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<title>Israel Bans Al Jazeera, Raids Jerusalem Offices</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israel-bans-al-jazeera-raids-jerusalem-offices/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=israel-bans-al-jazeera-raids-jerusalem-offices</link>
<comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israel-bans-al-jazeera-raids-jerusalem-offices/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2024 16:38:27 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[al jazeera]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[benjamin netanyahu]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[freedom of the press]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[israel]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296262</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir called the order "an assault on freedom of the press."
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israel-bans-al-jazeera-raids-jerusalem-offices/">Israel Bans Al Jazeera, Raids Jerusalem Offices</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[The Jerusalem offices of Al Jazeera were raided Sunday after Israel’s far-right Cabinet banned the Qatar-based satellite news network—the sole international media outlet providing 24/7 live coverage from Gaza—from operating in the country.“If you’re watching this… then Al Jazeera has been banned in <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/tag/israel" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Israel</a>,” correspondent Imran Khan <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/5/5/al-jazeeras-pre-recorded-final-report-from-israel-as-ban-enacted" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">said</a> in a pre-recorded report from occupied East Jerusalem preempting the Israeli Cabinet’s unanimous vote to shutter the network.The order—which does not affect Al Jazeera’s ability to operate in <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/tag/gaza" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Gaza</a> or the illegally occupied Palestinian territories—is believed to be the first of its kind targeting a foreign media outlet operating in Israel. It comes after the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-al-jazeera-israel" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">recently voted 71-10</a> in favor of a law empowering the Israeli communications minister to ban foreign news organizations from working in Israel and to confiscate their equipment.“The time has come to eject Hamas’ mouthpiece from our country,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu <a href="https://twitter.com/ofirgendelman/status/1787103863520034825" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">said</a> in a televised address.<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter">
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">"You cannot, in a democratic country pass such a specific law that singles out one network." Israeli author Akiva Eldar says his gov't’s move to close Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel is to cater to the radical right and control the narrative concerning Israel's war on Gaza <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/2935.png" alt="⤵" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://t.co/SRJcXoGhL2" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/SRJcXoGhL2</a>— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) <a href="https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1787157810192769464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">May 5, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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</figure>Ofir Gendelman, Netanyahu’s Arab media spokesperson, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/05/middleeast/israel-al-jazeera-closure-intl/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">said</a> Sunday that the closure would be “implemented immediately.”Gendelman said that the network’s “broadcast equipment will be confiscated, the channel’s correspondents will be prevented from working, the channel will be removed from cable and satellite television companies, and Al Jazeera‘s websites will be blocked on the internet.”In a statement, Al Jazeera vowed to “pursue all available legal channels through international legal institutions in its quest to protect both its rights and journalists, as well as the public’s right to information.”“Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law,” the network added. “Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation, and threats will not deter Al Jazeera.”<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter">
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Remember when the Israeli military shot and killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and targeted other journalists with her, the military spokesman said "they were armed with cameras."— Yousef Munayyer (@YousefMunayyer) <a href="https://twitter.com/YousefMunayyer/status/1787102903624245406?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">May 5, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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The New York-based Foreign Press Association issued a <a href="https://twitter.com/tombateman/status/1787130724509708582" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">statement</a> slamming the move and saying it “should be a cause for concern for all supporters of a free press.”“With this decision, Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station,” the group said. “This is a dark day for the media. This is a dark day for democracy.”Human Rights Watch Israel and <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/tag/palestine" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Palestine</a> director Omar Shakir <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-aljazeera-hamas-gaza-war-eba9416aea82f505ab908ee60d1de5e4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">called</a> the order “an assault on freedom of the press.”“Rather than trying to silence reporting on its atrocities in Gaza, the Israeli government should stop committing them,” he added.<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter">
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">AlJazeera's offices have been bombed in Gaza. Their staff has been beaten in the West Bank. They've been killed in the West Bank & Gaza. Israel is trying to muzzle <a href="https://twitter.com/AlJazeera?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">@AlJazeera</a>. But precedent is larger & threatens to cover up Israeli atrocities in Gaza. <a href="https://twitter.com/hrw?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">@hrw</a> <a href="https://t.co/IOVhAdf51P" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/IOVhAdf51P</a>— Omar Shakir (@OmarSShakir) <a href="https://twitter.com/OmarSShakir/status/1787111295575044503?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">May 5, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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</figure>Al Jazeera is the only international news network providing nonstop on-the-ground coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, often being the first to report Israeli atrocities in what many experts worldwide say is a genocidal campaign in the besieged, starving strip.Its correspondents and other media professionals work under constant risk to life and <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-kills-journalist" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">limb</a>. More than 100 journalists, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-journalists" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">killed</a> by Israeli forces since October 7 in what the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and others <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/journalists-killed-in-gaza-2666788920" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">say</a> are often intentional targetings of not only media workers but <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/al-jazeera-reporter-family" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">also their families</a>.In December, Israeli forces <a href="https://cpj.org/2023/12/al-jazeera-cameraperson-samer-abu-daqqa-killed-correspondent-wael-al-dahdouh-injured-in-drone-attack-in-khan-yunis/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">killed</a> Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa as he reported on the war in southern Gaza, an attack that also wounded Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh—whose wife, son, daughter, and grandson were <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/al-jazeera-reporter-family" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">killed</a> in a separate Israeli strike.<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left">
<blockquote>
“Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation, and threats will not deter Al Jazeera.”
</blockquote>
</figure>Previous probes—like the investigation into Israeli troops’ 2022 <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/11/blatant-murder-al-jazeera-accuses-israel-killing-journalist-shireen-abu-akleh" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">killing</a> of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh—have confirmed that Israel has deliberately targeted journalists.<div id="ad_slot_wrapper_22724432281_1" class="max-w-td m-auto p-6 ad-slot--wrapper ad-slot--wrapper--article-hrec-2">

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Last May, CPJ published <a href="https://cpj.org/reports/2023/05/deadly-pattern-20-journalists-died-by-israeli-military-fire-in-22-years-no-one-has-been-held-accountable/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Deadly Pattern</a>, a report that found Israeli troops had killed at least 20 journalists over the past 22 years with utter impunity. While some of the slain journalists have been foreigners—including Italian Associated Press reporter<a href="https://cpj.org/data/people/simone-camilli/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"> Simone Camilli</a> and British cameraman and filmmaker<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/apr/05/pressandpublishing.broadcasting" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"> James Miller</a>—the vast majority of victims have been Palestinian.Israeli forces have also attacked newsrooms in every major assault on Gaza, including in May 2021 when the 11-story al-Jalaa Tower, which housed offices of Al Jazeera, The Associated Press, and other media outlets, was completely destroyed in an airstrike.On Friday—World Press Freedom Day—Palestinian journalists covering the war on Gaza were <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-journalists" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">awarded</a> this year’s UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize after being recommended by an international jury of media professionals.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israel-bans-al-jazeera-raids-jerusalem-offices/">Israel Bans Al Jazeera, Raids Jerusalem Offices</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Slow Progress Towards a UN Plastics Treaty</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/slow-progress-towards-a-un-plastics-treaty/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=slow-progress-towards-a-un-plastics-treaty</link>
<comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/slow-progress-towards-a-un-plastics-treaty/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Winters / Grist]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2024 16:26:18 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[fossil fuels]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[lobbying]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[plastic waste]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[pollution]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[united nations]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296256</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Despite industry lobbying in favor of plastics’ “massive societal benefits”, a deal to stop plastic pollution is moving forward.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/slow-progress-towards-a-un-plastics-treaty/">Slow Progress Towards a UN Plastics Treaty</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
This story was originally published by <a href="https://grist.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Grist</a>. Sign up for Grist’s <a href="https://go.grist.org/signup/weekly/partner?utm_campaign=republish-content&utm_medium=syndication&utm_source=partner" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">weekly newsletter here</a>.
Negotiators wrapped up the fourth round of formal discussions over the United Nations’ global plastics treaty early on Tuesday morning, inching closer to a final agreement that’s intended to “<a href="https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/39812/OEWG_PP_1_INF_1_UNEA%20resolution.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">end plastic pollution</a>.” 
Delegates made important progress on the treaty, the final version of which is due by the end of the year. They pared down a lengthy draft of the text and agreed on a formal agenda for “intersessional” work ahead of the next — and final — meeting, in Busan, South Korea, scheduled for November 25. That work will involve critical issues around funding the treaty’s provisions and identifying plastic-related chemicals that should be restricted.
The agenda, however, doesn’t mention the elephant in the room: whether and how the treaty will limit plastic production.
“Nothing happened that was particularly surprising, but this outcome is still quite demoralizing,” said Chris Dixon, an ocean campaign leader for the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency who attended the talks. Other groups called the <a href="https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/2024/04/30/inc-4-negotiating-countries-fail-to-respond-to-the-magnitude-of-the-plastics-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">outcome</a> “<a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/press/55416/inc-4-plastic-treaty-in-danger-as-talks-in-ottawa-end-on-a-disappointing-note/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">disappointing</a>” and said the negotiations had been “<a href="https://www.ciel.org/news/outcome-plastics-negotiations-inc4-ottawa/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">undermined by deep-rooted industry influence</a>.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“Nothing happened that was particularly surprising, but this outcome is still quite demoralizing.”</blockquote></figure>
Dixon and other environmental advocates have spent the <a href="https://grist.org/solutions/the-global-plastics-treaty-can-fight-climate-change-if-it-reduces-plastic-production/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">past three</a> <a href="https://grist.org/international/the-world-agreed-to-a-global-plastics-treaty-now-comes-the-hard-part/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">meetings</a> fighting for a treaty that addresses the “full life cycle” of plastics — meaning one that goes beyond waste management to limit the amount of plastic that’s made in the first place.
The world already produces more than <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-production-of-plastics-since-1950/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">400 million metric tons</a> of plastic per year, and fossil fuel companies are planning to <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/shell-chevron-oil-chemicals-plastics-d75f8fee" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">dramatically increase that number</a> over the next few decades. Plastics have been described as the fossil fuel industry’s “<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/plastics-are-fossil-fuel-industrys-plan-b-fenceline-communities-pay-the-price/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">plan B</a>” as the world pivots away from using oil and gas in transportation and electricity generation. This could have dire implications not only for plastic pollution but for the climate; according to a <a href="https://energyanalysis.lbl.gov/publications/climate-impact-primary-plastic" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">recent study</a>, greenhouse gas emissions from growing plastic production could eat up one-fifth of the world’s remaining carbon budget by 2050.
Just because production limits aren’t on the agenda for ad hoc working groups, however, doesn’t mean they’re out of the treaty; it just means delegates may arrive in Busan less prepared to discuss technical concepts related to plastics manufacturing. Language about the “full life cycle” of plastics is still in the treaty’s mandate — which <a href="https://grist.org/politics/world-agrees-to-negotiate-a-historic-treaty-on-plastic-pollution/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">countries agreed on in 2022</a> — and throughout the draft text. Countries can also host unofficial discussions on the topic between now and November.
There’s already widespread support for addressing plastic production in the treaty. Dozens of countries supported a <a href="https://resolutions.unep.org/incres/uploads/rwanda_and_peru_crp_on_ppp.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">statement presented by Rwanda and Peru last week</a> saying that a global plastic reduction target should be “a North Star” for the treaty. The paper suggested reducing production by 40 percent below 2025 levels by 2040. Another declaration, published on Monday and signed by 28 countries, called for the treaty to “<a href="https://www.bridgetobusan.com/home/#read-the-declaration" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">achieve sustainable levels of production of primary plastic polymers</a>.”
Dixon said translating that support into binding treaty text is a matter of “political commitment.” On Monday, production was “the first topic to get dropped” as delegates scrambled to agree on an agenda for intersessional work, she said. They were trying to avoid a repeat of the previous conference, <a href="https://grist.org/international/small-victories-and-major-frustrations-mark-latest-round-of-plastics-treaty-negotiations/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">which ended with no agenda at all</a>.
Santos Virgilio, a delegate representing Angola, said during a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL5uNdyP8GUxbJ3U5j95DesSoho1LUTYvB&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.no-burn.org%2F&source_ve_path=MTY0OTksMjg2NjQsMTY0NTAz&feature=emb_share&v=hL-FqO3x9g8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">panel on Monday</a> that it is “too early to say” how his country and others will coax oil-producing states into accepting treaty provisions on plastic production. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar are among the countries most vociferously opposed to addressing plastic production as part of the treaty. Plastics industry lobbying groups also <a href="https://www.ciel.org/news/fossil-fuel-and-chemical-industry-influence-inc4/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">turned out in full force</a> at the negotiating session to oppose production caps.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>There’s already widespread support for addressing plastic production in the treaty.</blockquote></figure>
Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations, <a href="https://plasticscircularity.org/?news=as-inc-4-concludes-plastic-and-chemical-makers-urge-intersessional-work" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">said in a statement</a> on Monday that the industry is “fully committed to a legally binding agreement all countries can join that ends plastic pollution without eliminating the massive societal benefits plastics provide for a healthier and more sustainable world.”
Industry groups used the convening as a public relations opportunity, touting the benefits of plastic in ads placed throughout Ottawa. In a hotel, <a href="http://enb.iisd.org/media/pro-plastic-messaging-seen-hotels-ottawa-inc4-29apr24-photo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">one collection of ads</a> said plastics “save lives,” “deliver water,” and “reduce food waste.”
The United States has also resisted plastic production limits as part of the treaty. A State Department official <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a1357843-3cde-4714-bcbb-906c43c1829b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">told the Financial Times on Tuesday</a> that “overly prescriptive approaches” could alienate “major producers or consumers of plastics.” Instead of cutting the supply of plastics, the U.S. wants to focus on reducing demand and improving infrastructure for recycling and reuse.
Despite frustrations, several observers noted a promising shift in the tone at this week’s negotiating session, compared to the previous meeting. “There was a different energy, it was more collaborative,” said Erin Simon, the vice president and head of plastic waste and business for the environmental nonprofit WWF. Bjorn Beeler, the general manager and international coordinator for the nonprofit International Pollutants Elimination Network, said it was “very significant” that the delegates were able to move from a <a href="https://grist.org/looking-forward/on-the-agenda-this-earth-day-a-global-treaty-to-end-plastic-pollution/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">70-page “zero draft” of the treaty</a> — a laundry list of options meant to represent everybody’s viewpoints — to a more formal version that’s been vetted by negotiators.
All of the most ambitious provisions of the treaty are still in the newly updated draft, Beeler said, meaning they’re still up for discussion. He also noted growing support for health-related aspects of the treaty, particularly a provision to limit potentially dangerous chemicals that are commonly added to plastics. Delegates agreed to create an expert group to focus on this topic during intersessional work. They tasked it with proposing a framework to identify the most problematic types of plastic and plastic-related chemicals, as well as product designs that increase plastic products’ recycling and reuse potential.
Although countries disagree on whether certain substances should be banned or just restricted, and which criteria should be used to identify such substances, there is more convergence on regulating chemicals than on most other issues. Even Iraq, a major oil producer, submitted a <a href="https://resolutions.unep.org/incres/uploads/crp_iraq_chemicals_of_concern_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">statement</a> supporting the creation of two lists of banned and restricted plastic chemicals.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Despite frustrations, several observers noted a promising shift in the tone at this week’s negotiating session, compared to the previous meeting.</blockquote></figure>
“Everyone knows there are hazardous chemicals in plastics,” Beeler said. Griffins Ochieng, the executive director of the Kenya-based Center for Environmental Justice and Development, said in a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ16khBS8XUKLOe3XT_7I7SO1IOxfFn_6PhS9zl0TCFU7IKd2QCLQ6npOOLNA2xLCcjUGtK5TZHbk24/pubhtml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">statement</a> that a global plastics treaty that addresses chemicals in plastics “is an impetus toward eradicating plastic pollution.”
One other expert group will focus on finance — where to get funding to help developing countries transition away from single-use plastics and test plastics for hazardous chemicals, among other treaty objectives, and how to distribute that money. Some countries and many environmental groups support the creation of a dedicated fund to help poor countries implement the provisions of the plastics treaty. Others say it would be simpler to use an existing mechanism like the <a href="https://www.thegef.org/who-we-are" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Global Environmental Facility</a>, a multilateral fund that provides grants to support government projects.
With eight months remaining in 2024, delegates have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to wrap up a treaty by the end of the year, which is the goal countries agreed on when they decided to write a treaty in March 2022. Even if the treaty does not take its most ambitious form, it could still have a big impact. Policies to disincentivize the use of virgin plastic, for instance — like recycled content requirements — are relatively noncontroversial, and they could indirectly limit plastic production. Beeler said it’s also possible that new requirements on the measurement and disclosure of plastic production could eventually lead to production limits after the treaty is ratified.
Simon, with WWF, said she feels cautiously hopeful following this week’s meeting. The conference was “not a failure, and definitely not a win.” she said. “But it is progress.”
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/slow-progress-towards-a-un-plastics-treaty/">Slow Progress Towards a UN Plastics Treaty</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Election Disinformation Campaigns Are Eyeing Latino Voters</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/election-disinformation-campaigns-are-eyeing-latino-voters/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=election-disinformation-campaigns-are-eyeing-latino-voters</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Timothy Pratt / Capital & Main]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2024 16:08:46 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[DEIB]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[disinformation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Election 2024]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[latino vote]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[telemundo]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[univision]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[As the November election nears, journalists work to counter false and misleading information aimed at Spanish-speaking voters.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/election-disinformation-campaigns-are-eyeing-latino-voters/">Election Disinformation Campaigns Are Eyeing Latino Voters</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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When Rafael Olavarría was out of the U.S. for personal reasons recently, he found himself up early on a Friday doing something new in his job at the 2-year-old, Spanish-language fact-checking project <a href="https://factchequeado.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Factchequeado</a>.
For the first time, Olavarría was not only correcting a viral falsehood posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he had already corrected three weeks earlier, but <a href="https://factchequeado.com/verificaciones/20240308/parole-vuelos-secretos-migrantes-falso/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">also naming</a> the members of Congress who were repeating the disinformation, along with their statements and time stamps. Among them was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
“One of our missions,” said the former Univisión and Telemundo journalist, “is to raise the political price of lying.” (Asked by Capital & Main about Cruz’s posting of disinformation, a spokesperson for his office refused to comment and instead took to X to attack the reporter as biased.)
The lie in question revolves around the claim that the U.S. was “secretly” flying 320,000 unauthorized immigrants into the country — an assertion that is untrue and a distorted description of “humanitarian parole,” a federal immigration program granting people from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba permission to stay in the U.S. for up to two years. People participating in this program are vetted by the federal government and must pay for their transportation to the U.S. 
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>The landscape they describe is one filled with too much disinformation, and too few people trying to set the record straight.</blockquote></figure>
All these issues were fact checked by multiple outlets including <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-misinformation-immigrants-parole-biden-trump-musk-dbd634820b3f8d07b859b8a05b2b20a7" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">the Associated Press</a>, and yet Sen. Cruz and other members of Congress kept repeating the falsehoods, Olavarría said. So goes a typical day for Olavarría and his colleagues at Factchequeado, one of only a handful of fact-checking projects in Spanish in the U.S. Fact checkers combatting disinformation in Spanish and experts on the subject spoke to Capital & Main about the problem of viral disinformation. The landscape they describe is one filled with too much disinformation, and too few people trying to set the record straight.
It’s “an unequal fight,” according to Carlos Chirinos, who oversees the 10-person team at <a href="https://www.univision.com/especiales/noticias/detector/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">El Detector,</a> a fact-checking project at Univisión. Getting accurate information into the hands of the Spanish speakers among the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/10/key-facts-about-hispanic-eligible-voters-in-2024/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">36.2 million eligible Latino voters</a> in the U.S. will only become more important in the months leading to November’s presidential election, they say.
In addition to Olavarría’s project and El Detector, there is a team of fact checkers at the other large Spanish-language TV news network, <a href="https://www.telemundo.com/noticias/noticias-telemundo/politica/quienes-somos-tmna3861768" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Telemundo</a>, and another project called <a href="https://espanol.leadstories.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Lead Stories</a>. USA Today also hired a Spanish-speaking fact checker <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/factcheck/2024/03/08/verificacion-espanol-reportera/72894609007/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">earlier this year</a> — joining the newsroom’s 11 fact checkers in English.
Univisión launched El Detector in 2015, and its job has changed as disinformation in Spanish has changed, Chirinos said. In the last five years or so, content aimed at Latino communities in the U.S. has increasingly come from Spanish-speaking countries such as Venezuela, Colombia or Peru, he noted. “We try to do preemptive strikes,” he said. That involves spotting disinformation when it originates in other countries and preparing fact-checking materials for the U.S. audience.
Chirinos’ crew of 10 began an effort to multiply its fact-checking capabilities in late April by training Univisión reporters in cities with large Spanish-speaking populations such as Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago. The idea is for local reporters to spot viral disinformation in their areas, and broadcast their own fact-checking work.
One way Factchequeado disseminates its content is by creating partnerships, or “alianzas,” with media and community organizations. These partners then use text or multimedia content produced by Factchequeado that they deem relevant for their audiences. The partners also offer insight into the disinformation that is spreading in their areas at weekly virtual meetings. This collaboration often leads to more work for the Factchequeado fact checkers, who total three, including Olavarría.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“We don’t have enough staff to anticipate [viral disinformation] before it happens,” Carballo said. “We’re working reactively.”</blockquote></figure>
<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/espanol/al-dia/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Al Día</a>, the Spanish-language version of the Dallas Morning News, is one of over 70 partners across the country. As one of a team of three at Al Día, Rafael Carballo faces the challenge of serving some<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2023/12/07/almost-half-of-dallas-households-speak-languages-other-than-english/#:~:text=In%20Dallas%20County%2C%2056.9%25%20of,%2C%20compared%20with%2078.3%25%20nationally.&text=According%20to%20a%20new%20table,are%20Vietnamese%2C%20Chinese%20and%20French." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"> 67,000-plus households</a> speaking mostly Spanish in Dallas County. “We don’t have enough staff to anticipate [viral disinformation] before it happens,” Carballo said. “We’re working reactively,” said the editor. “Our hands are tied.”
The Dallas daily has used Factchequeado’s work to correct viral fake news about immigration and elections, Carballo said.
For disinformation to go viral, there needs to be a social media platform. Platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp amplify and spread disinformation through shares and algorithms that often prioritize controversial content. The small but growing number of people focusing on disinformation in Spanish in the U.S. is trying to work with these platforms to correct or even remove false content.
Factchequeado is “alerting the monitoring team” at Tik-Tok of such cases, Olavarría said. The platform doesn’t tell the project if it takes down videos due to its input, he added. But Olavarría said that a <a href="https://factchequeado.com/teexplicamos/20240308/gobierno-no-regala-5-mil-mensual/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">post</a> in early March about a Venezuelan “influencer” falsely claiming the U.S. government was <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/12/18/false-claim-feds-give-5000-gift-cards-to-immigrants-fact-check/71958682007/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">giving $5,000</a> to families for each child was swiftly removed by Tik-Tok.
When an AI-generated portrayal of Univisión reporter Jorge Ramos, supposedly <a href="https://factchequeado.com/verificaciones/20231117/ads-falsos-jorge-ramos-deuda-bancaria/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">promoting</a> “free money from the government,” began circulating on Facebook and Instagram, the platforms also removed that content.
Similarly, Univisión’s El Detector has a relationship with Meta — owners of Facebook and WhatsApp, two of the most widely used platforms among Latinos. The tech giant has posted warnings of false content in Spanish and linked to El Detector’s posts about the subject, Chirinos said.
These fact-checking organizations are not alone in fighting Spanish disinformation. The <a href="https://www.nhmc.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">National Hispanic Media Coalition</a> (NHMC) joined civil rights, anti-extremism and Latino organizations in launching a <a href="https://www.nhmc.org/partner-coalitions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">project</a> to hold the social media platforms <a href="https://www.nhmc.org/partner-coalitions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">accountable</a> in 2021. That initiative, called the <a href="https://time.com/5947262/spanish-disinformation-facebook/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Spanish Disinformation Coalition</a>, emerged after Facebook failed to remove election disinformation and posts of militias inciting violence in Spanish, despite the company’s 2020 <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/addressing-movements-and-organizations-tied-to-violence/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">announcement</a> that it would.
Nonetheless, ongoing efforts to get social media platforms to respond more robustly and systematically to disinformation in Spanish have produced little result, said Daiquiri Ryan Mercado, strategic legal adviser and policy counsel at the National Hispanic Media Coalition. They have “very little business incentive” to do so, she said. This has led NHMC and other groups to look to government regulators for solutions. National Hispanic Media Coalition staff have met with officials from the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Ongoing efforts to get social media platforms to respond more robustly and systematically to disinformation in Spanish have produced little result.</blockquote></figure>
But there have been few tangible results on this front as well, Ryan Mercado said. “We’re at a point where we can agree we have a problem, which is progress compared to two years ago,” she said.
As if monitoring and responding to false information in Spanish online weren’t daunting enough, there’s also radio. A greater share of Hispanics listen to radio compared to the rest of the U.S. population, according to <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/hispanic-report-2023.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Nielsen</a>. “It’s amazing we don’t spend more resources on combating disinformation in Spanish on radio,” said Gabriel R. Sánchez, political science professor at the University of New Mexico.
Sánchez wrote a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-spanish-language-mis-and-disinformation-is-a-huge-issue-in-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">paper</a> on disinformation and misinformation in 2022. “The landscape hasn’t shifted that much,” he said. “We still see very little resources or infrastructure in any language other than English. Latinos are in harm’s way.” 
Sánchez worries about the possible impact of false information on Latino turnout come November. “With misinformation targeted at Latinos about election fraud, making it seem like a waste of time, people might think, ‘Why even vote?’” Sanchez said.
Meanwhile, Olavarría said he and others working on the issue “are doing everything possible … to be everywhere the Latino community is [and] whatever we can achieve is a victory.”
Copyright 2024 Capital & Main
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/election-disinformation-campaigns-are-eyeing-latino-voters/">Election Disinformation Campaigns Are Eyeing Latino Voters</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>The Long Tradition of Black Third Party Activism</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-long-tradition-of-black-third-party-activism/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-long-tradition-of-black-third-party-activism</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Marc Blanc / History News Network]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 15:47:11 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[Cornel West is following in the footsteps of figures like nineteenth-century orators and pastors like Peter H. Clark and Sutton E. Griggs.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-long-tradition-of-black-third-party-activism/">The Long Tradition of Black Third Party Activism</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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From its start on June 5, 2023, Cornel West’s chaotic or, in his words, “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/cornel-wests-plan-grow-embryonic-campaign-jazz-improvise-rcna127193" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">improvised</a>” presidential campaign has been the subject of debate, ire, and scorn from commentators of various ideological shades. But the editorializing around his campaign rarely acknowledges the long tradition of Black third-party activism that West is continuing. In 1876, the orator and educator Peter H. Clark broke with the Republicans to join the nascent Workingmen’s Party, one of the earliest Marxist parties in U.S. history. Clark’s challenge to the Party of Lincoln paved the way for the novelist and pastor Sutton E. Griggs to critique U.S. imperialism and advocate for Black Populism at the turn of the 20th century. Clark and Griggs exercise direct ideological, rhetorical, and spiritual influence on West and other 21st-century Black radicals. In the introduction to the 2003 edition of Griggs’ 1899 novel, Imperium in Imperio, West calls Griggs “one of the most significant black public intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century.”
Clark and Griggs tried to unite radicals across race based on mutual investments in social and economic justice, pacifism, and progressive spirituality. Through oratory and fiction writing, Clark and Griggs introduced Black political priorities and cultural practices to white-led movements. Both men weathered backlash for opposing the two-party system, and they consequently remain less known than contemporaries such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, who maintained support, though at times reluctantly, for the GOP. While neither Clark, Griggs, nor the independent candidates they supported won office, the two reformers laid the groundwork for multiracial coalitions on the U.S. left in an era when white revolutionaries often harbored racist convictions.
*   *   *
While the history of Black radicalism in the U.S. predates Peter H. Clark, he was the first known Black American to join a socialist political party. His involvement with the Workingmen’s Party was as motivated by his disillusion with the Republicans as it was by his belief in the abolition of private property. In 1873, Clark spearheaded the Chillicothe Convention, an Ohio-based movement of Black dissent against the Republican Party. Participants in the convention tried to leverage their collective voting power to force elected Republicans into passing more aggressive civil rights legislation. Clark charged in the convention proceedings, excerpts of which can be found in <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813140773/americas-first-black-socialist/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Nikki M. Taylor’s biography of Clark</a>, that the Ohio GOP might as well have had no Black membership or constituency at all, “so rigidly are we excluded from anything, which might look like an equality of right in office holding.” Republicans paid lip service to racial equality, but the convention-goers saw their practical failure to elevate Black politicians to office or pass civil rights bills as a sign that the party’s priorities were not so dissimilar from those of segregationist Democrats. Clark’s critique of the Republicans would be validated in 1876 when the party struck an infamous compromise with Democrats to formally abandon Reconstruction in exchange for the right to declare victory in the 1876 presidential election.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>While the history of Black radicalism in the U.S. predates Peter H. Clark, he was the first known Black American to join a socialist political party.</blockquote></figure>
The GOP’s withdrawal of federal troops from the former Confederacy accelerated the reversal of Black political gains during Reconstruction and the consolidation of the sharecropping system. Instead of owning the land that had formerly belonged to their enslavers, Black farmers were forced to pay credit to white property owners to live on the land that their families had worked for generations. Sharecroppers were trapped in a cycle of indebted labor that was little different from chattel slavery. Many Black citizens blamed the party of the North for this virtual re-enslavement. The moment seemed perfect for a radical third party to challenge the Republicans by appealing to their disenfranchised Black constituency.
Clark joined the Workingmen’s Party the same year that the Republicans conceded Reconstruction. His faith that the socialist organization could help Black Americans was not always reciprocated by white party members. The attitudes of these early socialists typically ranged from the color blindness of Eugene V. Debs, whose <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1903/negro.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">statement</a> that his Socialist Party had “nothing special to offer the Negro” has been taken as representative of early socialism’s class reductionism, to the explicit racism of a politician such as Victor Berger, who claimed that socialism would only benefit “European or Caucasian” societies. Against this backdrop, Clark implored his white Northern comrades to pay attention to the political and economic struggles of Black sharecroppers. In March 1877, he proclaimed to an overflow crowd in Cincinnati that Southern “capitalists … carefully calculate how much, and no more, it will require to feed and clothe the black laborer and keep him alive from one year to another … Not a foot of land will they sell to the oppressed race who are trying to crowd out the degradation into which capital has plunged them.” At a time when many white socialists considered Black emancipation to be a finished battle of the past, irrelevant or even inimical to the radical labor movement, Clark argued that not only did many of the injustices of slavery still exist across the agricultural South, but that these injustices were the product of the same economic system that white industrial laborers were fighting.
In addition to foregrounding Southern Black labor, Clark advocated against some of the more violent strands of contemporary socialism and anarchism. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, socialists were divided between revolutionaries, who favored armed struggle against the ruling class, and “slowcialists,” who believed that capitalism could be voted out of existence at the ballot box. Clark ran with the latter camp. At the end of July 1877, waves of violent clashes between workers and employers erupted across the country. Beginning as a railway labor strike in Baltimore, the uprisings spread to cities further west and intensified into a general strike encompassing all industries. Government militia and private police forces, the same agents of state violence charged with putting down Indigenous rebellions on the plains and Black uprisings in Southern and Midwestern cities, descended on workers, rifles cocked. In a <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1877-peter-h-clark-socialism-remedy-evils-society/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">speech</a> that became known as “Socialism: The Remedy for the Evils of Society,” Clark counseled the thousands of workers who had assembled to hear him speak:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
We are exercising today the right to assemble and complain of our grievances. The courts of the land are open to us, and we hold in our hands the all compelling ballot. There is no need for violent counsels or violent deeds. If we are patient and wise, the future is ours.
</blockquote>
While strikes in Pittsburgh and St. Louis turned violent — abruptly halting the strike wave — Clark kept the Cincinnati demonstration peaceful. Local journalists who covered the July 1877 speech reported that his “calm face had a soothing effect on the excited multitude.” Even local newspapers with an anti-socialist bent described Clark as an “intelligent gentleman and speaker,” underlining his high reputation within many communities, from Black Cincinnatians to radical German Americans and even some conservative whites.
After the 1877 strike, Clark deepened his involvement with the Workingmen’s Party (which rebranded as the Socialistic Labor Party), sitting as secretary of the party’s national executive committee. The party recorded some success in organizing Black workers after the 1877 strike, establishing a chapter for Black members in St. Louis. Impressed with Clark’s speeches during the strike, the party nominated him as a candidate in two different election cycles, first for commissioner of Cincinnati public schools and then for the U.S. Congress in 1878. Although Clark did not win either contest, his impressive showing in the race for commissioner, in which he won 8% of the vote, points to the cross-racial appeal of his intersectional socialist politics in postbellum Cincinnati.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>While strikes in Pittsburgh and St. Louis turned violent — abruptly halting the strike wave — Clark kept the Cincinnati demonstration peaceful.</blockquote></figure>
However, Clark grew frustrated in 1879 after William Haller, his close friend and editor of the Cincinnati Emancipator newspaper, was excommunicated from the party for ideological reasons. It also became apparent to Clark that the party would not be able to secure him a political office that would allow him to contribute to the uplift of Black Americans, which he described as his “controlling political motive.” His stint with the Workingmen’s Party would ultimately be one of the final peaks in an illustrious political career that had spanned more than 20 years. In the 1880s, he turned to the Democratic Party, which he hoped would reward him with an office, and in doing lost the trust of both Black and white comrades. The Democrats ultimately proved disappointing to Clark’s political ambitions, just as the socialists and Republicans had done before. Clark then <a href="https://newterritorymag.com/literary-landscapes/peter-h-clark-st-louis-missouri/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">moved to St. Louis</a>, where he spent the latter decades of his life teaching at Sumner High, the city’s first Black high school.
Black voters would not begin to leave the Republican Party en masse until several decades after Clark delivered his speeches. However, a decade after Clark stepped off the podium, larger parties such as the People’s Party began to mobilize and increase Black dissent against the two-party system.
* * *
If one word could summarize the prolific career of author, publisher, and pastor Sutton E. Griggs, it would be independence. In both his political activism and his literary works, he refused to submit to the demands of any force other than his own judgment. He wrote five novels and dozens of pamphlets and nonfiction books, all of which he either self-published under his own imprints or financed through commission or “vanity” presses. Several of Griggs’ contemporaries, such as Mary Church Terrell, were forced to self-publish because mainstream white publishers did not believe that Black-authored fiction would sell. Griggs was unique in his proactive embrace of self-publishing as a strategy to circumvent the racism of mainstream publishing. Printing and selling his own books allowed him to reach an audience that commercial publishers neglected: poor Black Southerners. In The Story of My Struggles, a 1911 solicitation pamphlet asking readers to donate to his self-publishing venture, Griggs writes that he
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
went from door to door, visited, at dinner hours, places where plain workmen toiled. I went to schools where Negro boys and girls were struggling for an education. These humble people of the race came to me with their dimes, and I was able to at least hold my head above the threatening financial flood. 
</blockquote>
Griggs wanted his books, all of which promote racial equality either through fiction or polemic, to reach ordinary readers who possessed varying levels of literacy. According to Griggs’ biographer John Cullen Gruesser, writing never provided Griggs with financial stability; rather, it was a political act and social service. However, Griggs never reached his goal of cultivating a mass audience of poor Black readers. By his own admission, most of his books were “financial failure[s].” His inability to sell out a single print run frustrated him to such an extent that by 1911 he laid the blame “at the door of my race,” concluding that neither literacy nor interest in literature was prevalent enough among his ideal audience to allow him to break even on his writing. While literacy rates were indeed lower among Black Southerners than among whites or Black Northerners, Griggs’ choice to self-publish his texts limited his ability to circulate books in marginalized communities.
At the same time, self-publishing empowered Griggs to print radical critiques of racism and imperialism without the burden of editorial oversight. Independence was Griggs’ aim not just for his own writing and for Black Americans more generally, but also for people oppressed by U.S. empire abroad. Griggs’ fiction articulates the continuity between Black progressive politics and anti-imperialism at the turn of the century. In 1898, as Griggs was finishing his <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/15454/pg15454-images.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">first book</a>, the utopian novel Imperium in Imperio, the Spanish-American War broke out over control of Cuba, then a Spanish colony that had weathered years of anti-colonial insurrections. While Imperium in Imperio is often described as a Black nationalist novel, it celebrates solidarity with subjugated Cubans just as prominently. At the same time that essays like Booker T. Washington’s “New Negro for a New Century” were <a href="https://archive.org/details/newnegrofornewce00wash/mode/2up?q=cuba" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">supporting</a> U.S. encroachment into Cuba and the Philippines as a means for their political independence, Griggs’ novel is skeptical that U.S. rule would lead to liberation for indigenous Cubans or Filipinos. Referring to what was then an ongoing news story, the novel’s narrator explains how the “Imperium” — the name given to the novel’s clandestine African American nation-state — became radicalized:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
an insurrection broke out in Cuba … the whole Imperium watched this struggle with keenest interest, as the Cubans were in large measure negroes. In proportion as the Cubans drew near their freedom, the fever of hope correspondingly rose in the veins of the Imperium.
</blockquote>
The novel argues that revolts in the colonial periphery also threatened white supremacy on the U.S. mainland. The Cuban insurrection against Spain inspires the novel’s utopian Black republic to turn revolutionary and seize Texas and Louisiana, where a sovereign Black nation can be officially established. 
Imperium in Imperio questions sensational newspaper headlines that attempted to drum up support for the war by claiming, without evidence, that Spain sank the USS Maine. Griggs instead describes the event with loaded ambiguity, suggesting that it was not Spain but rather “some powerful engine of destruction” that attacked the American naval ship. His opposition to U.S. expansionism would have been difficult to maintain had he not decided to self-publish. Many Black newspapers, struggling to stay afloat, depended on political and financial partnerships with the Republican Party, which oversaw the war.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>The novel argues that revolts in the colonial periphery also threatened white supremacy on the U.S. mainland.</blockquote></figure>
Griggs carried his opposition to U.S. imperialism from his fiction to the campaign trail in 1900, when he rallied support for the Populist-aligned Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Acting as a political organizer, Griggs urged Black voters to abandon William McKinley’s Republican administration, which was expanding U.S. power over Cuba and the Philippines. Bryan opposed the wars, and made anti-expansionism a cornerstone of his campaign. Griggs’ arguments for supporting Bryan reveal that his anti-colonialism was a form of radical Black nationalism. He <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016014/1900-09-05/ed-1/seq-4/print/image_681x648_from_1562%2C1771_to_3865%2C3965/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">reasoned</a> that “the natives of the Philippines are practically in the same condition now — that of slavery — as the negro in the south before the war.” But popular opposition to imperial expansion was not popular enough to prevent Bryan from losing to McKinley by almost the same margin as he had lost in 1896. Neither did Griggs’ rhetoric translate into many Black votes for Bryan. Even if Bryan personally opposed both colonial expansion and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/128144/dark-history-liberal-reform" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">racial eugenics</a>, the Democratic Party remained aligned with the former Confederacy in most voters’ minds. However, Democratic Party racism did not deter Griggs from critiquing Republicans in his fiction. His <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38830/pg38830-images.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">third novel</a>, 1902’s Unfettered, features his most explicit commentary on how the two-party system held Black voters hostage:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
They believed that God had specifically created the Republican party to bring about their emancipation. On the other hand, they regarded the Democratic party as the earthly abode of evil, created explicitly and solely for the purpose of harassing them. Thus, whoever opposed the Republican party was sinning against God; and whoever voted against the party was in league with the devil … Such were the views held by the less enlightened, Dorlan felt. 
</blockquote>
Griggs’ attitude toward “less enlightened” Black voters could come off as arrogant. In Unfettered, it is up to the heroic Dorlan Warthell, an intellectual like Griggs, to educate the masses out of their blind devotion to the GOP. Dorlan ultimately founds a third party for anti-expansionist Black voters eager to leave the Republican Party because of its support for the subjugation of native populations in territories acquired after the war with Spain. The dubious ethics of aiding the Party of Dixie notwithstanding, Dorlan makes an admirable anti-imperialist case for opposing Republicans:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
Negroes can only favor one solution to the problem, the recognition of the fact that all men are created equal. They should favor no postponements of the decision, having themselves suffered from a postponement that lasted from midnight of July 4th, 1776 to until January 1st, 1863. 
</blockquote>
Like Clark, Griggs was a trained orator, working as a pastor at Baptist churches in Tennessee and his native Texas. His speaking prowess is on display in a handful of sermons that he recorded in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mkr3JIh9K51W_xd8wMl35bARJTGtDDQfU" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">1928</a>, making him a pioneer of the rich tradition of Black preacher recording artists. Black heroism and interracial collaboration triumphing over prejudice are recurring themes in his sermons. Religious calling propelled his commitment to education and literature, as well. He served as the first president of Nashville’s American Baptist Theological Seminary (now American Baptist College) in 1925 and accepted a commission from the National Baptist Convention to write a refutation of Thomas Dixon Jr.’s popular racist novels. Griggs’ fourth novel, 1905’s The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist, was the result of the commission.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Cornel West, another independent Black activist, has made his opposition to what he considers a colonialist war central to his critique of Joe Biden.</blockquote></figure>
Twenty years after Clark joined the Democratic Party, Griggs similarly alienated many of his contemporaries by leaving the Republicans and collaborating with political organizations that condoned anti-Black racism, including the Democrats and the Southern Baptist Convention. His willingness to work with “Democrats and ex-Confederate soldiers” made him a consistent target of criticism in the Chicago Defender, one of the largest Black weeklies of the era. Much of this criticism is fair. At the same time, however, Griggs can be seen as a presage to the great exodus of Black voters from the Republican Party in the 1950s. Like Clark before him, he was disappointed by the Republicans’ failure to serve their Black constituents, and recognized that the two major parties were unlikely to ever prioritize Black political interests. To borrow a historically significant phrase that Griggs helped to pioneer, the “New Negro” needed a new party.
Griggs and Clark both sensed that the Republican coalition that had won the Civil War had a few decades later become tenuous, and was breaking beneath the weight of ideological tensions. Today, dissent over a Democratic president’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza threatens to strain the already damaged relationship between liberals and leftists in the Democratic party. Cornel West, another independent Black activist, has made his opposition to what he considers a colonialist war central to his critique of Joe Biden, echoing the comments that his forebear Griggs made about the Spanish-American War. Agonized voters in 2024 may find themselves thinking similarly to Griggs in 1900: “A party can start out good and change … The ballot box is no place to make a vote of thanks for past favors.”
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-long-tradition-of-black-third-party-activism/">The Long Tradition of Black Third Party Activism</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Congress Must Act To Make Internet Access Equitable</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/congress-must-act-to-make-internet-access-equitable/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=congress-must-act-to-make-internet-access-equitable</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Claude Cummings Jr. / Otherwords]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 16:05:50 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[DEIB]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Economic Justice]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Social Justice]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Affordable Connectivity Program]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Bipartisan Infrastructure Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[broadband]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[equity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[internet access]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296182</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Over 23 million households could soon lose access to free or low-cost internet. That would be a disaster for rural communities and communities of color.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/congress-must-act-to-make-internet-access-equitable/">Congress Must Act To Make Internet Access Equitable</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Nearly a <a href="https://www.gao.gov/blog/closing-digital-divide-millions-americans-without-broadband" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">third</a> of Americans who don’t have broadband say the reason is because it costs too much — and unfortunately, Congress is prepared to let that figure rise dramatically.
Lawmakers have yet to renew funding for the federal government’s Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, which is being rolled back as of today and will fully come to an end in coming weeks unless Congress takes action. Through the ACP, more than <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/23/us/politics/internet-subsidies-affordable-connecticity-program.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">23 million households</a> have received either reduced bills or effectively free internet service.
The shutdown of the ACP will hurt communities of color the most, with over 30 percent of <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/#who-has-home-broadband?tabId=tab-3109350c-8dba-4b7f-ad52-a3e976ab8c8f" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Black families lacking home internet</a>, and rural communities as well.
Affordable internet access isn’t just about surfing the web or scrolling social media. High-speed broadband is a gateway to education, job opportunities, health care, and so much more. By taking this important program away from low-income families, Congress is not only driving up costs for an already vulnerable population, but potentially taking away their educational, employment, and economic opportunities as well.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>The shutdown of the ACP will hurt communities of color the most, with over 30 percent of <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/#who-has-home-broadband?tabId=tab-3109350c-8dba-4b7f-ad52-a3e976ab8c8f" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Black families lacking home internet</a>, and rural communities as well.</blockquote></figure>
If Congress is serious about both closing the digital divide and achieving racial equity, it will have to act now to keep the ACP up and running.
Launched in 2021 as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the ACP has been a resounding success, not only for helping families across the country afford reliable connectivity, but in incentivizing internet service providers to build it.
Too often, low-income and rural communities are overlooked by providers when they determine where to upgrade and expand high-speed service because they are viewed as a customer base who cannot afford it. Thanks to the ACP, these communities have become empowered customers — and internet service providers are now building strong, long-lasting connections to previously unserved and underserved areas.
My union, the Communications Workers of America, represents tens of thousands of broadband workers who are building and maintaining this nationwide network. They’re speaking with families and community members every day, hearing stories about unaffordable internet services and bad connectivity. And they’ve seen the direct benefits of the ACP in our cities, suburbs, and rural areas.
Like when the federal government built electricity to everyone, ACP is an investment in critical services and jobs that’s brought millions of Americans who were previously being left behind into the 21st Century. It’s a critical part of supporting Black, brown, and rural families and addressing economic inequality.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Hundreds of thousands of Americans could lose access to the life-saving services they need, from telehealth to remote work and online education.</blockquote></figure>
Losing the ACP wouldn’t only cut off these families — it would undercut the financial viability of networks being planned under the Infrastructure Act’s broadband deployment funding, causing providers to build less and leave more people behind. Affordable connectivity is truly one of the most important and most overlooked racial and economic justice issues of our time.
Discontinuing the ACP is an attack on the ability of communities of color and rural communities to access health care, online education, and better job opportunities, and would be a huge step backwards for our country. Hundreds of thousands of Americans could lose access to the life-saving services they need, from telehealth to remote work and online education.
Despite the success of the ACP, its bipartisan appeal, and the widespread need for affordable connectivity, Congress has not been able to move forward on funding for the program. We need our lawmakers to treat the internet as the essential resource that it is, and use our public dollars to help bridge the racial and economic gaps that may keep people offline.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/congress-must-act-to-make-internet-access-equitable/">Congress Must Act To Make Internet Access Equitable</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Students Are Horrified by What They’re Seeing — Just as in ’68</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/students-are-horrified-by-what-theyre-seeing-just-as-we-were-in-68/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=students-are-horrified-by-what-theyre-seeing-just-as-we-were-in-68</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Rudd / Waging Nonviolence]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 15:55:09 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Belief & Religion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Social Justice]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Wounds of War]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[campus protests]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[columbia university]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[nypd]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vietnam]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296175</guid>
<description><![CDATA[An organizer of the 1968 Columbia University protests on why the message against war, then and now, is the same.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/students-are-horrified-by-what-theyre-seeing-just-as-we-were-in-68/">Students Are Horrified by What They’re Seeing — Just as in ’68</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
What is the ethical response to witnessing a great moral crime? Turn away and allow oneself to be distracted? Pretend it doesn’t exist? Or acknowledge the crime for what it is, and take some sort of action to try to stop it?
Students at Columbia in 1968 understood that our own government — with the complicity of our university — had invaded Vietnam in order to wage a war of occupation against a civilian population, committing mass murder with tactics like carpet bombing of whole provinces, spraying chemical poisons on rice fields and forcing entire rural populations into concentration camps. What’s more, we knew that the mostly white university, against community opposition, was expanding into one of the few parks in neighboring Harlem. Black Columbia students in particular — having grown up during the postwar civil rights era — felt the imperative to act.
As the chairman of the Columbia chapter of <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2017/10/weatherman-confused-violence-militancy-sds/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Students for a Democratic Society</a>, I helped organize campus-wide protests that spring, during which hundreds of students occupied five buildings — a traditional nonviolent tactic. The occupation was followed by a mass strike that closed Columbia for more than a month. 
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Just as we were, the students are sick at heart and feel compelled to stop a moral obscenity.</blockquote></figure>
Now, over half a century later, Columbia students are once again engaging in consciously nonviolent tactics to protest the university’s complicity in a war — this time Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has caused the deaths of more than 34,000 human beings, mostly women and children, and displaced 2.3 million. 
After setting up tents on a patch of lawn and facing severe scrutiny in the media as well as arrests and suspensions, another group began occupying one of the same halls we occupied in 1968. Just as we were, the students are sick at heart and feel compelled to stop a moral obscenity. 
All the rest is commentary.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-then-and-now">Then and now</h3>
What the protesters are telling the country, then and now, is that it’s not morally acceptable for a university to conduct secret research in support of the war against Vietnam or to invest in Israeli military industries. Defending the status quo, the leadership of the institution and their funders naturally try to shut the students up. 
Back in 1968, Columbia’s administration called on New York City cops to empty the buildings, badly beating and arresting almost 700 students. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/nyregion/columbia-university-protests-arrests.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Fifty-six years to the day</a> later, the NYPD were again called in to break up a student occupation, <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/around-100-arrested-after-columbia-university-calls-in-police-to-end-pro-palestinian-occupation/5370721/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">arresting around a hundred students</a> as they cleared the occupied hall and encampment last night. It was the second time in the last month — since her trip to Washington, D.C., where she pledged loyalty and obeisance to far-right politicians in a bid to save her job — that Columbia’s president brought police on campus to make arrests.
Despite the similarities between then and now, there are differences.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>There may be individuals or provocateurs who defy the strategy, but at least the protesters are trying to make their intention clear.</blockquote></figure>
Most of the leadership of the Columbia strike in 1968 was young men like myself. That no longer appears to be the case — either at Columbia or the other university protests around the country. 
In 1968 we made the mistake of answering the police violence with anger, fighting them and calling them pigs. We blurred the line between nonviolence (the occupation of buildings) and violence (our slogans and rhetoric), thereby undercutting our moral position.
The students protesting the slaughter in Gaza, with their diverse leadership are making no such mistakes. They are thoroughly nonviolent. There may be individuals or provocateurs who defy the strategy, but at least the protesters are trying to make their intention clear. In a little-reported <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C6C_7ont_Ff/?img_index=1" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Instagram post</a> last week entitled “Columbia’s Gaza Student Protest Community Values,” they wrote “At universities across the nation our movement is united in valuing every human life” and “We firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry.” Setting up tents and praying for the souls of the dead, all the dead, is not violence.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-charge-of-antisemitism">The charge of antisemitism</h3>
Having myself been raised, like most American Jews, to believe that my Jewish identity is entwined with Israel, I understand why criticism of Israel feels threatening. Generational trauma is bred into us. 
Yet, having moved to an anti-Zionist position because of Israel’s brutality and racism toward the Palestinian people, I have been labeled a “self-hating Jew,” a “traitor” and worse. Now a new epithet has appeared, the “unJew.” 
No matter: Those of us who reject hatred, violence and denial of human and civil rights — and view that as <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/10/jewish-nonviolence-can-help-guide-path-forward-israel-palestine/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">intrinsic to Jewish identity</a> — still remain Jews. Concerned for the well-being and future of the seven million Jews living in Israel, we advocate for (as do many nonviolent Palestinians) <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/02/a-land-for-all-day-after-plan-progressives-can-get-behind/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">a future democratic Israel/Palestine</a>, where all citizens are equal, close to the ideal of a truly democratic United States so many of us are struggling for. The longer this war continues, the further off this solution or any other becomes — and the more dangerous the situation gets for Jews in Israel. Is this war against Gaza good for the Jews?
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Those of us who reject hatred, violence and denial of human and civil rights — and view that as <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/10/jewish-nonviolence-can-help-guide-path-forward-israel-palestine/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">intrinsic to Jewish identity</a> — still remain Jews.</blockquote></figure>
Pretending to defend Jews who feel threatened by criticism of Israel, <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/11/far-right-try-manipulate-gaza-crisis/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">the far right</a> (which harbors true antisemites in their ranks) — Nazis, Proud Boys and even a deranged person who murdered 11 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh — have been quick on the attack. Speaker of the House and MAGA acolyte Mike Johnson last week shed crocodile tears at Columbia, working himself up about the supposed antisemitism on campus.
If he were serious about suppressing such hatred, he would disavow and suppress the lie at the heart of both his white Christian nationalist movement and the anti-immigration movement: that “the Jews” are conspiring to create the flood of non-white immigration in order to “replace” white people. 
The fascist media, of course, have jumped to attack the protesters. The liberal media, always worried about the rise of antisemitism, follows.
It’s very hard to find reports anywhere of the constant attacks at Columbia on Muslim students, including one by IDF veterans who used chemical eye spray, sending victims to the hospital with severe injuries. It is also rare to see media that highlight the many Jewish supporters of the Gaza protest.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-courage-and-clarity-nbsp">Courage and clarity </h3>
Buried in this blizzard of accusations is the protesters’ original point, that mass slaughter is happening right now in Gaza. 
Despite threats of violence, expulsion, arrest, doxxing and being barred from future employment by the antisemitic label, the Gaza protesters aren’t backing down. Their ranks are increasing, with more than 40 campuses across the country holding protests, and more than 1,200 students arrested. Let’s hope that this incipient movement grows to stop American support for the war against Gaza — and to eventually rectify one-sided American policy toward Israel.
No matter how hard we Americans are fed the lie that war is peace, many young people can see through it. They should be cherished and respected for their moral clarity and courage. 
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/students-are-horrified-by-what-theyre-seeing-just-as-we-were-in-68/">Students Are Horrified by What They’re Seeing — Just as in ’68</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>State Department Wants a Saudi-Israel Deal, No Matter the Cost</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/state-department-laser-focused-on-a-saudi-israel-deal-no-matter-the-cost/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=state-department-laser-focused-on-a-saudi-israel-deal-no-matter-the-cost</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alexander Langlois / Responsible Statecraft]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 15:40:05 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Wounds of War]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Antony Blinken]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[iran]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[saudi arabia]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[A security guarantee to Riyadh puts the US at disproportionate risk for involvement in future regional conflicts.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/state-department-laser-focused-on-a-saudi-israel-deal-no-matter-the-cost/">State Department Wants a Saudi-Israel Deal, No Matter the Cost</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which in recent weeks spread to direct military exchanges with Iran, Biden administration officials remain convinced they can achieve a broader Middle East peace through an <a href="https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2024-february-14/#:~:text=Because%20of%20the%20Kingdom's%20major,a%20number%20of%20areas%20informally." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization deal</a> which would entail a U.S. security guarantee for Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, <a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/blinken-says-us-saudi-security-pact-for-israel-normalisation-nears-completion-35f154fb" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">said</a> that a U.S.-Saudi security pact is nearing completion. However, Washington should reject this lopsided strategy as it works against U.S. interests and is not practical.
The Biden administration does not appear to be considering an alternative approach. In late March, President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/saudi-arabia-israel-normalization-deal-sullivan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">said</a>, “I won’t go into detail now. But look, I’ve been working with the Saudis. They are prepared to fully recognize Israel,” re-affirming Washington’s obsession with the Abraham Accords and all its flaws.
<a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/16/jake-sullivan-davos-speech-israel-gaza-ukraine" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Multiple</a> <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-saudi-israel-gaza-brett-mcgurk_n_65a19ee2e4b07bd6950cd152" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">officials</a> continue to push this position, highlighting the administration’s focus on advancing Saudi-Israel relations, especially after Riyadh <a href="https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/saudi-arabia-acknowledges-helping-defend-israel-against-iran-797201" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">assisted</a> in taking down Iranian drones and missiles headed toward Israel last month.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Washington should reject this lopsided strategy as it works against U.S. interests and is not practical.</blockquote></figure>
The details of a potential deal — including <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/effort-create-far-reaching-us-saudi-israeli-pact-end-war-rcna134396" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">major U.S. concessions</a> — have reportedly not changed. This includes U.S. security guarantees for Riyadh and a green light for its civilian nuclear program in return for normalization with Israel and limiting relations with China. Washington is also <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-21/biden-white-house-eyes-diplomatic-win-with-us-israel-and-us-saudi-arabia-deals" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">reportedly</a> considering security assurances with Israel to sweeten the deal given extensive anti-Saudi sentiments in Congress.
This outline is concerning for multiple reasons. First, it further enmeshes the United States in the Middle East’s security makeup at a time when U.S. citizens broadly <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3882" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">support</a> a decreased military role abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Second, it puts the cart before the horse by offering significant incentives to U.S. partners to normalize when every indication suggests these two states already desire normalization anyway.
Both concerns present real threats to U.S. interests. Regarding security guarantees, Washington would <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-21/biden-white-house-eyes-diplomatic-win-with-us-israel-and-us-saudi-arabia-deals" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">promise</a> to commit troops to the defense of both Saudi Arabia and Israel in an <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/danger-regional-war-middle-east" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">unstable region</a> filled with rivalries and ongoing conflicts, reportedly within an understanding short of a NATO Article 5 treaty agreement.
Iran’s destabilizing role — exemplified in its attack on Israel and its aligned militias’ decision to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240422-rockets-fired-northern-iraq-hit-us-led-coalition-base-syria?utm_source=dailybrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyBrief2024Apr22&utm_term=DailyNewsBrief" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">attack</a> U.S. bases in Syria on April 21 for the first time in two months — should raise red flags in this regard. Its rivalries with Israel and Saudi Arabia, alongside broader regional infighting prevalent for decades, risks bringing U.S. forces into a conflict that has nothing to do with America.
This context should matter to American officials, especially today. The region is experiencing the worst instability since at least the Arab Spring revolutions of the early 2010s — when multiple autocratic regimes collapsed in the face of popular upheaval. The destabilizing nature of that moment produced many wars still raging in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. A second round of revolutions in the late 2010s produced the same outcome in Sudan.
Multiple U.S. officials argue the region has not witnessed such instability since <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/4437128-blinken-middle-east-israel-iran/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">1973</a>. This administration should not take that sentiment lightly — Israel’s war with Hamas and the tit-for-tat hostilities with Iran marks a scary moment for U.S. foreign policy and the region.
American forces are currently in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-military-says-it-destroyed-houthi-air-defense-drone-systems-2024-04-09/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">active hostilities</a> with the Yemen-based Houthis over Red Sea shipping security. Until recently, Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria fired on U.S. positions over <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/28/us-service-members-killed-drone-attack-jordan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">180 times</a>, killing three and injuring more than a dozen, and appear to be slowly testing the contours of that strategy today. The April 21 attack highlights that strategy, where U.S. forces are regularly targeted for the actions of Israel and other U.S. partners in the region. The odds of another <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/8/israel-kills-hezbollah-field-commander-in-lebanon-2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Israel-Lebanese Hezbollah war</a> remain unacceptably high.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>No U.S. president can reasonably argue for deeper security guarantees amid those risks.</blockquote></figure>
Meanwhile, Washington’s avowed regional partner — Israel — appears increasingly disinterested in preventing a broader regional war, opting to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-bombs-iran-embassy-syria-iranian-commanders-among-dead-2024-04-01/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">strike</a> an Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 that shifted dynamics further up the escalatory ladder in blatant disregard for basic diplomatic and state sovereignty norms. It does so with an understanding that U.S. forces will face the brunt of any response, arguably <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-israel-war/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">goading the U.S. into a conflict with Iran</a>.
No U.S. president can reasonably argue for deeper security guarantees amid those risks. Far too many tripwires threaten to pull the United States into conflict. This says nothing of the wider conflict that Saudi Arabia or Israel could create either accidentally or with their U.S. patron behind them. Indeed, the longest-running U.S. foreign policy theme in the region centralizes U.S. security guarantees for its regional partners, hardening divisions and giving states more confidence to take risks — a classic <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/04/27/how-america-enables-its-allies-bad-behavior-pub-63468" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">moral hazard</a>.
For now, a deal appears distant given Israel’s Gaza operation, which is producing substantial <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/11/01/pay-attention-to-arab-public-response-to-israel-hamas-war-pub-90893" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">anger</a> among Arab populations. Riyadh is currently disincentivized to normalize relations with Israel given fears of another Arab Spring. While some might argue that Saudi-Israeli cooperation against Iran’s recent attack suggests otherwise, this perspective fails to accept Riyadh’s recent shift towards pragmatism — a move supportive of stability that helps advance its Vision 2030 development plans as it shifts from an oil-based economy.
As such, U.S. officials should adopt a restrained approach. Lofty goals often lead Washington to create more problems while only temporarily resolving current ones. Ultimately, the United States can be the “indispensable nation” Biden proclaims it to be without committing to unwieldy security guarantees that put American citizens and broader U.S. interests at stake.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/state-department-laser-focused-on-a-saudi-israel-deal-no-matter-the-cost/">State Department Wants a Saudi-Israel Deal, No Matter the Cost</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>What We Leave Behind</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/what-we-leave-behind/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-we-leave-behind</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jim Knipfel]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 15:30:55 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Book Review]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[TD Original]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[crime blotter]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Death of Artists]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jim moske]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[obituary]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296131</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A new book explores the deaths of artists and the ex-con turned Metropolitan Museum of Art staffer who collected their obituaries.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/what-we-leave-behind/">What We Leave Behind</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Jim Moske <a href="https://www.blastbooks.com/book/deaths-of-artists/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Deaths of Artists</a> Blast Books, 128 pages, $40
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><a href="https://www.blastbooks.com/book/deaths-of-artists/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="739" height="1024" src="https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover-739x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-296136" style="width:316px;height:auto" srcset="https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover-739x1024.jpg 739w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover-216x300.jpg 216w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover-768x1065.jpg 768w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover-130x180.jpg 130w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover-195x270.jpg 195w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover-292x405.jpg 292w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover-422x585.jpg 422w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtistsCover.jpg 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 739px) 100vw, 739px" /></a></figure></div>
Like newspaper crime blotters, I’ve long held that public obituaries are a sadly unheralded literary subgenre.
While blotter entries condense a novel’s worth of human drama and conflict into a hundred-word narrative, obituaries serve a very different and much trickier purpose. Instead of recounting a single event, obituaries set out to assess an entire life in a few short paragraphs. They cement forever what was valuable and memorable about the deceased’s time among the living, and determine how someone will be remembered when they no longer have any say in the matter. Consider the recent death of O.J. Simpson. Reading the obits, it was clear he will be remembered for his role in a sensational murder trial, but only in passing as a football legend and sometimes actor. In the art of the obituary, sordid scandal and the tragic float to the top, whether the subject was famous or not.
This is one of several threads snaking through Jim Moske’s new book, “Deaths of Artists.” Despite what the title might suggest, “Deaths of Artists” is far more wide-ranging than a simple collection of archival obituaries memorializing long-forgotten painters and sculptors. The book dives into museum culture and administration, yellow journalism, the capriciousness of fame, the myths and sad realities of the “starving artist” archetype. It is also the story of the unlikely figure whose personal mission made the book possible.
In 2018, Moske, a Metropolitan Museum of Art archivist, was researching another project when he stumbled across two massive scrapbooks in the Met’s vaults. It wasn’t clear what they were, or why they were there, but when he opened the first volume, he found the pages were lined with yellowed, crumbling century-old newspaper clippings. One in particular caught his eye:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
FAMOUS ARTIST DIES PENNILESS AND ALL ALONE
Practically penniless and seemingly without friends, Mrs. Imogene Robinson Morrell, one of the most noted women painters of this country . . . died early today in her humble room in a cheap boarding house.
</blockquote>
Carefully flipping through the brittle pages, he soon discovered both volumes contained nothing but artists’ obituaries. Hundreds and hundreds of obituaries.
“As I continued to look,” Moske writes in his introduction, 
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
I saw a few stately remembrances of art world luminaries whose works remain familiar beacons in museum galleries today…But many others told stories of the decease of artists who were celebrated in their own time but have since fallen from fashion and are hardly remembered today. The majority recounted the passing away of people now completely forgotten.
</blockquote>
Curious, he began following clues around the archive to uncover who was responsible for the scrapbooks. He soon zeroed in on Arthur D’Hervilly, who’d been a Met employee around the turn of the 20th century. That name then set Moske off on another project to learn what he could about D’Hervilly. What he found ties the book together, creating far more than an archival curiosity.
Thanks to his fine calligraphy and facility with numbers, in the late 19th century, Arthur D’Hervilly had solid employment as an accountant while living in his mother’s Philadelphia boarding house. In 1882, he was convicted of stealing an estimated $15,000 from his employer and sentenced to a year of hard labor.
Upon his release from prison, D’Hervilly was determined to become an artist. While not without talent, surviving as an artist has never been easy for anyone. In 1894, he took a job as a security guard at the Met. At the time the Met, founded only 25 years earlier, wasn’t the imposing and monolithic cultural institution it is today. Again, on account of his beautiful calligraphy, head for figures and interest in art, D’Hervilly quickly ascended through a variety of positions within the museum’s administration. In a variant of the well-worn “started in the mailroom” rags-to-riches storyline, the ex-con was eventually named the Met’s assistant curator of paintings.
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<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" width="731" height="1024" src="https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2-731x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-296145" srcset="https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2-731x1024.jpg 731w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2-214x300.jpg 214w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2-768x1075.jpg 768w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2-129x180.jpg 129w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2-193x270.jpg 193w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2-289x405.jpg 289w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2-418x585.jpg 418w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BlastBooksDeathsOfArtists_p2.jpg 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 731px) 100vw, 731px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Artist, Dying of Starvation, Paints Picture of Herself. Miss Ella Finley. From “Deaths of Artists” by Jim Moske, courtesy of Blast Books</figcaption></figure></div>
Readers and Moske alike can only speculate why, but in 1906, D’Hervilly contacted The National Press Intelligence Company, a news-clipping service, asking them to send him the death notices of anyone identified as an artist. Whenever he received a new package, he dutifully pasted the notices into his growing scrapbooks, resulting in a chronological record of the deaths of over a thousand artists great and not-so-much. Again, we can only speculate why, but at some point, as he was building his morbid collection, he also abruptly began signing his name as the much more ostentatious (and baffling) “A. B. de St. M. D’Hervilly.”
D’Hervilly maintained his obsessive collection until his own death in 1919, after which his colleagues at the Met continued his good work for another decade.
For the most part contemporary newspaper obituaries are composed from simple templates filled out by grieving family members or, when possible, cribbed from Wikipedia pages. In the heyday of yellow journalism, however, things were a bit livelier. Sensationalism, lurid detail and the occasional bit of embellishment were what made the tabloids so popular. In many cases the line between an obituary and a crime blotter entry grew awfully blurry, as D’Hervilly’s collection made abundantly clear. The headlines alone, often marked by a deadpan gallows humor, were designed to tap directly into the readers’ ghoulish curiosity:
“Artist Killed While Hurrying to Catch a Train”
“Artist Fires Bullet into Brain while in Hotel Dining Room”
“Gives His Body for Dog Meat”
“Strange Death of Well-known Artist”
“Woman Artist Dies Enveloped in Flames”
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<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1-1024x683.png" alt="" class="wp-image-296158" srcset="https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1-1024x683.png 1024w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1-300x200.png 300w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1-768x512.png 768w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1-270x180.png 270w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1-405x270.png 405w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1-608x405.png 608w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1-878x585.png 878w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/obitexamples-1.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A selection of headlines. From “Deaths of Artists” by Jim Moske, courtesy of Blast Books</figcaption></figure></div>
A little editorializing on the part of the tabloid writers was never discouraged either. Under the headline “ARTIST SLAIN; DEATH HAND ON WALL IS CLUE,” we learn the victim, John Keyes, had been stabbed 20 times. The brutality of the murder didn’t dissuade the reporter from describing Keyes as “one of the drifting thousands who draw pictures — not salaries… His books and sketches were the dignity of his gloomy room.”
Like all good biographies, Moske’s meticulously researched account of D’Hervilly’s life veers off into assorted detours: explorations of the careers of the lesser-known artists from the scrapbooks, museum gossip, Vasari’s 16th century work “The Lives of Artists,” how clipping services work. All of it paints a portrait (if you will) of the fickle nature of the art world of the time, a world that’s changed very little over the ensuing century.
If the scrapbooks act as a kind of memento mori, then so does the book itself, which is illustrated with images of scrapbook pages, lurid tabloid headlines, samples of D’Hervilly’s handwriting and the work of some of these forgotten artists. The images give the story Moske is telling a distinct tangibility.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>In many cases the line between an obituary and a crime blotter entry grew awfully blurry, as D’Hervilly’s collection made abundantly clear.</blockquote></figure>
When D’Hervilly died in 1919, he was buried in an unmarked grave. Met administrators released a laudatory statement and small, sober notices appeared in The New York Times and other local papers. None of them featured splashy, tawdry, attention-grabbing headlines. In all likelihood, apart from his colleagues and friends, D’Hervilly, like most of the artists in his scrapbooks, was forgotten the second readers turned the page to check last night’s scores. For a century, he remained nothing but a name on an employee ledger until Moske went looking, finding not only A. B. de St. M. D’Hervilly, but all those other, equally forgotten lives he’d so carefully preserved.
The lesson within the story of D’Hervilly and his peculiar scrapbooks is that we are what we leave behind. Sometimes it’s not very pretty. Sometimes it’s meager, sometimes it’s amazing. But it’s still a mark, proving we’d been here. If we’re lucky, at some point down the line, someone will rediscover it, whatever it is, and maybe remember us for a few minutes.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/what-we-leave-behind/">What We Leave Behind</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Iran’s Death Row Recording Star </title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/irans-death-row-recording-star/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=irans-death-row-recording-star</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kamin Mohammadi]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 22:53:47 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Belief & Religion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Countering Violence Against Women]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Global Voices]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[TD Original]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[death penalty]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[iran]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[mahsa amini]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Toomaj Salehi]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[woman life freedom]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296101</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A political rapper faces the death penalty amid a fresh crackdown on women. 
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/irans-death-row-recording-star/">Iran’s Death Row Recording Star </a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
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Toomaj Salehi raps about subjects not often publicly discussed in the Islamic Republic of Iran. His hard-hitting songs touch on child poverty, discrimination against minorities and regime corruption, often accompanied by videos that depict him confronting regime clerics. Social justice themes are common in the “rap-e Farsi” genre that arose in Iran in the 1990s, but few have been as bold as Salehi. A Persian-rapping Tupac Shakur, Salehi is so direct in his criticisms of the regime, some have assumed he must live abroad; when his first big hit, “Rat Hole,” landed in 2021, he had to do an Instagram Live to prove he actually lived in Iran.
On April 24, Salehi received a death sentence from the Revolutionary Court of Isfahan for the crimes of rapping in support of the Woman Life Freedom movement and posting videos of himself at protests. 
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When the women-led protests broke out in September 2022 — sparked by the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini by the Morality Police for “bad hijab” — the Woman Life Freedom movement swept across Iran. Huge crowds took to the streets and women publicly burned their headscarves. Salehi was instantly vocal in his support for the protests, which he attended and filmed. Nine months after being brutally arrested in October 2022, he was sentenced to six years and three months in prison; only a Supreme Court ruling spared him a death sentence. Upon his release on bail in November 2023, Salehi  made a video describing the physical and mental torture he suffered during his imprisonment — mostly in solitary confinement — resulting in broken fingers, arms, legs and teeth. Though visibly emaciated, he remained defiant and called out the Iranian regime for fabricating a video showing him apologizing for his actions. He reassured his fans that he was unrepentant and described plans for an operation to fix a broken leg that had healed badly. He talked of the future and of continuing to resist the regime.
Within two weeks of releasing the video, Salehi was again brutally arrested, with reports of police carting him away covered in blood. When the Revolutionary Court handed down the death sentence against him last week, protests erupted across Iran calling for his release. The rapper has become a symbol of the people’s struggle, his songs anthems of protest. His words and image cover walls in Iran’s cities and “trees of hope” have been planted in honor of a self-description in one of his best-loved raps. Some of the signs beg for international support to save him from execution. Imprisoned human rights activist and Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi has called for an international campaign to save Salehi. “Toomaj Salehi epitomizes the resounding voice of the Woman Life Freedom movement and its anthem,” she said from her own prison cell. “His execution would signify the death of our vibrant movement.”
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The regime is fighting back. On April 25, Milad Alavi, a journalist for Shargh newspaper, was summoned to the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office for publishing a video of people’s reactions to Salehi’s sentence. Many others have been silenced with threats of harm to themselves and their families. A new crackdown on women’s dress, meanwhile, has been in effect since April 13 under a national action plan called “Noor,” resulting in yet more videos of women again being forcefully arrested and abused for violations. Female university students have been targeted, as pressure intensifies on civil rights activists, dissenters, cultural figures and female political prisoners. Mohammadi has spearheaded a call to document and amplify these abuses on social media using the hashtag “#WarAgainstWomen.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Within two weeks of releasing the video, Salehi was again brutally arrested, with reports of police carting him away covered in blood.</blockquote></figure>
The women of Iran remain defiant. They go out without the mandatory headscarf and resist arrest by shouting, screaming and kicking. Crowds flock to film and post online abuses meted out on the streets. As operation Noor gains traction, a university student from Isfahan who goes by the name “Effy” shared footage of heavily veiled women from the Morality Police patrolling Naqshe Jahan square, circulating among families, couples and groups of friends enjoying the weekend’s balmy spring weather. “The Morality Police are back in force and, of course, we are aware of them, but remember we are also used to this,” she told me. “All my life I have seen these people proliferate when it’s coming into summer.” When I ask her if she is scared, she laughs. “The people of Iran are tough. To be honest, we are more worried about the economy, how to afford bread and if there is going to be a war with Israel.”




To join the campaign to amplify Toomaj Salehi’s name, music and story, use <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FreeToomaj?src=hashtag_click" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">#freetoomaj</a>


A similar sentiment was recently echoed in Iran’s Etemad newspaper in an article titled, “Rising Costs, Inflation, and Unemployment Strain Public Nerves, Don’t Squeeze the People Further.” The article boldly criticizes the authorities for failing to address the economic hardship and rising social pressure on citizens, exemplified by skyrocketing inflation that has seen the price of lentils increase 71% and white beans an extraordinary 130% since January. Mismanagement of the economy, corruption and blatant inequality is enough to fire people up against the regime. Police abuse and the discriminatory hijab laws only add to the discontent.
As Salehi rapped in his controversial song ‘Normal’, “A laborer’s annual wage is worth a dinner abroad / Here, people are just alive, they don’t have a life.”

The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/irans-death-row-recording-star/">Iran’s Death Row Recording Star </a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Civil Liberties Groups Decry Bill Redefining ‘Antisemitism’</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/civil-liberties-groups-decry-house-passage-of-bill-redefining-antisemitism/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=civil-liberties-groups-decry-house-passage-of-bill-redefining-antisemitism</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 16:16:07 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Belief & Religion]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[The language of the bill conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/civil-liberties-groups-decry-house-passage-of-bill-redefining-antisemitism/">Civil Liberties Groups Decry Bill Redefining ‘Antisemitism’</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve legislation directing the U.S. Department of Education to consider a dubious definition of antisemitism, despite warnings from Jewish-led groups that the measure speciously conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people.
House members approved the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6090/text" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Antisemitism Awareness Act</a>—bipartisan legislation introduced last year by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Max Miller (R-Ohio), and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in the lower chamber and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate—by a <a href="https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024172" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">vote of 320-91</a>.
Both progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans opposed language in the bill. The former <a href="https://twitter.com/RepSaraJacobs/status/1785779112071557499" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">objected</a> to conflating criticism of <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/tag/israel" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Israel</a> with hatred of Jews, while the latter <a href="https://twitter.com/RepMattGaetz/status/1785762505345691786" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">bristled</a> at labeling Christian scripture—which posits that Jews killed Jesus—as antisemitic.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">House passes GOP-led Antisemitism Awareness Act — which mandates the Department of Education to use contested IHRA definition of antisemitism — by bipartisan 320-91 vote. 70 Dems voted against. Here’s why <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/2b07.png" alt="⬇" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /><a href="https://t.co/VEGNC0AbYm" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">https://t.co/VEGNC0AbYm</a> <a href="https://t.co/d3qX8bU57T" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/d3qX8bU57T</a>— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) <a href="https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1785775817353507053?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">May 1, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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“Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, one doesn’t need to look far to find it these days. But the supporters of this bill are looking in the wrong places,” Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of the Jewish-led group Americans for Peace Now, <a href="https://peacenow.org/entry.php?id=43112" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">said</a> following Wednesday’s vote.
“They aren’t interested in protecting Jews,” he added. “They are interested in supporting right-wing views and narratives on Israel and shutting down legitimate questions and criticisms by crying ‘antisemite’ at everyone, including Jews” who oppose Israel’s far-right government.
“With this disingenuous effort, House Republicans have failed to seriously address antisemitism,” Susskind added. “I hope the Senate does better.”
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Today the House votes on the gag legislation they're calling the "Antisemitism Awareness Act". Antisemitism is a serious problem, but codifying a legal definition could have dangerous implications for free speech. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f9f5.png" alt="🧵" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /><a href="https://t.co/lU0YhyO3EH" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/lU0YhyO3EH</a>— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) <a href="https://twitter.com/jewishaction/status/1785700613625467334?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">May 1, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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The legislation—officially H.R. 6090—would require the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism when determining whether alleged harassment is motivated by antisemitic animus and violates <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/TitleVI" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Title VI</a> of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance,” including colleges and universities.
Lawler’s office <a href="https://lawler.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=931" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">called</a> the proposal “a key step in calling out antisemitism where it is and ensuring antisemitic hate crimes on college campuses are properly investigated and prosecuted,” while Gottheimer <a href="https://gottheimer.house.gov/posts/release-gottheimer-helps-lead-bipartisan-bicameral-antisemitism-awareness-act" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">emphasized</a> that “the IHRA definition underscores that antisemitism includes denying Jewish self-determination to their ancestral homeland of Israel… and applying double standards to Israel.”
Critics say that’s the trouble with the IHRA working definition: It conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/01/new-amnesty-report-outlines-true-extent-israeli-apartheid-regime" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">apartheid state</a> engaged in illegal occupation and a “<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/watch-live-international-court-of-justice-delivers-ruling-in-israel-genocide-case" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">plausibly</a>” genocidal war on <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/tag/gaza" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Gaza.</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">ACLU strongly oppose use of the IHRA definition, or any definition of discrimination that threatens to censor or penalize political speech protected by the First Amendment. ACLU urges House of Representatives to vote "No" on Anti-semitism Awareness Act. <a href="https://t.co/mQ483eyoKX" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">https://t.co/mQ483eyoKX</a> <a href="https://t.co/SlgUGQHwzy" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/SlgUGQHwzy</a>— Jamil Dakwar (@jdakwar) <a href="https://twitter.com/jdakwar/status/1785700262591463792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">May 1, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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As the ACLU noted last week in a <a href="https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-urges-congress-to-oppose-anti-semitism-awareness-act" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">letter</a> urging lawmakers to reject the legislation:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
The IHRA working definition… is overbroad. It equates protected political speech with unprotected discrimination, and enshrining it into regulation would chill the exercise of First Amendment rights and risk undermining the Department of Education’s legitimate and important efforts to combat discrimination. Criticism of Israel and its policies is political speech, squarely protected by the First Amendment. But the IHRA working definition declares that “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” and “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” are all examples of antisemitism.
</blockquote>
Jewish Voice for Peace Action <a href="https://twitter.com/JvpAction/status/1785684460970635318" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">slammed</a> what it called IHRA’s “controversial and dangerous mis-definition that does not help fight real antisemitism and is only a tool for silencing the movement for Palestinian rights.”
“The Israeli government’s bombardment and siege of Gaza has killed over 34,000 people in six months,” the group said on social media. “Congress must stop attacking the students and faculty members who are trying to stop this genocide, and instead focus on ending U.S. complicity in Israel’s attacks.”
Israel’s Gaza onslaught has sparked a wave of nonviolent student-led protests <a href="https://twitter.com/sandeepbak/status/1785704856478536008" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">across the United States</a> and <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/uk-universities-israel" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">around the world.</a> Some of these protests have been <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/university-of-texas-gaza-protests" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">violently repressed</a> by police, while anti-genocide activists including Jews have been branded “antisemitic” for condemning Israeli crimes or defending Palestinians’ legal right to resist them.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Sending in militarized police and snipers to stop students from exercising their First Amendment rights is truly disgusting. Why are my colleagues and the mainstream media more outraged over these anti-war protests than they are about the over 35,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza? <a href="https://t.co/EwLqRrS2we" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/EwLqRrS2we</a>— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepRashida/status/1785748760368156757?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">May 1, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Americans for Peace Now said that while it is “deeply concerned about the escalating antisemitism in the United States and globally,” the legislation “poses a significant threat to free speech and open discourse.”
“Equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism is a tactic used to stifle important discussions on Israeli policies and actions, thereby hindering the broader effort to combat true instances of hatred and discrimination against Jewish communities,” the group added.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“Equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism is a tactic used to stifle important discussions on Israeli policies and actions.”</blockquote></figure>
Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate and lead drafter of the IHRA working definition, <a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/how-the-biden-administration-should-approach-the-issue-of-antisemitism/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">warned</a> years ago that “Jewish groups have used the definition as a weapon to say anti-Zionist expressions are inherently antisemitic and must be suppressed.”
“Imagine if <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/tag/black-lives-matter" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Black Lives Matter</a> said the most important thing the [Biden] administration could do to remedy systemic racism is adopt a definition of racism, and that definition included this example: opposition to affirmative action,” Stern wrote in 2020.
“Obviously, sometimes opposition to affirmative action is racist and sometimes it is not,” he added. “The debate about systemic racism would be changed to a free speech fight, and those with reasonable concerns about affirmative action correctly upset that the state was branding them racist.”
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/civil-liberties-groups-decry-house-passage-of-bill-redefining-antisemitism/">Civil Liberties Groups Decry Bill Redefining ‘Antisemitism’</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Congress Shines a Light on Big Oil’s Long Campaign of Climate Denial</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/congress-shines-a-light-on-big-oils-decades-long-campaign-of-climate-denial/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=congress-shines-a-light-on-big-oils-decades-long-campaign-of-climate-denial</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Adam M. Lowenstein / DeSmog]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 15:57:03 +0000</pubDate>
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<description><![CDATA[Fossil fuel industry efforts to delay inquiries highlight its sense of impunity – and echo tactics used to obstruct climate action and deceive the public.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/congress-shines-a-light-on-big-oils-decades-long-campaign-of-climate-denial/">Congress Shines a Light on Big Oil’s Long Campaign of Climate Denial</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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Oil and gas companies and their top trade groups were aware for decades that carbon emissions contribute to climate change, according to a scathing new report from congressional investigators. Moreover, industry giants knew that many of the technologies they presented publicly as solutions to the climate crisis – such as algae-based biofuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS) – were neither as green nor as feasible as they promised, the study reveals.
The Senate Budget Committee and Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability published the <a href="https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/new-joint-bicameral-staff-report-reveals-big-oils-campaign-climate-denial" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">report</a> and related documents on April 30, three years after launching a joint <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/10/29/congress-exxonmobil-shell-bp-chevron-american-petroleum-institute-climate-disinformation/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">investigation</a> of Shell, Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, and two leading industry trade groups..
Fossil fuel obstructionism has evolved “from denial to duplicity,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), in a May 1 congressional hearing based on the report.
Both the hearing and the report capture what Whitehouse described as “climate denial lite,” in which the industry pivots “to pretending it is taking climate change seriously, while secretly undermining its own publicly stated goals.”
The investigation reveals that for ExxonMobil and other leading fossil fuel companies in the report, the perception of taking some sort of action on climate appears to have been as high a priority as actually taking action.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Fossil fuel obstructionism has evolved “from denial to duplicity,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), in a May 1 congressional hearing based on the report.</blockquote></figure>
For example, for years, Exxon sought to associate its brand with algae-based biofuels. In a 2019 <a href="https://www.ispot.tv/ad/ovGn/exxon-mobil-algae-potential" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">video</a>, the company claimed these biofuels “would one day power planes, propel ships, and fuel trucks – and cut their emissions in half.”
Between 2009 and 2023, Exxon spent some $175 million on <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">algae-related marketing</a> like this video – almost half as much as the company spent working on the technology. (Exxon and other industry leaders largely <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/03/23/big-oil-algae-biofuel-funding-cut-exxonmobil/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">stopped</a> funding for algae biofuel research by 2023.)
Even as the company publicly touted algae biofuels as a climate solution, the company knew the technology remained unproven – and, moreover, that Exxon was not investing nearly enough money if it were serious about developing algae as a viable technology.
In an <a href="https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-oversight.house.gov/files/a/exxon-documents/EM-HCOR3-00084836.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">email</a> made public by the committee, an Exxon employee noted that one of the company’s executives had “made comments about us getting too far out there on the original algae ads.”
In an Exxon document released by House investigators with the header “Algae Biofuels Program Talking Points,” the company noted, “ExxonMobil’s analysis has concluded that final development and broad deployment of algae-based biofuels by the company would require future investments of billions of dollars” – orders of magnitude more than the $350 million that Exxon eventually spent.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-repeating-patterns">Repeating Patterns</h3>
Congressional investigators identified a similar pattern in industry responses to a 2019 decision by <a href="https://www.desmog.com/andrew-wheeler/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Andrew Wheeler</a>, then the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Donald Trump, to roll back a rule designed to reduce methane emissions.
Internally, BP agreed with Wheeler’s decision. In a 2019 <a href="https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-oversight.house.gov/files/a/bp-documents/BPA_HCOR_00341864.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">email</a> published by the committee, one executive noted that Wheeler’s “legal theory … for rolling back direct regulation of methane” was “aligned with our thinking.” The <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">American Petroleum Institute</a> (API), the leading trade association for the oil and gas industry, which <a href="https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/sustainability/our-participation-in-trade-associations-climate-2021-progress-update.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">counts</a> BP as a dues-paying member, lobbied for the rollback.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“Time and again, the biggest oil and gas corporations say one thing for the purposes of public consumption, but do something completely different to protect their profits.”</blockquote></figure>
In public, however, BP and other oil giants claimed to be disappointed by the Trump administration’s decision. David Lawler, then-chairman and president of BP America, <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/512097-oil-majors-oppose-epa-methane-rollback/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">said</a> publicly that “direct federal regulation of methane emissions is essential.”
“Time and again, the biggest oil and gas corporations say one thing for the purposes of public consumption, but do something completely different to protect their profits,” Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and one of the leaders of the investigation, said in his prepared <a href="https://www.budget.senate.gov/download/hon-jamie_raskin---testimony---senate-budget-committee" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">testimony</a>.
“Company officials will admit the terrifying reality of their business model behind closed doors, but say something entirely different, false, and soothing to the public,” Raskin said.
Yet, even as Raskin and Whitehouse were able to reveal damning new evidence of this corporate doublespeak, they pointed out that a complete public reckoning remained impossible, since the industry refused to fully engage with investigators.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-denying-reality">Denying Reality</h3>
In a pattern that echoes the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long efforts to deny the reality of climate change and, more recently, to portray oil and gas companies as committed to solving the crisis, the four companies and two trade groups that received congressional subpoenas appear to have withheld meaningful information while simultaneously flooding the committees with “hundreds of thousands of generic and non-responsive documents,” Raskin said.
Many documents submitted by the API were almost entirely redacted. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce produced only 24 documents that congressional investigators considered within the scope of the subpoena, including an invitation to a virtual meeting about “the future of natural gas infrastructure.”
Fossil fuel interests “completely obstructed the committees’ investigation,” Raskin said in a video played at the hearing.
During the hearing, this disinformation effort was assisted by congressional Republicans.
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">This week, we’re shining a light on the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign of deceit about climate change. Tune in Wednesday, May 1st at 9am. <a href="https://t.co/ftDXAnxI5D" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/ftDXAnxI5D</a>— Senate Budget Committee (@SenateBudget) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenateBudget/status/1784932744893526354?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">April 29, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) read into the record debunked right-wing claims that carbon dioxide is good for the climate because it is “plant food.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) spent significant time alleging that Dr. Geoffrey Supran, a University of Miami climate disinformation expert who <a href="https://www.budget.senate.gov/download/mr-geoffrey-supran-phd_-testimony---senate-budget-committee" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">testified</a> at the hearing, wrote tweets that Supran did not, in fact, write.
“These are not my tweets, these are retweets,” Supran attempted to explain when he was finally shown the tweets, as Kennedy continued to speak over him.
“I’d like to make very clear that this form of character assassination is characteristic of the propaganda techniques of fossil fuel interests,” Supran added.
Supran’s point, however, was mostly obscured by Kennedy’s ongoing hectoring from the committee dais.
In a more productive exchange, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) asked Raskin about the argument Exxon put forth that the investigators’ subpoena was “designed to intrude on ExxonMobil’s First Amendment activities, including its constitutionally protected right to petition the government.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“Both industries lied to the public and regulators about what they knew about the harms of their products, and when they knew it.”</blockquote></figure>
“That would obviously lead to the end of our civil and criminal discovery system, if the first amendment gave you the right not to turn over documents,” Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, replied.
“When an objection is made – if it is an extremely unpersuasive, novel, imaginative, unsupported objection – you can always tell, there’s something they really don’t want you to see,” Kaine noted. “I can only imagine the extent of the iceberg under the water that you were not allowed to see.”
The fossil fuel industry’s refusal to respond adequately to congressional subpoenas, while also flooding the committee with what Raskin’s testimony called a “paper blizzard” of some 125,000 “mass emails, newsletters, flyers, and otherwise meaningless fluff documents,” appeared designed to distract investigators and forestall potential legal action against companies and their executives.
“There is certainly an adequate legal foundation for litigation against this industry,” Sharon Eubanks, the former head of the tobacco litigation team at the Department of Justice, and leader of the U.S. government’s racketeering case against Big Tobacco, told members of the committee.
“Both industries lied to the public and regulators about what they knew about the harms of their products, and when they knew it.”
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/congress-shines-a-light-on-big-oils-decades-long-campaign-of-climate-denial/">Congress Shines a Light on Big Oil’s Long Campaign of Climate Denial</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>The Media’s Tireless Pursuit of Emotive Conflict in Politics</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-medias-tireless-pursuit-of-emotive-conflict-in-politics/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-medias-tireless-pursuit-of-emotive-conflict-in-politics</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Reich / Substack]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 15:45:46 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[donald trump]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Election 2024]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gaza]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[joe biden]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296055</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Mainstream outlets focus on emotions in their coverage. So far, 2024 is presenting a blizzard of it. How should the man who was elected to heal America respond?
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-medias-tireless-pursuit-of-emotive-conflict-in-politics/">The Media’s Tireless Pursuit of Emotive Conflict in Politics</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
The media focuses on conflict, discord, and dissension, of which there is an abundance today. This poses a problem for Joe Biden, who works behind the scenes to avoid conflict, discord, and dissension. Yet it’s made-to-order for Trump.
Israel’s war in Gaza has ignited student activism on dozens of campuses nationwide. On Tuesday night, hundreds of police officers in riot gear began arresting anti-war demonstrators at Columbia University, about 20 hours after protesters occupied a campus building — further escalating a crisis that has consumed Columbia and spread to many other universities.
The conflict is splitting the Democratic Party. A recent <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24628251-breaking-points-survey-results" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">survey</a> shows that cable news viewers — who tend to be older — are more supportive of Israel than non-cable viewers. People who get their news primarily from social media, YouTube, or podcasts — who tend to be younger — generally believe Israel is committing war crimes.
The conflict is fueling Trump, who yesterday urged college presidents to be tougher on the protesters, whom he called “raging lunatics,” and commended New York City police officers for arresting students. “To every college president, I say remove the encampments immediately. Vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Israel’s war in Gaza has ignited student activism on dozens of campuses nationwide.</blockquote></figure>
Trump’s strong law-and-order message about the protests is at sharp odds with his presidential campaign — which is itself a protest movement centered on his utter disregard for law: his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, that the January 6 rioters were “patriots,” and that Biden is behind Trump’s current federal and state prosecutions.
Fox News and other right-wing media outlets are amping up these claims, creating a media echo chamber of grievance-based lies.
The rest of the media is transfixed by Trump’s trials, which Trump is using to magnify the alleged conspiracy against him. On Tuesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s trial for election fraud, found Trump in contempt of court for attacking witnesses and jurors and warned he might jail Trump if his attacks on the judge, prosecutors, and witnesses continued.
Trump does not rule out the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he <a href="https://time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election-interview/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">says</a>. He <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109449803240069864" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">claimed</a> on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
“He’s in full war mode,” says his former adviser and occasional confidant Stephen Bannon. Trump’s sense of the state of the country is “quite apocalyptic. That’s where Trump’s heart is. That’s where his obsession is.”
President Biden, meanwhile, has remained above the fray, seeking to push Netanyahu toward a ceasefire in Gaza while ignoring Trump’s taunts and threats.
Both sources of conflict — over the war in Gaza and over Trump’s prosecutions and allegations — are dominating the media. They are the biggest stories in America.
This poses a challenge for an incumbent president doing everything within his power to keep the ship of state moving steadily forward, and who by temperament and inclination continues to focus on the slow, steady, behind-the-scenes work of governance.
Biden is working behind the scenes to get humanitarian aid to Gaza and stop Netanyahu from ordering an attack on Rafah. In my humble view, he should condition further aid to Israel on a ceasefire in Gaza.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>He <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109449803240069864" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">claimed</a> on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”</blockquote></figure>
Biden still lives in the world of rational, non-emotive messaging. He has been in politics for 50 years. He is steeped in rational, conventional argument — the kind that former President Dwight Eisenhower delivered.
I’m old enough to remember when Eisenhower talked to the nation. Despite Ike’s flat delivery, which was often punctuated with throat-clearing, the public listened and responded, usually positively, because Americans in the 1950s were able to process non-emotive messages. They might disagree with him, but he gave reasons for what he did or proposed and invited voters to deliberate rationally.
The media of that era felt duty-bound to transmit those non-emotive messages.
By “non-emotive,” I mean messages that are straightforward. They don’t cause the recipient to be entertained or inspired, don’t play on fear or bigotry or any other strong negative emotion, don’t stir conflict.
This is no longer the way the media transmits information or how Americans process it. Now, a message has to pack a wallop to be heard.
When it comes to messaging about his accomplishments, neither Biden nor his surrogates do the emotive work that our media ecosystem demands and the American public is now primed to respond to.
When voters tell pollsters they think Trump is “stronger” than Biden on foreign policy or the economy, the “strength” they feel comes from the emotions Trump stirs up — rage, ferocity, vindictiveness, and anger. These emotions are connected to brute strength.
Trump gets attention because the media lives off emotive messaging. The more charged the message, the more likely viewers will stop scrolling. The fiercer the words, the more likely readers will take notice.
Everything Trump says and posts is designed to spur an emotional reaction. His anger, ridicule, and vindictiveness are intended to elicit immediate, passionate responses. They don’t inform. They don’t truthfully explain. They just stir up.<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff72b56a0-3a7b-4a52-85b3-174d17baa7b4_1760x1258.png" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"></a>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Trump gets attention because the media lives off emotive messaging.</blockquote></figure>
Biden projects strength the old-fashioned way — through mature and responsible leadership. But mature and responsible leadership doesn’t break through today’s media and reach today’s public nearly as well as brute strength.
So what’s the answer? Not for Biden (or his Democratic allies and surrogates) to abandon facts, data, analysis, and reasoned argument.
The best response is for Biden to continue the hard work of governing, including putting maximum pressure on Netanyahu to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.
Biden and other Democrats must draw the starkest possible contrast between Trump’s unhinged childishness and Biden’s competent adulthood.
Rather than sell Biden’s policies, sell Biden’s character. Rather than dispute Trump’s arguments, condemn his temperament.
And ask Americans the following question: Do they want a sociopathic infant at the helm again, or a sane grown-up?<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8b460b9a-0347-48ff-ac6a-a7a0cd021562_3500x2580.jpeg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"></a>
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-medias-tireless-pursuit-of-emotive-conflict-in-politics/">The Media’s Tireless Pursuit of Emotive Conflict in Politics</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>New Federal Rules Aim To Protect LGBTQ+ Employees</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/new-federal-rules-aim-to-protect-lgbtq-employees/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-federal-rules-aim-to-protect-lgbtq-employees</link>
<comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/new-federal-rules-aim-to-protect-lgbtq-employees/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Chabeli Carrazana / The 19th]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 12:52:53 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Business & Economy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[DEIB]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[LGBTQIA+]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Bostock v. Clayton County]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[eeoc]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[lgbtq rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[transgender rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[workplace discrimination]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296049</guid>
<description><![CDATA[New guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission strengthens protections for transgender and nonbinary employees in American workplaces for the first time in 25 years.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/new-federal-rules-aim-to-protect-lgbtq-employees/">New Federal Rules Aim To Protect LGBTQ+ Employees</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
LGBTQ+ workers who are misgendered by their employers or blocked from accessing restrooms consistent with their gender identity will now get additional workplace protections as a result of <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/enforcement-guidance-harassment-workplace" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">new guidance</a> issued Monday by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 
It’s the first time in 25 years that the EEOC has issued new rules on workplace discrimination — a change precipitated in part by the 2020 Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, the landmark decision that found that LGBTQ+ workers are <a href="https://19thnews.org/2020/08/the-supreme-court-ruled-on-a-landmark-lgbtq-rights-case-the-doj-has-yet-to-enforce-it/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">protected from workplace discrimination</a>. 
“We are really pleased to be issuing this guidance today to reflect our commitment to protecting everyone, and particularly those really vulnerable persons from underserved communities, from harassment in the workplace,” said Charlotte Burrows, the chair of the EEOC, during a call with reporters Monday announcing the changes.
Under the new guidance, employers who consistently call workers by the wrong pronouns or name could be found to be creating a hostile work environment. Similarly, denying an employee access to a bathroom, or other sex-segregated facility such as a lactation or changing room, appropriate with their gender identity could be committing workplace harassment. The guidance goes into effect immediately. 
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>It’s the first time in 25 years that the EEOC has issued new rules on workplace discrimination.</blockquote></figure>
The EEOC’s guidance is not law, but it does indicate how the commission will interpret harassment cases that are brought to the agency, which is responsible for enforcing civil rights workplace protections. This year, for example, the commission settled a case with several trucking companies that allegedly harassed and then fired two gay mechanics because of their sexual orientation. The companies had to pay <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/ta-dedicated-pay-460000-eeoc-sexual-orientation-and-retaliation-suit" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">$460,000 “and furnish significant equitable relief” as part of the settlement</a>.
Burrows said the new guidance was necessary because harassment is pervasive in American workplaces. Employer bias on the basis of race, sex, disability or another characteristic made up more than a third of the cases the EEOC reviewed between fiscal years 2016 and 2023. But the agency had not issued new guidance on the matter since 1999, so, in October, the EEOC began to take public comments as it prepared to make updates. Staff reviewed about 38,000 comments to arrive at the new guidance, which consolidated and replaced five separate guidance documents issued by the EEOC between 1987 and 1999.
The new guidance also details protections that extend to remote workers and <a href="https://19thnews.org/2024/04/pregnant-workers-fairness-act-regulations-childbirth-abortion/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pregnant workers</a>.
“We really talk about the proliferation of virtual work environments … online harassment does occur,” Burrows said. “The bottom line is: If the conduct is sufficiently tied to the workplace, has consequences in the workplace, and contributes to an employee’s hostile work environment, then that legal analysis as to whether or not it violates our civil rights laws is really going to be the same.” 
For LGBTQ+ workers, the EEOC’s guidance strengthens the impact of the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">2020 Bostock decision</a>, affecting an estimated <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/state-nd-laws-after-bostock/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">3.6 million</a> employees. It also clarifies the requirements for employers.  
Emily Martin, the chief program officer for the National Women’s Law Center, said in a <a href="https://nwlc.org/press-release/nwlc-reacts-to-eeocs-updated-guidance-on-workplace-harassment/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">statement</a> that the guidance “makes clear that federal law does not allow workplaces to be in the business of using harassment to enforce sex stereotypes about how employees should live, present, or identify. This is illegal discrimination, plain and simple.”
The guidelines were approved by a 3-2 vote in the five-member commission, including by Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal.
“The guidance reflects important developments affirming that individuals are protected against harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” Kotagal said in a statement, adding that it also “answers the call of the #MeToo movement, which shined a bright light on the ripple effects of harassment and the need for urgent cultural and legal change.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“The guidance reflects important developments affirming that individuals are protected against harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”</blockquote></figure>
But Commissioner Andrea Lucas, who opposed the new guidance, said it “effectively eliminates single-sex workplace facilities” and impinges on women’s rights in the workplace, a controversial conservative talking point that many LGBTQ+ advocates say unnecessarily pits <a href="https://19thnews.org/2024/03/bathroom-safety-trans-nonbinary-people/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">transgender people’s rights</a> and women’s rights against each other.
Lucas, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, said in a statement that “women’s sex-based rights in the workplace are under attack.” 
“There is no conflict between demanding rights for women and for all transgender people,” said Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, in a <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-applauds-eeoc-guidance-on-workplace-harassment#:~:text=The%20new%20guidance%20admirably%20details,1964%20Civil%20Rights%20Act%2C%20the" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">statement</a>. “Attacking trans people does nothing to address the real problems women face. As feminists, we reject efforts to appropriate the rhetoric of ‘women’s rights’ to inflict harm on trans people, men or women.”
Instead, the move by the EEOC is a recognition of the challenges in modern workplaces, <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-applauds-eeoc-guidance-on-workplace-harassment#:~:text=The%20new%20guidance%20admirably%20details,1964%20Civil%20Rights%20Act%2C%20the" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">wrote</a> ACLU senior staff attorney Gillian Thomas, “where the #MeToo movement, overdue reckoning with our nation’s violent racist history, and recognition of LGBTQ people’s right to be free from workplace discrimination, among other developments, have brought harassment’s perniciousness into sharp relief.”
Kate Sosin, The 19th’s LGBTQ+ reporter, contributed to this report.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/new-federal-rules-aim-to-protect-lgbtq-employees/">New Federal Rules Aim To Protect LGBTQ+ Employees</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Torture, Abu Ghraib, and the Legacy of the U.S. War on Iraq</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/torture-abu-ghraib-and-the-legacy-of-the-u-s-war-on-iraq/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=torture-abu-ghraib-and-the-legacy-of-the-u-s-war-on-iraq</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Maha Hilal / TomDispatch]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 12:41:22 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Wounds of War]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[abu ghraib]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[iraq war]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Taguba report]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[torture]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[war on terror]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296042</guid>
<description><![CDATA[20 years after the Iraq War prison scandal, victims are still in court and Washington is still trying to forget.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/torture-abu-ghraib-and-the-legacy-of-the-u-s-war-on-iraq/">Torture, Abu Ghraib, and the Legacy of the U.S. War on Iraq</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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“To this day I feel humiliation for what was done to me… The time I spent in Abu Ghraib — it ended my life. I’m only half a human now.” That’s what Abu Ghraib survivor Talib al-Majli <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/11/1167341565/us-iraq-war-abu-ghraib-survivor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">had to say</a> about the 16 months he spent at that notorious prison in Iraq after being captured and detained by American troops on October 31, 2003. In the wake of his release, al-Majli has <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/11/1167341565/us-iraq-war-abu-ghraib-survivor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">continued to suffer </a>a myriad of difficulties, including an inability to hold a job thanks to physical and mental-health deficits and a family life that remains in shambles.
He was never even charged with a crime — not exactly surprising, given the <a href="https://www.derechos.org/nizkor/us/doc/icrc-prisoner-report-feb-2004.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Red Cross’s estimate</a> that 70% to 90% of those arrested and detained in Iraq after the 2003 American invasion of that country were guilty of nothing. But like other survivors, his time at Abu Ghraib continues to haunt him, even though, nearly 20 years later in America, the lack of justice and accountability for war crimes at that prison has been relegated to the distant past and is considered a long-closed chapter in this country’s War on Terror.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Abu Ghraib “Scandal”</h3>
On April 28th, 2004, CBS News’s 60 Minutes aired a segment about Abu Ghraib prison, revealing for the first time photos of the kinds of torture that had happened there. Some of those now-infamous pictures included a <a href="https://www.wired.com/2008/03/gallery-abu-ghraib/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">black-hooded prisoner</a> being made to stand on a box, his arms outstretched and electrical wires attached to his hands; naked prisoners piled on top of each other in a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/abu-ghraib-torture-photos" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">pyramid-like structure</a>; and a prisoner in a jumpsuit on his knees being <a href="https://www.npr.org/2006/03/21/5293136/dog-handler-in-abu-ghraib-photo-found-guilty" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">threatened with a dog</a>. In addition to those disturbing images, several photos included American military personnel grinning or posing with thumbs-up signs, indications that they seemed to be taking pleasure in the humiliation and torture of those Iraqi prisoners and that the photos were meant to be seen.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“The time I spent in Abu Ghraib — it ended my life. I’m only half a human now.”</blockquote></figure>
Once those pictures were exposed, there was widespread outrage across the globe in what became known as the Abu Ghraib scandal. However, that word “scandal” still puts the focus on those photos rather than on the violence the victims suffered or the fact that, two decades later, there has been zero accountability when it comes to the government officials who sanctioned an atmosphere ripe for torture.
Thanks to the existence of the Federal Tort Claims Act, all claims against the federal government, when it came to Abu Ghraib, were dismissed. Nor did the government <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/09/25/iraq-torture-survivors-await-us-redress-accountability" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">provide any compensation</a> or redress to the Abu Ghraib survivors, even after, in 2022, the Pentagon<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/09/25/iraq-torture-survivors-await-us-redress-accountability" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"> released a plan</a> to minimize harm to civilians in U.S. military operations. However, there is a civil suit filed in 2008 — Al Shimari v. CACI — brought <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/15/abu-ghraib-torture-case-finally-goes-trial" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">on behalf of</a> three plaintiffs against military contractor CACI’s role in torture at Abu Ghraib. Though CACI tried 20 times to have the case dismissed, the trial — the first to address the abuse of Abu Ghraib detainees — <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2024/apr/14/abu-ghraib-iraq-torture-abuse" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">finally began</a> in mid-April in the Eastern District Court of Virginia. If the plaintiffs succeed with a ruling in their favor, it will be a welcome step toward some semblance of justice. However, for other survivors of Abu Ghraib, any prospect of justice remains unlikely at best.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Road to Abu Ghraib</h3>
”My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture… And therefore, I’m not going to address the ‘torture’ word.” So said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a press conference in 2004. He failed, of course, to even mention that he and other members of President George W. Bush’s administration had gone to great lengths not only to sanction brutal torture techniques in their “Global War on Terror,” but to dramatically raise the threshold for what might even be considered torture.
As Vian Bakir argued in her book <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Torture-Intelligence-and-Sousveillance-in-the-War-on-Terror-Agenda-Building-Struggles/Bakir/p/book/9781138252998" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles</a>, his comments were part of a three-pronged Bush administration strategy to reframe the abuses depicted in those photos, including providing “evidence” of the supposed legality of the basic interrogation techniques, framing such abuses as isolated rather than systemic events, and doing their best to destroy visual evidence of torture altogether.
Although top Bush officials claimed to know nothing about what happened at Abu Ghraib, the war on terror they launched was built to thoroughly dehumanize and deny any rights to those detained. As a 2004 Human Rights Watch report, “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2004/06/09/road-abu-ghraib" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">The Road to Abu Ghraib</a>,” noted, a pattern of abuse globally resulted not from the actions of individual soldiers, but from administration policies that circumvented the law, deployed distinctly torture-like methods of interrogation to “soften up” detainees, and took a “see no evil, hear no evil,” approach to any allegations of prisoner abuse.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Thanks to the existence of the Federal Tort Claims Act, all claims against the federal government, when it came to Abu Ghraib, were dismissed.</blockquote></figure>
In fact, the Bush administration actively sought out legal opinions about how to exclude war-on-terror prisoners from any legal framework whatsoever. A <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/torturingdemocracy/documents/20020125.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">memorandum</a> from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to President Bush argued that the Geneva Conventions simply didn’t apply to members of the terror group al-Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban. Regarding what would constitute torture, an infamous memo, drafted by Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.08.01.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">argued that</a> “physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” Even after the Abu Ghraib photos became public, Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials never relented when it came to their supposed inapplicability. As Rumsfeld put it in a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2004/06/09/road-abu-ghraib#_ftn98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">television interview</a>, they “did not apply precisely” in Iraq.
In January 2004, Major General Anthony Taguba was appointed to conduct an Army investigation into the military unit, the 800th Military Police Brigade, which ran Abu Ghraib, where abuses had been reported from October through December 2003. His report was unequivocal about the systematic nature of torture there: “Between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force (372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police Battalion, 800th MP Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison.”
Sadly, the Taguba report was neither the first nor the last to document abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib. Moreover, prior to its release, the International Committee of the Red Cross had <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2004/06/09/road-abu-ghraib" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">issued multiple warnings</a> that such abuse was occurring at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Simulating Atonement</h3>
Once the pictures were revealed, President Bush and other members of his administration were quick to condemn the violence at the prison. Within a week, Bush had assured King Abdullah of Jordan, who was visiting the White House, that he was sorry about what those Iraqi prisoners had endured and “equally sorry that people who’ve been seeing those pictures didn’t understand the true nature and heart of America.”
As scholar Ryan Shepard <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10510970903260319" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">pointed out</a>, Bush’s behavior was a classic case of “simulated atonement,” aimed at offering an “appearance of genuine confession” while avoiding any real responsibility for what happened. He analyzed four instances in which the president offered an “apologia” for what happened — two interviews with Alhurra and Al Arabiya television on May 5, 2004, and two appearances with the King of Jordan the next day.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Bush’s behavior was a classic case of “simulated atonement,” aimed at offering an “appearance of genuine confession” while avoiding any real responsibility for what happened.</blockquote></figure>
In each case, the president <a href="https://tomdispatch.com/quaint-and-obsolete/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">also responsible</a> for the setting up of an offshore prison of injustice on occupied Cuban land in Guantánamo Bay in 2002 managed to shift the blame in classic fashion, suggesting that the torture had not been systematic and that the fault for it lay with a few low-level people. He also denied that he knew anything about torture at Abu Ghraib prior to the release of the photos and tried to restore the image of America by drawing a comparison to what the regime of Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein had done prior to the American invasion.
In his interview with Alhurra, for example, he claimed that the U.S. response to Abu Ghraib — investigations and justice — would be unlike anything Saddam Hussein had done. Sadly enough, however, the American takeover of that prison and the torture that occurred there was anything but a break from Hussein’s reign. In the context of such a faux apology, however, Bush apparently assumed that Iraqis could be easily swayed on that point, regardless of the violence they had endured at American hands; that they would, in fact, as Ryan Shepard <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10510970903260319" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">put it</a>, “accept the truth-seeking, freedom-loving American occupation as vastly superior to the previous regime.”
True accountability for Abu Ghraib? Not a chance. But revisiting Bush’s apologia so many years later is a vivid reminder that he and his top officials never had the slightest intention of truly addressing those acts of torture as systemic to America’s war on terror, especially because he was directly implicated in them.
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Weapons of American Imperialism</h3>
On March 19th, 2003, President Bush gave an address from the Oval Office to his “fellow citizens.” He opened by <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/news/20030319-17.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">saying that</a> “American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” The liberated people of Iraq, he said, would “witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military.”
There was, of course, nothing about his invasion of Iraq that was honorable or decent. It was an illegally waged war for which Bush and his administration had <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/19/examining-justifications-us-invasion-iraq" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">spent months building support</a>. In his State of the Union address in 2002, in fact, the president had referred to Iraq as part of an “axis of evil” and a country that “continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror.” Later that year, he began to claim that Saddam’s regime also had weapons of mass destruction. (It didn’t and he knew it.) If that wasn’t enough to establish the threat Iraq supposedly posed, in January 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/19/examining-justifications-us-invasion-iraq" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">claimed</a> that it “aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.”
Days after Cheney made those claims, Secretary of State Colin Powell falsely asserted to members of the U.N. Security Council that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, had used them before, and would not hesitate to use them again. He mentioned the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/1151160567/colin-powell-iraq-un-weapons-mass-destruction" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">17 times in his speech</a>, leaving no room to mistake the urgency of his message. Similarly, President Bush insisted the U.S. had “no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>To befriend the U.S. in the context of Abu Ghraib, would, of course, have involved a sort of coerced amnesia.</blockquote></figure>
The false pretenses under which the U.S. waged war on Iraq are a reminder that the war on terror was never truly about curbing a threat, but about expanding American imperial power globally.
When the United States took over that prison, they replaced Saddam Hussein’s portrait with a sign that said, “America is the friend of all Iraqis.” To befriend the U.S. in the context of Abu Ghraib, would, of course, have involved a sort of coerced amnesia.
In <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1525/lal.2007.19.2.247" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">his essay</a> “Abu Ghraib and its Shadow Archives,” Macquarie University professor Joseph Pugliese makes this connection, writing that “the Abu Ghraib photographs compel the viewer to bear testimony to the deployment and enactment of absolute U.S. imperial power on the bodies of the Arab prisoners through the organizing principles of white supremacist aesthetics that intertwine violence and sexuality with Orientalist spectacle.”
As a project of American post-9/11 empire building, Abu Ghraib and the torture of prisoners there should be viewed through the lens of what I call carceral imperialism — an extension of the American carceral state beyond its borders in the service of domination and hegemony. (The Alliance for Global Justice refers to a phenomenon related to the one I’m discussing as “<a href="https://afgj.org/prison-imperialism" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">prison imperialism</a>.”) The distinction I draw is based on my focus on the war on terror and how the prison became a tool through which that war was being fought. In the case of Abu Ghraib, the capture, detention, and torture through which Iraqis were contained and subdued was a primary strategy of the U.S. colonization of Iraq and was used as a way to transform detained Iraqis into a visible threat that would legitimize the U.S. presence there. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_torture_and_prisoner_abuse" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Bagram prison</a> in Afghanistan was another example of carceral imperialism.)
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Beyond Spectacle and Towards Justice</h3>
What made the torture at Abu Ghraib possible to begin with? While there were, of course, several factors, it’s important to consider one above all: the way the American war not on, but of terror rendered Iraqi bodies so utterly disposable.
One way of viewing this dehumanization is through philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2003" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Homo Sacer</a>, which defines a relationship between power and two forms of life: zoe and bios. Zoe refers to an individual who is recognized as fully human with a political and social life, while bios refers to physical life alone. Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were reduced to bios, or bare life, while being stripped of all rights and protections, which left them vulnerable to uninhibited and unaccountable violence and horrifying torture.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>It’s crucial, even so many years later, to ensure that those who endured such horrific violence at American hands are not forgotten.</blockquote></figure>
Twenty years later, those unforgettable images of torture at Abu Ghraib serve as a continuous reminder of the nature of American brutality in that Global War on Terror that has <a href="https://tomdispatch.com/the-pentagon-proclaims-failure-in-its-war-on-terror-in-africa/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">not</a> ended. They continue to haunt me — and other Muslims and Arabs — 20 years later. They will undoubtedly be seared in my memory for life.
Whether or not justice prevails in some way for Abu Ghraib’s survivors, as witnesses – even distant ones — to what transpired at that prison, our job should still be to search for the stories behind the hoods, the bars, and the indescribable acts of torture that took place there. It’s crucial, even so many years later, to ensure that those who endured such horrific violence at American hands are not forgotten. Otherwise, our gaze will become one more weapon of torture — extending the life of the horrific acts in those images and ensuring that the humiliation of those War on Terror prisoners will continue to be a passing spectacle for our consumption.
Two decades after those photos were released, what’s crucial about the unbearable violence and horror they capture is the choice they still force viewers to make — whether to become just another bystander to the violence and horror this country delivered under the label of the War on Terror or to take in the torture and demand justice for the survivors.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/torture-abu-ghraib-and-the-legacy-of-the-u-s-war-on-iraq/">Torture, Abu Ghraib, and the Legacy of the U.S. War on Iraq</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Breaking the Impasse on Nuclear Disarmament</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/breaking-the-impasse-on-nuclear-disarmament/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=breaking-the-impasse-on-nuclear-disarmament</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daryl G. Kimball / Arms Control Today]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 12:25:05 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[joe biden]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[New START]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[nuclear disarmament]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[nuclear testing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vladimir putin]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[Ahead of START’s expiration in 2026, the world needs to pressure the U.S. and Russia back to the negotiating table. 
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/breaking-the-impasse-on-nuclear-disarmament/">Breaking the Impasse on Nuclear Disarmament</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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The success of the global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament system has always relied on effective cooperation and dialogue between the two largest nuclear-weapon states.
But as their relations deteriorated over the past decade, Russia and the United States have dithered and delayed on new disarmament talks and even failed to resolve disputes on successful arms control agreements that helped ease tensions and reduce nuclear risks in the past.
Russia’s illegal and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat rhetoric have increased the danger of nuclear conflict. The war has become the Kremlin’s cynical excuse to short-circuit meaningful channels of diplomacy that could reduce nuclear risk. 
In early 2023, Russia suspended implementation of the last remaining Russian-U.S. nuclear arms control agreement, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), while publicly committing to adhere to the treaty’s central limits. But New START will expire in February 2026.
That is why U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan proposed in June 2023 that the two sides start talks “without precondition” to establish a new nuclear arms control framework. 
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Halting the cycle of spiraling nuclear tensions is in every nation’s interest.</blockquote></figure>
“It is in neither [Russian or U.S.] interests to embark on an open-ended competition in strategic nuclear forces,” and the United States is “prepared to stick to the central limits as long as Russia does,” he said. New START caps each side at no more than 1,550 treaty-accountable deployed nuclear warheads.
But in December, Russia rejected the U.S. proposal, saying it sees “no basis for such work” due to tensions over the war in Ukraine. 
Meanwhile, China is expanding and diversifying its relatively smaller arsenal, now estimated at 500 nuclear warheads, about 300 of which are on long-range systems. After agreeing to discuss nuclear risk reduction with U.S. officials in November, Chinese leaders have declined so far to meet again.
The White House has requested $69 billion for sustaining and upgrading the massive U.S. nuclear arsenal in fiscal year 2025, a 22 percent increase from the previous year. Nevertheless, some politicians and members of the nuclear priesthood are pushing to increase the cost and size of the nuclear arsenal even more by deploying 50 extra land-based missiles and uploading additional warheads on existing missiles.
If Russia and the United States exceed New START limits, China undoubtedly would be tempted to accelerate its own nuclear buildup. Such an action-reaction cycle would be madness. 
Once nuclear-armed adversaries achieve a mutually assured destruction capability, as China, Russia, and the United States have done, expanding their nuclear forces or acquiring new capabilities will not lead to more security but rather to an increasingly costly, unstable, and dangerous balance of terror. As U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin put it in December 2022, “Nuclear deterrence isn’t just a numbers game. In fact, that sort of thinking can spur a dangerous arms race.”
Halting the cycle of spiraling nuclear tensions is in every nation’s interest. Furthermore, under Article VI of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Russia and the United States, along with China, France, and the United Kingdom, have a legal obligation to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Refusing to engage at the negotiating table, combined with building an even greater nuclear destructive capacity, is a violation of this core NPT tenet.
Ahead of New START’s expiration, all NPT states-parties, nuclear armed or not, allied or nonaligned, must increase the diplomatic pressure on Russia and United States, as well as China, to freeze the size of their nuclear arsenals and engage in meaningful, sustained arms reduction talks. Their message should be sent through all relevant channels, including bilateral meetings, the upcoming preparatory meeting for the next NPT review conference, the UN General Assembly, and daily at the UN Security Council.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>The two sides also should seek to resume on a reciprocal basis data exchanges and inspections similar to those under New START.</blockquote></figure>
A comprehensive, formal Russian-U.S. nuclear arms control deal would be difficult to achieve even in a more stable geostrategic environment. In these more troubled times, the pragmatic interim approach should be for Moscow and Washington to pursue a simple executive agreement or just unilaterally declare that they will continue to respect New START’s central deployed warhead limit until a more comprehensive nuclear arms control framework agreement can be concluded. 
As part of such a deal, the two sides also should seek to resume on a reciprocal basis data exchanges and inspections similar to those under New START. If they cannot do that, each side could confidently use their national technical means of intelligence to monitor compliance and ensure there is no militarily significant violation by the other party of the deployed warhead ceiling. Such an arrangement would lessen dangerous nuclear competition and create space for more intensive and wide-ranging arms control negotiations.
More nuclear weapons make us all less secure. Embarking on a safer path through disarmament diplomacy is imperative.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/breaking-the-impasse-on-nuclear-disarmament/">Breaking the Impasse on Nuclear Disarmament</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>College Leaders Want Obedience. Student Protesters Want Disinvestment</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/college-leaders-want-obedience-student-protesters-want-disinvestment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=college-leaders-want-obedience-student-protesters-want-disinvestment</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sravya Tadepalli / Prism ]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 17:39:48 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[palestine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[protest]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=296020</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Gifts and contracts from Israel total about $342 million between 2014 and 2022.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/college-leaders-want-obedience-student-protesters-want-disinvestment/">College Leaders Want Obedience. Student Protesters Want Disinvestment</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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Students at dozens of universities across the U.S. have started encampments in the last two weeks to pressure administrators to divest from companies enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
On April 17, while Columbia University President Minouche Shafik traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify on antisemitism in front of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, hundreds of students set up tents in the heart of Columbia’s campus, calling on the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel. On April 18, Shafik called the police to clear the encampment, leading to the arrest of more than 100 students. The mass crackdown prompted students at several other universities to join the cause at their schools.
“As students, we refuse to be complicit while our university remains complicit in genocide,” said a student protestor at the Tufts University encampment, who asked to be kept anonymous. “Until our institutions disclose their investments and divest from all companies that aid and abet the genocide in Palestine, we will continue organizing to disrupt business as usual.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>The mass crackdown prompted students at several other universities to join the cause at their schools.</blockquote></figure>
While specific demands from college campuses differ, the most common ask is that universities disclose financial ties to Israel and <a href="https://prismreports.org/2023/11/16/pro-palestinian-organizers-target-military-corporations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">divest</a> from companies complicit in ongoing violence. While the amount of money universities invest in such companies is largely unknown, a database from the <a href="https://sites.ed.gov/foreigngifts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">U.S. Department of Education</a> shows that American colleges and universities reported about $342 million in gifts and contracts from Israel from 2014-2024.
The impact of financial investments and contracts with the Israeli government may be significant. Reporting from <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/19/harvard-israel-palestine-investments/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">The Harvard Crimson in 2020</a> found that the Harvard Management Company, which manages the Harvard endowment’s investments, had more than $194 million invested in Booking Holdings, a company the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session31/database-hrc3136/23-06-30-Update-israeli-settlement-opt-database-hrc3136.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">United Nations listed</a> as having ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Pro-Palestinian students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the university has accepted more than <a href="https://apnews.com/article/college-protests-israel-divestment-palestinians-3f37f96f7be8e1124f266842d9caa627" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">$11 million</a> from Israel’s defense ministry.
Divestment <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-divestment-doesnt-hurt-dirty-companies" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">usually has a minimal impact</a> on companies’ bottom lines as sold shares are transferred to other investors. But students are pushing their universities to divest <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/business/college-protesters-divestment-israel.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">on moral grounds</a>, arguing that continuing to fund Israel makes these universities complicit in genocide.
“We think that the bare minimum for the university to do is divest, and even if they’re not sending riot cops to remove us from the space, they’re still invested in an ongoing genocide, and they need to divest, and that is the bottom line,” said the anonymous Tufts student.
Protests have been almost entirely peaceful, with rare exceptions usually prompted by the arrival of counter-protestors or police. At the University of Texas at Austin, President Jay Hartzell <a href="https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/ut-austin-faculty-protest-state-police-arrests-pro-palestinian-demonstrators/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">worked with Gov. Greg Abbott</a> to call on Texas state troopers to make arrests. The troopers arrived in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/27/israel-hamas-war-campus-protests-arrests/73462872007/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">riot gear</a>, with some on horseback, making <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/ut-austin-protest-faculty-palestine-19421364.php" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">dozens of arrests</a> and pinning several students and a journalist to the ground.
“I’ve protested here as a student, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Roger Reeves, a professor of English at UT Austin. “It was unnecessary, and I was really surprised that the administration had done something like that and called for such a violent repression of a peaceful protest.”
Administrators have used school rules governing public spaces to discipline students and call for police action. Administrators have suspended hundreds of students <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/columbia-protests-gaza-encampment-suspensions/5361232/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">from their universities</a>, and in many cases, students have lost access to their on-campus housing and dining services. Police have also arrested <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/us/northeastern-arizona-state-university-protests-arrests.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">hundreds of protestors at schools</a> such as Yale University, New York University, Arizona State University, Emerson College, and several other college campuses.
“This [protest] escalation is long overdue,” said another student protestor at Tufts University. “Students should be putting everything on the line. We are willing to risk our educations, our futures, everything, because people in Palestine have not been given the opportunity to see theirs realized.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Administrators have suspended hundreds of students <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/columbia-protests-gaza-encampment-suspensions/5361232/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">from their universities</a>, and in many cases, students have lost access to their on-campus housing and dining services.</blockquote></figure>
While encampment occupations have taken place outside, allowing classes and indoor activities to largely continue, some universities have treated the protests as disruptions. The University of Southern California <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestine-war-campus-protests-usc-cff0c1e59fc6164f615a2686d7f1b401#:~:text=LOS%20ANGELES%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20The,alumni%20stunned%20as%20protests%20over" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony</a> in response to protests against its decision to prohibit a pro-Palestinian valedictorian from speaking at the graduation ceremony. On April 22, Columbia University announced that its Morningside main campus would hold <a href="https://ca.news.yahoo.com/person-hybrid-classes-offered-columbia-225021262.html#:~:text=This%20is%20a%20misrepresentation%20of,the%20remainder%20of%20the%20semester." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">hybrid classes for the rest of the semester with few exceptions</a>.
“By moving classes online, the university is buying into the narrative that the campus is not safe and secure for students and especially for Jewish students, which actually is not the case,” said Marianne Hirsch, an English professor at Columbia University.
Several university professors and alums, including Hirsch, have publicly <a href="https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1781368248388161540" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">expressed their horror</a> at the decisions of university presidents to arrest students. On April 22, members of the Barnard chapter of the American Association for University Professors unanimously issued a vote of “no confidence” in Barnard College President Laura Rosenbury for a “<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRBefRHNEcGERU5o91lPasMG8RY0fN6F1GXqtnxclJRrE3ANS3LtHh-tWirM7miv8cMXn3Hlgsp1_Ac/pub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">lack of care for students</a>” in the context of pro-Palestinian activism on campus. A Columbia University senate vote on a similar resolution is expected to face Shafik for her response to the encampment protest, although it is expected to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/us/columbia-senate-nemat-shafik.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">fall short of censure</a>.
“To bring in police and make arrests so fast without even a chance at negotiation, surrounding the campus with armed police in riot gear, shutting off the campus from the community and erecting barriers, I think that has just created fear and intimidation and has actually produced the threat of violence that wasn’t actually happening at all in the encampment protest,” Hirsch said.
Professors have also been targeted by the police. Police <a href="https://sg.news.yahoo.com/emory-university-philosophy-chair-arrested-034839075.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">handcuffed Emory University philosophy department chair Noëlle McAfee</a> after just observing the demonstration and the police crackdown. Police threw Emory economics professor Caroline Fohlin <a href="https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/columbia-usc-university-protests-04-25-24/h_b017df501bd8ea7eccc3231b882ae1db" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">to the ground and arrested</a> her after she expressed concern about police violently arresting a student. The faculty senate at Emory University is holding a <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/faculty-senate-of-emory-college-calls-for-no-confidence-vote-for-president/JFKZ3NJSYNCCTEHAD34JJQ3UQU/#:~:text=In%20an%20overwhelming%20vote%20Friday,vote%20in%20President%20Gregory%20Fenves." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">no-confidence vote</a> concerning President Gregory Fenves.
Some university staff have resigned in protest of their university’s behavior. <a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/23/three-barnard-student-admissions-representatives-step-down-following-student-protesters-arrests-suspensions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Three head tour guides at Barnard College</a> resigned after Barnard suspended and evicted at least 53 student protestors. Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe, a professor at Hunter College, <a href="https://twitter.com/taoleighgoffe/status/1782032686887948780" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">resigned from an artist-in-residence position</a> in protest of what she described as Columbia’s “<a href="https://twitter.com/taoleighgoffe/status/1782032704134934897/photo/1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">totalitarian actions</a>,” praising the protestors in a note on Twitter.
“The students are giving a masterclass in what it means to apply to the core values,” <a href="https://twitter.com/taoleighgoffe/status/1782032704134934897/photo/1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Goffe wrote</a>. “Protect privacy. Protecting one another by masking outdoors during the ongoing pandemic. Mutual aid. Leading by example. And studying for finals!”
Despite the crackdowns, students have continued encampments planning robust programming from Palestinian history teach-ins to tutorials in dabke, or traditional Levantine folk dance. At Tufts, Harvard, and other schools, protestors have posted <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C6T3jWLOR8i/?img_index=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">daily schedules</a> full of events to attract students to the encampments and encourage solidarity building with Palestine. The programming is also designed to reorient attention to what students believe matters more than their protest activities—the killing of more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Students told Prism that the best support is turnout. With higher numbers of participants, it becomes more difficult for the university to crack down on encampments. Students also said they prefer financial donations go to direct relief in Gaza, but students could use contributions for extra supplies like tents and blankets. While student encampments that have not yet been repressed are settling in for the long haul, hopeful for the possibility of negotiations, students also are prepared.
“Divestment may not happen while I’m at Tufts, but I do think there is awareness spreading in the U.S. about the reality of the Zionist occupation of Palestine and people are starting to become willing to put themselves on the line in the U.S.,” said the first anonymous Tufts student protestor. “I think the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa took 12 years at Tufts and who knows how long it will take for this movement.”
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/college-leaders-want-obedience-student-protesters-want-disinvestment/">College Leaders Want Obedience. Student Protesters Want Disinvestment</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Have the World’s Coral Reefs Passed the Point of No Return?</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/have-the-worlds-coral-reefs-past-the-point-of-no-return/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=have-the-worlds-coral-reefs-past-the-point-of-no-return</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kate Yoder / Grist]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:25:27 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Science]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[coral bleaching]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[coral reef]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[extreme heat]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[global warming]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[A quarter of marine life depends on coral reefs. So do 1 billion people.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/have-the-worlds-coral-reefs-past-the-point-of-no-return/">Have the World’s Coral Reefs Passed the Point of No Return?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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The Scramble for Deep-Sea Minerals </a>


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This story was originally published by <a href="https://grist.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Grist</a>. Sign up for Grist’s <a href="https://go.grist.org/signup/weekly/partner?utm_campaign=republish-content&utm_medium=syndication&utm_source=partner" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">weekly newsletter here</a>.
About a year ago, <a href="https://grist.org/extreme-weather/a-record-warm-streak-in-the-oceans-has-scientists-worried/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">the seas got unusually hot</a>, even by our current, overheated standards. Twelve months of broken records later, the oceans are <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/oceans-record-hot-rcna143179" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">still more feverish</a> than climate models and normal fluctuations in global weather patterns can explain.
When the seas turn into bathwater, it threatens the survival of the planet’s coral reefs, home to <a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-03-biodiversity-coral-reefs-world-depth.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">a quarter of all marine life</a> and a source of sustenance for many people living along the world’s coasts. Mostly clustered in the shallow waters of the tropics, coral reefs have one of the lowest thresholds for rising temperatures of all the possible <a href="https://grist.org/climate-tipping-points-amazon-greenland-boreal-forest/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">“tipping points,”</a> the cascading feedback loops that set off large, abrupt changes in the ecosystems, weather patterns, and ice formations on Earth. Stable, existing systems wind up in new, completely different states: The lush Amazon rainforest, for example, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/magazine/amazon-tipping-point.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">might collapse into a grassy savanna</a>. Coral reefs might transform into seaweed-smothered graveyards.
Earlier this month, the world officially entered its fourth — and probably worst — <a href="https://grist.org/science/world-4th-coral-bleaching-event-official-climate/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">mass coral bleaching event</a> in history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Coral Reef Initiative. Hot water causes corals to expel the tiny algae that live in their tissues, which provide them with food (through photosynthesis) and also a rainbow of pigments. Separated from their algae, corals “bleach,” turning ghostly white, and start to starve.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Earlier this month, the world officially entered its fourth — and probably worst — <a href="https://grist.org/science/world-4th-coral-bleaching-event-official-climate/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">mass coral bleaching event</a> in history.</blockquote></figure>
The Florida Keys, where water temperatures veered into hot-tub territory last year, saw its <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/15/global-coral-bleaching-ocean-temperatures/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">most severe bleaching event</a> to date, with scientists “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-17/after-mass-coral-bleaching-florida-scientists-prepare-for-another-hot-summer?sref=wINQCNXe" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">evacuating” thousands of corals</a> to tanks on land. In Australia, the iconic Great Barrier Reef is also facing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/18/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-australia/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">its biggest test yet</a>. In the Indian Ocean, even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/climate/coral-reefs-bleaching.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">coral species known to be resistant to hot temperatures</a> are bleaching.
“This is one of the key living systems that we thought was closest to a tipping point,” said Tim Lenton, a professor of climate change and Earth systems at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. “This is sort of horrible confirmation that it is.” 
An estimated <a href="https://coast.noaa.gov/states/fast-facts/coral-reefs.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">1 billion people around the world</a> benefit from coral reefs, which provide food and income, while also protecting coastal property from storms and flooding. The benefits add up to about <a href="https://sciencepolicyreview.org/2020/08/coral-reefs-are-critical-for-our-food-supply-tourism-and-ocean-health-we-can-protect-them-from-climate-change/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">$11 trillion a year</a>. With some scientists worried that coral reefs may have <a href="https://grist.org/climate/report-climate-tipping-points-new-level-danger/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">already passed a point of no return</a>, researchers are turning to desperate measures to save them, from building artificial reefs to attempts to cool down reefs through geoengineering.
Last year, the warmer weather pattern known as El Niño took hold of the globe, <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/degrees-matter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">temporarily pushing global average temperatures to 1.5 degrees </a>Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming over pre-industrial times. That’s precisely the level at which scientists have predicted that between <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/SR15_Chapter_3_LR.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">70</a> and <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/02/coral-reefs-extinct-global-warming-new-study/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">99 percent</a> of tropical reefs would disappear. With a cooler La Niña phase on the way this summer, it’s possible that corals will make it through the current bout of hot ocean temperatures. But each week high temperatures persist, another 1 percent of corals are predicted to bleach. By the early 2030s, global temperatures are <a href="https://grist.org/climate/the-worlds-most-ambitious-climate-goal-is-essentially-out-of-reach/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">on track to pass the 1.5 C</a> threshold for good, compared to around 1.2 C today.
Bleaching doesn’t spell certain death, but the corals that survive struggle to reproduce and are more susceptible to diseases. Even when reefs do recover, there’s usually a loss of species, said Didier Zoccola, a scientist in Monaco who has studied corals for decades. “You have winners and losers, and the losers, you don’t know if they are important in the ecosystem,” he said.
For a coral reef, the tipping point would come when bleaching becomes an annual event, according to David Kline, the executive director of the Pacific Blue Foundation, a nonprofit working to preserve reefs in Fiji. Species would go extinct, leaving only the most heat-tolerant creatures, the “cockroaches” of corals that can survive tough conditions. <a href="https://theconversation.com/seaweed-is-taking-over-coral-reefs-but-theres-a-gardening-solution-sea-weeding-212460" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Seaweed would start taking over</a>. Parts of the world may be approaching this point, if not already past it: The Great Barrier Reef, for example, has gone through <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/08/coral-bleaching-great-barrier-reef-australia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">five mass bleaching events in the last eight years</a>, leaving little chance for recovery. Florida has already lost more than <a href="https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/news/dec19/noaa-launches-mission-iconic-reefs-to-save-florida-keys-coral-reefs.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">90 percent</a> of its coral reefs.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>An estimated <a href="https://coast.noaa.gov/states/fast-facts/coral-reefs.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">1 billion people around the world</a> benefit from coral reefs, which provide food and income, while also protecting coastal property from storms and flooding.</blockquote></figure>
“I think most scientists, myself included, would be very uncomfortable saying we’ve reached a tipping point,” said Deborah Brosnan, a longtime coral scientist who founded the reef restoration project OceanShot. “But in reality, are we very close to a tipping point? I believe we are, just judging by the scale of the bleaching that we’re seeing.”
Reefs around the world have already <a href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/september/over-half-of-coral-reef-cover-lost-since-1950.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">declined by half since the 1950s</a> because of climate change, overfishing, and pollution. Some scientists argue that the world may have already passed the point of no return for corals long ago, <a href="https://www.globalcoral.org/we-have-already-exceeded-the-upper-temperature-limit-for-coral-reef-ecosystems-which-are-dying-at-todays-co2-levels/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">as far back as the 1980s</a>, yet there’s no consensus. “If we really want to have healthy, diverse coral reefs in the future, we need to do something about our greenhouse gas emissions, like, right now,” Kline said.
Rising temperatures might have already set off other notable tipping points, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/17/greenland-ice-sheet-on-brink-of-major-tipping-point-says-study" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet</a> and the thawing of the northern permafrost, which threatens to release vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Coral tipping points would unfold on a regional level, with giant blobs of hot ocean water wrecking reefs, what Lenton characterizes as a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44609-w" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">“clustered” tipping point</a>.
Coral reefs are so vulnerable, in part, because their existence is fragile in the first palace. Reefs are “a verdant explosion of life in a nutrient desert,” Lenton said, only able to exist because of “really strong reinforcing feedback loops within the system.” An intricate web of corals, algae, sponges, and microbes <a href="https://fiorelabsymbiosis.org/nutrient-cycling-on-coral-reefs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">move essential nutrients like nitrogen</a> around, leading to a profusion of life. “It’s not surprising that if you push it too hard, or knock certain things out, you can tip it into a different ‘no coral’ state, or maybe several different states.”
Losing corals could lead to consequences you wouldn’t expect. For example, you can thank corals for the sand on many beaches — they help create it (coral <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sand.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">skeletons turn into sand</a>) and protect beaches from erosion, with the structure of the reef calming waves before they reach shore. Reefs contribute to <a href="https://coral.org/en/coral-reefs-101/why-care-about-reefs/medicine/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">medical breakthroughs</a> — organisms found in them produce compounds used to treat cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“It’s not surprising that if you push it too hard, or knock certain things out, you can tip it into a different ‘no coral’ state, or maybe several different states.”</blockquote></figure>
Researchers are racing to salvage what’s left of corals and the ecosystems they support. A restoration project in the Caribbean that Brosnan founded, called OceanShot, is <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coral-reefs-restoration-climate-change-ocean-shot-project-caribbean/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">building artificial reefs</a> where natural ones have collapsed. The tiered structures provide habitat for creatures that live in the reefs, both the larger species that live on top and the smaller ones that like to hide in crevices lower down. The installations have had good results, with dozens of fish species moving in, alongside invertebrates like lobsters. Even finicky black urchins transplanted on the reef decided to stay. Brosnan’s team is also hoping to deploy them in places where beaches are being lost, since the artificial reefs can also help prevent sand from washing away.
Some preservation attempts are pretty out there. Scientists with the <a href="https://nationalzoo.si.edu/center-for-species-survival/coral-reproduction-and-cryopreservation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute</a> in Washington, D.C., for example, are working on deep-freezing coral sperm and larvae through <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-climate-change-and-pollution-imperil-coral-reefs-scientists-are-deep-freezing-corals-to-repopulate-future-oceans-224480" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">“cryopreservation,”</a> Futurama-style, hoping that they can repopulate oceans of the future. In the Great Barrier Reef, researchers have experimented with <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/coral-reef-cloud-brightnening-australia/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">brightening clouds with sea salt</a>, a form of geoengineering, to try to protect corals from the hot sun.
Elsewhere, laboratories are breeding corals to withstand heat and ocean acidification. Zoccola works on one such project in Monaco, where scientists are using <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000823" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">“assisted evolution”</a> to speed up nature’s process, since corals can’t adapt fast enough in the wild. He calls it a “Noah’s Ark” for corals, hoping that species can live in the lab until, one day, they’re ready to return to the ocean.<a href="https://grist.org/science/points-of-no-return/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"></a>
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/have-the-worlds-coral-reefs-past-the-point-of-no-return/">Have the World’s Coral Reefs Passed the Point of No Return?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Let’s Not Nuclearize the Heavens</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/lets-not-nuclearize-the-heavens/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=lets-not-nuclearize-the-heavens</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Strausbaugh]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:24:00 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[TD Column]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[Russia’s emergent nuclear anti-satellite program highlights the dangers of viewing outer space as a battleground.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/lets-not-nuclearize-the-heavens/">Let’s Not Nuclearize the Heavens</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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Last August, the Russians sent a probe to the moon, something they had not attempted since 1976. It crashed. “This is another indicator of how the Soviet/Russian space program has deteriorated over the years,” Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut, told Radio Free Europe. “The fact that they cannot mount a mission to the moon like they did in 1976 speaks volumes about the state of their aerospace industry today.” 
Now the White House has warned that the Russians may be planning to put a nuclear anti-satellite weapon into space as soon as this year. This type of weapon, CNN reported, could “destroy satellites by creating a massive energy wave when detonated, potentially, crippling a vast swath of the commercial and government satellites that the world below depends on to talk on cell phones, pay bills and surf the internet.” 
Putting a nuclear device on top of a rocket is a marriage of two very high-risk technologies. Given the Russian space program’s record of “<a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-lunar-landing-crash-space-program-problems/32557717.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">embarrassments, failures, and scandals</a>,” not to mention their history of carelessness with radioactive materials, maybe we should be as worried that they’ll fail as that they’ll succeed.
It’s not unknown, for instance, for a rocket to blow up on the launchpad. Such a catastrophe might not detonate the nuclear device, but it could damage it, spreading radiation within a few miles of the site. Or the rocket might explode — experience a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” in rocketeer jargon — as it ascended, dropping its damaged, radioactive payload somewhere else. One wouldn’t want to be at that spot, or anywhere nearby. There’s no knowing the yield of the hypothetical weapon. In the 1960s, the Soviets conducted high-altitude explosions of small nuclear devices with yields of three kilotons. As a benchmark, that’s only about a fifth the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. It’s still the equivalent of 3,000 tons of dynamite, plus localized radiation within a few miles’ radius. Within that area, a mortality rate of 50% would be expected. What if that were a densely populated city like New York or Tokyo or, closer to home, Moscow?
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>“The fact that they cannot mount a mission to the moon like they did in 1976 speaks volumes about the state of their aerospace industry today.”</blockquote></figure>
Let’s review the history. The Soviet space program scored stunning early successes in the space race with the Americans. They orbited Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; sent the first probe to the Moon in 1959; and orbited Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, in 1961. These conquests look all the more remarkable now that we know how very ramshackle the program was. While trumpeting their undeniable victories, the Soviets hid their many failures. Poorly funded, squabbling for supplies and constantly hurried by ignorant political figures, Soviet scientists and engineers jerry-rigged rockets and space vehicles that were extremely hazardous and sometimes deadly. It was only after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that we began to learn what a Potemkin space program it really was.
In Sputnik II, they put the dog Laika in orbit as a propaganda coup, knowing full well she would die up there. Her corpse circled the planet for five months before being cremated on reentry. Gagarin barely survived a fiery, tumbling reentry himself. Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was not so lucky. In 1967 his Soyuz capsule, rushed into service and plagued with problems, smashed into the ground and exploded, leaving him a charred lump unrecognizable as human. Three other cosmonauts died of asphyxiation when all the oxygen leaked from their capsule in 1971. They couldn’t fit into the capsule wearing life-saving spacesuits and helmets, so they were squeezed in wearing only wool outfits resembling leisure suits. And the Soviets still hold the record for the most deadly rocket accident ever, a monstrous launchpad explosion that killed as many as 165 people. There are numerous such examples of dangerous or deadly failures, most of which the Soviet government covered up at the time.
Things didn’t improve after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The cash-strapped Russian Federation that inherited the space program allowed already shoddy equipment and facilities to deteriorate further into dilapidation. Western visitors to the Russian space station Mir in the later 1990s were appalled by its dangerous decrepitude. 
That tradition has continued. In 2019, The New York Times reported that a nuclear-powered cruise missile the Russians were testing exploded, killing at least seven workers at the test site and spreading radioactive material detected 25 miles away. Previous Russian tests of anti-satellite weaponry have not gone well either. In 2021, their military used a missile to destroy one of their own Soviet-era satellites in orbit. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/15/science/russia-anti-satellite-missile-test-debris.html?searchResultPosition=3" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">The resulting debris cloud forced the crew of seven aboard the ISS to shelter in docked spacecraft.</a> A NASA spokesperson deplored the test as “reckless and dangerous.” French defense minister Florence Parly colorfully condemned the Russians as “space vandals.”
Meanwhile, the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986 is only the most familiar in a dismally long history of Russian carelessness with nuclear materials. In the Soviet years they test-fired nuclear weapons on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic an astounding 130 times. The most-nuked region on the planet, however, is a zone of Kazakhstan called by the appropriately sci-fi name the Semipalatinsk Polygon. From the very first Soviet atom bomb test in 1949 through to 1989, more than 450 nuclear devices were detonated there. Some 1.5 million people were exposed to the radiation, then monitored like lab rats to clock the effects. Related illnesses and abnormalities including genetic mutations persist to this day.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>The cash-strapped Russian Federation that inherited the space program allowed already shoddy equipment and facilities to deteriorate further into dilapidation.</blockquote></figure>
Chernobyl has not been the only nuclear plant they have mishandled. One of the largest and dirtiest, the Mayak plutonium facility in the Chelyabinsk region, was kept secret during the Soviet era. It has experienced more than one radiation-spewing incident, ranking not far behind the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters in impact, and dumped so much radioactive material in a local river and lake that fishing the river became a deadly pastime and the lake had to be filled in with concrete. As recently as 2017, the Mayak facility was believed to be “<a href="about:blank" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">the source of a radioactive cloud that hovered over Europe.</a>”
The Soviet Russians were also notorious for dumping radioactive waste in the ocean, making the Arctic’s  Kara Sea “the world’s largest known nuclear dump,”” and sinking spent reactors near the coast of Japan. <a href="https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/radioactive-waste-and-spent-nuclear-fuel/2011-06-comment-radioactive-dump-in-moscow-a-ten-year-history-of-reckless-procrastination#:~:text=A%20part%20of%20the%20dump,the%20mid%2D20th%20century" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">They even ringed their own capital city Moscow, site of much nuclear research at the time, with radioactive dump sites that remain public hazards</a>. Small wonder all of Europe has been in a state of alarm since 2022, when invading Russian troops seized the huge Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
The space race was an arms race from the start. The rockets that powered the nominally peaceful explorations of cosmonauts and astronauts were developed to carry nuclear warheads. In the 1960s, the U.S. and Soviet Union conducted high-altitude nuclear detonations the results of which were so alarmingly unpredictable that both sides agreed to an Outer Space Treaty in 1967, banning the use of nukes in space. It is still in effect, and all other spacefaring nations are signatories.
Although Putin denies that Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satellite weapon, the U.S. and Japan have used the story to sponsor<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/19/us-japan-nuclear-weapons-ban-space-un-war" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"> a U.N. security council resolution</a> for renewed commitment to banning nuclear weapons in space. Russia has denounced the move as “yet another propaganda stunt by Washington.”
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/lets-not-nuclearize-the-heavens/">Let’s Not Nuclearize the Heavens</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>Two Vital Questions for the ‘Pod Save’ Crowd</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/two-vital-questions-for-the-pod-save-crowd/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=two-vital-questions-for-the-pod-save-crowd</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Freddie deBoer]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:23:33 +0000</pubDate>
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<description><![CDATA[Democrats are overdue to take a tough look at their theory of politics.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/two-vital-questions-for-the-pod-save-crowd/">Two Vital Questions for the ‘Pod Save’ Crowd</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<content:encoded><![CDATA[
The following story is co-published with <a href="https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/perhaps-liking-or-not-liking-taylor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Freddie deBoer’s Substack</a>.
The podcast Pod Save America, a name which makes me want to commit arson, is a useful metonym for a brand of politics that fails and fails and fails and yet never finds itself far from power. It’s the approach of a type of scolding liberal realist who delights in ladling out condescension for the rest of us. The podcast and its associated media empire are led by former Obama administration apparatchiks, and the organization carries Barack Obama’s torch in the 2020s – it’s stentorian, bloodless, endlessly superior, averse to unbridled political passion, addicted to triangulation, and unrelentingly attached to the idea that there is a Right Way to do politics, which is supposed to result in both substantive and political success. (Recent history notwithstanding.) It’s appropriate that the abbreviation for the podcast would be PSA, as they embody a kind of patronizing liberal messaging that treats everyone else as a child who needs to be patiently informed about How Things Work, and always, always told to slow down in the pursuit of progress.
They embrace a kind of vague liberal social politics that catches on to the latest thing when it is safe to do so, kind of like how their former boss <a href="https://apnews.com/united-states-government-general-news-63f51fcd69bb4ce18ed6b7306d1b3c89" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">waited until it was absolutely safe</a> before supporting gay marriage. They’re born organization kids, happiest and most secure within the structures of institutions and traditions that dramatically narrow the boundaries of the possible, freeing them from the moral duty to choose what’s right over what’s politically expedient. They hate Trump, naturally, seemingly unable to understand that the deracinated technocracy and adult-in-the-room incrementalism of the Obama administration directly contributed to Trump’s victory. (With a Democratic party addicted to driving the car of state in the exact middle of the road and a policy agenda that could not possibly fix the country’s anemic post-financial crisis economy, the conditions were perfect for a populist right demagogue like Trump to rise.) They’re firmly in favor of progress, provided that progress is defined in vague and unthreatening terms. And I’m sure they’re all good guys, just like most middle aged dads who donate to the NOW and are active in the PTA. The trouble is that, as Obama showed time and again, being a good guy is not enough.
I have two questions for them.
<ol>
<li>If leftists voting third party amounts to support for Trump on consequentialist grounds, doesn’t voting and advocating for Hillary Clinton also amount to support for Trump on the exact same grounds?</li>
</ol>
I made this point recently regarding Jon Chait and got a surprising amount of pushback. Surprising, that is, because the logic is unassailable. A leftist voter decides to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary in 2016; after Bernie’s defeat, he decides to vote for Jill Stein. This supposedly subtracts a vote from Hillary. I have never understood this logic – a leftist is not a liberal nor necessarily a Democrat, and they no more owe the Democratic candidate a vote than a moderate conservative who also chooses to stay at home. But let’s accept this version of consequentialism in voting: if this is our logic, then people who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary necessarily supported Trump. Because she lost! Hillary lost the election! And no matter what the pink pussy hat brigade still says 8 years later, there is no individual human being more responsible for Trump’s victory than Hillary. She lost! It was her campaign, and she lost! She ignored the Rust Belt and assumed she had key states in the bag, followed Chuck Schumer’s <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chuck-schumer-democrats-will-lose-blue-collar-whites-gain-suburbs/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">laughable advice</a>, hired Robby Mook’s useless ass, and ran a campaign based on celebrity glitz in an era of rampant inequality. If you voted for Hillary, you backed the wrong horse, and by any consequentialist logic you bear more responsibility than a non-voter. And there were many more Hillary primary voters than these supposed hordes of leftists who refused to vote for her in the general.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Establishment Democrats have tended to hate this type of messaging because it suggests that they have to actually do something economically.</blockquote></figure>
For the Pod Save America boys, it seems that it’s always November 2000 and that every left challenger to machine Democrat dominance is a Florida lefty who voted for Ralph Nader. What’s always left out of the 2000 postmortems is that while only 24,000 registered Florida Democrats voted for Nader, <a href="https://reason.com/2016/08/03/ralph-nader-did-not-hand-2000-election/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">more than 300,000</a> voted for Bush! Gore was such a terrible candidate that a number of Florida Democrats equal to the population of Cincinnati voted for the other team directly. And of course an affirmative vote for Bush is mathematically twice as consequential than a vote cast for Nader. Besides, <a href="http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/lewis/pdf/greenreform9.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">this 2006 study</a> finds that the core assumption of the “blame Nader” crowd is wrong: Nader’s support was not made up of voters who would have voted for Gore if Nader hadn’t run. A large chunk of Nader’s Florida support came from voters who would have stayed at home absent Nader’s candidacy. You can complain that they’re stupid for that, but asking why a committed anti-Democratic leftist didn’t vote for Gore demonstrates fallacious thinking. What Al Gore could have done is to run a campaign worth voting for. As Jim Hightower <a href="https://www.salon.com/2000/11/28/hightower/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pointed out</a> at the time of the election, in his 1992 campaign against George HW Bush, 62% of voters who made less than $50,000 a year voted for Bill Clinton. When Gore ran, he captured only 43% of that demographic. And that’s your election, right there, that’s an actual structural cause of Gore’s defeat – his inability to rally support from poorer voters.
Hightower chalked this erosion up to “four more years of income stagnation and decline for these families under the regime of the Clinton-Gore ‘New Democrats,’” which sounds right to me. Establishment Democrats have tended to hate this type of messaging because it suggests that they have to actually do something economically, which would entail raising taxes and in so doing risk alienating the wealthy donors who have captured the party. The pleasant surprise of the Biden administration has been its willingness to pursue aggressive initiatives that actually address the immense inequality and lower-income stagnation that have been the defining economic story of my lifetime. <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">It’s paying dividends</a>. That kind of domestic-policy aggression was exactly what Barack Obama refused to attempt. He was too busy running for the title of “Most Reasonable President Ever,” which of course was folly while Congressional Republicans burned him in effigy and relentlessly pulled the country right. Being reasonable never got Obama anywhere.
Of course, the most obvious answer for why Obama liberals have been so enamored of the blame Nader/Bernie/Stein voters attitude is that they are substantively opposed to the left-wing economic program such voters support. Second question!
<ol start="2">
<li>If you pledge to “vote blue no matter who,” promising Democrats your vote no matter who they nominate, what leverage will you ever have over the party? Once you give away your vote for nothing, how do you get any of what you want?</li>
</ol>
I have been searching for an answer to this question my entire adult life. Here’s how it’s supposed to work. You, as a voter, want things. These are based on self-interest, on moral principle, and assorted other impulses. Representative democracy is supposed to give you an opportunity to pursue such things; you just might not have the votes to get them. But your vote is your voice and, crucially, your leverage. If a candidate or party doesn’t represent your values, won’t pledge to give you what you want, then you withhold your vote from them. They can then decide if your vote and the votes of people who feel the same way as you do are worth pursuing by embracing your preferences. If the number of people who feel the same way as you grows large enough, eventually it becomes very politically expensive to ignore you. Your individual vote is worth very little. But if enough of you feel the same way – well, you can do things like vote en masse for George W. Bush despite your Democratic registration and hand him the presidency. Or you might eventually get the Democrats to implement a policy agenda that broadens their coalition and enables a 50-state strategy instead of piecing together coalitions of disparate groups that you hope turn out in sufficient numbers.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Your vote is your voice and, crucially, your leverage.</blockquote></figure>
Instead, people like me are constantly told to vote blue no matter who, to support Democrats in any election regardless of what those individual Democrats stand for. To do otherwise, supposedly, is to support the Republicans, and because Trump is a particularly inflammatory figure, they emphasize that you’re supporting Trump specifically. (Even if the race in question is for, like, comptroller of Cleveland.) I lived a particularly aggressive version of this, as a young man, as Joe Lieberman was my senator. Liberman represented the repudiation of almost everything I believed in, but the pressure from Connecticut Dems to support him was overwhelming. But he was a neoconservative in all but name and epitomized the cautious, establishmentarian version of Democratic politics that has dominated in my lifetime. So I couldn’t vote for him. Well, they always told us to use the primary process, so we did, and we defeated Joe Lieberman! And for our trouble most of the “blue no matter who” types in Connecticut voted against the Democratic candidate and reelected Lieberman, but not before calling us traitors and anti-Semites. Womp womp!
So here’s the question: once you’ve pledged your vote to a party in perpetuity without any qualifications and with zero expectation of getting anything in return… how do you make that party do what you want? You’ve already promised to give them the only thing they care about. Your vote’s already committed, so why on earth should they move in the direction of your values the slightest bit? It’s like a wife promising to never leave her husband no matter how badly he treats her; if the commitment is real, there’s no reason for him to change his behavior. At all. Am I supposed to believe that the Democratic party – the Bill Clinton, Tom Daschle, Zell Miller Democratic party – is going to give me what I want out of some sense of obligation, when I’ve made it clear I’ll support them no matter what they do, forever? That does not make sense. People love to say that there’s no other choice than a worse choice. But what if the Democrats and Republicans just keep getting worse in tandem? What if the Democrats remain one inch better than the Republicans, forever? How does actual progress happen? How do you get an actually-good option, instead of just “better than the Republicans,” which is the lowest of low bars? I have no idea. I don’t think the people who insist on “vote blue no matter who” have any idea, either.
Of course, as with the idea that third party voters are really votes for Republicans while votes for Democrats who predictably fail are not, this is really about substance, not process. “Vote blue no matter who” people are substantively opposed to the agenda of the left wing. Which is fine, go ahead and advocate for what you advocate. But the idea that leftists should keep voting Democratic in the face of decades of bad Democrat policies, supposedly for their own good, is just a transparent trick. It’s a way to dramatically narrow the in-coalition debate while pretending that you’re just being pragmatic. “You have to support this candidate no matter what, by the way the fact that the candidate agrees with me on everything is mere coincidence.” Try harder.
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>The idea that leftists should keep voting Democratic in the face of decades of bad Democrat policies, supposedly for their own good, is just a transparent trick.</blockquote></figure>
I’m prepared for these questions to have answers that I don’t like. They do however strike me as very sensible questions, and yet Democrats often react to them with anger. And if we’re going to be in the business of condescending to each other, allow me to point out that for all of the post-2016 election recriminations the Democratic party has still not done essential work in figuring out what went wrong, which of its fundamental assumptions about politics had led it astray, and whether it really benefits them to treat left-wing voters with such unbridled aggression. I don’t listen to a lot of Pod Saved America, but I don’t think those guys have figured it out either. Hillary Clinton was a uniquely bad candidate who earned the nomination thanks to a massive amount of insider advantage, which she received because it was “her turn.” We can now agree that that was bad, right? How do you stop that from happening again? Can we stop caring about “turns”? Looking forward, Trump is a unique threat, but also uniquely vulnerable thanks to his personal instability, the incompetence of the people he surrounds himself with, and his lack of policy coherence. What happens when the Democrats have to again run against candidates who enjoy at least a minimal amount of stability, competence, and a coherent policy agenda? It’s a frightening question.
People keep telling me that the Democrats have actually moved left; for my part, I’ve been saying for awhile now that Biden has cleared the extremely low bar of being the best president of my lifetime. For any of this progress to mean anything, the party has to truly leave its triangulating, center-right, Clintonite past behind it. And to do that it has to ask itself uncomfortable questions.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/two-vital-questions-for-the-pod-save-crowd/">Two Vital Questions for the ‘Pod Save’ Crowd</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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<title>The Supreme Court Is Poised to Rescue Donald Trump</title>
<link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-supreme-court-is-poised-to-rescue-donald-trump/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-supreme-court-is-poised-to-rescue-donald-trump</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bill Blum]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2024 16:21:53 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[TD Column]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[TD Original]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[donald trump]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[election interference]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jack smith]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[presidential immunity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[samuel alito]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=295946</guid>
<description><![CDATA[If Trump is granted presidential immunity in Jack Smith’s election subversion case, say goodbye to the rule of law.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-supreme-court-is-poised-to-rescue-donald-trump/">The Supreme Court Is Poised to Rescue Donald Trump</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Should Donald Trump be accorded immunity from criminal prosecution for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election? If you think the question is a no-brainer for the nine elite lawyers who comprise the Supreme Court, I have bad tidings. The court that <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">annulled</a> <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Roe v. Wade</a>, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">gutted the Voting Rights Act</a> and reinterpreted the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2007/07-290" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Second</a> <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Amendment</a> to transform the U.S. into a legalized shooting gallery is unlikely to save our withering democracy from Trump or future presidents who think they are above the law.
Last Thursday, the court heard oral arguments in the <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/trump-v-united-states-3/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">election-subversion case</a> brought against Trump by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith. Although it is difficult to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases from the content and tone of oral arguments, it is safe to say that the day went poorly for Smith. While none of the justices seemed prepared to give Trump the absolute immunity he is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-awaiting-ruling-says-presidents-must-complete-total-immunity-rcna134483" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">demanding</a>, the panel’s six Republican appointees signaled repeatedly, during the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/23-939_l5gm.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">marathon 160-minute hearing</a>, that they will offer him a limited but substantial degree of protection. This will effectively delay his subversion trial until after the next election, if not derail the trial altogether.
It was clear the fix was in when Justice Clarence Thomas took his usual seat on the bench next to Chief Justice John Roberts. By any fair standard of judicial integrity, Thomas should have recused himself in light of his insurrectionist wife Ginni’s outspoken and zealous support of Trump’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/31/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-trump-2024-eligibility" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">big lie</a>” about the 2020 election. But Thomas <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/unequal-justice-clarence-thomas-isnt-going-anywhere/">has no integrity</a> and knows no shame.
As the court’s most senior associate justice, Thomas led off the hearing with a softball question to Trump’s lead attorney, former <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._John_Sauer" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Missouri Solicitor General D. John Sauer</a>, about the legal source of the immunity claim. 
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Although it is difficult to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases from the content and tone of oral arguments, it is safe to say that the day went poorly for Smith.</blockquote></figure>
“The source of the immunity,” Sauer replied, is “rooted” in the Constitution, “principally…in the Executive Vesting Clause of Article II, Section 1.” The clause, he said, not only vests the president with the powers explicitly listed in Article II [such as the authority to appoint ambassadors], but also encompasses “all powers that were originally understood to be included” within the president’s purview. 
There is, of course, nothing in Article II or any other section of the Constitution that confers immunity from criminal prosecution on sitting or former presidents who have broken the law. <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/founding-era-history-doesnt-support-trumps-immunity-claim" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">As many constitutional scholars have noted</a>, Trump’s immunity claim finds no support in “originalism” as a theory of constitutional interpretation. The actual debates of the founding era were focused on setting limits to the powers of the presidency. The founding generation had many faults, but to its credit, it did not intend to swap a British king for an American monarch.
No matter. Thomas permitted Sauer to lay out his theory and allowed his bludgeoning of history to pass. Accelerating into full Trump-mode, Sauer declared that under the doctrine of separation of powers, presidents must be given immunity from judicial scrutiny of their “official acts.” Otherwise, he argued:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
If a president can be charged, put on trial and imprisoned for his most controversial decisions as soon as he leaves office, that looming threat will distort the president’s decision-making precisely when bold and fearless action is most needed. Every current president will face de facto blackmail and extortion by his political rivals while he is still in office.
</blockquote>
The distinction between a president’s official and personal acts was addressed by the Supreme Court in <a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep457/usrep457731/usrep457731.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Nixon v. Fitzgerald</a>, a 1982 decision involving a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by a federal contractor against disgraced former president Richard Nixon. Fitzgerald held that presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity” in civil cases seeking damages arising from their official acts and acts “within the outer perimeter” of their official duties. Sauer urged the court to import the Fitzgerald standard to criminal law.
Sauer’s proposal set off alarm bells among the court’s three Democratic appointees. 
“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?,” asked Justice Elena Kagan. 
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>Sauer’s proposal set off alarm bells among the court’s three Democratic appointees.</blockquote></figure>
“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor inquired. 
Both hypotheticals, Sauer answered, could be deemed official acts warranting immunity, depending on the surrounding circumstances. 
Summing up the implications of Sauer’s position, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson predicted that the president could become the “most powerful person in the world and [have] no potential penalty for committing crimes. I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is for turning the Oval Office into…the seat of criminal activity in this country.” 
Following Sauer at the lectern on behalf of the government, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dreeben" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Michael Dreeben</a>, a former deputy solicitor general and veteran Supreme Court litigator, sounded dismayed. “There is no immunity that is in the Constitution,” he reminded the justices, “unless this Court creates it today.”
That, it seems, is precisely the goal of the court’s reactionary majority. 
“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, told Dreeben. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second high-court appointee, added approvingly, “This case has huge implications for the presidency, for the future of the presidency, for the future of the country.” 
None displayed more contempt for Special Counsel Smith than Justice Samuel Alito, author of the Dobbs decision that jettisoned Roe. The real danger facing the country, Alito asserted, comes not from insurrectionist presidents but from overzealous deep-state prosecutors seeking to harm their political opponents, leading “us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy…”
Taken aback by the Orwellian nature of Alito’s reasoning, Dreeben could only respond, “I think it’s exactly the opposite, Justice Alito.”
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote>None displayed more contempt for Special Counsel Smith than Justice Samuel Alito, author of the Dobbs decision that jettisoned Roe.</blockquote></figure>
The thinnest of silver linings appeared in a colloquy between Dreeben and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s third appointee, who suggested the case could be remanded to District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to segregate the official acts alleged in the indictment lodged against Trump from the personal acts Trump undertook during his reelection campaign. This would allow the trial to proceed for personal conduct only.
But even assuming that such segregation is technically possible, and that Chief Justice Roberts would provide a decisive fifth vote in favor of Barrett’s solution, the trial would inevitably be delayed until after the next election. And that would suit Trump just fine. 
Delay is central to the Trump game plan. If he wins in November, he will be able to dismiss the federal prosecutions against him and leverage the power of the presidency to halt any remaining state litigation in New York and Georgia for the duration of his second term. All he needs is a little help from his friends.
The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-supreme-court-is-poised-to-rescue-donald-trump/">The Supreme Court Is Poised to Rescue Donald Trump</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.
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