As Trump Continues Killing Spree, Pressley Leads Call for Biden to Immediately Abolish Death Penalty

"Your historic election with record turnout represents a national mandate to make meaningful progress in reforming our unjust and inhumane criminal legal system," wrote the lawmakers to Biden.

by

Julia Conley, staff writer

Published on

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

by

Common Dreams

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) led a call by congressional Democrats for President-elect Joe Biden to immediately end the federal death penalty when he takes office in January. (Photo: Olivier Douliery/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

More than 40 Democratic lawmakers joined Rep. Ayanna Pressley late Tuesday in calling on President-elect Joe Biden to immediately abolish the federal death penalty upon taking office next month, bringing an end to a period of six months in which President Donald Trump has overseen more federal executions of people "than the total number executed over the previous six decades."

Biden is opposed to capital punishment and has pledged to abolish its use at the federal level. In Pressley's letter, the lawmaker emphasizes that Biden must make the policy change a top priority after January 20, when he will take office.

""The sheer number of executions set the Trump administration apart as an outlier in the use of capital punishment, compared both to the historical practices of American presidencies and the contemporary practices of the states in the Union.
—Death Penalty Information Center

"With a stroke of your pen, you can stop all federal executions, prohibit United States Attorneys from seeking the death penalty, dismantle death row at [Federal Correctional Complex] Terre Haute, and call for the resentencing of people who are currently sentenced to death," Pressley wrote. 

The letter was signed by lawmakers including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.). Recently elected Reps.-elect Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) also signed the document.

The president is in the midst of what The Guardian called an "execution spree," having killed three people—Orlando Hall, Brandon Bernard, and Alfred Bourgeois—since losing the presidential election on November 3. Before Biden takes office, Trump is planning to put to death inmates Lisa Montgomery, Corey Johnson, and Dustin Higgs. 

Trump is the first president to carry out the death penalty during a lame-duck session since 1889, when President Grover Cleveland executed a Native American named Richard Smith. 

Pressley sent the letter to Biden as the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) released a year-end report showing that Trump has killed more people in 2020 than all states that have carried out executions, combined—an unprecedented use of the death penalty by the federal government. 

Seven state executions were carried out in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas this year, while the president has killed 10 people since July, when he resumed the use of the federal death penalty after 17 years. 

"The sheer number of executions set the Trump administration apart as an outlier in the use of capital punishment, compared both to the historical practices of American presidencies and the contemporary practices of the states in the Union," the DPIC wrote. "In addition, the details of the cases and the highly politicized manner in which they were carried out revealed significant problems in the application of the federal death penalty."

The people Trump has put to death and plans to execute before his term is over—five Black men and one white woman—have been the subject of calls by global human rights advocates, prosecutors, and former jurors who have pleaded with the administration for clemency. 

Montgomery is the survivor of lifelong sexual and physical abuse and was experiencing psychosis, according to her lawyers, when she commited a murder in 2004. Bernard was 18 when he was involved in a kidnapping and killing of a couple in Texas, did not fire the gun that killed the victims, and has shown remorse for his crime. Bourgeois's lawyers argue that he has a severe intellectual disability.  

"Capital punishment is unjust, racist, and defective," Rep. Connolly said in a press release on Tuesday. "The United States stands alone among its peers in executing its own citizens, a barbaric punishment that denies the dignity and humanity of all people and is disproportionately applied to people who are Black, Latinx, and poor. For example, Black people make up less than 13% of the nation's population while accounting for more than 42% of those on death row." 

Trump's executions have sparked outcry on social media in recent weeks.

Study of 50 Years of Tax Cuts For Rich Confirms 'Trickle Down' Theory Is an Absolute Sham

"Major tax cuts for the rich since the 1980s have increased income inequality, with all the problems that brings, without any offsetting gains in economic performance."

by

Kenny Stancil, staff writer

 Published on

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

by

Common Dreams

A yacht belonging to British billionaire Joe Lewis, pictured in Butler's Wharf on July 3, 2018 in London. (Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

Neoliberal gospel says that cutting taxes on the wealthy will eventually benefit everyone by boosting economic growth and reducing unemployment, but a new analysis of fiscal policies in 18 countries over the last 50 years reveals that progressive critics of "trickle down" theory have been right all along: supply-side economics fuels inequality, and the real beneficiaries of the right-wing approach to taxation are the super-rich.

"Cutting taxes on the rich increases top income shares, but has little effect on economic performance."
—David Hope and Julian Limberg

The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich (pdf), a working paper published this month by the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics and written by LSE's David Hope and Julian Limberg of King's College London, examines data from nearly 20 OECD countries, including the U.K. and the U.S., and finds that the past five decades have been characterized by "falling taxes on the rich in the advanced economies," with "major tax cuts... particularly clustered in the late 1980s."

But, according to Hope and Limberg, the vast majority of the populations in those countries have little to show for it, as the benefits of slashing taxes on the wealthy are concentrated among a handful of super-rich individuals—not widely shared across society in the form of improved job creation or prosperity, as "trickle down" theorists alleged would happen.

"Our research shows that the economic case for keeping taxes on the rich low is weak," Hope said Wednesday. "Major tax cuts for the rich since the 1980s have increased income inequality, with all the problems that brings, without any offsetting gains in economic performance."

In their study, the pair of political economists note that "economic performance, as measured by real GDP per capita and the unemployment rate, is not significantly affected by major tax cuts for the rich." However, they add, "major tax cuts for the rich increase the top 1% share of pre-tax national income in the years following the reform" by a magnitude of nearly 1%.

The researchers continue:

Our findings on the effects of growth and unemployment provide evidence against supply-side theories that suggest lower taxes on the rich will induce labour supply responses from high-income individuals (more hours of work, more effort etc.) that boost economic activity. They are, in fact, more in line with recent empirical research showing that income tax holidays and windfall gains do not lead individuals to significantly alter the amount they work.

Our results have important implications for current debates around the economic consequences of taxing the rich, as they provide causal evidence that supports the growing pool of evidence from correlational studies that cutting taxes on the rich increases top income shares, but has little effect on economic performance.

Limberg is hopeful that the research could bolster the case for increasing taxes on the wealthy to fund a just recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing economic fallout.

"Our results," he said Wednesday, "might be welcome news for governments as they seek to repair the public finances after the Covid-19 crisis, as they imply that they should not be unduly concerned about the economic consequences of higher taxes on the rich."

Progressives have argued that America's disastrous handling of the ongoing catastrophe is attributable to several decades of "free-market" ideology and associated policies that exacerbated vulnerabilities and undermined the government's capacity to respond effectively.

According to social justice advocates, taxing billionaires' surging wealth—akin to the "Millionaire's Tax" passed earlier this month in Argentina—could contribute to reversing the trend of intensifying inequality plaguing the nation.

Ocasio-Cortez Warns Biden That War and Wall Street Appointees Are a 'Huge Reason We Got Trump'

The congresswoman attributed the rise of Trump partly to "extreme disdain for this moneyed political establishment that rules Washington."

by

Brett Wilkins, staff writer

Published on

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

 by

Common Dreams

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks during a news conference outside of the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, November 19, 2020. (Photo: Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a stern warning for President-elect Joe Biden about filling his Cabinet with the types of war and Wall Street candidates that have come to characterize Democratic administrations over the past three decades. 

"A larger issue that we have right now... is the Biden administration is bringing back a lot of Obama appointees."
—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

In an interview for The Intercept's "Intercepted" podcast aired on Wednesday, host Jeremy Scahill asked Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) what she thought of Biden hiring members of former President Barack Obama's administration from corporations including Goldman Sachs and McKinsey.

"It's horrible," she replied. "I think it's also part of a larger issue that we have right now, which is the Biden administration is bringing back a lot of Obama appointees, which depending on where you are in the party, may sound nice, I guess."

"But I think what a lot of people fail to remember is that we now have a Biden administration that's bringing back a lot of Obama appointees, but when Obama was making appointments, he was bringing back a lot of Clinton appointees," she added.

As Obama took office during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, many believed his "hope and change" message would translate into action against banks and other corporations responsible for the crash, which cost millions of Americans their homes, their retirements savings, and their livelihoods. 

However, instead of holding Wall Street accountable for and closing the revolving door between business and government as promised during his 2008 campaign, Obama hired so many bankers that leftist critics dubbed his the "Goldman Sachs administration." 

It was a similar story on matters of war and peace. Although Obama promised a less militant foreign policy, he expanded the war in Afghanistan, intervened in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, backed the Saudi-led war in Yemen, oversaw a global assassination program, and ultimately bombed more countries than his predecesor, former President George W. Bush, earning him the moniker of "drone warrior-in-chief." 

As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, Biden's transition team has quietly hired people including Goldman Sachs veterans Monica Maher and Eric Goldstein, and former McKinsey and current Cove Hill Partners manager Josh Zoffer, and several Big Tech executives in recent weeks. 

Biden has tapped former Obama officials, including Avril Haines for director of national intelligence and Antony Blinken for secretary of state, who played key roles in planning and executing militarist policies. 

Such picks and policies, admonished Ocasio-Cortez, are "a huge reason why we got [President] Donald Trump in the first place."

"In addition to just the racism that was waiting to be reanimated in this country, [there] was just an extreme disdain for this moneyed political establishment that rules Washington," she said. 

Ocasio-Cortez also told Scahill that she believes the Democratic Party needs new leadership, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) should be replaced. However, she said the party has no plan for how to accomplish this or to fill the leadership vaccum their departures would leave.

"If you create that vacuum, there are so many nefarious forces at play to fill that vacuum with something even worse," she cautioned. 

Ocasio-Cortez has been a controversial figure during her short but impactful House tenure. The freshman firebrand has raised eyebrows and ire by being unafraid to criticize members of her own party when she believes they have strayed from serving the needs of their middle- and working-class constituents. 

Earlier this year, some centrist Democrats were apoplectic after the democratic socialist asserted that "we don't have a 'left' party in the United States," that the Democratic Party is more of a "center-conservative" party than a progressive one, and that "in any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party." 

'What a Failed State Looks Like': GOP Under Fire for Blocking Necessary Funds as Covid Vaccine Distribution Begins

"The end of a tragic, crippling pandemic is in sight and Senate Republicans can't get around to authorizing any money to complete the job."

by
Jake Johnson, staff writer COMMON DREAMS

UPS employees move one of two shipping containers containing the first shipments of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on a ramp at UPS Worldport in Louisville, Kentucky on Sunday, December 13, 2020. (Photo: Michael Clevenger/Pool/Getty Images)


As U.S. distribution of the newly approved Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine kicked off Sunday with the shipment of millions of doses to sites across the nation, Senate Republicans faced mounting outrage for continuing to block federal funds that crisis-ravaged states and localities desperately need to carry out an unparalleled mass inoculation effort.

Facing large budget shortfalls due to the Covid-19 pandemic and lack of relief from the deadlocked Congress, state and local governments will soon be tasked with executing a rapid vaccination campaign that will require large quantities of supplies as well as new clinics, additional workers, and public outreach—all of which will cost money that states and localities fear they don't have.

As the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, "State leaders say they are short billions of dollars in funding needed to successfully provide Covid-19 vaccinations to all Americans who want to be inoculated by health officials' June goal."

"States are so stretched. It would be a shame if all the effort on Warp Speed for development isn't warp speed for distribution."
—Dr. Leana Wen, George Washington University

"The federal government is providing the vaccine, along with syringes, needles, face masks, and shields," the Journal noted. But local officials are warning of a repeat of the Trump administration's slow and inadequate rollout of protective equipment in the early months of the pandemic, a failure that resulted in a chaotic free-for-all as states scrambled to obtain necessary supplies.

Nevertheless, the Journal reported, "officials in several states said they would spend whatever is needed to get residents vaccinated. Some said that might force spending cuts in areas like education, unless Congress provides additional funding or the federal government reimburses a large chunk of their rollout costs."

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, setting in motion an unprecedented and urgent campaign to distribute the vaccine as U.S. Covid-19 deaths approached 300,000.

The FDA's move, and the subsequent shipment of around three million doses of the vaccine to facilities across the nation, came as talks over a coronavirus relief package remained at a standstill, calling into question whether billions of dollars for vaccine distribution and additional relief to state and local governments will be approved before the end of the year.

"If you want to know what a failed state looks like, this is it," David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, tweeted Sunday. "The end of a tragic, crippling pandemic [is] in sight and Senate Republicans can't get around to authorizing any money to complete the job."

Dr. Leana Wen, former health commissioner for Baltimore and a professor at George Washington University, warned that states "are running a marathon at sprint speed with very little support.

"States are so stretched," Wen told the Journal. "It would be a shame if all the effort on Warp Speed for development isn't warp speed for distribution."

Congressional Republicans have for months dismissed Democrats' calls for robust aid to state and local governments, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has made clear that he will not approve such relief without the inclusion of a sweeping liability shield for corporations—a proposal that consumer advocacy groups, labor unions, and progressive lawmakers have denounced as a "get-out-of-jail-free card" for large companies.

"Imagine holding emergency aid hostage—help for the unemployed, small businesses, first responders, people, funding to deliver a vaccine—to give corporations legal immunity. But that has been the GOP position for eight months," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted last week. "Senator McConnell: It is past time for the Senate to act."

On Monday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers of Congress is expected to unveil legislative text for a $908 billion relief proposal that has been in the works for weeks. Politico reported late Sunday that "the deal is expected to be split into two pieces... One would be a $748 billion piece of coronavirus relief with less controversial items like schools and healthcare; the other would marry $160 billion in money for local governments with a temporary liability shield."

As it stands, the bipartisan proposal reportedly contains $16 billion in funding specifically for vaccine distribution, an amount that has been criticized as inadequate. Dayen on Saturday called the proposed figure "appalling."

Lower Drug Prices Now, a progressive advocacy coalition, tweeted that "a Covid-19 vaccine doesn't do much good if our communities don't have the resources to distribute it. We need lawmakers to come together and pass Covid relief if we want to beat this pandemic.

"The Senate Majority leader blocked the HEROES Act, and 'hit pause' on Covid relief while he continued confirming judge after judge," the coalition said Sunday. "So many lives and businesses are at stake, we can't wait any longer."

A POLITICAL OBIT
British spy novelist John le Carre dies aged 89

John le Carre, author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, wrote 25 novels and one memoir in a career spanning 60 years

British author John Le Carre at the UK film premiere of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in London, on September 13, 2011 [File: Sang Tan/ AP]

14 Dec 2020 AL JAZEERA 

John le Carre, the spy-turned-novelist best known for the Cold War thrillers Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, has died. He was 89.

His literary agent said in a statement that Le Carre died after a short illness in Cornwall, southwestern England, on Saturday evening.

“His like will never be seen again, and his loss will be felt by every book lover, everyone interested in the human condition,” said Jonny Geller, CEO of The Curtis Brown Group.

Le Carre was survived by his wife, Jane, and four sons. The family said in a brief statement that he had died of pneumonia.

The author, whose real name was David John Moore Cornwell, wrote 25 novels and one memoir in a career spanning 60 years, selling some 60 million books worldwide.

By exploring treachery at the heart of British intelligence in spy novels, le Carre challenged Western assumptions about the Cold War by defining for millions the moral ambiguities of the battle between the Soviet Union and the West.

Unlike the glamour of Ian Fleming’s unquestioning James Bond, le Carre’s heroes were trapped in the wilderness of mirrors inside British intelligence which was reeling from the betrayal of Kim Philby who fled to Moscow in 1963.

“It’s not a shooting war anymore, George. That’s the trouble,” Connie Sachs, British intelligence’s resident alcoholic expert on Soviet spies, tells spy catcher George Smiley in the 1979 novel Smiley’s People.

“It’s grey. Half angels fighting half devils. No one knows where the lines are,” Sachs says in the final novel of Le Carre’s Karla trilogy.

Such a bleak portrayal of the Cold War shaped popular Western perceptions of the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States that dominated the second half of the 20th century until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Cold War, for le Carre, was A Looking Glass War – the name of his 1965 novel – with no heroes and where morals were up for sale, or betrayal, by spymasters in Moscow, Berlin, Washington and London.

Betrayal of family, lovers, ideology and country run through le Carre’s novels which use the deceit of spies as a way to tell the story of nations, particularly Britain’s sentimental failure to see its own post-imperial decline.

Such was his influence that le Carre was credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing espionage terms such as “mole”, “honey pot” and “pavement artist” to popular English usage.

John le Carre worked in the 1950’s and 60’s for British intelligence agencies 

[File: Alastair Grant/ AP]

“John le Carre has passed at the age of 89. This terrible year has claimed a literary giant and a humanitarian spirit,” tweeted novelist Stephen King. 

Margaret Atwood said: “Very sorry to hear this. His Smiley novels are key to understanding the mid-20th century”.


Soldier, Spy

David John Moore Cornwell was born on October 19, 1931 in Dorset, England, to Ronnie and Olive, though his mother, despairing at the infidelities and financial impropriety of her husband, abandoned the family when he was five years old.

Mother and son would meet again decades later though the boy who became le Carre said he endured “16 hugless years” in the charge of his father, a flamboyant businessman who served time in jail.

At the age of 17, Cornwell left Sherborne School in 1948 to study German in Bern, Switzerland, where he came to the attention of British spies. After a spell in the British Army, he studied German at Oxford, where he informed on his left-wing students for Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service.

Le Carre was awarded a first-class honours degree before teaching languages at Eton College, Britain’s most exclusive school. He also worked at MI5 in London before moving in 1960 to the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6.

Posted to Bonn, then capital of West Germany, Cornwell fought on one of the toughest fronts of Cold War espionage: 1960s Berlin.

As the Berlin Wall went up, le Carre wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, where a British spy is sacrificed for an ex-Nazi-turned-Communist who is a British mole.

“What the hell do you think spies are?” asks Alec Leamas, the British spy who is finally shot on the Berlin Wall. “They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.”

By casting British spies as every bit as ruthless as their Communist foes, le Carre defined the dislocation of the Cold War that left broken humans in the wake of distant superpowers.

His other works included Smiley’s People, The Russia House, and, in 2017, the Smiley farewell, A Legacy of Spies. Many novels were adapted for film and television, notably the 1965 productions of Smiley’s People and Tinker Tailor featuring Alec Guinness as Smiley.

Big Pharma to Brexit

After the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving Russia’s once-mighty spies impoverished, le Carre turned his focus to what he perceived as the corruption of the US-dominated world order.

From corrupt pharmaceutical companies, Palestinian fighters and Russian oligarchs to lying US agents and, of course, perfidious British spies, le Carre painted a depressing – and at times polemical – view of the chaos of the post-Cold War world.

“The new American realism, which is nothing other than gross corporate power cloaked in demagogy, means one thing only: that America will put America first in everything,” he wrote in the foreword to The Tailor of Panama.

He opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and his anger at the US was evident in his later novels, which sold well and were turned into popular films but did not match the mastery of his Cold War bestsellers.

They included The Constant Gardener, which was about the pharmaceutical industry’s machinations in Africa. And A Most Wanted Man, published in 2008, which looked at extraordinary rendition and the war on terror. Our Kind of Traitor, released in 2010, took in Russian crime syndicates and the murky machinations of the financial sector.

Le Carre reportedly turned down an honour from Queen Elizabeth II – though he accepted Germany’s Goethe Medal in 2011 – and said he did not want his books considered for literary prizes.

An avowed Europhile, he was also an outspoken critic of Brexit, and at the last general election in 2019, told the AFP news agency that Britons should “join the resistance” against Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“My England would be the one that recognises its place in the EU,” he told a US interviewer in 2017.

“The jingoistic England that is trying to march us out of the EU, that is an England I don’t want to know."

SOURCE : NEWS AGENCIES

 SEVENTY IS THE NEW FIFTY

Cher at 74: 'There are 20-year-old girls who can’t do what I do’

Cher: ‘I love the feeling you have in your body when you sing.’ 

Photograph: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott

Her $60m annual Las Vegas residency was off the cards this year, but the singer still has lots to say about animal rights, Trump’s ‘toxic’ politics, cosmetic surgery and the men in her life
by Simon Hattenstone

Mon 14 Dec 2020 06.00 GMT

The Goddess of Pop is in town. And what an entrance she makes. Two-tone black-and-white beret, matching jacket, skinny jeans, black boots, black mask, and an elephant-shaped knuckle-duster. She looks the ultimate in revolutionary chic – Cher Guevara. She is not in London to promote a record (100m sold and counting) or a film (she won the best actress Oscar in 1988 for Moonstruck); she is here to talk about rescuing the world’s loneliest elephant from a zoo in Pakistan and flying him to a sanctuary in Cambodia. Cherilyn Sarkisian, aged 74, has never been predictable.

We meet in a London hotel, close to the BBC’s Broadcasting House, where she has been eulogising elephants. She is masked, I am masked, and we sit at opposite ends of the room. It’s such a strange world we’re living in, I say – how are you coping? And she is straight off into a turbo-charged rant. “How am I taking it? There are no words that describe it. And in my country the president doesn’t believe it has anything to do with him. He doesn’t think he has any responsibility to help us.”


How has Donald Trump changed the culture of the United States? “It’s toxic,” she says. “People who just disagreed with each other before are now enemies. I hate to even call him a president because all he does is watch TV.”

In October, Cher recorded a song for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe, a reworked version of a number from the 1940s musical Cabin in the Sky. I tell her I love it and ask if Biden has said anything to her about it. “Well, yes, I think he loves it, too.” She pauses. “I said if Trump can’t be in the White House, he’s going to burn it down. He’s trying to block Joe at every moment. He’s the most vindictive person I’ve ever witnessed. I think he’s fighting so hard because he’s going to be prosecuted when he gets out of the White House.” Could he end up in prison? “Oh, I hope so. I’ll be dancing around.”


When she talks about Trump she sounds traumatised. She tries not to mention his name. “I hate him,” she says. Have you hated anybody like this before? “No, in my whole life, never. I pretty much disliked Bush when he started those wars, and I could say for a minute it was touch and go for hate. But the one thing I know is he loves America and Trump doesn’t.”

We move to more positive territory – the liberation of Kaavan the elephant. Cher is just back from visiting him in Cambodia. She says he is eating well, readjusting happily, and has already got a couple of girlfriends. “If you saw Kaavan before we took him to this sanctuary, he was a different animal. In a matter of minutes, he completely changed. It was amazing to watch.”

It was Cher’s Twitter followers who first told her about Kaavan, a 36-year-old Asian bull elephant living in dreadful conditions at the zoo in Islamabad. There was no roof on the shed, no water in his pool and he had no toys to play with. He would stand in his tiny shed with his head facing the wall. You never saw a more depressed-looking pachyderm. The more Cher discovered about Kaavan, the more determined she became to rescue him.

She remembered that, four years earlier, she had met Mark Cowne, Bob Geldof’s manager, and that they had bonded over their love of elephants. She rang him out of the blue. “I said: ‘Hi, do you remember me, it’s Cher, would you like to go to Pakistan and save an elephant?’ He said sure.” They started the charity Free the Wild, and masterminded a plan to free Kaavan, who was relocated to Cambodia at an estimated cost of $400,000 (£300,000). A Pakistani court ordered the zoo’s closure last May.

Cher visiting Kaavan the elephant in his new home in Cambodia this month. 

Photograph: Reuters

Cher has barely started with her animal liberation plans. “We’re working on a gorilla right now, and another elephant.” Did she grow up with animals? Yes, I’ve had many dogs, and I have cats now.” She lives in Malibu, Los Angeles. “I live in a particularly beautiful spot, but the fires are just killing us. A fire came right up my house and burned the side of it. I was so lucky.” And suddenly we’re back with Trump; she can’t help herself. “It’s climate change. And he wouldn’t give us any money for it. He hates us. He hates California. He doesn’t have one drop of goodness in him.”

Much of Cher’s recent life has been about campaigning – whether politically, to support abused animals or helping disadvantaged people through the pandemic. Her charity Cher Cares, which she runs with Dr Irwin Redlener, the founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, is directing resources to disadvantaged communities to help them through the Covid crisis.

I hate Trump … He doesn’t have one drop of goodness in him

If it wasn’t for the pandemic she would be playing in Las Vegas, as she has done since 2008. Is it true she gets paid $60m a year for Vegas? “Wait. Say this again, please.” I’m expecting her to tell me not to be so ridiculous, but she is simply considering the figure. “It sounds like a good number, but I don’t know the figure. I know I go to work and I like it and I’m getting paid well, but also I have an overhead you can’t believe. I have 100 people on staff.” Cher is worth an estimated $360m (£270m).

She really has had an incredible life. Cher was born in 1946, her mother the southern beauty Georgia Holt, a bohemian actor/singer-songwriter who got married six times, to five different men. Holt largely brought her up Cher and her half-sister Georganne as a single mother. Cher did not meet her father, an American-Armenian truck driver called John Sarkisian, until she was 11. “He was charming like you cannot believe,” she says. “But he had some larceny in him. He had a criminal past.” Her mother was loving and hot-tempered. Sometimes she hit her (“My mom was from the south and it was kinda the thing”), but usually she championed her. Cher struggled with dyslexia. “My mom was my biggest fan. She said it doesn’t matter, school is not important. And I said: ‘Yeah Mom, but I can’t even see numbers – they look like little scratchy things to me.’ She said: ‘When you grow up, you’re going to have somebody else to do numbers for you.’”

At 16, Cher met 27-year-old Sonny Bono. He was a decent songwriter and a mediocre singer; she was gorgeous with a remarkable contralto. He became her svengali and lover. After working together with Phil Spector (she backed the Ronettes on Be My Baby and the Righteous Brother on You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling), they joined forces and became huge, with hits including the classic I Got You Babe and their own TV show. They were the most famous couple on the planet as a singing duo, a comedy act, and husband and wife. Then it all went to pot.

She was the talent; he took the money – 95% of it, with 5% going to lawyers. Cher divorced him in 1975. “We worked side by side for 11 years and I ended up with nothing. I worked really hard for that money, and it never occurred to me that he would take it.” Actually, she says, she ended up with less than nothing. “I had to give him $2m on top.” Why? “Because I didn’t carry out the contract for Sonny and Cher as a couple. It never occurred to me that I would be charged with the contracts we didn’t fulfil.”

Were you furious with him? “You know, we had such a strange relationship. The day we got our divorce, he grabbed me, bent me backwards and kissed me, and we were hysterical. I couldn’t keep angry with him for some reason. I had a lot of anger, but I couldn’t stay angry.”

Cher with Gregg Allman taking it easy in 1977.

 Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Four days after divorcing Bono, she married the rock star Gregg Allman. Nine days later, she filed for divorce because of his drug and alcohol problems (he was addicted to heroin), although they soon got back together. There have been so many famous men in her life: David Geffen, Tom Cruise, Gene Simmons, Val Kilmer, Warren Beatty, Tommy Lee. And if they weren’t famous at the time, they soon became so. Rob Camilletti, who she dated in the 80s, became known as Bagel Boy because, at the time, she was 40 and he was 22 and he worked in a bagel shop, although he subsequently became a pilot to the stars.

Who has been the love of her life? “Well, I think Robert [Camilletti] and Gregory Allman,” she answers, without a blink. “Gregory was a special man.” And a difficult man? “Well, look, he was a southern gentleman who happened to do drugs. It was that simple. And he tried hard to get off them. One time we were going to a rehab and I said: ‘I’m so tired of doing this,’ and he said: ‘So am I. And I keep doing it for you.’ Robert was completely different. He was like a rock.”

It’s interesting that you call him Gregory, I say. To the public he has always been Gregg. She smiles. “He never called me Cher.” What did he call you? “Chooch.” Why? “People I’m close to don’t call me Cher. They have nicknames. No one ever called me Cher in my whole life.” What does your mother call you? “Honey.”

Cher dated Rob Camilletti in the 1980s. 

Photograph: Time & Life Pictures/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

She once said that Cruise was one of her top-five lovers. Who heads the list? “I’m not telling you that!” Oh Cher, it’s winter, it’s cold, we’re in a pandemic – give us a bit of festive cheer. She laughs. “Tough shit. Don’t even go there. I’ve been around – this ain’t my first time at the rodeo!”

Cher has a touch of Mae West about her – particularly when she talks about men. She once said men are not a necessity; they are luxuries, like dessert (adding that she does love dessert). I start to remind her of the time her mother told her to find herself a rich man, but she beats me to it. “I was struggling to get a movie made. She said: ‘Honey, what you need in your life is a rich man.’ And I went: ‘Mom, I am a rich man.’ It still has a meaning to me. I don’t need that; I am that.”

Few people have reinvented themselves as often or as successfully as Cher. So many decades in music can be encapsulated by her hits – the rousing picaresque pop of Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves and Dark Lady in the 70s; the epic pop-rock of Dead Ringer for Love (with Meat Loaf) and If I Could Turn Back Time in the 80s; the electro-dance pop of Believe in the 90s.

In the 80s she also established herself as a serious, understated actor in Robert Altman’s Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. There followed memorable performances in films such as Moonstruck, Silkwood and The Witches of Eastwick. In 2018’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, she stole the show with a gloriously camp cameo. It’s hard to think of anybody who has been as successful in movies and music. Yet Cher has never quite received the acclaim she deserves – bizarrely, she has not been inaugurated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cher with Nicholas Cage in the 1987 film Moonstruck. 

DIRECTED BY THE GREAT CANADIAN FILM MAKER

NORMAN JEWISON

Photograph: Allstar/MGM

And, of course, few women have been so empowering for other women – the independence, the longevity, the chutzpah and, perhaps most of all, the level-headedness. She has often been surrounded by addicts, but she has remained steadfastly sober. Every element of her life has been played out in public – divorces, affairs, the addiction problems of Allman and their son Elijah, the transitioning of her son Chaz Bono, the fallouts and fall-ins with her mother, cosmetic surgery.

When Chaz transitioned, Cher admitted she found it hard to deal with, and was forever getting her pronouns wrong when talking about him in public. She laughs when I mention it today. “I’m much better at it now.” The mere mention of Chaz reminds her of Trump and what she sees as the erosion of respect and rights in the US. “We’ve gone backwards 20 years. We were making great progress and now all these conservative people don’t want black people voting, they don’t want Latino people voting. They don’t want trans people here. They want to go back to the 50s; antebellum days, if they could.”

There is a surprising stillness to Cher. Even when she rages against Trump she does so quietly. There is also a refreshing openness – many megastars are evasive, talk in soundbites or reel off anecdotes on autopilot. Cher answers fully, as if considering every question for the first time. She doesn’t pretend to be your friend or feign intimacy, but she chats with an honesty verging on the compulsive – as if she knows no other way.

I ask about ageing, and she starts talking about her mother, who is 94, though she claims to be 74 (perversely, Cher’s age). “I’ve always thought of her as this kick-ass chick, and now I start to see my grandmother in her. She’s still lively and we still laugh. But I see her getting older, and it makes me nervous.” For your mother or yourself? “For both of us.”

Does ageing worry her? “I hate it.” She gives me a look. “What, I’m going to say I like it? No, I don’t. Any woman who is honest will say it’s not as much fun. When I was working on the road we used to work two shows a night and then go out dancing all night long.” And now? “It’s like we’ve got to rest because you’ve got another night. Also, I don’t like going out now because everybody’s got a camera and it’s not safe. People rush you, and you don’t know if they’re going to kill you or take your picture. Either way, I don’t like it.”
I love standing on the stage and singing. You just feel like you can fill everything, and I pretty much can

Has anybody been hostile? “I had a man try to kill me. I always got dropped off at the stage door when I was doing Come Back To the Five and Dime on Broadway. I thought he was going to shake my hand, and he grabbed my arm and put it behind my back. He started pushing me down the alleyway, and he said: ‘If you make a sound, I’ll kill you.’ Two fans, who later became friends, saw something was wrong, and they started screaming and ran towards me, and he ran away.”

In the past she has talked about the pressure to remain young in her business. Today, she is renowned as the poster girl for cosmetic surgery. I ask if she thinks she normalised procedures. “Wait, what? You say I made it OK for what?” For normal people, regular civilians, to have cosmetic surgery, I say. “These girls are having surgery at 18. So come on! I’ve never seen girls do so much to want to change everything they look like. I never wanted to do that. You’ve got big lips to start with and a big butt. I don’t understand it.”

Does she think cosmetic surgery has prolonged her career? If you’re no good at what you do, she says, people don’t care what you look like. “You don’t pay bucks to stand and look at someone. They’ve got to deliver something.” She may get tired, she says, but her voice is better than it’s ever been. “And I’ve worked my whole life to keep my strength in my body. There are 20-year-old girls who can’t do what I do.”

Indeed she does look fabulously, freakishly fit. It’s weird how the National Enquirer constantly suggests she is on death’s doorstep. “My entire life I am dying!” She looks as if she’s smiling behind the mask. But I’m not sure. “My entire life.” How does that make her feel? “It’s the Enquirer. It sells magazines. I don’t know why they pick dying because I never have done.”

Epic performance: Cher on stage in December 2019. 

Photograph: EMG/REX/Shutterstock

Cher’s first farewell tour started in 2002 and ended three years later, making her an estimated $100m. What keeps her going now? “I love standing on the stage and singing. The feeling you have in your body when you sing.” What is that feeling? “It’s big, no matter how small you are. You just feel like you can fill everything, and I pretty much can. Then you put the audience in. And I’m very shy. But once you get over your stage fright everything gets good.”

But I assumed you would be wildly extrovert – like the Cher on stage. “Nope,” she says. How do you go from one to the other? “A lot of the biggest entertainers are shy. I’ve always been shy. But once I’m on stage and get hold of an audience, I know I can bring the room together as one. No matter how many thousands of people, I can bring it to where they are all friends. If you have a heartbreak or a sickness, for 90 minutes I can make you forget.”

It’s time to leave. Cher gives me a closeup of the elephant knuckle-duster – actually a beautiful ring made for her by another friend, the designer Loree Rodkin. She reminds me how much there is still to do – battling bigotry, rescuing the next Kaavan, helping to ease the pandemic and, hopefully, even that return to Vegas.

I ask what has given her most pleasure in life. What we’ve just been talking about, she says. “Making people happy. It sounds corny, but I mean it. I love being able to take an audience and move them to a different place.” Is she surprised she is still taking them to this different place? “Absolutely,” she says. And now there is no mistaking the smile behind the mask. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”