professional national force Most are themselves of high caste many intermarried with the royal family indoctrinated with their own ideology of loyalty to the King avatar ofamp160 the god Vishnu They have violated the terms of the Comprehensive Agreement recruiting new soldiers since 2006 and importing arms The United Nations Mission in Nepal UNMIN has confirmed this and protested to the Nepalese government Prime Minister Prachanda tried to fire the Army chief in May 2009 for insubordination due to his unwillingness to comply with the terms of the agreement The president however with likely backing from New Delhi backed the Army chief Thereupon the Maoists once again made a surprising move Prachanda resigned Well aware that he was the most popular figure in the country and that his message would be heard sympathetically Prachanda addressed the nation He explained that he was unable as head of government to force out the head of the military He called for 8220civilian supremacy8221 versus 8220military supremacy8221 Again needless to say this is not a specifically 8220communist8221 demand but a populist and commonsense one He intimated that India widely suspected in Nepal of having expansionist designs on the country and the Indiaaligned Congress Party were working against the 2006 agreement Leaving government he vowed to take the struggle back to the streets where it has been with a passion ever since Yardley doesn8217t quite capture the context when he writes 8220the Maoists withdrew from the government after the president overruled the Maoist prime minister8217s firing of the army chief82308221 He8217s accurate in observing that they8217ve 8220spent the ensuing months trying to destabilize the coalition government that replaced them8221 But he might point out that they are trying to bring it down precisely because it8217s reneging on the agreement about integration of the PLA and being swayed by the political influence of the Nepali Army The Maoists call the current regime illegitimate because it reflects military supremacy 8220Now8221 writes Yardley 8220the Maoists want to replace the country8217s existing parliamentarystyle democracy and produce a constitution based on a directly elected powerful executive Rival parties say the Maoists oppose a true multiparty democracy and are trying to insert elements of a Communist system into the Constitution8221 It actually wouldn8217t be surprising if real communists were trying to insert elements of a 8220Communist system8221 into a constitution that8217s being written because of their own hardearned efforts in a Constituent Assembly they dominate because they won the vote But what is 8220a Communist system8221 that might be politically 8220inserted8221 into the Constitution The directly elected powerful executive is a feature of the US French and other bourgeoisdemocratic systems and has nothing to do per se with 8220communism8221 Really what the Maoists are trying to do8212and they seem very flexible about the means8212is to lead a country steeped in what we might loosely call 8220feudal8221 institutions and practices with rudimentary industry and only a nascent industrial working class into a new period in which it won8217t be a satrapy of imperialist powers its development dictated by the requirements of multinational corporations but enjoy genuine independence allowing for economic growth producing benefits for ordinary people The Maoists debate among themselves the applicability ofamp160 Chairman Mao8217s concept of 8220New Democracy8221 in China right after the revolution of 1949 which involved an alliance of workers peasants pettybourgeoisie and nationalist capitalists It is one option The goal8212as it has always been for communists back to the Manifesto of 1848 and for that matter as the French philosopher Alain Badiou points out back to Plato8212is social equality which you may find a profoundly inspiring or deeply disturbing ideal depending on who you are in this world The timing for the transition from the present semifeudal system to a socialist system integrating a lot of private enterprise to a system in which private profit ceases to drive economic activity as posited by Marxist theory as the real 8220end of history82218212this is a matter for discussion among the people amp160And left out of the discussion for ages the people are rallying to the Maoist cause The Maoists are not calling at this point for 8220all power to the workers8217 and peasants8217 soviets8221 or drawing unimaginatively on the poetry of past communistled revolutions They8217re talking about civilian sovereignty and respect for the 2006 agreement which enjoys widespread support But insistence on such modest points alone may well bring them to power They have already won a war and an election Now perhaps8212I8217m merely viewing from afar for the urban insurrection Andolan III following the mass movements of 1990 and 2006 began in November with a massive march on the capital surrounding the Singha Durbar the seat of illegitimate government paralyzing activity It was preceded by an evening torchlit processionamp160 There were some clashes with police but the demonstrators stood their ground there was a dramatic confrontation between number two Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai captured on video He and those he led pressed past the police Prachanda spoke to the crowd He cited the recent report of UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon noting that the Nepalese government wasn8217t observing the 2006 agreement with respect to the integration of the two armies He wasn8217t calling for communist revolution but simply for implementation of the agreement And again some international communists or those who see themselves as such are criticizing his party for dwelling on this narrow legal issue rather than the grand issue of revolutionary seizure of power 224 la 1917 or 1949 Maybe such critics gesticulating from the sidelines don8217t get it Every revolution is different If it succeeds it does because it responds to concrete conditions When the Maoists laid down their arms in 2006 they told the world we8217re confident we can move on from here using these tactics to plant the red flag of real people8217s power over Mt Everest They forced their foes into an agreement that the latter are now reneging on The Maoists probably expected that Meanwhile the PLA has not been wasting time but as Yardley documents training politically and militarily8212either for integration into a truly national army accountable to the people or for renewed confrontation with the army I8217d imagine some Maoists are also volunteering the armyamp160 about 100000 strong as it recruits new troops in violation of the accord in order to influence it and undermine it The Maoists meanwhile express indignation that in aamp160 poor country of Nepal8217s size such a large army even exists and advocate its replacement by a popular militia There is a crisis The government has shown bad faith It has not asserted civilian supremacy over the military and been unable to implement the 2006 agreement Because power really does grow out of the barrel of a gun and the army hasn8217t in fact despite Yardley8217s contention 8220grudgingly succumbed to civilian control8221 amp160And while the Maoists have shown they can both fight on the battlefield and win an election in the end they may need to resort to violent means again This time on an urban battlefield with masses in the streets while the PLA stands by attentively countrywide ready to serve the cause The most thoughtful communists in the world today have put an awful lot of thought into their unfolding strategy Those on the outside looking in persuaded this can8217t be happening scratch their heads and come up with explanations for the Maoists8217 8220maneuverings8221 As though the Maoists were US politicians deviously seeking to maintain or acquire power by trading votes on this or that As though they were opportunists asking for anything other that was is theirs following the People8217s War the 2006 Peace Agreement the 2008 election proclamation of the republic abolition of the monarchy convening of the Constituent Assembly8212all due let us repeat to their efforts They asked that the People8217s Liberation Army be united with the national army the former Royal Nepalese Army to end the war They8217ve also made it clear all along that if that project is thwarted they8217re prepared to resume the war Their recent mass demonstrations in Katmandu and proclamation of autonomous provinces within a federal Nepal and even the postponed plans to shut down the international airport indicate that they are serious about demonstrating their power among the masses and challenging their opponents to muster forces against them Both the Maoists and their opponents think they8217re right and as Marx once wrote 8220Between equal rights force decides8221 We will see But our vision of what8217s happening will be clouded as much as clarified by the New York Times GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University and Adjunct Professor of Religion He is the author of Servants Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan Male Colors The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan and Interracial Intimacy in Japan Western Men and Japanese Women 15431900 He is also a contributor to CounterPunch8217s merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq Afghanistan and Yugoslavia Imperial Crusades He can be reached at gleuppgranitetuftsedu

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politicians/NOUN deviously/ADV seeking/VERB to/PART maintain/VERB or/CCONJ acquire/VERB power/NOUN by/ADP trading/NOUN votes/NOUN on/ADP this/PRON or/CCONJ that/SCONJ As/SCONJ though/SCONJ they/PRON were/AUX opportunists/NOUN asking/VERB for/ADP anything/PRON other/ADJ that/PRON was/AUX is/AUX theirs/NOUN following/VERB the/DET People8217s/PROPN War/PROPN the/DET 2006/NUM Peace/PROPN Agreement/PROPN the/DET 2008/NUM election/NOUN proclamation/NOUN of/ADP the/DET republic/NOUN abolition/NOUN of/ADP the/DET monarchy/ADJ convening/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Constituent/PROPN Assembly8212all/NOUN due/ADJ let/VERB us/PRON repeat/VERB to/ADP their/PRON efforts/NOUN They/PRON asked/VERB that/SCONJ the/DET People8217s/PROPN Liberation/PROPN Army/PROPN be/AUX united/VERB with/ADP the/DET national/PROPN army/PROPN the/DET former/ADJ Royal/PROPN Nepalese/PROPN Army/PROPN to/PART end/VERB the/DET war/NOUN They8217ve/PROPN also/ADV made/VERB it/PRON clear/ADJ all/ADV along/ADP that/SCONJ if/SCONJ that/DET 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much/ADV as/SCONJ clarified/VERB by/ADP the/DET New/PROPN York/PROPN Times/PROPN GARY/PROPN LEUPP/PROPN is/AUX Professor/PROPN of/ADP History/PROPN at/ADP Tufts/PROPN University/PROPN and/CCONJ Adjunct/PROPN Professor/PROPN of/ADP Religion/PROPN He/PRON is/AUX the/DET author/NOUN of/ADP Servants/PROPN Shophands/PROPN and/CCONJ Laborers/PROPN in/ADP in/ADP the/DET Cities/PROPN of/ADP Tokugawa/PROPN Japan/PROPN Male/PROPN Colors/NOUN The/DET Construction/PROPN of/ADP Homosexuality/PROPN in/ADP Tokugawa/PROPN Japan/PROPN and/CCONJ Interracial/PROPN Intimacy/PROPN in/ADP Japan/PROPN Western/PROPN Men/PROPN and/CCONJ Japanese/ADJ Women/PROPN 15431900/NUM He/PRON is/AUX also/ADV a/DET contributor/NOUN to/ADP CounterPunch8217s/PROPN merciless/NOUN chronicle/NOUN of/ADP the/DET wars/NOUN on/ADP Iraq/PROPN Afghanistan/PROPN and/CCONJ Yugoslavia/PROPN Imperial/PROPN Crusades/PROPN He/PRON can/AUX be/AUX reached/VERB at/ADP gleuppgranitetuftsedu/NOUN

<p>Once again, the nation of Pakistan has found itself in what many commentators are calling a national crisis.&amp;#160; This time around, the civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari was forced to keep one of his party&#8217;s election promises&#8212;reinstating Chief Justice Chaudhury (who had been summarily dismissed by General Musharraf in 2007&#8212;a move which precipitated Muharraf&#8217;s downfall).&amp;#160; This reinstatement was the result of a popular movement spearheaded by lawyers and other elements of the religious and secular opposition.&amp;#160; One element of the secular opposition is the Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP), a democratic socialist organization launched in 1997 from various elements of the Pakistani Left.&amp;#160; In 2007, after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, I communicated with Farooq Tariq, the secretary general of the LPP.&amp;#160; After the recent events, I got back in touch with him. What follows is an exchange conducted the past couple of days (March 16-17, 2009) between myself and Mr. Tariq.</p> <p>Hello Tariq.&amp;#160; To begin, can you give the readers an idea of what is transpiring in Pakistan? In your description, can you identify the parties and prominent individuals involved?</p> <p>What is transpiring in Pakistan is mass power. A real sense of victory after the restoration of the chief justice Iftikhar Choudry is one of the main features of this movement. It will be difficult for any government in the future here in Pakistan not to implement what was promised. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was forced to accept a demand only and only with the emergence of mass power in the streets.</p> <p>It is a victory of the people against the traditional power brokers of Pakistan. It is a victory of hope against cynicism. There were many saying that Iftikhar Choudry would never be reinstated because President Zardari will never change his mind. The sheer expression of mass uprising frightened all the major actors of the movement. They rushed to accept the initial demand of restoration even before the long march reached Islamabad. Had it (the long march) not been called off by the lawyers&#8217; leaders after the acceptance of the first demand, the list of demands would (probably) have been expanded from the political to the economic area.&amp;#160; This movement showed that the people of Pakistan can make a difference. Pakistan has changed and changed for ever.</p> <p>The Long March of the lawyer&#8217;s movement proved that a consistent struggle and militant actions can be fruitful. The tactics and strategy of the lawyers movement were a combination of the united mass action of political parties and civil society organizations and a successful propaganda campaign through the electronic and print media. Had the lawyers movement gone alone, they could not have won the battle.&amp;#160; The main political parties that were in the forefront of this struggle are Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, Tehreek Insaaf, Jamaat Islami, Pukhtoonkhawa Mili Awami Party, Awami Tehreek, National Party, Labour Party Pakistan, Khaksar Tehreek, Baluchistan National Party, Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party, National Workers Party, Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party and a majority of Pakistan social organizations. Of these Jamaat Islami is a religious party and rest are Left, liberal and progressive parties.</p> <p>Anyhow, the most consistent political parties that were part of the lawyers movement since it started on 9 March 2007 are Tehreek Insaf of Imran Khan, an emerging party of the middle classes, Jamaat Islami, a religious fundamentalist party and the Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP), a socialist party.&amp;#160; The rest of the parties were of and are part of the movement.&amp;#160; The most prominent figures of the lawyers movement were Ali Ahmad Kurd, president Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), and three SCBA presidents including Aitezaz Ahsan, Hamid Khan and Munir A Malik. They were all arrested but stood firm. From the political parties, Imran Khan, a former Pakistan cricket team captain has emerged as the most popular personality of the movement. His party was not very well known or active by movement standards , but because of the participation of Tehreek Insaaf (Justice Party) in this movement, it has become a household name in Pakistan.</p> <p>From the Left parties, Labour Party Pakistan has gained to some extent. Also, the LPP is now better nationally known with a very militant position.&amp;#160; The party that got the most advantage from this movement is the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN). It won the February election arguing for the reinstatement of the top judges. It used clever tactics after the elections. It left the Alliance at the Center with PPP on this question. The PMLN leaders and the Sharif brothers made very radical speeches before and during the long march. The party (PMLN) was ready to take risks and loose the provincial government in Punjab on the issue. If there was an election today, this right wing bourgeoisie party would have a national land slide victory.</p> <p>Does your party (the Labour Party of Pakistan) support any of the figures involved? If so why? If not, why?</p> <p>LPP supported the leaders of the lawyer&#8217;s movement all the time but with a critical attitude. Our literature produced during the movement helped to expand the nature of the movement. Our first poster read, &#8220;on the footsteps of the lawyers, till the end of dictatorship&#8221;. We linked the restoration of the judges with the end of military dictatorship. We saw the potential of this movement to expand on a national level from the very beginning. We supported them because the nature of the movement was very progressive. It was not a religious movement of any kind although the religious parties tried to take it over.&amp;#160; However, the demand of an independent judiciary could never be termed as an Islamic demand.</p> <p>We supported them (the movement) because it was producing an anti-militarist political tendency among a significant section of the middle class and was producing a new layer of young political activists who were not religious fundamentalist. We helped the movement and the movement helped the Left ideas to grow in both the political and organizational arenas. Those who were associated with the lawyers movement got a national identity and were heard everywhere.</p> <p>Do the events occurring in Pakistan open an avenue for the Left? Will the PPP cease to exist as a party or will it return closer to its leftist roots?</p> <p>It is a very complex political situation. The ideas of religious fundamentalism have a natural ally here. That ally is the presence of the NATO forces in Afghanistan. The objective situation is very favorable for the right wing ideas to grow. The nature of the Pakistan state is another help to them. (After all) It is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and not a people&#8217;s republic. Yet, the ideas of the Left are growing as well. Our help from the international scene comes from the development of Left governments in Latin America and social movements in the advanced capitalist countries.</p> <p>Internally, we are growing because of our tactics of helping and developing the mass movements of the workers, peasant women and the lawyers. The association with the movement is a key to our recent growth. Over 5000 have joined the Labour Party during our &#8220;peoples contact movement (drive)&#8221; in December and January 2009. Incidentally, our best growth was in North West Frontier Province, where over 2000 have joined during this time.</p> <p>But our most stable basis is still the trade unions and peasant organizations. We have not left our work in this class base to join the lawyer&#8217;s movement. It was possible for our comrades in Faisalabad, the third largest city of Pakistan, to lead over 100,000 against the shortages of electricity in January 2009. Twenty of them were arrested on 14 March 2009 and we had given a call for a general strike on 16 March, the day lawyers won. I was told by the comrade that the call has been supported by the traders as well. It would have been a total success if the lawyer&#8217;s movement would have continued on the day (March 16). The success of the lawyer&#8217;s movement has opened a new avenue for the growth of Left ideas. For the first time, we are witnessing the educated youth joining our party. Earlier, we were a handful of comrades within the party who had university degrees.</p> <p>The PPP is the main loser of this whole episode. It has politically moved much towards the right since it came in power a year ago. It has tried to implement the neo-liberal agenda that was initiated by General Musharraf. It is seen as a party allowing the American imperialists to attack Pakistan directly without any state resistance. It failed to implement the promises of reinstatement of the judges despite written agreements three times. The leader Asif Zardari is probably the most hated politician among the mainstream leaders. He is seen as a liar, deceiver, swindler, trickster, charlatan, quack and cheater. A day after the reinstatement of the top judges, he made a statement that he wanted to reinstate the judges. This was after he was seen as the main hurdle in the path of reinstatement.</p> <p>The PPP is distributing sweets all over Pakistan after the reinstatement claiming that they have fulfilled the promise of Benazir Bhutto. Yet for over eight months, their entire leadership was arguing that Benazir Bhutto never promised to reinstate them. They were saying that Iftikhar Choudry is a politicized judge. Their argument was that he should take a new oath like some other judges have taken. They were making a point that Iftikhar Choudry is just one person. They were using all sorts of&amp;#160; arguments against the judges in all the television and print media debates. Yet only a day later (after the reinstatement), they wanted the Pakistani people to believe that it was the PPP who had reinstated and fulfilled a promise of Benazir Bhutto. They believe the memory of the people is very short. They believe that we should forget our jails, arrests, tortures, ungrounded life, the barricades in the road to stop the long march and whatever else. The PPP leaders have become real hypocrites.</p> <p>The party is not finished but is losing its support rapidly. It will remain as a major party unless another party replaces them with a revolutionary programme. The PMLN can never replace the PPP. It can win an election for the time being but it can never have the permanent support of the people because the nature of PMLN is almost the same as PPP. Both are right wing bourgeoisie parties with populist appeal at some times.</p> <p>There is no possibility of the PPP taking a Left route. The reason is very simple, PPP leadership from top to bottom is committed to power and to (certain) people. They have proved again and again that they will serve the interests of the ruling class and imperialism and are not for the (majority of) the people. They have even abandoned the gesture of leftist ideas. It will remain in the political scene as a party of the capitalists and feudalists. All the time it is losing support. Benazir Bhutto&#8217;s death gave it a breathing space but that is lost already.</p> <p>What about the conflicts in Swat and other parts of the Northwest Frontier&amp;#160; Province (NWFP)? How are they affected by what occurs in Islamabad?</p> <p>In Swat, the government signed a surrender pact with the religious fundamentalists. Under their pressure, so-called Sharia courts have been established and the normal judicial structure has ceased to exist at present. It is a victory of the extreme religious fundamentalists in the area. They now control at least major parts of NWFP including the Malakanad division. There is a peace in Swat at present at the cost of abandoning all sort of normal democratic institutions and ideas. The public girls schools are now open with a totally different character. They have become the public Madrassa. The girls have to read what the student girls are reading in (mosque-run) Madrassa.</p> <p>The Islamabad answer to all this is to accept the Predator drone attacks by the Americans. On one side, they are signing surrender agreements with religious forces and on the other side (they are) helping American imperialism to fashion their air attacks. This entire situation is paving the way for the growth of extreme religious ideas in all parts of the NWFP. The government of the Awami National Party is unable to mobilize the mass support they had enjoyed only one year earlier on the question of peace in the region. The religious fanatics got less than three present votes in the February 2009 general elections as compared to 15 percent in 2002. The Islamabad government seems paralyzed in this situation. They are waiting for miracles to happen. They are still acting like it is &#8220;business as usual&#8221;. There is no thought out strategy by Islamabad to handle the conflict with religious forces.</p> <p>From your perspective, what role do you think Washington is playing in the struggle between the forces represented by Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif?</p> <p>Washington is trying to bring them together and asking them to resolve their conflicts. The American ambassador in Pakistan is very busy between Raiwind, the residence of Nawaz Sharif, and Islamabad. They are asking both sides to come together to fight effectively the &#8220;war on terror&#8221;. They always frighten both of them as to the consequences of the conflict between them. The best option (as Washington sees it, would be) that the both should form an alliance at (the) center and in other areas. Nawaz Sharif has been saying all the time that he was forced to go for the Long March. It was not his choice. He did not want the masses to come on the roads but the sheer bull-headedness of Zardari forced them to this situation. The feudal ego of Zardari has meant that the Sharif brothers are out of power for the time being. A day after the success of the movement, Nawaz Sharif told his supporters to behave and that he respects Zardari and Gilani of the PPP. His brother Shahbaz Sharif told a television that those who make a mistake in the morning and then come back home in the evening must be forgiven.</p> <p>The last time I spoke with you (November 2007), I asked the following questions. I am hoping you can respond to them with your country&#8217;s history since that time in mind: What, in your opinion, is the cause of the unrest in Pakistan? How much of a role do religious extremists play? How much of a role does the Army play?</p> <p>There are multiple reasons for the constant unrest in Pakistan. The foremost reason is the inability of the ruling classes in Pakistan to solve all the basic problems faced by the masses. There exists a feudalistic relationship and land is not distributed to peasants. This brings a very feudal culture and atmosphere in Pakistan. Both the main bourgeois parties, PPP and PMLN, do not speak about it anymore. The major parts of the main leadership in both parties are from the feudal class. They use the ownership of land for political purposes and to win the elections. Sixty-one years of independence have brought no real independence for the majority of the people. This is the real crisis of leadership in Pakistan. Both main parties rely on the military generals. Even in this (most recent) crisis over the&amp;#160; days from 12-16 March 2009, the army chief was mediating between the president, prime minister and the Nawaz brothers. The Nawaz brothers (said they) were very thankful to the &#8220;positive&#8221; role of the army chief.</p> <p>The failure of reformist parties like the PPP paved the way for the growth of religious extremism. The extremists were and are supported by a major section of the army. It is a very complex relationship between the rich, the army and religious extremists. It changes and adjusts all the time. 9/11 made an indispensable difference to this relationship. The fact is that the support of the ruling class for religious extremism is not open as was the case in the past, but the presence of the American forces in the region has given a real momentum for the growth of the religious fundamentalists.</p> <p>The military is out of power in public but not in real terms. No military general has faced any truth commission after their unconstitutional rule. General Musharraf was given a guard of honor when he resigned on 17 August 2008. He still lives in an army house and enjoys all the privileges. The military power in the budget allocated to &#8220;defense&#8221;, is a defense of the ruling class in real terms. Over 30 percent of national income goes to defense budget. The whole society is militarized.&amp;#160; (There are)&amp;#160; a lot of weapons everywhere and it is not decreasing.</p> <p>Mr. Sharif was quoted after the crackdown by Pakistani police failed to stop the protests earlier this week as saying what happened was the &#8220;beginning of a revolution.&#8221; Is this true? If so, would it be a revolution for the majority of the Pakistani people or merely the elites who seem to take turns ruling the country?</p> <p>Mr. Sharif has used the words of revolution, rebellion and upsurge several times after his government dissolved in Punjab and governor rule was imposed. He told a gathering that he is flying a flag of revolution and to side with him. His brother Shahbaz Sharif has recited Jalib and Faiz Ahmad Fiaz several times in public&#8211; both poets are known for their revolutionary poems all over Pakistan. The word revolution to Nawaz Sharif&amp;#160; means nothing and only comes out of his mouth when he is in the&amp;#160; opposition. The revolution means for them, their power and that is it. The Nawaz brothers economic priorities are absolutely the same as those of the PPP. They both are for the neo-liberal agenda and both are happy to work with American imperialism.</p> <p>RON JACOBS is author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859841678/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground</a>, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs&#8217; essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch&#8217;s collection on music, art and sex, <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Serpents in the Garden</a>. His first novel, <a href="" type="internal">Short Order Frame Up,</a> is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:rjacobs3625@charter.net" type="external">rjacobs3625@charter.net</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Pakistan in Turmoil

https://counterpunch.org/2009/03/20/pakistan-in-turmoil/

2009-03-20

4left

Once again the nation of Pakistan has found itself in what many commentators are calling a national crisisamp160 This time around the civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari was forced to keep one of his party8217s election promises8212reinstating Chief Justice Chaudhury who had been summarily dismissed by General Musharraf in 20078212a move which precipitated Muharraf8217s downfallamp160 This reinstatement was the result of a popular movement spearheaded by lawyers and other elements of the religious and secular oppositionamp160 One element of the secular opposition is the Labour Party of Pakistan LPP a democratic socialist organization launched in 1997 from various elements of the Pakistani Leftamp160 In 2007 after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto I communicated with Farooq Tariq the secretary general of the LPPamp160 After the recent events I got back in touch with him What follows is an exchange conducted the past couple of days March 1617 2009 between myself and Mr Tariq Hello Tariqamp160 To begin can you give the readers an idea of what is transpiring in Pakistan In your description can you identify the parties and prominent individuals involved What is transpiring in Pakistan is mass power A real sense of victory after the restoration of the chief justice Iftikhar Choudry is one of the main features of this movement It will be difficult for any government in the future here in Pakistan not to implement what was promised The Pakistan Peoples Party PPP was forced to accept a demand only and only with the emergence of mass power in the streets It is a victory of the people against the traditional power brokers of Pakistan It is a victory of hope against cynicism There were many saying that Iftikhar Choudry would never be reinstated because President Zardari will never change his mind The sheer expression of mass uprising frightened all the major actors of the movement They rushed to accept the initial demand of restoration even before the long march reached Islamabad Had it the long march not been called off by the lawyers8217 leaders after the acceptance of the first demand the list of demands would probably have been expanded from the political to the economic areaamp160 This movement showed that the people of Pakistan can make a difference Pakistan has changed and changed for ever The Long March of the lawyer8217s movement proved that a consistent struggle and militant actions can be fruitful The tactics and strategy of the lawyers movement were a combination of the united mass action of political parties and civil society organizations and a successful propaganda campaign through the electronic and print media Had the lawyers movement gone alone they could not have won the battleamp160 The main political parties that were in the forefront of this struggle are Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz Tehreek Insaaf Jamaat Islami Pukhtoonkhawa Mili Awami Party Awami Tehreek National Party Labour Party Pakistan Khaksar Tehreek Baluchistan National Party Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party National Workers Party Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party and a majority of Pakistan social organizations Of these Jamaat Islami is a religious party and rest are Left liberal and progressive parties Anyhow the most consistent political parties that were part of the lawyers movement since it started on 9 March 2007 are Tehreek Insaf of Imran Khan an emerging party of the middle classes Jamaat Islami a religious fundamentalist party and the Labour Party of Pakistan LPP a socialist partyamp160 The rest of the parties were of and are part of the movementamp160 The most prominent figures of the lawyers movement were Ali Ahmad Kurd president Supreme Court Bar Association SCBA and three SCBA presidents including Aitezaz Ahsan Hamid Khan and Munir A Malik They were all arrested but stood firm From the political parties Imran Khan a former Pakistan cricket team captain has emerged as the most popular personality of the movement His party was not very well known or active by movement standards but because of the participation of Tehreek Insaaf Justice Party in this movement it has become a household name in Pakistan From the Left parties Labour Party Pakistan has gained to some extent Also the LPP is now better nationally known with a very militant positionamp160 The party that got the most advantage from this movement is the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz PMLN It won the February election arguing for the reinstatement of the top judges It used clever tactics after the elections It left the Alliance at the Center with PPP on this question The PMLN leaders and the Sharif brothers made very radical speeches before and during the long march The party PMLN was ready to take risks and loose the provincial government in Punjab on the issue If there was an election today this right wing bourgeoisie party would have a national land slide victory Does your party the Labour Party of Pakistan support any of the figures involved If so why If not why LPP supported the leaders of the lawyer8217s movement all the time but with a critical attitude Our literature produced during the movement helped to expand the nature of the movement Our first poster read 8220on the footsteps of the lawyers till the end of dictatorship8221 We linked the restoration of the judges with the end of military dictatorship We saw the potential of this movement to expand on a national level from the very beginning We supported them because the nature of the movement was very progressive It was not a religious movement of any kind although the religious parties tried to take it overamp160 However the demand of an independent judiciary could never be termed as an Islamic demand We supported them the movement because it was producing an antimilitarist political tendency among a significant section of the middle class and was producing a new layer of young political activists who were not religious fundamentalist We helped the movement and the movement helped the Left ideas to grow in both the political and organizational arenas Those who were associated with the lawyers movement got a national identity and were heard everywhere Do the events occurring in Pakistan open an avenue for the Left Will the PPP cease to exist as a party or will it return closer to its leftist roots It is a very complex political situation The ideas of religious fundamentalism have a natural ally here That ally is the presence of the NATO forces in Afghanistan The objective situation is very favorable for the right wing ideas to grow The nature of the Pakistan state is another help to them After all It is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and not a people8217s republic Yet the ideas of the Left are growing as well Our help from the international scene comes from the development of Left governments in Latin America and social movements in the advanced capitalist countries Internally we are growing because of our tactics of helping and developing the mass movements of the workers peasant women and the lawyers The association with the movement is a key to our recent growth Over 5000 have joined the Labour Party during our 8220peoples contact movement drive8221 in December and January 2009 Incidentally our best growth was in North West Frontier Province where over 2000 have joined during this time But our most stable basis is still the trade unions and peasant organizations We have not left our work in this class base to join the lawyer8217s movement It was possible for our comrades in Faisalabad the third largest city of Pakistan to lead over 100000 against the shortages of electricity in January 2009 Twenty of them were arrested on 14 March 2009 and we had given a call for a general strike on 16 March the day lawyers won I was told by the comrade that the call has been supported by the traders as well It would have been a total success if the lawyer8217s movement would have continued on the day March 16 The success of the lawyer8217s movement has opened a new avenue for the growth of Left ideas For the first time we are witnessing the educated youth joining our party Earlier we were a handful of comrades within the party who had university degrees The PPP is the main loser of this whole episode It has politically moved much towards the right since it came in power a year ago It has tried to implement the neoliberal agenda that was initiated by General Musharraf It is seen as a party allowing the American imperialists to attack Pakistan directly without any state resistance It failed to implement the promises of reinstatement of the judges despite written agreements three times The leader Asif Zardari is probably the most hated politician among the mainstream leaders He is seen as a liar deceiver swindler trickster charlatan quack and cheater A day after the reinstatement of the top judges he made a statement that he wanted to reinstate the judges This was after he was seen as the main hurdle in the path of reinstatement The PPP is distributing sweets all over Pakistan after the reinstatement claiming that they have fulfilled the promise of Benazir Bhutto Yet for over eight months their entire leadership was arguing that Benazir Bhutto never promised to reinstate them They were saying that Iftikhar Choudry is a politicized judge Their argument was that he should take a new oath like some other judges have taken They were making a point that Iftikhar Choudry is just one person They were using all sorts ofamp160 arguments against the judges in all the television and print media debates Yet only a day later after the reinstatement they wanted the Pakistani people to believe that it was the PPP who had reinstated and fulfilled a promise of Benazir Bhutto They believe the memory of the people is very short They believe that we should forget our jails arrests tortures ungrounded life the barricades in the road to stop the long march and whatever else The PPP leaders have become real hypocrites The party is not finished but is losing its support rapidly It will remain as a major party unless another party replaces them with a revolutionary programme The PMLN can never replace the PPP It can win an election for the time being but it can never have the permanent support of the people because the nature of PMLN is almost the same as PPP Both are right wing bourgeoisie parties with populist appeal at some times There is no possibility of the PPP taking a Left route The reason is very simple PPP leadership from top to bottom is committed to power and to certain people They have proved again and again that they will serve the interests of the ruling class and imperialism and are not for the majority of the people They have even abandoned the gesture of leftist ideas It will remain in the political scene as a party of the capitalists and feudalists All the time it is losing support Benazir Bhutto8217s death gave it a breathing space but that is lost already What about the conflicts in Swat and other parts of the Northwest Frontieramp160 Province NWFP How are they affected by what occurs in Islamabad In Swat the government signed a surrender pact with the religious fundamentalists Under their pressure socalled Sharia courts have been established and the normal judicial structure has ceased to exist at present It is a victory of the extreme religious fundamentalists in the area They now control at least major parts of NWFP including the Malakanad division There is a peace in Swat at present at the cost of abandoning all sort of normal democratic institutions and ideas The public girls schools are now open with a totally different character They have become the public Madrassa The girls have to read what the student girls are reading in mosquerun Madrassa The Islamabad answer to all this is to accept the Predator drone attacks by the Americans On one side they are signing surrender agreements with religious forces and on the other side they are helping American imperialism to fashion their air attacks This entire situation is paving the way for the growth of extreme religious ideas in all parts of the NWFP The government of the Awami National Party is unable to mobilize the mass support they had enjoyed only one year earlier on the question of peace in the region The religious fanatics got less than three present votes in the February 2009 general elections as compared to 15 percent in 2002 The Islamabad government seems paralyzed in this situation They are waiting for miracles to happen They are still acting like it is 8220business as usual8221 There is no thought out strategy by Islamabad to handle the conflict with religious forces From your perspective what role do you think Washington is playing in the struggle between the forces represented by Mr Zardari and Mr Sharif Washington is trying to bring them together and asking them to resolve their conflicts The American ambassador in Pakistan is very busy between Raiwind the residence of Nawaz Sharif and Islamabad They are asking both sides to come together to fight effectively the 8220war on terror8221 They always frighten both of them as to the consequences of the conflict between them The best option as Washington sees it would be that the both should form an alliance at the center and in other areas Nawaz Sharif has been saying all the time that he was forced to go for the Long March It was not his choice He did not want the masses to come on the roads but the sheer bullheadedness of Zardari forced them to this situation The feudal ego of Zardari has meant that the Sharif brothers are out of power for the time being A day after the success of the movement Nawaz Sharif told his supporters to behave and that he respects Zardari and Gilani of the PPP His brother Shahbaz Sharif told a television that those who make a mistake in the morning and then come back home in the evening must be forgiven The last time I spoke with you November 2007 I asked the following questions I am hoping you can respond to them with your country8217s history since that time in mind What in your opinion is the cause of the unrest in Pakistan How much of a role do religious extremists play How much of a role does the Army play There are multiple reasons for the constant unrest in Pakistan The foremost reason is the inability of the ruling classes in Pakistan to solve all the basic problems faced by the masses There exists a feudalistic relationship and land is not distributed to peasants This brings a very feudal culture and atmosphere in Pakistan Both the main bourgeois parties PPP and PMLN do not speak about it anymore The major parts of the main leadership in both parties are from the feudal class They use the ownership of land for political purposes and to win the elections Sixtyone years of independence have brought no real independence for the majority of the people This is the real crisis of leadership in Pakistan Both main parties rely on the military generals Even in this most recent crisis over theamp160 days from 1216 March 2009 the army chief was mediating between the president prime minister and the Nawaz brothers The Nawaz brothers said they were very thankful to the 8220positive8221 role of the army chief The failure of reformist parties like the PPP paved the way for the growth of religious extremism The extremists were and are supported by a major section of the army It is a very complex relationship between the rich the army and religious extremists It changes and adjusts all the time 911 made an indispensable difference to this relationship The fact is that the support of the ruling class for religious extremism is not open as was the case in the past but the presence of the American forces in the region has given a real momentum for the growth of the religious fundamentalists The military is out of power in public but not in real terms No military general has faced any truth commission after their unconstitutional rule General Musharraf was given a guard of honor when he resigned on 17 August 2008 He still lives in an army house and enjoys all the privileges The military power in the budget allocated to 8220defense8221 is a defense of the ruling class in real terms Over 30 percent of national income goes to defense budget The whole society is militarizedamp160 There areamp160 a lot of weapons everywhere and it is not decreasing Mr Sharif was quoted after the crackdown by Pakistani police failed to stop the protests earlier this week as saying what happened was the 8220beginning of a revolution8221 Is this true If so would it be a revolution for the majority of the Pakistani people or merely the elites who seem to take turns ruling the country Mr Sharif has used the words of revolution rebellion and upsurge several times after his government dissolved in Punjab and governor rule was imposed He told a gathering that he is flying a flag of revolution and to side with him His brother Shahbaz Sharif has recited Jalib and Faiz Ahmad Fiaz several times in public8211 both poets are known for their revolutionary poems all over Pakistan The word revolution to Nawaz Sharifamp160 means nothing and only comes out of his mouth when he is in theamp160 opposition The revolution means for them their power and that is it The Nawaz brothers economic priorities are absolutely the same as those of the PPP They both are for the neoliberal agenda and both are happy to work with American imperialism RON JACOBS is author of The Way the Wind Blew a history of the Weather Underground which is just republished by Verso Jacobs8217 essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch8217s collection on music art and sex Serpents in the Garden His first novel Short Order Frame Up is published by Mainstay Press He can be reached at rjacobs3625charternet amp160 amp160

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Frontier/PROPN Province/PROPN where/SCONJ over/ADP 2000/NUM have/AUX joined/VERB during/ADP this/DET time/NOUN But/CCONJ our/PRON most/ADV stable/ADJ basis/NOUN is/AUX still/ADV the/DET trade/NOUN unions/NOUN and/CCONJ peasant/NOUN organizations/NOUN We/PRON have/AUX not/PART left/VERB our/PRON work/NOUN in/ADP this/DET class/NOUN base/NOUN to/PART join/VERB the/DET lawyer8217s/PROPN movement/NOUN It/PRON was/AUX possible/ADJ for/SCONJ our/PRON comrades/NOUN in/ADP Faisalabad/PROPN the/DET third/ADV largest/ADJ city/NOUN of/ADP Pakistan/PROPN to/PART lead/VERB over/ADP 100000/NUM against/ADP the/DET shortages/NOUN of/ADP electricity/NOUN in/ADP January/PROPN 2009/NUM Twenty/PROPN of/ADP them/PRON were/AUX arrested/VERB on/ADP 14/NUM March/PROPN 2009/NUM and/CCONJ we/PRON had/AUX given/VERB a/DET call/NOUN for/ADP a/DET general/ADJ strike/NOUN on/ADP 16/NUM March/PROPN the/DET day/NOUN lawyers/NOUN won/VERB I/PRON was/AUX told/VERB by/ADP the/DET comrade/NOUN that/SCONJ the/DET 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<p>USC big men Bennie Boatwright and Chimezie Metu scored 18 points apiece and Jordan McLaughlin made six free throws in the final 38.4 seconds in the Trojans&#8217; comeback 75-70 Pac-12 victory over the Oregon Ducks at Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, Ore., on Thursday.</p> <p>McLaughlin and Jonah Mathews had 11 points apiece for the Trojans (14-6, 5-2 Pac-12), who broke a 15-game losing streak to Oregon and moved within one-half game of the Pac-12 lead behind Arizona and Stanford.</p> <p>USC, which broke an eight-game series losing streak to Utah on Sunday, had not won in Eugene since Jan. 2, 2009.</p> <p>Payton Pritchard scored 18 points and forward MiKyle McIntosh had 11 points and 10 rebounds for the Ducks (12-7, 2-4), who have lost two in a row.</p> <p>Paul White had 14 points and Troy Brown added 12 points for the Ducks.</p> <p>USC has won five of its last six games, the only loss coming when Stanford guard Daejon Davis hit a 50-footer as time expired in a 77-76 victory Jan. 7.</p> <p>Elijah Brown hit a 3-pointer to give the Ducks a 68-66 lead with 2:56 remaining before Metu tied the game on a jump-hook in the lane with 1:49 left.</p> <p>Mathews made one of two free throws for a 69-68 lead with 1:20 remaining, and McLaughlin made two free throws to make it 71-68 with 38.4 seconds left.</p> <p>White made a layup with 29 seconds remaining before McLaughlin hit two more free throws with 22.8 seconds left for a 73-70 lead.</p> <p>After Pritchard missed a 3-pointer, McLaughlin hit two more foul shots to clinch the victory.</p> <p>Neither team led by more than four points in the second half, when there were 14 lead changes.</p> <p>Point guard McLaughlin also had nine rebounds and seven assists. He leads the Pac-12 with 7.6 assists a game.</p> <p>Boatwright had five rebounds and Metu had four, as the Trojans had a 36-26 edge on the boards.</p> <p>Boatwright made four of the Trojans&#8217; seven 3-pointers and Mathews had two. Mathews has eight 3-pointers in the last three games after moving into a reserve role.</p> <p>&#8212;Field Level Media</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) - Patrick Reed fought off furious back-nine challenges from Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler to record a one-shot victory at the U.S. Masters on Sunday, trading in his &#8216;Captain America&#8217; cap for a Green Jacket.</p> Patrick Reed of the U.S. hold the Masters Tournament Trophy and wears his green jacket after winning the 2018 Masters tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S. April 8, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder <p>The final round began with Reed holding a three-shot advantage over Rory McIlroy, but while the Northern Irishman&#8217;s challenge faded Reed had to hold off his hard-charging U.S. Ryder Cup team mates to claim his first major championship.</p> <p>Needing a two-putt par from 26 feet at the 18th to clinch the title, Reed ran his first putt four feet past the hole, took a deep breath and held his nerve rolling a knee-knocker into the cup for a one-under 71 that ended Fowler&#8217;s hopes of a playoff.</p> <p>The fiery leader of recent U.S. Ryder and Presidents Cup efforts, Reed displayed plenty of the same brash spirit that earned him the &#8216;Captain America&#8217; moniker while adding his name to the list of Masters champions.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-golf-masters-fowler/masters-runner-up-fowler-im-ready-to-win-idUSKBN1HG06K" type="external">Masters runner-up Fowler: 'I'm ready to win'</a> <a href="/article/us-golf-masters-reed-underdog/reed-thrives-on-underdog-role-to-clinch-first-major-idUSKBN1HG035" type="external">Reed thrives on underdog role to clinch first major</a> <a href="/article/us-golf-masters-spieth/sizzling-spieth-charge-adds-drama-to-masters-idUSKBN1HG03Z" type="external">Sizzling Spieth charge adds drama to Masters</a> <p>&#8220;Today was definitely probably the hardest mentally a round of golf could possibly be,&#8221; said Reed, who posted a 15-under 273 total. &#8220;It was going to be tough, anytime trying to close off a golf tournament is really tough.&#8221;</p> <p>Fowler, who remains without a major title, had put the pressure on with a back nine charge that featured six birdies over his final 11 holes, including one at the last, but his 67 and 14-under total would not be enough.</p> <p>Before Fowler took up the challenge of overhauling Reed, it was Spieth leading the chase with a sizzling eight-under 64 that matched the lowest final round at a Masters to finish two shots back.</p> <p>Sitting nine shots off the pace at the start of the day, Spieth was an after thought as spectators filed into Augusta National but was once again in the Masters spotlight when the Green Jacket was up for grabs.</p> <p>In four Masters appearances, Spieth also has two runner-up finishes and a tie for 11th last year.</p> <p>&#8220;With eight people ahead of me starting the day, to get that much help and shoot a fantastic round was nearly impossible,&#8221; said Spieth, whose only blemish was bogey at the 18th after his tee shot hit a branch. &#8220;But I almost pulled off the impossible.&#8221;</p> Patrick Reed of the U.S. hold the Masters Tournament Trophy and wears his green jacket after winning the 2018 Masters tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S. April 8, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder <p>While Reed had established his championship credentials with five PGA Tour wins and runnerup finish at the last major the 2017 PGA Championships at Quail Hollow, Reed, who had never had round under 70 at Augusta National, was not rated among the hot favorites when the year&#8217;s first major got underway.</p> <p>But after opening the tournament with three straight rounds in the 60s Reed had everyone&#8217;s attention.</p> <p>Only is final round 71 kept Reed from writing his name in the Masters record books as the first golfer to post four sub-70 rounds.</p> <p>&#8220;You know, just kind of one of those things that you expect that trying to go win your first major that people are going to make runs and it&#8217;s not going to be easy,&#8221; said Reed. &#8220;You&#8217;re going to have to go out and play a good round of golf and shoot under par.&#8221;</p> <p>McIlroy, three shots back and playing in the final pair with Reed, had to get off to a quick start and he did just that, chopping two shots off the deficit in just two holes.</p> <p>Reed sent his opening tee shot deep into the pines and opened his account with a bogey and McIlroy amped up the pressure with a birdie at the second while Reed settled for a par as the American&#8217;s advantage narrowed to one stroke.</p> <p>But the rollercoaster ride had only just begun as the third hole saw a two-shot swing back to Reed, who birdied the hole while McIlroy took a bogey to put both men back where they started.</p> <p>While Reed steadied himself McIlroy unraveled, taking bogeys at five and eight to drop into a pack that included Spaniard Jon Rahm and Fowler four back of the front-running Reed.</p> Slideshow (15 Images) <p>McIlroy, who squandered a four-shot lead at Augusta National in 2011 by shooting a final round of 80, was out of the race by the turn and will have to wait another year for his chance to become the first European to complete the career grand slam.</p> <p>&#8220;Just wasn&#8217;t meant to be,&#8221; shrugged the Northern Irishman, after slumping to a final round two-over 74 to finish six shots back of the leader. &#8220;At least I put myself in the position. That&#8217;s all I wanted to do.</p> <p>&#8220;The last four years I&#8217;ve had top 10s but I haven&#8217;t been close enough to the lead. Today I got myself there.</p> <p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t quite do enough. But, you know, come back again next year and try.&#8221;</p> <p>(This version of the story was refiled to fix headline to &#8216;cap&#8217;)</p> <p>Editing by Pritha Sarkar/Peter Rutherford</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Japanese two-way star Shohei Ohtani continued to display Babe Ruth-like brilliance in the early stages of his Major League career as he flirted with a perfect game while pitching for six-plus innings in a Los Angeles Angels victory on Sunday.</p> Apr 8, 2018; Anaheim, CA, USA; Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani (17) throws against the Oakland Athletics in the second inning during a MLB baseball game at Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports <p>The 23-year-old rookie allowed just one hit and struck out 12 over seven scoreless innings as he improved to 2-0 as a pitcher in his team&#8217;s 6-1 win over the Oakland Athletics.</p> <p>The performance only increased the buzz that Ohtani, who hit home runs in three consecutive games last week, could become the highest-profile player since Hall of Famer Ruth to succeed on both the mound and at the plate.</p> <p>Ruth managed to dominate both disciplines for the Boston Red Sox in 1918 and 1919 before his fateful move on to the New York Yankees, where he became the Sultan of Swat and seldom pitched.</p> <p>&#8220;I think he&#8217;s mature beyond his years,&#8221; Angels manager Mike Scioscia told reporters when asked about the right-handed pitcher before Sunday&#8217;s game.</p> <p>&#8220;He&#8217;s been challenged at a young age, so he&#8217;s seasoned to what a lot of players have to get acclimated to. He&#8217;s been playing at a very high level of baseball from a very young age.</p> <p>&#8220;Shohei, he&#8217;s very confident, he works very, very hard at what he needs to do, and there&#8217;s a lot on his plate. But he has the talent to do it.&#8221;</p> CLEAN ZERO <p>Ohtani showed plenty of that talent when he retired the first 19 batters he faced, throwing a perfect game until Marcus Semien lined a fastball into left field for a single with one out in the seventh.</p> <p>&#8220;Probably my best outing ever was when I was in elementary school,&#8221; Ohtani, who shone for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan before joining the Angels in December, said through an interpreter.</p> Apr 8, 2018; Anaheim, CA, USA; Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani (17) is greeted by teammates in the dugout against the Oakland Athletics during a MLB baseball game at Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports <p>He pumped his fist as he walked off the field after striking out the last batter he faced with two runners on in the seventh inning, receiving a standing ovation from the 44,742 in attendance as he departed.</p> <p>&#8220;I wanted to keep a clean zero on the board,&#8221; Ohtani said of his last out. &#8220;One hit would have been two runs &#8212; that&#8217;s a huge difference. I wanted that strikeout and I got it.&#8221;</p> <p>Nicknamed the Babe Ruth of Japan because of his dual threat, Ohtani became the first Major League player with two wins and three home runs in his team's first 10 games since Jim Shaw for the Washington Senators in 1919, according to mlb.com <a href="http://www.mlb.com" type="external">www.mlb.com</a>.</p> <p>He also joined Ruth (1916) and Ken Brett (1973) as the only players in Major League history with a double-digit strikeout game and a home run in three consecutive contests.</p> <p>Ohtani homered in his first ever at-bat at Angels stadium last week and has continued to thrill fans with a .389 batting average at the plate, where he has three homers and seven RBIs.</p> <p>On the mound, which is where the Angels plan to use him primarily, Ohtani has 18 strikeouts in two games, helping to push Los Angeles to an impressive 7-3 start. &amp;#160;</p> <p>Reporting by Jahmal Corner in Los Angeles and Gene Cherry in North Carolina; Editing by John O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>Kyle Busch finally ended a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race happy, winning Sunday&#8217;s O&#8217;Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway by holding off Kevin Harvick over the closing laps.</p> <p>It was the 44th series win for Busch, who had finished second or third in the previous four Cup races even as Harvick had already won three times this season.</p> <p>It was also the first win of the season for Joe Gibbs Racing, considered the top Toyota team in the sport.</p> <p>&#8220;My guys were awesome on pit road,&#8221; Busch said. &#8220;Adam (Stevens, the crew chief) and the guys gave me a great car.</p> <p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t say enough about these guys. It was rocking today.&#8221;</p> <p>A point of controversy in the upcoming weeks is going to be the NASCAR-issued pit guns, which Harvick blamed for his up and down day, calling them &#8220;pathetic,&#8221; and &#8220;embarrassing for the sport.&#8221;</p> <p>Kurt Busch started from the pole after truncated qualifying Friday made his fast lap in the first round stand up. He was passed on the first lap by teammate Harvick, who got into the low preferred line around the track as Busch went high.</p> <p>With a cold track and cold tires &#8212; the temperature at race start was 46 degrees &#8212; and drivers jockeying for position, the first crash of the day happened on Lap 2 when Alex Bowman got down on the apron and the rear of his car swung right.</p> <p>When defending series champion Martin Truex Jr.&#8217;s crash on Lap 81 took him out of the race, Harvick won Stage 1 under caution, dominating it by leading 74 of 85 laps. It was his fourth stage win of the season, tops in the Cup Series.</p> <p>On a track that doesn&#8217;t afford much green-flag passing, fast pit stops were critical, and even more important was getting on and off pit road mistake-free. That was too much to ask on the first round of stops for contenders Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson.</p> <p>Blaney and Hamlin were too fast entering pit road and served pass-through penalties, taking them from being among the leaders to the middle of the pack, with Hamlin soon going a lap down. Johnson&#8217;s crew didn&#8217;t get his right-front wheel on tight and he had to pit again to tighten it up, relegating him to two laps down as Stage 1 wound down.</p> <p>When Stage 2 opened for green-flag racing on Lap 91, Kyle Busch re-started in first after a faster pit stop than Harvick, who came out second. Busch held the lead starting from the outside line and kept it until Lap 116, when Harvick flew by on the low line through Turns 1 and 2.</p> <p>But the 1.5mile D-shaped oval proved treacherous throughout the race, with Kyle Larson blowing a right front tire and hitting the wall hard between Turns 1 and 2 on Lap 126.</p> <p>On the ensuing pit stops, Harvick dropped eight spots and came out ninth, then Harvick lost a lap when he had to pit with a loose wheel but he slowly made his way back to be in contention until the end despite more pit-road foibles. With Kurt Busch taking over the lead and younger brother Kyle re-starting second when Harvick fell back, Kurt broke out on top and kept the lead until Lap 166 when Kyle passed him to win Stage 2 four laps later, his second stage win of the season.</p> <p>On the restart on Lap 178 after Stage 2 with Erik Jones leading, seven cars had a big pileup, including Hamlin, Trevor Bayne, Brad Keselowski, Johnson, David Ragan, Aric Almirola and Dillon, bringing out the red flag and a race stoppage of 11 minutes, 4 seconds for cleanup.</p> <p>The Cup series heads to Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tenn., next Sunday for the Food City 500 at the half-mile bullring oval for the second short-track race of the season.</p> <p>&#8212;K. Lee Davis, Field Level Media</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>HUMBOLDT, Saskatchewan (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined religious and community leaders at an emotional vigil on Sunday night to honor the 15 members of a junior ice hockey team killed in a bus crash that shocked the hockey-loving nation.</p> <p>Hundreds of people including National Hockey League (NHL) players attended the vigil at the Elgar Petersen Arena, home of the Humboldt Broncos club at the center of one of the worst disasters to hit Canada&#8217;s sporting community.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re here behind you. We will be here for you,&#8221; Rob Muench, mayor of the small farming town of Humboldt in Saskatchewan province, told the gathering.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-canada-crash-community/hockey-loving-canada-town-mourns-fine-young-guys-after-crash-idUSKBN1HF0UD" type="external">Hockey-loving Canada town mourns 'fine young guys' after crash</a> <p>&#8220;We will get through this.&#8221;</p> <p>Fourteen other members of the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team were injured in the accident, which occurred as the team was traveling to a league playoff game in the town of Nipawin, about 200 km (125 miles) northeast of Humboldt, on Friday.</p> <p>The bus collided with a semi-trailer truck. Canadian police are looking into road, weather and vehicle conditions.</p> <p>Former NHL star Sheldon Kennedy was among those who were expected to attend the vigil, along with former players Bob Wilkie and Peter Soberlak. Kennedy was on board a bus involved in another fatal crash in 1986, in which four members of the Swift Current Broncos were killed.</p> <p>One minute silence was observed at the time when the playoff was scheduled on Sunday evening.</p> <p>&#8220;Today and for every day forward we are all humble Broncos and we will be forever humble Broncos strong,&#8221; Broncos President Kevin Geringer told the members attending the vigil.</p> <p>For the prairies community of Humboldt, population about 6,000, ice hockey is a sport that unifies the town and gives it its identity, bringing home two national championships.</p> Mourners comfort each other during a vigil at the Elgar Petersen Arena, home of the Humboldt Broncos, to honour the victims of a fatal bus accident in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, Canada April 8, 2018. Jonathan Hayward/Pool via REUTERS <p>Townspeople and team supporters gathered at the local Uniplex sports and education complex to comfort each other. An online fund-raising initiative to help the victims&#8217; families has raised C$3.7 million ($2.9 million).</p> <p>Rob Eichorst, the team&#8217;s governor, said Sunday&#8217;s interdenominational vigil was organized by local religious leaders &#8220;for healing of the community, the hockey team, the province, the country.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no playbook on how to handle this,&#8221; Eichorst said. &#8220;People are bringing food ... We&#8217;ve got multinational companies helping us, we&#8217;ve got national companies offering stuff. The support is overwhelming and truly appreciated.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (23 Images) <p>He estimated 300 to 400 people had gathered at the complex on Friday evening. Grief counselors were on hand and the Red Cross was providing support to players&#8217; families as well as the families who billet players.</p> <p>Reporting by Katherine Fitzpatrick&amp;#160;in HUMBOLDT, Saskatchewan; Writing by Denny Thomas; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Stephen Coates</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

USC snaps losing streak in Oregon with 75-70 win 'Captain America' Reed swaps cap for Green Jacket Baseball: Guardian Angel Ohtani maintains Major League magic Kyle Busch holds off Harvick for Texas win Trudeau attends emotional vigil for Canada bus crash victims

https://reuters.com/article/basketball-ncaa-ore-usc-recap/usc-snaps-losing-streak-in-oregon-with-75-70-win-idUSMTZEE1JSC6M8U

2018-01-19

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USC big men Bennie Boatwright and Chimezie Metu scored 18 points apiece and Jordan McLaughlin made six free throws in the final 384 seconds in the Trojans8217 comeback 7570 Pac12 victory over the Oregon Ducks at Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene Ore on Thursday McLaughlin and Jonah Mathews had 11 points apiece for the Trojans 146 52 Pac12 who broke a 15game losing streak to Oregon and moved within onehalf game of the Pac12 lead behind Arizona and Stanford USC which broke an eightgame series losing streak to Utah on Sunday had not won in Eugene since Jan 2 2009 Payton Pritchard scored 18 points and forward MiKyle McIntosh had 11 points and 10 rebounds for the Ducks 127 24 who have lost two in a row Paul White had 14 points and Troy Brown added 12 points for the Ducks USC has won five of its last six games the only loss coming when Stanford guard Daejon Davis hit a 50footer as time expired in a 7776 victory Jan 7 Elijah Brown hit a 3pointer to give the Ducks a 6866 lead with 256 remaining before Metu tied the game on a jumphook in the lane with 149 left Mathews made one of two free throws for a 6968 lead with 120 remaining and McLaughlin made two free throws to make it 7168 with 384 seconds left White made a layup with 29 seconds remaining before McLaughlin hit two more free throws with 228 seconds left for a 7370 lead After Pritchard missed a 3pointer McLaughlin hit two more foul shots to clinch the victory Neither team led by more than four points in the second half when there were 14 lead changes Point guard McLaughlin also had nine rebounds and seven assists He leads the Pac12 with 76 assists a game Boatwright had five rebounds and Metu had four as the Trojans had a 3626 edge on the boards Boatwright made four of the Trojans8217 seven 3pointers and Mathews had two Mathews has eight 3pointers in the last three games after moving into a reserve role 8212Field Level Media Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AUGUSTA Ga Reuters Patrick Reed fought off furious backnine challenges from Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler to record a oneshot victory at the US Masters on Sunday trading in his 8216Captain America8217 cap for a Green Jacket Patrick Reed of the US hold the Masters Tournament Trophy and wears his green jacket after winning the 2018 Masters tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 8 2018 REUTERSBrian Snyder The final round began with Reed holding a threeshot advantage over Rory McIlroy but while the Northern Irishman8217s challenge faded Reed had to hold off his hardcharging US Ryder Cup team mates to claim his first major championship Needing a twoputt par from 26 feet at the 18th to clinch the title Reed ran his first putt four feet past the hole took a deep breath and held his nerve rolling a kneeknocker into the cup for a oneunder 71 that ended Fowler8217s hopes of a playoff The fiery leader of recent US Ryder and Presidents Cup efforts Reed displayed plenty of the same brash spirit that earned him the 8216Captain America8217 moniker while adding his name to the list of Masters champions Related Coverage Masters runnerup Fowler Im ready to win Reed thrives on underdog role to clinch first major Sizzling Spieth charge adds drama to Masters 8220Today was definitely probably the hardest mentally a round of golf could possibly be8221 said Reed who posted a 15under 273 total 8220It was going to be tough anytime trying to close off a golf tournament is really tough8221 Fowler who remains without a major title had put the pressure on with a back nine charge that featured six birdies over his final 11 holes including one at the last but his 67 and 14under total would not be enough Before Fowler took up the challenge of overhauling Reed it was Spieth leading the chase with a sizzling eightunder 64 that matched the lowest final round at a Masters to finish two shots back Sitting nine shots off the pace at the start of the day Spieth was an after thought as spectators filed into Augusta National but was once again in the Masters spotlight when the Green Jacket was up for grabs In four Masters appearances Spieth also has two runnerup finishes and a tie for 11th last year 8220With eight people ahead of me starting the day to get that much help and shoot a fantastic round was nearly impossible8221 said Spieth whose only blemish was bogey at the 18th after his tee shot hit a branch 8220But I almost pulled off the impossible8221 Patrick Reed of the US hold the Masters Tournament Trophy and wears his green jacket after winning the 2018 Masters tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 8 2018 REUTERSBrian Snyder While Reed had established his championship credentials with five PGA Tour wins and runnerup finish at the last major the 2017 PGA Championships at Quail Hollow Reed who had never had round under 70 at Augusta National was not rated among the hot favorites when the year8217s first major got underway But after opening the tournament with three straight rounds in the 60s Reed had everyone8217s attention Only is final round 71 kept Reed from writing his name in the Masters record books as the first golfer to post four sub70 rounds 8220You know just kind of one of those things that you expect that trying to go win your first major that people are going to make runs and it8217s not going to be easy8221 said Reed 8220You8217re going to have to go out and play a good round of golf and shoot under par8221 McIlroy three shots back and playing in the final pair with Reed had to get off to a quick start and he did just that chopping two shots off the deficit in just two holes Reed sent his opening tee shot deep into the pines and opened his account with a bogey and McIlroy amped up the pressure with a birdie at the second while Reed settled for a par as the American8217s advantage narrowed to one stroke But the rollercoaster ride had only just begun as the third hole saw a twoshot swing back to Reed who birdied the hole while McIlroy took a bogey to put both men back where they started While Reed steadied himself McIlroy unraveled taking bogeys at five and eight to drop into a pack that included Spaniard Jon Rahm and Fowler four back of the frontrunning Reed Slideshow 15 Images McIlroy who squandered a fourshot lead at Augusta National in 2011 by shooting a final round of 80 was out of the race by the turn and will have to wait another year for his chance to become the first European to complete the career grand slam 8220Just wasn8217t meant to be8221 shrugged the Northern Irishman after slumping to a final round twoover 74 to finish six shots back of the leader 8220At least I put myself in the position That8217s all I wanted to do 8220The last four years I8217ve had top 10s but I haven8217t been close enough to the lead Today I got myself there 8220I didn8217t quite do enough But you know come back again next year and try8221 This version of the story was refiled to fix headline to 8216cap8217 Editing by Pritha SarkarPeter Rutherford Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Japanese twoway star Shohei Ohtani continued to display Babe Ruthlike brilliance in the early stages of his Major League career as he flirted with a perfect game while pitching for sixplus innings in a Los Angeles Angels victory on Sunday Apr 8 2018 Anaheim CA USA Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani 17 throws against the Oakland Athletics in the second inning during a MLB baseball game at Angel Stadium of Anaheim Kirby LeeUSA TODAY Sports The 23yearold rookie allowed just one hit and struck out 12 over seven scoreless innings as he improved to 20 as a pitcher in his team8217s 61 win over the Oakland Athletics The performance only increased the buzz that Ohtani who hit home runs in three consecutive games last week could become the highestprofile player since Hall of Famer Ruth to succeed on both the mound and at the plate Ruth managed to dominate both disciplines for the Boston Red Sox in 1918 and 1919 before his fateful move on to the New York Yankees where he became the Sultan of Swat and seldom pitched 8220I think he8217s mature beyond his years8221 Angels manager Mike Scioscia told reporters when asked about the righthanded pitcher before Sunday8217s game 8220He8217s been challenged at a young age so he8217s seasoned to what a lot of players have to get acclimated to He8217s been playing at a very high level of baseball from a very young age 8220Shohei he8217s very confident he works very very hard at what he needs to do and there8217s a lot on his plate But he has the talent to do it8221 CLEAN ZERO Ohtani showed plenty of that talent when he retired the first 19 batters he faced throwing a perfect game until Marcus Semien lined a fastball into left field for a single with one out in the seventh 8220Probably my best outing ever was when I was in elementary school8221 Ohtani who shone for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan before joining the Angels in December said through an interpreter Apr 8 2018 Anaheim CA USA Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani 17 is greeted by teammates in the dugout against the Oakland Athletics during a MLB baseball game at Angel Stadium of Anaheim Kirby LeeUSA TODAY Sports He pumped his fist as he walked off the field after striking out the last batter he faced with two runners on in the seventh inning receiving a standing ovation from the 44742 in attendance as he departed 8220I wanted to keep a clean zero on the board8221 Ohtani said of his last out 8220One hit would have been two runs 8212 that8217s a huge difference I wanted that strikeout and I got it8221 Nicknamed the Babe Ruth of Japan because of his dual threat Ohtani became the first Major League player with two wins and three home runs in his teams first 10 games since Jim Shaw for the Washington Senators in 1919 according to mlbcom wwwmlbcom He also joined Ruth 1916 and Ken Brett 1973 as the only players in Major League history with a doubledigit strikeout game and a home run in three consecutive contests Ohtani homered in his first ever atbat at Angels stadium last week and has continued to thrill fans with a 389 batting average at the plate where he has three homers and seven RBIs On the mound which is where the Angels plan to use him primarily Ohtani has 18 strikeouts in two games helping to push Los Angeles to an impressive 73 start amp160 Reporting by Jahmal Corner in Los Angeles and Gene Cherry in North Carolina Editing by John OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Kyle Busch finally ended a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race happy winning Sunday8217s O8217Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway by holding off Kevin Harvick over the closing laps It was the 44th series win for Busch who had finished second or third in the previous four Cup races even as Harvick had already won three times this season It was also the first win of the season for Joe Gibbs Racing considered the top Toyota team in the sport 8220My guys were awesome on pit road8221 Busch said 8220Adam Stevens the crew chief and the guys gave me a great car 8220I can8217t say enough about these guys It was rocking today8221 A point of controversy in the upcoming weeks is going to be the NASCARissued pit guns which Harvick blamed for his up and down day calling them 8220pathetic8221 and 8220embarrassing for the sport8221 Kurt Busch started from the pole after truncated qualifying Friday made his fast lap in the first round stand up He was passed on the first lap by teammate Harvick who got into the low preferred line around the track as Busch went high With a cold track and cold tires 8212 the temperature at race start was 46 degrees 8212 and drivers jockeying for position the first crash of the day happened on Lap 2 when Alex Bowman got down on the apron and the rear of his car swung right When defending series champion Martin Truex Jr8217s crash on Lap 81 took him out of the race Harvick won Stage 1 under caution dominating it by leading 74 of 85 laps It was his fourth stage win of the season tops in the Cup Series On a track that doesn8217t afford much greenflag passing fast pit stops were critical and even more important was getting on and off pit road mistakefree That was too much to ask on the first round of stops for contenders Ryan Blaney Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson Blaney and Hamlin were too fast entering pit road and served passthrough penalties taking them from being among the leaders to the middle of the pack with Hamlin soon going a lap down Johnson8217s crew didn8217t get his rightfront wheel on tight and he had to pit again to tighten it up relegating him to two laps down as Stage 1 wound down When Stage 2 opened for greenflag racing on Lap 91 Kyle Busch restarted in first after a faster pit stop than Harvick who came out second Busch held the lead starting from the outside line and kept it until Lap 116 when Harvick flew by on the low line through Turns 1 and 2 But the 15mile Dshaped oval proved treacherous throughout the race with Kyle Larson blowing a right front tire and hitting the wall hard between Turns 1 and 2 on Lap 126 On the ensuing pit stops Harvick dropped eight spots and came out ninth then Harvick lost a lap when he had to pit with a loose wheel but he slowly made his way back to be in contention until the end despite more pitroad foibles With Kurt Busch taking over the lead and younger brother Kyle restarting second when Harvick fell back Kurt broke out on top and kept the lead until Lap 166 when Kyle passed him to win Stage 2 four laps later his second stage win of the season On the restart on Lap 178 after Stage 2 with Erik Jones leading seven cars had a big pileup including Hamlin Trevor Bayne Brad Keselowski Johnson David Ragan Aric Almirola and Dillon bringing out the red flag and a race stoppage of 11 minutes 4 seconds for cleanup The Cup series heads to Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol Tenn next Sunday for the Food City 500 at the halfmile bullring oval for the second shorttrack race of the season 8212K Lee Davis Field Level Media Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles HUMBOLDT Saskatchewan Reuters Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined religious and community leaders at an emotional vigil on Sunday night to honor the 15 members of a junior ice hockey team killed in a bus crash that shocked the hockeyloving nation Hundreds of people including National Hockey League NHL players attended the vigil at the Elgar Petersen Arena home of the Humboldt Broncos club at the center of one of the worst disasters to hit Canada8217s sporting community 8220We8217re here behind you We will be here for you8221 Rob Muench mayor of the small farming town of Humboldt in Saskatchewan province told the gathering Related Coverage Hockeyloving Canada town mourns fine young guys after crash 8220We will get through this8221 Fourteen other members of the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team were injured in the accident which occurred as the team was traveling to a league playoff game in the town of Nipawin about 200 km 125 miles northeast of Humboldt on Friday The bus collided with a semitrailer truck Canadian police are looking into road weather and vehicle conditions Former NHL star Sheldon Kennedy was among those who were expected to attend the vigil along with former players Bob Wilkie and Peter Soberlak Kennedy was on board a bus involved in another fatal crash in 1986 in which four members of the Swift Current Broncos were killed One minute silence was observed at the time when the playoff was scheduled on Sunday evening 8220Today and for every day forward we are all humble Broncos and we will be forever humble Broncos strong8221 Broncos President Kevin Geringer told the members attending the vigil For the prairies community of Humboldt population about 6000 ice hockey is a sport that unifies the town and gives it its identity bringing home two national championships Mourners comfort each other during a vigil at the Elgar Petersen Arena home of the Humboldt Broncos to honour the victims of a fatal bus accident in Humboldt Saskatchewan Canada April 8 2018 Jonathan HaywardPool via REUTERS Townspeople and team supporters gathered at the local Uniplex sports and education complex to comfort each other An online fundraising initiative to help the victims8217 families has raised C37 million 29 million Rob Eichorst the team8217s governor said Sunday8217s interdenominational vigil was organized by local religious leaders 8220for healing of the community the hockey team the province the country8221 8220There8217s no playbook on how to handle this8221 Eichorst said 8220People are bringing food We8217ve got multinational companies helping us we8217ve got national companies offering stuff The support is overwhelming and truly appreciated8221 Slideshow 23 Images He estimated 300 to 400 people had gathered at the complex on Friday evening Grief counselors were on hand and the Red Cross was providing support to players8217 families as well as the families who billet players Reporting by Katherine Fitzpatrickamp160in HUMBOLDT Saskatchewan Writing by Denny Thomas Editing by Rosalba OBrien and Stephen Coates Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Gary Webb with his &#8220;Dark Alliance&#8221; article in the San Jose Mercury News.</p> <p>At 2 a.m.&#8212;midnight in San Jose&#8212;on August 18, 1996, I was at a party at my best friend&#8217;s house in Indianapolis. I excused myself, went into a bedroom, plugged into my laptop, and dialed into the Mercury&#8217;s website. A picture of a man smoking crack, superimposed upon the seal of the CIA, drew itself on the screen. After more than a year of work, &#8220;Dark Alliance&#8221; was finally out.</p> <p>The Mercury News executive editor, Jerry Ceppos, called and congratulated me. The TV networks were calling the paper. We were getting phone calls from all over the world. &#8220;Let&#8217;s stay on top of this,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Anything you need, you let us know. We want to run with this thing.&#8221; A few days later, I got a $500 bonus check in the mail and a note from Ceppos: &#8220;Remarkable series! Thanks for doing this for us.&#8221;</p> <p>Over the next few weeks, we got interview requests from Jerry Springer, Geraldo Rivera, Tom Snyder, Jesse Jackson and Montel Williams. I was on CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC and CBS Morning News. The Mercury printed up 5,000 copies of the series, and they were gone in a matter of weeks. The London Times did a story. Le Monde in Paris wrote something. Newspapers in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Colombia and <a href="index.php?page=18&amp;amp;region_id=2" type="external">Nicaragua</a> called for interviews.</p> <p>NBC News (9/27/96) did a strong follow-up, finally exposing the <a href="index.php?page=7&amp;amp;issue_area_id=7" type="external">drug</a>-related entries in Oliver North&#8217;s notebooks to a national TV audience, but it was the only network attempting to advance the story. The establishment papers&#8212;the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, the same newspapers that had so confidently reported in the 1980s that there was no truth to these claims of <a href="index.php?page=7&amp;amp;issue_area_id=54" type="external">Contra drug trafficking</a>&#8212;remained largely silent.</p> <p>&#8220;Where is the rebuttal? Why haven&#8217;t the media risen in revolt against this story?&#8221; an exasperated Bernard Kalb, former spokesman for the Reagan State Department, demanded on CNN&#8217;s Reliable Sources. &#8220;It isn&#8217;t a story that simply got lost. It, in fact, has resonated and echoed, and the question is, where are the media knocking it down, when that, too, is a journalistic responsibility?&#8221;</p> <p>Kalb&#8217;s guest, former Reagan Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland, clucked that he &#8220;would expect to see this kind of story in a magazine like In These Times, not in a mainstream newspaper such as the San Jose Mercury News.&#8221; No one on Kalb&#8217;s show bothered to mention that Eastland had a history of trying to cover up the Contra drug link. In May 1986, his office had planted a false story in the New York Times (5/7/86) stating that the Justice Department had &#8220;cleared&#8221; the Contras of any involvement in gun running and drug smuggling, a statement the Justice Department was later forced to recant.</p> <p>One question I was frequently asked during radio appearances was whether I thought the national media reaction would be different if the series had appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times. My stock answer was that it hadn&#8217;t appeared in those newspapers because they&#8217;d decided in 1986 that there was no story here. My feeling was that those newspapers&#8217; very familiarity with the story made it more difficult for them to report it. How could they come back 10 years later and admit that the Contras had been selling cocaine to Americans, when they&#8217;d already assured us it wasn&#8217;t happening?</p> <p>San Jose Mercury News chief Jerry Ceppos: &#8220;It&#8217;s really a strange piece.&#8221;</p> <p>In early October, I was in New York City getting ready for an appearance on the Montel Williams Show, which was doing a two-day special on the &#8220;Dark Alliance&#8221; series. About 2 a.m., Jerry Ceppos called. The Washington Post had just moved a story on the wires. It would be in the morning edition (10/4/96), and it was highly critical of the series. He asked me to take a look at it and give him my reaction.</p> <p>&#8220;What did they say was wrong?&#8221; I asked.</p> <p>&#8220;They don&#8217;t say any of the facts are wrong,&#8221; Ceppos said. &#8220;They just don&#8217;t agree with our conclusions.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;And their evidence is what?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;A lot of unnamed sources, mainly. It&#8217;s really a strange piece. I&#8217;ll send you a fax of it, and we can talk in the morning.&#8221;</p> <p>The story was headlined &#8220;The CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking of Alleged Plot.&#8221; I laughed. What plot?</p> <p>The reporters, Walter Pincus and Roberto Suro, wrote that their investigation does not support the conclusion that the CIA-backed Contras&#8212;or Nicaraguans in general&#8212;played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States. Instead, the available data from arrest records, hospitals, drug treatment centers and drug-user surveys point to a rise in crack as a broad-based phenomenon driven in numerous places by players of different nationalities, races and ethnic groups.</p> <p>Ah ha. The old tidal wave theory. Here it comes again. I wondered what &#8220;available data&#8221; Pincus and Suro had gathered from the 1982-83 era, the dawn of the L.A. crack market, since the DEA and NIDA had admitted a decade earlier that there were no such data.</p> <p>The story grudgingly and often back-handedly admitted that the basic facts presented in the series were correct, and it buried key admissions deep inside, such as the fact that &#8220;the CIA knew about some of these activities and did little or nothing to stop them.&#8221; Toward the end, Pincus and Suro confirmed that Norwin Meneses and Blandon had met with Enrique Bermudez in Honduras, but without disclosing Bermudez&#8217;s relationship with the CIA. CIA agent Adolfo Calero, whom the Post euphemistically described as someone &#8220;who worked closely with the CIA,&#8221; also admitted to the Post reporters that he had met with Meneses.</p> <p>Overall, it was a cleverly crafted piece of disinformation that would set the stage for the attacks to follow. It falsely claimed that the series made a &#8220;racially charged allegation that the &#8216;CIA army&#8217; of Contras deliberately targeted the black community in an effort to expand the market for a cheap form of cocaine.&#8221; And, despite Blandon&#8217;s testimony that he sold 200 to 300 kilos of cocaine for Meneses in L.A. and that all the profits were sent to the Contras, the Post quoted unnamed &#8220;law enforcement officials&#8221; as saying &#8220;Blandon sold $30,000 to $60,000 worth of cocaine in two transactions.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Moreover,&#8221; the Post declared, &#8220;the mere idea that any one person could have played a decisive role in the nationwide crack epidemic is rejected out of hand by academic experts and law enforcement officials.&#8221; But they identified neither the academic experts nor the law enforcement officials.</p> <p>Walter Pincus: His piece was &#8220;just silly&#8221;</p> <p>I wrote Ceppos a memo pointing out the holes in the Post&#8217;s story. &#8220;The Pincus piece,&#8221; I wrote, &#8220;is just silly. It&#8217;s the kind of story you&#8217;d expect from someone who spent three weeks working on a story, as opposed to 16 months.&#8221; The fact that the Post&#8217;s unnamed &#8220;experts&#8221; would reject a scenario &#8220;out of hand,&#8221; I wrote, was the whole problem. &#8220;None of them&#8212;whoever they are&#8212;has ever studied this before.&#8221;</p> <p>To his credit, Ceppos fired off a blistering letter to the Post, pointing out the factual errors in the piece and calling Pincus&#8217; claims of a &#8220;racially charged allegation&#8221; a &#8220;complete and total mischaracterization.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The most difficult issue is whether a casual reading of our series leads to the conclusion that the CIA is directly responsible for the outbreak of the crack epidemic in Los Angeles. While there is considerable circumstantial evidence of CIA involvement with the leaders of this drug ring, we never reached or reported any definitive conclusion on CIA involvement,&#8221; Ceppos wrote. &#8220;We reported that men selling cocaine in Los Angeles met with people on the CIA payroll. We reported that they received fundraising orders from the people on the CIA payroll. We reported that the money raised was sent to a CIA-run operation. But we did not go further and took pains to say that clearly.&#8221;</p> <p>Ceppos posted the letter on the staff bulletin board, along with a memo defending the series:</p> <p>The Post held Ceppos&#8217; letter for weeks, ordered him to rewrite it and then refused to print it.</p> <p>The L.A. Times and New York Times struck next. The week of October 20, 1996, both ran long stories attacking my reporting and the series. They took the same tack the Washington Post had several weeks earlier: admitting that the basic facts were true and then complaining that the facts didn&#8217;t mean a thing.</p> <p>Relying again mostly on unnamed sources, these two newspapers of record claimed Blandon and Meneses hadn&#8217;t had &#8220;official positions&#8221; with the Contras. Drug money had been sent, but not millions; it was only tens of thousands, according to unnamed sources. And experts scoffed at the notion that one drug ring could have supplied enough cocaine to feed the tidal wave of crack that engulfed America, a ridiculous claim I&#8217;d never made.</p> <p>The papers found no need to mention the mass of historical evidence that supported the series&#8217; findings. Without anything approaching documentation, the papers just flatly declared that I was wrong.</p> <p>&#8220;The crack epidemic in Los Angeles followed no blueprint or master plan. It was not orchestrated by the Contras or the CIA. No one trafficker, even kingpins who sold thousands of kilos and pocketed millions of dollars, ever came close to monopolizing the drug trade,&#8221; the L.A. Times (10/20/96) assured its readers in the lead paragraph of a three-day series.</p> <p>The next day, the L.A. Times (10/21/96) absolved the CIA of any involvement with Blandon and Meneses. Its authoritative sources: former CIA director Robert Gates, former CIA official Vincent Cannistraro and current CIA director John Deutch. &#8220;Like good little boys and girls, the Times, the Washington Post et al., toddled off to the CIA and asked the agency if it had ever done such a thing. When the CIA said &#8216;no,&#8217; the papers solemnly printed it&#8212;just as though the CIA hadn&#8217;t previously denied any number of <a href="index.php?page=7&amp;amp;issue_area_id=43" type="external">illegal operations</a> in which it was later caught red-handed,&#8221; columnist Molly Ivins observed (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 12/29/96).</p> <p>Buried deep within the L.A. Times story were admissions by CIA officials that Contra supporters &#8220;were involved in drug running, but they bought villas and did not put it into the FDN.&#8221; And the story conceded, &#8220;the allegation that some elements of the CIA-sponsored Contra army cooperated with drug traffickers has been well documented for years.&#8221; But the story dismissed the idea that &#8220;millions&#8221; went to the Contras from the Nicaraguans&#8217; drug sales. Unnamed sources said it was around $50,000 or $60,000, which caused former Meneses distributor Rafael Cornejo some mirth.</p> <p>&#8220;Sixty thousand?&#8221; he scoffed. &#8220;You can raise that in an afternoon.&#8221;</p> <p>The unprecedented attacks by three major newspapers alarmed the Mercury&#8217;s editors. I was called to a meeting with Ceppos and the other editors and told that I should quit trying to advance the story. We needed to start working on a written response to the other newspapers, he said. I vehemently disagreed.</p> <p>&#8220;The best way to shut them up is to put the rest of what we know in the paper and keep plowing ahead,&#8221; I argued. &#8220;Let&#8217;s run a story about Walter Pincus&#8217; CIA connections. Let&#8217;s write about how the L.A. Times has been booting this story since 1987.&#8221; I told them of my discovery that the L.A. Times Washington bureau had been sent a copy of the notes found in Ronald Lister&#8217;s house in 1990 and had thrown them away. Ceppos disagreed.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to go to war with them,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The Mercury News&#8217; &#8216;Dark Alliance&#8217; logo, which emphasized that the significance of the Contra crack story was that the Contras were a CIA-created army.</p> <p>&#8220;The best way to answer our critics,&#8221; [deputy managing editor] Paul Van Slambrouck told Ceppos, &#8220;is to advance the story. Let&#8217;s go out and get some more evidence of drug money being sent to the Contras. Let&#8217;s get more evidence of this drug ring&#8217;s dealings with the Contras.&#8221; Ceppos relented, authorizing another reporting trip to Central America. He also assigned L.A. bureau reporter Pamela Kramer and Pete Carey, an investigative reporter, to gather information about the start of the L.A. crack market. He also made another decision: He was changing the logo that the series had used on the Internet and in the reprints. The CIA&#8217;s seal was coming off.</p> <p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the point of doing that?&#8221; I asked. &#8220;We documented that these traffickers were meeting with CIA agents. If you change the logo, the rest of the media is going to accuse us of backing away from the story.&#8221;</p> <p>But Ceppos wouldn&#8217;t budge. Thousands of reprints with the CIA-crack smoker logo were gathered up and burned, and a CD-ROM version of the series&#8212;which had been pressed and ready for distribution&#8212;was also destroyed. The Post (10/21/96) and L.A. Times (10/22/96) immediately crowed that the Mercury was retreating from the series.</p> <p>Ceppos called me at home on March 25, 1997, to inform me that he&#8217;d made &#8220;a very difficult decision.&#8221; Mistakes had been made in the series, he said, and the newspaper was going to print a letter to its readers saying so.</p> <p>&#8220;Is this a fait accompli?&#8221; I asked. &#8220;Or do I get a chance to say something?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The decision has been made,&#8221; Ceppos said. &#8220;I&#8217;ll fax you a draft of what we&#8217;re considering.&#8221;</p> <p>According to Ceppos&#8217; proposed column, we should have said that Blandon claimed he quit dealing with the Contras in 1983&#8212;something that the editors had cut to save space. We had &#8220;insufficient proof&#8221; to say millions went to the Contras; we should have said it was an estimate. We should have said that we didn&#8217;t find proof of involvement of &#8220;CIA decision-makers,&#8221; whatever that meant. We should have said Ricky Ross wasn&#8217;t the only crack supplier in L.A.&#8212;but we hadn&#8217;t said that. And, finally, Ceppos wrote, the experts were unanimous in saying that the Contras had not played a major role in the crack trade and that the series had &#8220;oversimplified&#8221; how crack had become a problem. Strangely, Ceppos had borrowed his conclusions from Pete Carey&#8217;s never-published crack story.</p> <p>I brought a written response to San Jose with me the next day when I met with Ceppos and the other editors in the ornate conference room near the editors&#8217; offices. &#8220;That &#8216;experts&#8217; would disagree with the findings of original research is one of the perils of doing it, as any researcher can tell you,&#8221; I wrote.</p> <p>The other editors looked at the table uncomfortably.</p> <p>&#8220;We are going to print those other stories, aren&#8217;t we?&#8221;</p> <p>Ceppos shook his head slightly.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not?&#8221; I asked incredulously. &#8220;Why not?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;They&#8217;re a quarter-turn of the screw,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We&#8217;re not going to print anything else unless it&#8217;s a major advance.&#8221;</p> <p>I exploded. &#8220;You think the fact that the head of this Contra drug ring was working for the DEA is a quarter-turn of a screw?&#8221; I shouted. &#8220;You don&#8217;t think the fact that the DEA helped an accused CIA drug trafficker escape criminal charges is a major advance? You&#8217;ve got to be kidding me. Are we even going to pursue this story any more?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;No,&#8221; Ceppos said.</p> <p>&#8220;Let me get this straight,&#8221; I said. &#8220;We&#8217;re killing the other stories. We&#8217;re not going to do any more investigation of this topic. And we&#8217;re going to run this mealy-mouthed column that pretends we don&#8217;t know anything else, tuck our tails between our legs and slink off into the sunset. That&#8217;s what you&#8217;ve got in mind?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;You and I have very different views of this situation,&#8221; he said quietly.</p> <p>&#8220;You got that right.&#8221;</p> <p>The result of the stormy meeting was that Ceppos rewrote his column, removing the obvious factual errors but leaving the rest virtually unchanged.</p> <p>&#8220;No matter how many times the words and phrases are tweaked, the end result is still a sham,&#8221; I responded in a memo. &#8220;You&#8217;re sitting on information that supports what I wrote and pretending to be unaware of it.&#8221;</p> <p>At a final meeting before the column ran, I predicted that the mainstream press would read the column as a retraction, one that covered everything the series had revealed. &#8220;You run this, and all we&#8217;ll hear is, &#8216;The Mercury News has admitted it isn&#8217;t true! The Contras weren&#8217;t dealing cocaine! The CIA had nothing to do with it!&#8217; And you know as well as I do, that&#8217;s not true.&#8221;</p> <p>Ceppos&#8217; column ran on May 11, 1997, and if there was ever a chance of getting to the bottom of the CIA&#8217;s involvement with drug traffickers, it died on that day. The New York Times (5/13/97), which hadn&#8217;t found the original story newsworthy enough to mention, splashed Ceppos&#8217; apology on its front page. An editorial (5/14/97) lauded Ceppos for his courage and declared that he&#8217;d set a brave new standard for dealing with &#8220;egregious errors.&#8221;</p> <p>Howard Kurtz, the media critic for the Washington Post, called for a comment. &#8220;It&#8217;s nauseating,&#8221; I told him.</p> <p>The controversy raged for another month, and the issue gradually became what Ceppos reportedly had dreaded: He was being accused of suppressing information. He was covering things up. Talk radio had a field day. In Washington, DJ Joe Madison, who&#8217;d been making hay with the story for months, urged the listeners of his 50,000-watt station to call Ceppos and demand that he print the stories he was suppressing. Letters and email from outraged readers began pouring in.</p> <p>Ceppos, who&#8217;d not spoken to me since his column ran, called me at home in early June. He was killing the follow-ups, he shouted. I was off the story for good. He couldn&#8217;t trust me anymore because I&#8217;d &#8220;aligned myself with one side of the issue.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Which side is that, Jerry? The side that wants the truth to come out?&#8221;</p> <p>He wasn&#8217;t getting into a debate, he told me. I was to report to his office in two days &#8220;to discuss your future at the Mercury News.&#8221;</p> <p>Gary Webb left the Mercury News shortly after being exiled to the paper&#8217;s Cupertino bureau. Unable to get another job at a major newspaper, he died on December 10, 2004, an apparent suicide. This article is excerpted from his 1998 book Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.</p>

Taking a Dive on Contra Crack

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/taking-a-dive-on-contra-crack/

2005-03-01

4left

Gary Webb with his 8220Dark Alliance8221 article in the San Jose Mercury News At 2 am8212midnight in San Jose8212on August 18 1996 I was at a party at my best friend8217s house in Indianapolis I excused myself went into a bedroom plugged into my laptop and dialed into the Mercury8217s website A picture of a man smoking crack superimposed upon the seal of the CIA drew itself on the screen After more than a year of work 8220Dark Alliance8221 was finally out The Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos called and congratulated me The TV networks were calling the paper We were getting phone calls from all over the world 8220Let8217s stay on top of this8221 he said 8220Anything you need you let us know We want to run with this thing8221 A few days later I got a 500 bonus check in the mail and a note from Ceppos 8220Remarkable series Thanks for doing this for us8221 Over the next few weeks we got interview requests from Jerry Springer Geraldo Rivera Tom Snyder Jesse Jackson and Montel Williams I was on CNN CSPAN MSNBC and CBS Morning News The Mercury printed up 5000 copies of the series and they were gone in a matter of weeks The London Times did a story Le Monde in Paris wrote something Newspapers in Germany Belgium Spain Colombia and Nicaragua called for interviews NBC News 92796 did a strong followup finally exposing the drugrelated entries in Oliver North8217s notebooks to a national TV audience but it was the only network attempting to advance the story The establishment papers8212the New York Times Washington Post and Los Angeles Times the same newspapers that had so confidently reported in the 1980s that there was no truth to these claims of Contra drug trafficking8212remained largely silent 8220Where is the rebuttal Why haven8217t the media risen in revolt against this story8221 an exasperated Bernard Kalb former spokesman for the Reagan State Department demanded on CNN8217s Reliable Sources 8220It isn8217t a story that simply got lost It in fact has resonated and echoed and the question is where are the media knocking it down when that too is a journalistic responsibility8221 Kalb8217s guest former Reagan Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland clucked that he 8220would expect to see this kind of story in a magazine like In These Times not in a mainstream newspaper such as the San Jose Mercury News8221 No one on Kalb8217s show bothered to mention that Eastland had a history of trying to cover up the Contra drug link In May 1986 his office had planted a false story in the New York Times 5786 stating that the Justice Department had 8220cleared8221 the Contras of any involvement in gun running and drug smuggling a statement the Justice Department was later forced to recant One question I was frequently asked during radio appearances was whether I thought the national media reaction would be different if the series had appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times My stock answer was that it hadn8217t appeared in those newspapers because they8217d decided in 1986 that there was no story here My feeling was that those newspapers8217 very familiarity with the story made it more difficult for them to report it How could they come back 10 years later and admit that the Contras had been selling cocaine to Americans when they8217d already assured us it wasn8217t happening San Jose Mercury News chief Jerry Ceppos 8220It8217s really a strange piece8221 In early October I was in New York City getting ready for an appearance on the Montel Williams Show which was doing a twoday special on the 8220Dark Alliance8221 series About 2 am Jerry Ceppos called The Washington Post had just moved a story on the wires It would be in the morning edition 10496 and it was highly critical of the series He asked me to take a look at it and give him my reaction 8220What did they say was wrong8221 I asked 8220They don8217t say any of the facts are wrong8221 Ceppos said 8220They just don8217t agree with our conclusions8221 8220And their evidence is what8221 8220A lot of unnamed sources mainly It8217s really a strange piece I8217ll send you a fax of it and we can talk in the morning8221 The story was headlined 8220The CIA and Crack Evidence Is Lacking of Alleged Plot8221 I laughed What plot The reporters Walter Pincus and Roberto Suro wrote that their investigation does not support the conclusion that the CIAbacked Contras8212or Nicaraguans in general8212played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States Instead the available data from arrest records hospitals drug treatment centers and druguser surveys point to a rise in crack as a broadbased phenomenon driven in numerous places by players of different nationalities races and ethnic groups Ah ha The old tidal wave theory Here it comes again I wondered what 8220available data8221 Pincus and Suro had gathered from the 198283 era the dawn of the LA crack market since the DEA and NIDA had admitted a decade earlier that there were no such data The story grudgingly and often backhandedly admitted that the basic facts presented in the series were correct and it buried key admissions deep inside such as the fact that 8220the CIA knew about some of these activities and did little or nothing to stop them8221 Toward the end Pincus and Suro confirmed that Norwin Meneses and Blandon had met with Enrique Bermudez in Honduras but without disclosing Bermudez8217s relationship with the CIA CIA agent Adolfo Calero whom the Post euphemistically described as someone 8220who worked closely with the CIA8221 also admitted to the Post reporters that he had met with Meneses Overall it was a cleverly crafted piece of disinformation that would set the stage for the attacks to follow It falsely claimed that the series made a 8220racially charged allegation that the 8216CIA army8217 of Contras deliberately targeted the black community in an effort to expand the market for a cheap form of cocaine8221 And despite Blandon8217s testimony that he sold 200 to 300 kilos of cocaine for Meneses in LA and that all the profits were sent to the Contras the Post quoted unnamed 8220law enforcement officials8221 as saying 8220Blandon sold 30000 to 60000 worth of cocaine in two transactions8221 8220Moreover8221 the Post declared 8220the mere idea that any one person could have played a decisive role in the nationwide crack epidemic is rejected out of hand by academic experts and law enforcement officials8221 But they identified neither the academic experts nor the law enforcement officials Walter Pincus His piece was 8220just silly8221 I wrote Ceppos a memo pointing out the holes in the Post8217s story 8220The Pincus piece8221 I wrote 8220is just silly It8217s the kind of story you8217d expect from someone who spent three weeks working on a story as opposed to 16 months8221 The fact that the Post8217s unnamed 8220experts8221 would reject a scenario 8220out of hand8221 I wrote was the whole problem 8220None of them8212whoever they are8212has ever studied this before8221 To his credit Ceppos fired off a blistering letter to the Post pointing out the factual errors in the piece and calling Pincus8217 claims of a 8220racially charged allegation8221 a 8220complete and total mischaracterization8221 8220The most difficult issue is whether a casual reading of our series leads to the conclusion that the CIA is directly responsible for the outbreak of the crack epidemic in Los Angeles While there is considerable circumstantial evidence of CIA involvement with the leaders of this drug ring we never reached or reported any definitive conclusion on CIA involvement8221 Ceppos wrote 8220We reported that men selling cocaine in Los Angeles met with people on the CIA payroll We reported that they received fundraising orders from the people on the CIA payroll We reported that the money raised was sent to a CIArun operation But we did not go further and took pains to say that clearly8221 Ceppos posted the letter on the staff bulletin board along with a memo defending the series The Post held Ceppos8217 letter for weeks ordered him to rewrite it and then refused to print it The LA Times and New York Times struck next The week of October 20 1996 both ran long stories attacking my reporting and the series They took the same tack the Washington Post had several weeks earlier admitting that the basic facts were true and then complaining that the facts didn8217t mean a thing Relying again mostly on unnamed sources these two newspapers of record claimed Blandon and Meneses hadn8217t had 8220official positions8221 with the Contras Drug money had been sent but not millions it was only tens of thousands according to unnamed sources And experts scoffed at the notion that one drug ring could have supplied enough cocaine to feed the tidal wave of crack that engulfed America a ridiculous claim I8217d never made The papers found no need to mention the mass of historical evidence that supported the series8217 findings Without anything approaching documentation the papers just flatly declared that I was wrong 8220The crack epidemic in Los Angeles followed no blueprint or master plan It was not orchestrated by the Contras or the CIA No one trafficker even kingpins who sold thousands of kilos and pocketed millions of dollars ever came close to monopolizing the drug trade8221 the LA Times 102096 assured its readers in the lead paragraph of a threeday series The next day the LA Times 102196 absolved the CIA of any involvement with Blandon and Meneses Its authoritative sources former CIA director Robert Gates former CIA official Vincent Cannistraro and current CIA director John Deutch 8220Like good little boys and girls the Times the Washington Post et al toddled off to the CIA and asked the agency if it had ever done such a thing When the CIA said 8216no8217 the papers solemnly printed it8212just as though the CIA hadn8217t previously denied any number of illegal operations in which it was later caught redhanded8221 columnist Molly Ivins observed Fort Worth StarTelegram 122996 Buried deep within the LA Times story were admissions by CIA officials that Contra supporters 8220were involved in drug running but they bought villas and did not put it into the FDN8221 And the story conceded 8220the allegation that some elements of the CIAsponsored Contra army cooperated with drug traffickers has been well documented for years8221 But the story dismissed the idea that 8220millions8221 went to the Contras from the Nicaraguans8217 drug sales Unnamed sources said it was around 50000 or 60000 which caused former Meneses distributor Rafael Cornejo some mirth 8220Sixty thousand8221 he scoffed 8220You can raise that in an afternoon8221 The unprecedented attacks by three major newspapers alarmed the Mercury8217s editors I was called to a meeting with Ceppos and the other editors and told that I should quit trying to advance the story We needed to start working on a written response to the other newspapers he said I vehemently disagreed 8220The best way to shut them up is to put the rest of what we know in the paper and keep plowing ahead8221 I argued 8220Let8217s run a story about Walter Pincus8217 CIA connections Let8217s write about how the LA Times has been booting this story since 19878221 I told them of my discovery that the LA Times Washington bureau had been sent a copy of the notes found in Ronald Lister8217s house in 1990 and had thrown them away Ceppos disagreed 8220I don8217t want to go to war with them8221 he said The Mercury News8217 8216Dark Alliance8217 logo which emphasized that the significance of the Contra crack story was that the Contras were a CIAcreated army 8220The best way to answer our critics8221 deputy managing editor Paul Van Slambrouck told Ceppos 8220is to advance the story Let8217s go out and get some more evidence of drug money being sent to the Contras Let8217s get more evidence of this drug ring8217s dealings with the Contras8221 Ceppos relented authorizing another reporting trip to Central America He also assigned LA bureau reporter Pamela Kramer and Pete Carey an investigative reporter to gather information about the start of the LA crack market He also made another decision He was changing the logo that the series had used on the Internet and in the reprints The CIA8217s seal was coming off 8220What8217s the point of doing that8221 I asked 8220We documented that these traffickers were meeting with CIA agents If you change the logo the rest of the media is going to accuse us of backing away from the story8221 But Ceppos wouldn8217t budge Thousands of reprints with the CIAcrack smoker logo were gathered up and burned and a CDROM version of the series8212which had been pressed and ready for distribution8212was also destroyed The Post 102196 and LA Times 102296 immediately crowed that the Mercury was retreating from the series Ceppos called me at home on March 25 1997 to inform me that he8217d made 8220a very difficult decision8221 Mistakes had been made in the series he said and the newspaper was going to print a letter to its readers saying so 8220Is this a fait accompli8221 I asked 8220Or do I get a chance to say something8221 8220The decision has been made8221 Ceppos said 8220I8217ll fax you a draft of what we8217re considering8221 According to Ceppos8217 proposed column we should have said that Blandon claimed he quit dealing with the Contras in 19838212something that the editors had cut to save space We had 8220insufficient proof8221 to say millions went to the Contras we should have said it was an estimate We should have said that we didn8217t find proof of involvement of 8220CIA decisionmakers8221 whatever that meant We should have said Ricky Ross wasn8217t the only crack supplier in LA8212but we hadn8217t said that And finally Ceppos wrote the experts were unanimous in saying that the Contras had not played a major role in the crack trade and that the series had 8220oversimplified8221 how crack had become a problem Strangely Ceppos had borrowed his conclusions from Pete Carey8217s neverpublished crack story I brought a written response to San Jose with me the next day when I met with Ceppos and the other editors in the ornate conference room near the editors8217 offices 8220That 8216experts8217 would disagree with the findings of original research is one of the perils of doing it as any researcher can tell you8221 I wrote The other editors looked at the table uncomfortably 8220We are going to print those other stories aren8217t we8221 Ceppos shook his head slightly 8220We8217re not8221 I asked incredulously 8220Why not8221 8220They8217re a quarterturn of the screw8221 he said 8220We8217re not going to print anything else unless it8217s a major advance8221 I exploded 8220You think the fact that the head of this Contra drug ring was working for the DEA is a quarterturn of a screw8221 I shouted 8220You don8217t think the fact that the DEA helped an accused CIA drug trafficker escape criminal charges is a major advance You8217ve got to be kidding me Are we even going to pursue this story any more8221 8220No8221 Ceppos said 8220Let me get this straight8221 I said 8220We8217re killing the other stories We8217re not going to do any more investigation of this topic And we8217re going to run this mealymouthed column that pretends we don8217t know anything else tuck our tails between our legs and slink off into the sunset That8217s what you8217ve got in mind8221 8220You and I have very different views of this situation8221 he said quietly 8220You got that right8221 The result of the stormy meeting was that Ceppos rewrote his column removing the obvious factual errors but leaving the rest virtually unchanged 8220No matter how many times the words and phrases are tweaked the end result is still a sham8221 I responded in a memo 8220You8217re sitting on information that supports what I wrote and pretending to be unaware of it8221 At a final meeting before the column ran I predicted that the mainstream press would read the column as a retraction one that covered everything the series had revealed 8220You run this and all we8217ll hear is 8216The Mercury News has admitted it isn8217t true The Contras weren8217t dealing cocaine The CIA had nothing to do with it8217 And you know as well as I do that8217s not true8221 Ceppos8217 column ran on May 11 1997 and if there was ever a chance of getting to the bottom of the CIA8217s involvement with drug traffickers it died on that day The New York Times 51397 which hadn8217t found the original story newsworthy enough to mention splashed Ceppos8217 apology on its front page An editorial 51497 lauded Ceppos for his courage and declared that he8217d set a brave new standard for dealing with 8220egregious errors8221 Howard Kurtz the media critic for the Washington Post called for a comment 8220It8217s nauseating8221 I told him The controversy raged for another month and the issue gradually became what Ceppos reportedly had dreaded He was being accused of suppressing information He was covering things up Talk radio had a field day In Washington DJ Joe Madison who8217d been making hay with the story for months urged the listeners of his 50000watt station to call Ceppos and demand that he print the stories he was suppressing Letters and email from outraged readers began pouring in Ceppos who8217d not spoken to me since his column ran called me at home in early June He was killing the followups he shouted I was off the story for good He couldn8217t trust me anymore because I8217d 8220aligned myself with one side of the issue8221 8220Which side is that Jerry The side that wants the truth to come out8221 He wasn8217t getting into a debate he told me I was to report to his office in two days 8220to discuss your future at the Mercury News8221 Gary Webb left the Mercury News shortly after being exiled to the paper8217s Cupertino bureau Unable to get another job at a major newspaper he died on December 10 2004 an apparent suicide This article is excerpted from his 1998 book Dark Alliance The CIA the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

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investigation/NOUN does/AUX not/PART support/VERB the/DET conclusion/NOUN that/SCONJ the/DET CIAbacked/PROPN Contras8212or/PROPN Nicaraguans/PROPN in/ADP general8212played/VERB a/DET major/ADJ role/NOUN in/ADP the/DET emergence/NOUN of/ADP crack/NOUN as/ADP a/DET narcotic/ADJ in/ADP widespread/ADJ use/NOUN across/ADP the/DET United/PROPN States/PROPN Instead/ADV the/DET available/ADJ data/NOUN from/ADP arrest/NOUN records/NOUN hospitals/NOUN drug/NOUN treatment/NOUN centers/NOUN and/CCONJ druguser/NOUN surveys/NOUN point/VERB to/ADP a/DET rise/NOUN in/ADP crack/NOUN as/ADP a/DET broadbased/VERB phenomenon/NOUN driven/VERB in/ADP numerous/ADJ places/NOUN by/ADP players/NOUN of/ADP different/ADJ nationalities/NOUN races/NOUN and/CCONJ ethnic/ADJ groups/NOUN Ah/INTJ ha/INTJ The/DET old/ADJ tidal/ADJ wave/NOUN theory/NOUN Here/ADV it/PRON comes/VERB again/ADV I/PRON wondered/VERB what/PRON 8220available/ADJ data8221/NOUN Pincus/PROPN and/CCONJ Suro/PROPN had/AUX gathered/VERB from/ADP 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