Altercation: MSM Discovers Fox ‘News’ Isn’t News

Only 25 years after it became obvious

BY ERIC ALTERMAN
DECEMBER 17, 2021

MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/SIPA USA VIA AP IMAGE
At a protest against Fox News outside the network’s New York offices, November 23, 2021


On the PBS NewsHour Tuesday night, anchor Judy Woodruff and NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik discussed the recent text messages sent by Fox News hosts to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the January 6 violent insurrection. Woodruff wondered whether “in terms of what we knew about—we have known in the past they have spoken favorably of a former President Trump for years. But does this take it to a different level, do you think?” Folkenflik added, “And so I think that what you have here is a question of Fox News having that word ‘news’ appended to its name, but not operating like a news operation.”

I’ve been writing about Fox News since it first began broadcasting 25 years ago. The first story I remember had to do with the fact that New York’s then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, at the behest of Roger Ailes, used the power of his office to force Time Warner Cable to carry Fox in New York. It had originally been left off the dial and could not likely have survived without that market. That gives you a clue that maybe it was not a typical “news” station from moment one.

Those clues have been mounting on a daily basis ever since. I can’t count the number of times I’ve felt compelled, in different fora, to argue that what Fox does is not and has never been “news.” I think my clearest statement of this fact, and of the problem that everybody pretended that this was not case, came in a “Think Again” column I wrote in 2010 on the website of the Center for American Progress. 

The piece, headlined “Just What Exactly Is Fox News?” began with this:

Fox News Channel is often described as a cable news station. On occasion, the words “conservative” or “biased” are attached to that description. But few dispute the journalistic orientation of the overall enterprise.

This is a mistake. Fox is something new—something for which we do not yet have a word. It provides almost no actual journalism. Instead, it gives ideological guidance to the Republican Party and millions of its supporters, attacking its opponents and keeping its supporters in line. And it does so at a hefty profit, thereby turning itself into the political equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.

In the same column, I offered this (incomplete) thesis:

I’m not exactly sure what to call Fox. It has more in common with the integrated political/judicial/business/media empire that is making a mockery of Italian democracy under the rule of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi than any American political or media machine of the past. And yet for a whole host of reasons, both financial and psychological, many in the media cannot admit this, thereby allowing Fox to benefit from the protections of journalism offered up by the First Amendment while simultaneously subverting their purpose.

I therefore have to chuckle quite a bit when someone like Jonah Goldberg writes that a reason he left Fox News after 13 years “was that I didn’t want to be complicit in so many lies.” How many lies was the right number, Jonah? A thousand? A million?

I can’t bear at this point to list all the times I’ve tried to make the point that “‘real’ journalists debase themselves and their profession by participating in the destructive and debilitating charade” of treating Fox “journalists” as their colleagues. Readers might recall that, at one point, the Obama administration tried to address Fox’s dishonesty by barring its officials from appearing on Fox’s Sunday shows. The administration was attacked—and Fox defended—by the likes of CNN’s Jake Tapper, and The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik, with assists from Maggie Haberman, the Times’ White House correspondent, NBC’s Jonathan Allen, the Associated Press’s Zeke Miller, and Politico’s Jack Shafer, and sadly, many, many others; thereby helping to enable Fox’s lies, and with them the systematic destruction of our democracy and our planet.

Now the curtain has been pulled back, and the wizard is naked before the world. Thanks to Liz Cheney’s dramatic reading of the text messages sent to Trump’s White House chief of staff by Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Brian Kilmeade, we have airtight evidence that not only are these Fox News hosts deliberately lying to their audience, they are acting as backstage players on the basis of what they know to be the truth.

What will now change? My guess is nothing. Fox will continue to make its owners, shareholders, and lying hosts richer and richer. Our democracy will continue to disintegrate, and our political reporters will forget all this and go back to focusing on the reporting that belongs on Page Six and The Sporting News.

And, oh yes, Chris Wallace will no longer be the “whataboutist” go-to for those who wish to pretend that Fox does any news at all. (I wonder what Fox pays out in nondisclosure agreements, given the fact that Wallace, Shepard Smith, and Juan Williams have all left so quietly.) Eric Boehlert has more on Wallace’s well-timed exit, so that I don’t have to think about it anymore.

DEFINE A CAPITALI$T STATE

Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice Is Perpetuating Climate Destruction

When the government’s lawyers defend fossil fuel interests, people and the planet pay the price.

BY DOROTHY SLATER, HANNAH STORY BROWN
DECEMBER 17, 2021

BRYAN OLIN DOZIER/NURPHOTO VIA AP
Environmental activists march to the U.S. Capitol on October 15, 2021, part of a week of protest actions to bring attention to climate change.

The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.

Anyone with an eye on the planet’s ticking clock should be growing frustrated with the Biden administration’s slow and sometimes backwards pace on climate action. It is increasingly difficult to assess whether the administration genuinely wants to address the climate crisis while being thwarted by political and judicial setbacks, or has simply decided that the planet’s livable future is worth auctioning off to the highest fossil fuel bidder.


Read more from the Revolving Door Project

Blame is not to be shared equally throughout the administration. The EPA is working on an ambitious new Clean Air Act rule to curb methane emissions, while the SEC has embarked on some promising climate financial risk assessments. But one of the biggest hindrances to climate policy is coming from an agency that isn’t traditionally thought of as “environmental”: Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice.

The DOJ functions as the federal government’s lawyer, which means it touches nearly every federal law and policy, from the Constitution to the Clean Air Act. Any enforcement action, lawsuit, or regulatory strategy has to have DOJ sign-on if the administration wants to fight for or against any climate-oriented policy. The fate of almost all of President Biden’s climate ambition will ultimately be decided in the octagon of legal challenge. Yet Garland’s DOJ has been effectively functioning as an ally to the fossil fuel industry, making the legal case for Biden to ignore his duty to both the American people and the planet.

It’s a pattern that transcends climate: From student debt to humane immigration policy, Garland’s DOJ has taken sides. To paraphrase Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project, one of the biggest problems in Biden’s administration is that he’s surrounded himself with lawyers who tell him why he can’t do things, instead of how he can do them. The consequences of Garland deliberately tying the administration’s hands at every turn will be most drastic for the climate in the long term.

The Trump administration, in its deregulatory zeal, did an almost unthinkable amount of damage to the already insufficient environmental regulation that was once on the books. Indefensibly, Biden’s DOJ is continuing to defend much of that damage in the name of continuity and stability, instead of reassessing the impact of Trump’s slash-and-burn and charting a new way forward. For one, Biden’s DOJ is defending a Trump-era decision to issue permits to pipeline company Enbridge to build and operate the Line 3 tar sands pipeline. Line 3, which became operational earlier this year, violates Ojibwe treaty rights and emits the equivalent of 50 coal plants’ worth of climate-warming emissions per year. When asked about how the pipeline could possibly square with the president’s goals to reduce emissions, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted the administration could not comment or intervene to stop the pipeline from going live because the issue was in “active litigation.”

Yet active litigation apparently wasn’t a sufficient reason for the administration to delay the nation’s largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in history. Biden started off the year strong in January when he announced a pause on new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands. By June, however, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled in Louisiana v. Biden that Biden didn’t have the authority to implement a systematic stoppage. The administration appealed the Louisiana judge’s decision, and the DOJ itself issued a legal opinion that the court order did not require the Department of the Interior to move forward with this specific lease sale. Meanwhile, several environmental advocacy groups, led by Earthjustice, launched a lawsuit against the administration to stop the lease sale.

In other words, the pause’s legal standing was moving through the courts, the very same “ongoing litigation” invoked by Psaki regarding Line 3 that left the question of the authority to block public land leases up in the air. Yet none of it prevented the administration from selling off more public lands for oil production than ever before. In total, 1.7 million acres of federal waters were leased for drilling in November, out of 80 million total acres that have been made available to oil and gas companies.

Meanwhile, both the Earthjustice-led litigation and the federal government’s appeal of the Louisiana decision continue, with lawyers from the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division defending the government in both cases. The American Petroleum Institute and the State of Louisiana have successfully joined the government as defendants in the Earthjustice case, while Earthjustice lawyers have filed several amicus briefs in support of the government in the Louisiana case. Seeing the very same Biden administration on both sides of the issue highlights the self-sabotaging nature of Garland’s fence-sitting. Rather than leading the nation, the Biden administration is boldly proclaiming that it has no strong feelings one way or the other about the planet.

Indefensibly, Biden’s DOJ is continuing to defend much of the Trump administration’s damage in the name of continuity and stability.

The DOJ’s moral failure when it comes to the climate crisis is particularly visible in Juliana v. United States, where it continues to oppose teenagers asking the court to intervene in safeguarding the planet’s future. Six years ago, a group of 21 children and teenagers filed a lawsuit against the United States, alleging that the federal government’s continued support of fossil fuel exploitation and consumption violates their constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today, Biden’s DOJ continues to defend the government against these young plaintiffs’ claims. In November of this year, nine senators and 39 U.S. representatives urged Biden to stop contesting the lawsuit, arguing that the position taken by DOJ lawyers on the United States’ behalf is misaligned with Biden’s stance on environmental justice. The myopia of the DOJ’s legal arguments astounds: A group of American youth argue for the benefits of a planet that sustains human life, while DOJ lawyers argue that the court should dismiss their complaint for lack of jurisdiction.

Another ongoing case about the health and future of American children has DOJ lawyers on the defensive. Last week, The Intercept reported on the EPA’s long-standing failure to regulate the phthalate DINP, a chemical used in plastic that causes a wide range of birth defects and cancers, and interferes with children’s sexual development. In 2000, the EPA proposed a rule that would add DINP to the toxics inventory, but never finalized it. In the 21 years since, DINP has become ubiquitous in American products, with hundreds of millions of pounds of DINP produced or imported each year. Not content to merely produce fossil fuels, Exxon is also a phthalate manufacturer, and has lobbied hard to keep the chemical in children’s toys. Earthjustice launched lawsuits against the EPA in September and the FDA in December for their continued failure to regulate. A DOJ lawyer is defending the EPA, and another will likely defend the FDA in this new case, meaning that DOJ lawyers will have a substantial say in whether this toxic chemical continues to wreak havoc on Americans’ health.

If there’s one bright spot, it’s in the department’s novel commitment to environmental justice—the DOJ Civil Rights Division has opened a first-of-its-kind “environmental justice investigation” into whether the Alabama health department’s practices put Black communities at higher risk of infectious-disease exposure. This week, the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division also expressed their commitment to “achieving the objectives for environmental justice” and enforcing corporate compliance with environmental regulation.

In some cases, course correction along these lines could be quite simple. The Biden DOJ originally defended a Trump-era approval for ConocoPhillips’s Alaska Willow project back in May, a project that would have produced more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day for the next 30 years. However, when a federal court in Alaska decided the Bureau of Land Management had failed to account for greenhouse gas emissions and vacated the approval, Biden’s DOJ allowed the clock to run out on their timeline to appeal, letting the Willow project die. Yet ConocoPhillips intends to proceed with the Willow project despite the court’s decision, and the DOJ should not lapse into inaction when future challenges to the project inevitably erupt.

Biden is, of course, the most powerful person in the country, so he has no excuse for employing anything but the very best legal team at his Department of Justice. And any good lawyer with the ability to recognize reality and “listen to the science,” as Biden has so often promised to do, should not throw up their hands in the face of opposition. DOJ lawyers should be endlessly creative in invoking America’s laws to help this country, and the global community, survive a climate apocalypse. Their mandate to defend the country’s interests requires nothing less.

Anyone who would argue that preserving a healthy and livable planet is in the United States’ interests should care about the DOJ’s next move. The DOJ can be a powerful ally or a powerful foe in the fight for our planet’s future—what it can’t do is split the difference. If it is going to choose the former, it will need to do so quickly.

DOROTHY SLATER is a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project.

IINFLUENCE OF BIG BROTHER CHINA

Private sector overtakes state as North Korea's top economic actor under Kim - S.Korea

Hyonhee Shin
Wed., December 15, 2021

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a ceremony to inaugurate the start of construction on the first phase of a project to eventually build 50,000 new apartments, in Pyongyang

By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) - The private sector has overtaken state-led agents to become North Korea's biggest economic actor over the past decade, a sign of booming markets allowed by leader Kim Jong Un, South Korea's Unification Ministry said on Thursday.

The ministry, which handles North Korea affairs, released a report on political, economic and social changes during Kim's 10-year rule, based on data from South Korean and U.N. agencies as well as interviews with defectors.

While the isolated country suffered from coronavirus lockdowns and sanctions over its weapons programmes, private activity has grown from about 28% a decade ago to make up nearly 38% of the economy, the ministry said in the report.

Government-led programmes, meanwhile, have shrunk to make up 29% of the economy from 37%, and around 9% was from entities that work in both state and private sectors, up from 7%.

The number of merchants has also soared some fourfold to hit an all-time high at about 1,368 in 2018, from 338 in 2011, before sharply dropping amid economic hardships and the pandemic.

"As marketisation continues, the proportion of private economy is on a long-term upward trend," the ministry said. "People's activities are shaping into a dual way, state and private economy."

North Korea does not answer questions from foreign reporters and its government and state media rarely give insights into economic conditions.

Kim became leader in late 2011, upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.

The new leader's approval of markets previously abhorred by his father had helped improved livelihoods for many North Koreans, with its gross domestic product (GDP) rising 3.9% in 2016 - the fastest in 17 years.

But initial progress was overshadowed by sanctions imposed over nuclear and long-range missile tests, a ministry official said, even as Kim vowed to build a self-reliant economy after declaring completion of "state nuclear force" in 2017.

"After all, in order to achieve sustainable economic growth and substantively boost people's livelihoods, they need to shift policy toward denuclearisation and economic cooperation," the official said.

As the pandemic and natural disasters compounded the squeeze, North Korea's GDP suffered its biggest contraction in 23 years in 2020, while crop production hit its lowest level under Kim, at 4.4 million. North Korea's trade with top ally China has plunged more than 90% from its 2014 peak.

This month, Kim warned of a "very giant struggle" next year, and called in October for focusing on improving people's lives despite "grim" economic conditions.

North Korea has not confirmed any COVID-19 infections but shut its borders and tightly restricted public transport and inter-state movement.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Warren Wants Big Oil Executive Pay Investigated

By Irina Slav - Dec 16, 2021

Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch an investigation into the remuneration of executives at several oil companies, including Marathon Petroleum, Chevron, and Occidental Petroleum.

According to Warren, these companies "may be misleading investors and the public about their executive compensation by using loophole-ridden climate metrics tied to CEO pay," she said in a letter to SEC chairman Gary Gensler.

Citing a Washington Post report that made allegations oil companies were setting climate change goals but then using easily manipulated metrics to gauge success, Senator Warren said that "These potentially deceptive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics pose a serious problem: they have the potential to mislead investors and the public on the terms and conditions under which executive bonuses are paid to top company officials. I am requesting that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigate this matter." 

Marathon Petroleum, one of the "world's most egregious fossil fuel lobbying companies preventing policy-based climate action," paid its then-CEO $1.9 million between 2011 and 2020 for meeting environmental goals, awarding bonuses in nearly every year, even though a Marathon Petroleum pipeline released 1,400 barrels of diesel fuel into an Indiana creek in 2018," Senator Warren said in her letter.

Last month, Warren targeted natural gas exporters in a similar vein, accusing them of causing massive price increases for American consumers to enrich themselves.

"I am writing regarding my concern about rising natural gas prices for American consumers, the impact this will have for families struggling to pay their bills and keep their homes warm this winter, and the extent to which these price increases are being driven by energy companies' corporate greed and profiteering as they 'moved record amounts of U.S. gas out of the country,'" she said.

ROFLMAO

In response, the chief executive of EQT noted the reduction in emissions since the start of the shale gas boom, calling the U.S. LNG export industry the potentially largest green initiative in the world.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Chilean women, wary of rightist, may decide president’s race

By PATRICIA LUNA and JOSHUA GOODMAN

1 of 5

A follower of Chile's presidential candidate Jose Antonio Kast from the Partido Republicano, holds campaign flags during a rally in Santiago, Chile, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Chile votes in the runoff election on Dec. 19. (AP PhotoMatias Delacroix)

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — When Chileans went to the polls last month, Elizabeth Padilla, like more than half of eligible voters in the South American country, stayed home, not feeling represented by any of the seven candidates on the ballot.

But her apathy suddenly lifted when a politician she feared, José Antonio Kast finished first. In recent days, as Chileans gear up for a runoff pitting the far-right candidate against leftist lawmaker Gabriel Boric, the 45-year-old artist has been hanging campaign posters in her downtown Santiago neighborhood and warning friends of what she sees as a serious threat to women if Kast wins.

“We are four sisters and I have three nieces. I’m very worried about what could happen,” said Padilla, who has spent many a sleepless night contemplating a return of “fascism” in a country that until 1990 was governed by a military dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who Kast has defended. “The truth is I didn’t know there were so many people who think like this.”









Presidential candidate Gabriel Boric, of the Apruebo Dignidad coalition party, holds a gas tank covered by the Spanish message "Gas at a fair price" as he campaigns in Vina del Mar, Chile, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Chile heads to a presidential runoff on Dec. 19. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

It’s a sentiment shared widely by Chilean women, especially younger urban professionals, who are shaping up to be the clincher in a tight race between political extremes battling for Chile’s future.

Kast, the 55-year-old founder of the fledgling Republican Party, secured 28% of the vote on Nov. 21, edging out Boric by two points. Historically, every candidate in Chile who led in the first round of balloting went on to prevail in the head-to-head runoff.

Emerging from dictatorship, Chilean women voted in larger numbers and favored conservative candidates more consistently than their male compatriots, perhaps fearing a return of the turmoil seen during the 1970-1973 rule of the toppled socialist President Salvador Allende, when women, then mostly stuck in the kitchen, banged on pots and pans to protest food shortages.

But the gender gap abruptly closed with the election in 2005 of leftist Michelle Bachelet, which triggered a “pink wave” of presidential victories for women across the region.

Several opinion polls indicate that this time women are flocking in droves to Boric — a millennial who uses non-binary pronouns from the stump — as he capitalizes on Kast’s long record of sexist comments and policy goals seen as out of step with fast changing societal norms.

“Don’t vote for the Nazi. No, no, no,” a few thousand women shouted Wednesday at boisterous feminist rally in downtown Santiago against Kast, the son of a German immigrant who was recently revealed to be a card-carrying member of Adolf Hitler’s political party.

Giovanna Roa, who was in attendance, said that a Kast victory would be a major setback for women.


The two candidates right wing Kast (l), socialist Boric (r)

“Kast explicitly wants to move us back to a place we already left behind,” said the 34-year-old Roa, a member of the convention redrafting Pinochet’s constitution — the first such institution in the world where gender parity is mandatory. “He wants us hidden and out of the public arena.”

Chile, despite its reputation as one of Latin America’s most socially conservative countries, has always had a combative feminist movement that in recent years has made great strides passing laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, loosen abortion restrictions and boost the representation of women in politics.

One sign of its strength is the feminist anthem “A Rapist in Your Path,” which has been adopted by activists across the world to denounce violence against women since first being performed during a wave of anti-government protests in 2019.

The rise of Kast, in the eyes of his critics, is a backlash against those gains and the emergence in Chile of a kind of identity politics that has roiled democracies across the world.

Polls show that he has made inroads with middle-class and rural voters who fear that Boric — a former student protest leader who doesn’t shy away from vindicating Allende — would disrupt three decades of economic and political stability that has made Chile the envy of many in Latin America.

Kast, who has donned Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hat in television interviews, has recently started to walk back some of his past views to shore up support among women.

But courting the key voting bloc was made harder when a video surfaced days after the first round in which a key supporter, YouTuber-turned-congressman-elect Johannes Kaiser, can be heard mocking voting rights for women — which dates to 1949 — if its end result is that “schizophrenic” women keep supporting parties that welcome immigrants who threaten to rape women when they go jogging in the park.

As a lawmaker in 2004, Kast voted against legislation legalizing divorce — a position he reaffirmed as recently as 2010. In an interview during the campaign he said it was no longer an issue.

In a 2018 newspaper column, he attacked Chile’s most famous actress, Daniela Vega, referring to the transgender star of the Academy Award-winning film “A Fantastic Woman” as a man. His column opposed a bill — later passed — allowing individuals to select their gender identity on legal documents.

“I wouldn’t write (the newspaper column) in the same terms,” he said in a televised debate this week, adding that he would respect the existing legislation.

The campaign platform he presented ahead of the first round of voting opposes same-sex marriage — which Chile’s congress approved this month by a wide majority — and vows to tighten Chile’s already restrictive abortion laws, which allows a woman to terminate pregnancy only in the case of rape, when the fetus won’t survive or the mother’s health is at risk.

The 204-page document instead highlights “family-focused” policies such as marriage courses, incentives to have babies and health care subsidies for married women. The platform also calls for the elimination of the Ministry of Women — a position he has since abandoned.

“I want to confess that we made a mistake,” said Kast, surrounded by female supporters, at a campaign rally this month highlighting policies he said would promote women. “We ask for forgiveness. We changed positions and clearly we aren’t only going to keep the Ministry of Women but we are going to strengthen it.”

In sharp contrast, the 35-year-old Boric seems to embrace his portrayal by the far right as Chile’s first “woke” presidential candidate.

On the stump, he addresses supporters using gender-neutral terms popular with only a handful of fellow Chilean millennials and not found in traditional Spanish grammar. His unmarried partner, a fellow activist, said she’s not interested in serving as first lady, a traditional role she believes Chile has outlived.

Unlike Kast, Boric also refused to appear on the online “Bad Boys” program hosted by the surprise third place finisher, Franco Parisi, who garnered more than 13% of first round votes. In rejecting the invitation, Boric cited Parisi’s large child-support debt to his ex wife.

“Electorally it would be profitable. … However I believe that in elections as in life one has to be guided by principles,” he said.

Recent polls show that women and young voters overwhelmingly favor Boric, sometimes by as much as 20 points.

“In a tight race, a spike in votes from young women, who tend to skew more left wing and feel threatened by Kast’s conservative discourse, may make a big difference,” said Marcela Rios, a political scientist at the United Nations Development Program in Chile who has focused on gender issues. “It all depends on turnout.”

But outside the capital, where traditional gender roles have changed less, it’s unclear how deep support for Boric really is among women.

To be sure, Boric has not been exempt of criticism for his past behavior toward woman.

In July, following Boric’s victory in a primary, a fellow activist denounced what she said were “acts of violence” involving the leftist standard bearer in 2012, when he headed the student union at the University of Chile. It’s unclear what transpired but Boric, who she said acted like a “harassing pig,” recently apologized to the woman, who in turn has accused Kast of “ unscrupulous and violent ” promotion of the incident.

Boric’s mother says she’s partly to blame for any of her son’s lingering machismo.

“I raised him with basically a sexist mentality ... because that’s how I was taught too,” María Soledad Font said in an interview her home in southern Chile.

But over time, after Boric traveled to Santiago for college and expanded his horizons, he began to shed what she called the “old Gabriel.”

”He made it a goal to listen and understand,” said Font, showing her son’s childhood bedroom — replete with framed soccer jerseys, a photo of Cuban guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara and spray-painted slogans from the French Revolution. “That’s when he began to see (men and women) are equal in values and talents.”

___

Goodman reported from Miami. Claudio Monge contributed to this report from Punta Arenas, Chile.

‘Very worrying’: is a far-right radical about to take over in Chile?

As election run-off looms, José Antonio Kast’s opponents sound the alarm

The ultra-conservative presidential candidate, José Antonio Kast, participates in an event. Photograph: Elvis Gonzalez/EPA

Tom Phillips and John Bartlett in Rancagua
Thu 16 Dec 2021 

María Irene Campos was a woman on a mission.

“I want to send the message that Chile will never again be communist,” the 74-year-old retiree proclaimed as she hit the streets last Friday to catch a glimpse of the man she believes can save her South American homeland from such a fate.

That man is José Antonio Kast – an ultra-conservative lawyer and father of nine, who some call Chile’s answer to Brazil’s radical leader, Jair Bolsonaro – and who is now just one step away from becoming his country’s next president.


Chile far-right candidate rides anti-migrant wave in presidential poll

Fifteen million Chileans will head to the polls on Sunday for the second, decisive round of Chile’s presidential election to choose between the far-right politician and his leftist rival, Gabriel Boric, who appears to hold a slender lead.

“He seems like a good person to me – somebody with conviction,” said Susana Guajardo, 61, another Kast supporter who had come to see the candidate during a campaign visit to Rancagua, a quiet city 50 miles south of Chile’s capital, Santiago.

But the prospect of a four-year Kast presidency has horrified many in Chile and across the region and fueled fears that one of South America’s most prosperous and stable democracies could be on the verge of being captured by Steve Bannon-style extremists.

“All of the progress we have made in terms of women’s rights, inclusion and human rights will be affected if Kast wins on Sunday,” warned Gaby Riquelme, a 35-year-old who has spent recent weeks pamphleting for Boric.

Riquelme feared Kast, whose Germany-born father was recently revealed to have been a member of the Nazi party, risked plunging Chile into “instability and disorder” by opposing the grassroots movement battling to address its many social problems after 2019’s historic protests.

“Kast will undoubtedly be a step backwards,” she said of the fervent Catholic who vehemently opposes same-sex marriage, recently legalized by Chile’s parliament.

On Tuesday, Chile’s moderate former president Michelle Bachelet threw her weight behind Boric, telling Chileans they faced a “fundamental” choice and urging them to back a leader who could lead the country “down the path of progress for all”.

Chile’s 2021 race has uncanny and disturbing echoes of the profoundly polarized 2018 vote that saw Jair Bolsonaro – like Kast long viewed as a political aberration – gain control of Latin America’s largest democracy.

While a more graceful orator than his notoriously blunt Brazilian counterpart, Kast has hoisted almost identical banners including law and order, opposition to “gender ideology” and a flag-waving antipathy toward the left and its alleged bid to deny citizens their “freedom”.

All of the progress we have made in terms of women’s rights, inclusion and human rights will be affected if Kast wins on SundayGaby Riquelme

“Communism is advancing”, Kast, who is 55, warned earlier this year. “Chile needs a political alternative that seeks to recover … the freedom we have lost.”

Boric, meanwhile, has promised “hope will prevail over fear” – a carbon copy of the pledge the leftist Brazilian Fernando Haddad made before losing to Bolsonaro in October 2018.

In the weeks since last month’s first-round vote, which he narrowly won, Kast has tried to soften his tone and play down his links to Bolsonaro in an apparent bid to attract moderate voters.

During the final presidential debate on Monday he rejected claims he was homophobic, claiming that several same-sex couples had attended his daughter’s wedding.

But Kast has not always been so coy.

On 18 October 2018, 10 days before Bolsonaro won power, the Chilean flew to Rio to meet Brazil’s future president. “Jair Bolsonaro represents the hope of freedom, security, development and social justice in a Brazil that was destroyed by the left,” Kast tweeted alongside a photograph of him delivering a bright red Chile football shirt. The jersey had been personalized with the number 17, then the symbol of Bolsonaro’s far-right candidacy.
What it shows is that Kast is part of a larger story of international networks … and a movement that is basically trying to be disruptiveRobert Funk

The two men stayed in touch after Bolsonaro took power, with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo recently revealing that a key connection was the German-Chilean businessman Sven von Storch. He is the husband of Beatrix von Storch, the deputy leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister.

In December 2018, Kast gave a keynote speech at a conservative congress organized by Bolsonaro’s congressman son, Eduardo, in the Brazilian border city of Foz do Iguaçu.

He used part of his address to recast Augusto Pinochet’s September 1973 overthrow of Chile’s socialist leader Salvador Allende, just as Bolsonaro has sought to rewrite the history of the Brazilian military dictatorship.

“Allende was overthrown by the people,” insisted Kast who has praised Pinochet’s “economic legacy”. “We have to rewrite history from our point of view,” he told delegates.

After Kast’s first-round victory last month, Eduardo – Steve Bannon’s representative in Latin America – wished the Chilean candidate luck.

Eduardo, Bolsonaro’s son, and José Antonio Kast gesture as they meet in Santiago, Chile on December 13, 2018

 Photograph: Iván Alvarado/Reuters

“Kast is a patriot, internationally well-connected and a thorn in the side of the São Paulo Forum,” tweeted Bolsonaro, in reference to the leftist alliance that has become a bugbear for Latin America’s hard right.

Political scientist Robert Funk said insufficient attention was being paid to the links between Kast and the conspiracy-filled, anti-semitism-laced, anti-globalist hard-right “world of Steve Bannon”.

“I think it is very worrying and I’m amazed this has not received more play here,” said the University of Chile academic, calling Kast “part Pinochetista-right, part Catholic-conservatism and part Trumpist-Bolsonaro nationalist populist”.

“What it shows is that Kast is part of a larger story of international networks … and a movement that is basically trying to be disruptive … Kast is not the conservative candidate. He’s the disruptive candidate,” Funk added.

“The story of his contact and support with Bolsonaro, with [the Spanish far-right party] Vox, with AfD – [with] the world of Steve Bannon – is pretty worrying, and not only for Chile. It shows how far they have managed to get in politics around the world.”

Kast supporters dismiss claims their guru is a radical, just as Bolsonaristas consider their authoritarian-minded leader a paragon of democratic, Godly values.
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“I don’t find him extreme in the slightest,” Guajardo said, as Kast strode past her during his visit to Rancagua, to cheers of “Viva Chile!” and “God bless you!”

Kast donned a poncho and hat at a rally in San Fernando. 

Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images

Later that evening Kast took to the stage amid flurries of white confetti to address a boisterous crowd in the nearby town of San Fernando.

He donned a poncho to dance cueca, Chile’s national dance, and led a solemn rendition of the national anthem while hundreds of Chilean flags fluttered above the crowd. “Each of us must go out into the streets and raise the Chilean flag, which represents all of us,” he declared, to rapturous applause.

Many of his supporters are convinced the right-winger could save Chile from being plunged back into what they describe as Venezuela-style socialist turmoil.

“I want democracy, peace and stability,” said Campos. “José Antonio Kast represents all of these things.”

BOURGEOIS PRESS 

Explainer: 'Communism vs fascism?' Chile braces for polarized presidential run-off
 
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile is set to vote for a new president on Sunday, with a young former student leader Gabriel Boric on the left battling far-right conservative Jose Antonio Kast, in the most polarized election since the country's return to democracy in 1990.

An at times heated campaign has seen Kast play up Boric's alliance with the Andean country's Communist Party, while Kast himself has come under fire for his defense of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet that ended three decades ago.

The run-off vote is the first presidential decider since Chile was rocked in 2019 by months of angry protests https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chile-braces-protests-crossroads-election-nears-2021-10-18 against economic inequalities that eventually sparked a process https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/how-chile-is-rewriting-its-pinochet-era-constitution-2021-05-14 - still ongoing - to redraft its decades-old constitution.

"What we're seeing here is a debate stuck in the cold war trenches, of communism versus fascism," said Kenneth Bunker, director of consultancy Tresquintos, who said the "virulence and polarization" could put some voters off.

"It's the old left-right divide."

HOW WILL THE VOTE WORK?

The winner-takes-all Dec. 19 election will see Chileans vote for a new president after a fragmented first-round ballot in mid-November also chose members of Congress and regional councils.

The voting starts at 8 a.m. (1100 GMT) and ballot stations close around 6 p.m., with results expected to come in fairly quickly Sunday evening.

WHO IS RUNNING?

The two candidates going head-to-head are 55-year-old ultra-right former congressman Kast https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chiles-kast-channels-pinochets-ghost-against-communist-left-2021-12-15, who is just behind in opinion polls against Boric https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/student-leader-president-chiles-boric-eyes-historic-election-win-2021-12-15, 35, a former leader student running for a leftist coalition.

There had been seven candidates in the November first round, with votes from the more centrist runners on the right and left seen as key to deciding which way the vote will go.

WHO'S THE FAVORITE?

Pollsters expect a close race, with Boric slightly ahead in pre-election polls since Kast came top in a fragmented first round vote. More moderate voters, the polls show, have swung to Boric more than Kast though the gap is narrowing.

However, history is potentially against Boric. Since 1999, the winner of the first round vote has always gone on to win the second round run-off.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN ISSUES?

Many Chileans support the free-market policies that propelled the copper-rich country to decades of growth and made it a bastion of economic stability in volatile Latin America. But an increasing number want change to address the deep inequalities.

Some of the loudest demands have stemmed from anger over paltry retirement payouts blamed by critics on Chile's highly privatized pension system, while others have criticized the high costs and sometimes dubious quality of privatized education, and gaps between public and private healthcare.

Conservative voters have raised questions about increased immigration, and there are law and order concerns sparked by the protests in the capital and violent clashes between police and Mapuche indigenous groups in the country's south.

Whoever wins the presidency will also have to handle a referendum to approve or reject the text of a new constitution during their first year in office. An assembly, dominated by leftist and independent representatives, is leading the constitution redraft.

SPLIT CONGRESS

Despite a polarized presidential race, markets took solace from the congressional result in November, with a fairly even balance between parties on the left and right likely to moderate the power of the executive branch and any radical reforms.

"(The winner) is going to have to face a Congress different from the current one, a more balanced congress, almost split in two halves," said Marco Moreno, director of the school of government from the Central University of Chile.

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Chile was a regional role model. Now voters want change

Mind the Gap https://tmsnrt.rs/3ykKZi9

Mind the Gap (Interactive graphic) https://tmsnrt.rs/3dL3KSk

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(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan, Rosalba O'Brien and Marguerita Choy)

A tale of two Chiles: polar opposites vie for presidency



A tale of two Chiles: polar opposites vie for presidencyJose Antonio Kast is an open admirer of Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet (AFP/Ernesto BENAVIDES)

Thu, December 16, 2021

Two political outsiders with polar opposite social and political views go head-to-head in a runoff election Sunday to become Chile's next president.

Who are they?

- Far-right -

Lawyer and ex-MP Jose Antonio Kast, 55, is an outspoken admirer of Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet and of his neoliberal economic model that has boosted private enterprise, critics say at the expense of the poor and working classes.

The law-and-order candidate came out on top in the first round of presidential elections on November 21, with 27.9 percent of the vote.

Kast, leader of the Republican Party he founded in 2019, has expressed kinship with other conservative leaders such as Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump in the United States and Spain's far-right Vox party.

He protests when he is called "extreme right," and says he wants to be known as "a common-sense candidate."

This is Kast's second presidential contest -- in 2017, as an independent, he made it to fourth place with less than eight percent of the vote.

Married and a father to nine children, Kast is an active member of the Schoenstatt conservative Catholic movement. He is against gay marriage and abortion.

Kast hails from German immigrants who moved to Santiago in 1951 and became wealthy from sausage production and a restaurant chain. His father was a soldier in the Nazi military.

Kast's economic model proposes reducing public spending, cutting taxes and trimming the number of ministries.

He has softened his position on several points since November, reversing his proposal to scrap the ministry of women's affairs and backing down on his threat to undo Chile's already limited right to abortion, which is only allowed in cases of rape, if the fetus is unviable, or if the woman's life is at risk.

But he has not backed down on his plan to dig a border "trench" to keep out illegal immigrants, particularly from Venezuela.

Kast wants to retain Chile's system of private pensions, one of the main gripes of protesters who took to the streets in October 2019 to denounce deep-rooted social inequality.

And he has promised to restore order in a time of great political uncertainty, with many Chileans fearful of immigration and crime and angry about violence and arson committed by some anti-government protesters.

- Left -

At 35, lawmaker Gabriel Boric is Chile's youngest-ever presidential challenger -- only just meeting the required minimum age to participate.

The former student activist has vowed to relegate Chile's neoliberal economic policies, widely seen as sidelining the poor and working classes, "to the grave."

The millennial campaigned on introducing "a welfare state so that everyone has the same rights no matter how much money they have in their wallet."

Chile is one of the world's most socially unequal countries, where people pay wholly or in part for education and healthcare, and pensions are entirely made up of private savings.

Chile has one of the highest per capita incomes in Latin America and one of the highest concentrations of multimillionaires, but also "persistently high inequality" between rich and poor, according to the OECD.

The candidate for the Approve Dignity coalition that includes the left-wing Frente Amplio (Broad Front) and the Communist Party, ended up in a close second place with 25.8 percent of the vote in November's first round.

"If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism in Latin America, it will also be its grave," he said on the campaign trail.

His alliance with the Communist Party instills fear in many voters in a country with a deep-seated distrust of socialism.

Boric backed the 2019 anti-government protests that resulted in a process to rewrite Chile's dictatorship-era constitution.

In 2011, he led student protests for free schooling.

His detractors say Boric is inexperienced in politics, and he himself has conceded he has "much to learn."

But supporters say his lack of ties to the ruling elite, increasingly viewed with hostility, counts in his favor.

He has received the backing of former president Michelle Bachelet, the UN's high commissioner for human rights.

Boric, of Croatian and Catalan descent, has abandoned the unkempt, long hair of his activist days, seeking to build a more consensual and moderate image. But while he has adopted jackets, he shuns ties and makes no attempt to hide his tattoos.

He supports gay marriage and abortion rights.

Boric was born in Punta Arenas, some 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) south of Santiago. He is the oldest of three brothers and moved to the capital to study law, though he never sat for his bar exam.

He is unmarried, has no children and is an avid reader of poetry and history.

bur-mlr/to

Imperialism Is Responsible For Omicron

With capitalism acting as an incubator for pandemics, and vaccine nationalism preventing an effective global response, it is no surprise that the Omicron variant of Covid-19 has emerged. Waive the patents!

Sam Carliner

November 29, 2021

The world is now grappling with what the emergence of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 will mean after many countries returned to some semblance of stability after the initial spread of the virus in 2020. It is also unclear what the global economic implications will be: the market crashed on Friday, with major indices falling below what economists call “key levels” — a tumble attributed to uncertainty over Omicron. Treasury yields also took a dive, and crude oil prices fell. Though share prices for Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech — the three manufacturers of the Covid-19 vaccine — all rose big time.

After a year of leaders of imperialist governments claiming that life would “return to normal,” Omicron has revealed that the capitalist response to this pandemic was never fully effective. Although there is renewed discussion around the need to waive vaccine patents — which is absolutely essential, now more than ever — no one should count on imperialist leaders to take this necessary action after failing to do this for a full year. It was not a secret that Covid, like all viruses, would evolve to survive. Capitalism’s worldwide gutting of public health measures and need to place profit over human life turned out to be the perfect incubator for Covid’s evolution into new, stronger variants.

The variant’s genetic code contains more than 30 different mutations to the spike protein — the part of the virus used to attack human cells. Early indicators suggest that some of these mutations could make the new variant even more transmissible than the Delta variant, although it is currently unknown if it will cause more severe illness. Researchers in Seattle have identified three of the mutations as potential candidates for making vaccines less effective against Omicron than against the other variants, although more research is needed to determine whether this is the case.

South Africa was the first country to identify and report the variant to the world community due to its world-class infectious disease infrastructure. The number of new daily cases in the country began doubling rapidly around November 19, after over a month of stability. Researchers sprang into action and gathered enough data to send a report to the World Health Organization (WHO) by November 24. Many mainstream news outlets have misreported this discovery, instead claiming that the variant first evolved in South Africa. In reality, the geographic origins of the variant are still unknown. In the mere days since the South African scientists first reported their findings to the WHO, Omicron has been found elsewhere, including in Belgium, the UK, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, and Australia.

Biden responded by issuing a travel ban on several southern African countries, and other imperialist nations followed his lead. Biden did not ban travel from European countries where Omicron has been detected.

Biden’s response punishes South Africa for reporting Omicron to the world, and reinforces a racist depiction of Africa as a continent riddled with disease. This response by the United States and other imperialist countries is especially inexcusable when considering how these countries’ vaccine hoarding has contributed to so much of the Global South remaining unvaccinated for so long.

Like any species, viruses evolve through replication. This is why high vaccination rates are important: when the virus can’t spread to other people, its genetic lines are terminated when a body fights off an infection. When wealthier countries hoard vaccines and vaccine developers refuse to release their patents, the virus is able to continue to circulate in largely unvaccinated countries, leading to mass illness and death, as well as the evolution of new variants. DNA analysis suggests that Omicron’s family tree diverged from the original Covid-19 virus in mid-2020 and likely spent the last year circulating in areas with “poor genomic surveillance” — that is, places with limited ability to collect and analyze genetic samples of the virus. It was only when it began circulating in South Africa, which has a low vaccination rate despite robust public health infrastructure for testing samples, that it was identified.

Evolutionary epidemiologist Rob Wallace puts it well in a recent Patreon response to the Omicron news:

Vaccines are not the best bet in the race against new variants. Instead, it’s keeping novel diseases from emerging in the first place. And keeping those that do emerge from spreading by organizing governance around public health and the public commons. Both interventions require replacing a mode of social reproduction organized around profit that sacrifices millions annually, including this year by COVID.

For over a year, scientists have been calling for the waiving of vaccine patents. The pandemic remained widely unmitigated throughout the Global South due to vaccine hoarding by wealthy countries and the refusal of pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Moderna to share their vaccine production secrets with the world for quick, efficient, and widespread production. We do not have to wonder what a needs-based approach to a global pandemic might look like: Cuba’s planned economy and strong investment in healthcare enabled the country to develop its own vaccine with the intention of sharing with the rest of the world.

If patents were waived, countries that lack the resources to develop their own vaccines but do have manufacturing capacity could begin producing the vaccines on their own. Not only would this save money and increase the number of vaccines available, it would also reduce supply-chain issues — if vaccines are produced locally, they don’t have to be shipped from overseas, which speeds up the process and reduces the price of production even more.

As it currently stands, countries in the Global South are having to redirect public health resources — including funding, but also basic supplies like syringes — away from routine vaccination programs and toward Covid-19 programs, leading to lower rates of even routine vaccinations compared to previous years. If these same countries didn’t have to funnel millions of dollars into purchasing vaccines from private or overseas developers (South Africa had to pay double for the AstraZeneca vaccine compared to European countries), this money could be redirected toward purchasing other necessary supplies.

Amid backlash, President Biden is once again claiming to support waiving patents. No one should take him at face value. A year ago, Biden claimed publicly that he supported waiving the patents, only after it became too difficult for him to remain silent and knowing full well that he would appear callous if he said anything else. Once the capitalist press was satisfied and the populations of wealthy countries moved on from the issue, Biden kept silent. His new call to waive the patents is one of the first times he’s said anything on the subject since April.

Even now, Biden is not calling for the full waiving of patents, but a negotiated version of what Global South countries are calling for, as if it is possible to negotiate with a pandemic.

Waiving patents immediately was essential to fighting the pandemic and helping prevent the development of new, more dangerous variants. But capitalism is irrational, and will always place immediate profits over human need.

Lenin explains how capitalism in its final stage becomes imperialism, in which finance capital creates wealth for imperialist countries like the United States by monopolizing and exploiting the resources and labor of the vast majority of humanity, primarily in the Global South. During a pandemic, the brutality of this system is made all the more apparent and lethal. The people of the Global South are subjected to even deadlier conditions than usual, and their suffering extends to the working class in countries to which they are subjugated.

At the height of the pandemic in the United States, it was the working class that endured the worst of the disease. Black, Brown, and poor white communities were forced to work through 2020, denied basic workplace safety, and forced to pay for the pandemic while capitalist profits hit all time highs. Even with the vaccines now available to the working class in wealthy countries, the economic burdens of the crisis are placed on workers. And if new variants make vaccines less effective, it will be the working class who once again are disproportionately affected.

For this pandemic to end, the working class of wealthy countries must join the calls to waive the patents as fiercely as workers in countries subjected to imperialism have been doing for over a year. And we can never forget how capitalists responded to the Covid pandemic. Capitalists will isolate themselves from the rest of us when the next variant emerges, when the next — possibly more deadly — pandemic arises, and when the climate crisis becomes impossible to ignore. Capitalism’s only response to crises is greater exploitation.

The global working class has an alternative: fight for a socialist system that will adapt to crises based on human needs, not profit. And we can start practicing now the internationalist, anti-imperialist perspective that is required to achieve socialism by fighting for a working-class response to this pandemic, which will include that patents be waived immediately and unconditionally.


Sam Carliner
Sam Carliner is a socialist with a background in journalism. He mainly writes for Left Voice about US imperialism. He also tweets about imperialism as @saminthecan.