Why Trump Runs Free

BY PAUL STREET 

APRIL 29, 2022

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Photograph Source: mathiaswasik – CC BY 2.0

Trumptrocities

Writing the third chapter of my latest book This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America, was an exhausting and soul-chilling experience. Titled “A Fascist in the White House, 2017-21,” this chapter attempted to catalogue, categorize, and cross-reference the transgressions of the malignant ogre Donald Trump as US president. It records more than 400 “Trumptrocities” filed and cross-listed across 8 different folders. Among the orange-brushed brute’s many offences: the caging and theft of migrant children; pardoning the sadistic war criminal Eddie Gallagher; the placement of open Camp of the Saints fascists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller in top advisory roles; embrace of the slaveowners’ Confederacy; defense of murderous white supremacists in Charlottesville; a mass-murderous and pandemicist response to Covid-19; the ugly nativist and sexist call for Ilhan Omar and the Squad to “go back to your crime-ridden countries;” the juvenile disfiguring of a weather map; the sick racist worsening of Puerto Rico’s horrific Hurricane Maria experience; the insane claims that the corporate Democrats are “Marxists” and “radical Left” and that “the radical Left” was taking over America; mad declarations of his own special genius; repeated tyrannical assaults on independent media; open encouragement and cultivation of political violence; embrace of fascist militiamen who attacked state capitals to protest basic public health protections; constant denigration of women; embrace of authoritarian rulers the world over; jokes about being “president for life;” calls for the military suppression of the George Floyd Rebellion; the holding of a bizarre Christian nationalist photo-op following a brutal attack on civil rights protesters in Lafayette Square; the ordering of a police state execution of an antifascist; the arch-criminal assassination of a top Iranian general in Iraq; the embrace of neo-Nazi Q’Anon and fascist lunatics like Marjorie Taylor Greene; providing over for the Saudis’ literal butchering of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; cuddling up to world fascist hero and future Bucha butcher Vladimir Putin; the embrace of a white teen MAGAt who slaughtered two people with an AR-15 at a Black Lives Matter rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin; handing the nation’s climate and energy policy portfolio to fossil fuel interests determined to turn the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber; and, by the way, the attempted subversion and overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.

That’s just the short list. The full record is mind-boggling even if it was unsurprising to those who knew that The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik was on to something when he issued this warning in early May of 2016:

‘There is a simple formula for descriptions of Donald Trump: add together a qualification, a hyphen, and the word “fascist” …his personality and his program belong exclusively to the same dark strain of modern politics: an incoherent program of national revenge led by a strongman; a contempt for parliamentary government and procedures; an insistence that the existing, democratically elected government…is in league with evil outsiders and has been secretly trying to undermine the nation; a hysterical militarism designed to no particular end other than the sheer spectacle of strength; an equally hysterical sense of beleaguerment and victimization; and a supposed suspicion of big capitalism entirely reconciled to the worship of wealth and ‘success.’… The idea that it can be bounded in by honest conservatives in a Cabinet or restrained by normal constitutional limits is, to put it mildly, unsupported by history.’

That was dead on, even if Gopnik left out the critical race and gender components of the fascist formula – and even though the “normal constitutional limits” did just barely hold in 2020-21 (if Republican voter suppression and election rigging efforts work how they are supposed and the reigning media and politics culture stuck in its longstanding “normalcy bias,” the limits may well fail in 2024-25).

Attempted Reichstags

That Trump would test those limits to the point of an attempted coup was also predictable early on. It was clear almost from the start of his presidency that Trump had no interest in trying to stay in power the normal bourgeois electoral way: by making and trying to sell policies meant to appeal to enough voters and keeping enough ruling class players happy to prevail in the next election. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder predicted just three months into the Trump reign, the nation’s 45^th president would seek to stay in office through some sort of Reichstag Fire[1] moment(s) that would permit him to consolidate power over and against the will of the populace and electorate.

In the long hot summer of 2020, consistent with Snyder’s warning, Trump was in putsch mode, looking for Reichstag Fires. He openly flouted public opinion on the pandemic, public health, civil rights, race, police statism, and the rule of law. This kept his approval rate in the low 40s and the militantly uncharismatic, basement-dwelling corporatist Joe Biden well ahead of him in national polls. This was nothing for his critics and opponents to celebrate however, for, when combined with his clear desire to stay in power, it suggested strongly that he was going to try to keep the presidency in undemocratic, anti-constitutional, and violent ways.

Trump’s first attempted 2020 Reichstag was the beautiful George Floyd uprising, which he called “radical Left” and wanted to crush in the streets with the 101^st Airborne, much to the dismay of even his own military command. His next Reichstag try was the 2020 election itself, which he falsely claimed was “stolen” by the “radical Left” Democrats. This Big Hitlerian Lie was the insane claim and running through the addled minds of the thousands of maniacs who stormed the US Capitol at the call of their deranged Dear Leader on the sixth day of 2021. The terrible events of January 6^th were final proof that there had indeed been a fascist[2] in the White House since January 20, 2017. As US House investigators are learning in ever greater detail, Trump and his team were deeply involved in the Attack on the Capitol, the last and desperate phase of the Trump team’s attempt to carry out a coup d’état and stay in power over and against the judgement of voters and even of an idiotic 18^th Century Electoral College already tilted to the right.

Like Another Fascist After Another Failed Putsch

It was all very consistent with warnings made early on by astute political observers like Gopnik and Henry Giroux and with the likely serial rapist Trump’s long Mafia-like business career and sociopathic personality going back well before his emergence as a serious presidential contender. The malignant hyper-narcissist and “instinctive fascist” Donald Trump has long been one of the sickest individuals ever spawned by the human species.

How is this auburn-tinted swine not caged? Why does this malignant bag of fascist poison still stain the nation and world with its continuing presence as the de facto leader of one of the two ruling political parties in the world’s most powerful state? How does this deranged, blood-soaked pathogen from Queens still walk free? How does the tiny-fingered tangerine-tinted tyrant roam the land with Secret Service protection to spread yet more Hitlerian falsehood, including the violently absurd and destructive claim to have won the 2020 election – an attempted Reichstag Fire the noxious putschist Trump is still trying to fan?

The evidence of Trump’s technical/statutory criminality as president is abundant on at least six counts:

* Interfering with the certification of Biden’s election win on 1/6/2021.

* Trying to bully the Georgia Secretary of State into falsifying the popular presidential vote in Georgia.

* Inciting physical attacks on US Congresspersons and Congressional staff on 1/6/2021.

* Interfering with the federal investigation of the Capitol Riot.

* Removing government documents and tampering with and destroying classified White House documents.

* Using the threat to withhold military assistance to blackmail Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky into digging up political dirt on Biden in 2019.

(To be sure, these aren’t even Trump’s worst crimes. His most horrendous offences as president were Covid-19 pandemicide and his quieter but even deadlier crime of pedal-to-the-medal ecocide.)

From the US House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (hereafter “House Select Committee”) and US Attorney General Merrick Garland down to the district attorney office of Fulton County, Georgia, the Michigan Attorney General, the New York Attorney General, and the Manhattan DA’s office, top Democratic policymakers and legal authorities and key state and local prosecutors have more than enough ammunition to prosecute and incarcerate the Malignant One. But so what? All indications are that the dismal Dems will let Trump and his fascist collaborators skip down a path like the one enjoyed by Adolf Hitler following the failed Nazi Party Beer Hall Putsch: no real punishment and continued liberty to spread hate, lies, and fascism.

Properly surnamed after an inert decorative object, Garland shows little inclination to pull the legal trigger on Herr Trump. Biden pretends to be bothered by this but shows no interest in using his bully pulpit to push his listless, Lieberman-and Obama-like AG from passivity to prosecution. The demobilizing dollar Democrats seem ready to let the clock run out on the House’s January 6^th committee as the Amerikaner Party of Trump (the APoT, formerly known the Republicans) prepares to take back the House and squelch the investigation this fall.

It isn’t just Trump who is getting away with an attempted fascist coup. The charges made against, and the sentences handed down to his frothing minions who waylaid the US Capitol have been pathetically mild. Garland won’t prosecute coup complicit Republifascist Congresspersons and former White House staffers who have essentially told the Jan. 6 committee to go f*ck itself by flatly refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas.

The Rod Stewart-esque message to Trump and his late-fascist freakshow is clear:

Old thugs be free tonight.
Time is on your side,
Don’t let them put you down, don’t let ’em push you around,
don’t let ’em ever change your point of view.

A Gentleman’s Agreement

What gives? I won’t pretend to be able to look into the corrupted minds of the depressing neoliberal elitists atop the Democratic Party, but my semi-educated guess is that they have no serious desire to cage the lethal orange creature from Hell for four basic reasons. The first explanation is their normative commitment to the belief that imperial US presidents do in fact operate above the law and can’t properly perform their often-dirty duties if they think they might be criminally liable for nefarious actions even after leaving office. In the name of “look[ing] forward as opposed to backwards” (to quote future war criminal Barack Obama as President-Elect in January of 2009), this is a longstanding “gentleman’s agreement” between the two US ruling class parties. It apparently holds even if a former president tried to stay in power by overthrowing a bourgeois-democratic election in the imperial “homeland” itself!

Fear of Retaliation After Congress Reverts to Republifascist Control

A second and related explanation relates to the Dems’ fear of political-legal retaliation after they lose the US House (and perhaps the Senate) this Fall and the presidency in 2024-25, thanks in no small part to their ongoing captivity to capital, which continues to expose the elitist inauthenticity of their thoroughly disingenuous claim to be “the party of the people.” The “lock her up” APoT may well undertake multiple trumped-up party-line revenge impeachments of Biden no matter what, but the Justice Department going hard after the fascist criminal Trump will guarantee that ugly likelihood impeachments and add on wild prosecutions of Biden and Harris by a US attorney general taking orders from a Fuhrer Trump or DeSantis in 2025 or 2026. Congressional Democrats and liberal media personnel would also face significantly escalated legal, political, and physical menace. These are prices and risks top Democrats are unwilling willing to pay and take.

Fear of Violence

A third explanation is fear of neofascist violence. It’s not for nothing that Fulton County, Georgia’s Black female district attorney Fani Willis had to request FBI security assistance after she had the audacity to launch an investigation of crime boss Trump’s Gotti-like attempt to intimidate the Georgia Secretary of State into “finding” enough Trump votes to reverse the 2020 outcome in that battleground state. A considerable section of the very preponderantly white male Trumpenvolk is armed and dangerous, ready to maim and kill in defense of their demented hero. A serious prosecution and conviction of their cult object would certainly spark bloody revenge from the more deranged and weaponized of the orange-brushed beast’s little green men.

Pied Piper II?

A fourth Dem consideration is electoral. Remember the “Pied Piper” strategy of 2015-16, revealed by WikiLeaks – the Clinton Dems’ determination that Trump’s emergence as the top 2016 Republican presidential candidate would guarantee a Hillary victory and should therefore be encouraged? After eight years of standard cringing service to Wall Street, corporate America, and the miliary industrial complex under Obama (as under Bill Clinton 2003-2001), the capitalist-imperialist “inauthentic opposition” party (IOP) was looking forward to running against someone so awful that the counterfeit nature of their claim to be a progressive party wouldn’t matter. They wanted to run against Trump.

We saw how that worked out and yet we should not discount the possibility that the Dems want to face Trump yet again, using the horrific nature of his twice-impeached presidency and his real and alleged connections to Russia and Putin to (they think) crush him in the 2024 election. The Russia and Putin links likely hold special meaning for the Dems in the wake of Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine. The Dems’ will saddle “Putin toy” Trump with the crimes of Mariupol, Bucha, and, perhaps, Putin’s coming US-/NATO-egged-on deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

If the IOP (the Dems) do in fact want to run against Trump for a third time, the idea would probably be to keep him out of jail and not to feed the paranoid victimization fantasies of his Amerikaner base by actually prosecuting him for, you know, trying to overthrow the US constitutional bourgeois republic.

Why the Ruling Class Lets the Trumpenstein Live On

The nation’s ruling class could turn off the Trump show once and for all. Why doesn’t it pull the plug, one way or another, on Malignant Orange? It’s riven by its own internal divisions, with not insignificant parts of the bourgeoisie aligned with revanchist white nationalism and fossil fascism. Much of the majority of the US wealth and power elite that doesn’t like Trump and Trumpism-fascism probably doesn’t mind his continuing presence as a “bad cop” bogeyman driving voters to cower under the umbrella of the nicer cop corporate and imperial Democrats. And the nation’s masters are happy for the rabble (the citizenry) to be screaming and even shooting at each other across the binary red-blue partisan, geographic (largely rural v. metro), and culture war divides instead of uniting against their parasitic capitalist owners and the broader bourgeois and imperial system. America’s owners expect to keep rolling in profits no matter whether the government is held down by neofascists or neoliberals or some combination of the two.

“Normalcy Bias”

All of which helps explain why our rulers’ so-called mainstream media seems now, in Salon writer Chauncy de Vega’s words, to have “made its peace with fascism.” As de Vega explains:

‘America’s democracy crisis is getting worse. The Republican-fascists and their allies are undeterred. If anything, they are energized and have escalated their attempts to end democracy in America…In the new America the Republican-fascists are trying to force into being, if you are not one of the MAGA elect, your life will be hell. If you think your life is difficult now, it will be orders of magnitude worse if the fascists and their movement achieve their goals… But instead of explaining this reality to the American people in a consistent, clear, repeated, transparent and direct way – while providing the larger context and importance of these facts – the mainstream news media has, for the most part, chosen to focus on the latest distraction…As public opinion polls have repeatedly shown, the result is a growing lack of concern about Trump’s coup attempt, the Republican-fascist movement and the overall crisis of democracy… The mainstream media is possessed by normalcy bias and clings to fantasies of an old order of more or less functional democracy. What we describe as “normal politics” colors how the news media, and the country’s leadership class more generally, views all political events…There is…the…prospect that the news media as an institution, and many of its most prominent voices, will simply adapt to whatever new “normal” a full-on Republican-fascist regime imposes once it takes power in 2024 or in the years beyond. If one worships at the mantle of power and influence, rather than truth and democracy, such a decision is only natural’ (emphasis added).

Poor Jamie Raskin: Bless His Heart 

In the meantime, let us offer some praise and pity for poor Jamie Raskin, a US House manager of Trump’s second impeachment (the one over January 6th): praise for having decency, intelligence, and courage to say the F-word (fascism) when describing the right-wing Republican forces that menaces the US; pity for his childish faith in “normal” constitutional mechanisms to defeat the threat. The former law professor Raskin is so passionately enthralled by his country’s deeply conservative aristo-republican 18th Century Constitution that he claimed (in an MSDNC documentary titled “Love the Constitution”) to seriously believe that the House case for the conviction of Trump after January 6th would be so convincing as to garner a 100-0 vote in the US Senate. This was an utterly ludicrous thing to have expected (or claim to have expected) from a Senate half occupied by the fossil fascist APoT – a Senate containing seven “Republicans” who had refused to certify Biden’s clear victory even right after the assault on the Capitol. Now, bless his heart, Raskin wants us to know that the long, drawn-out House Select Committee’s June 2022 hearings will “blow the roof off the House.” Here’s some of what Raskin said to an event hosted by Georgetown University last week:

“The hearings will tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House…No president has ever come close to doing what happened here in terms of trying to organize an inside coup to overthrow an election and bypass the constitutional order…and then also use a violent insurrection made up of domestic violent extremist groups, white nationalist and racist, fascist groups in order to support the coup…It’s anybody’s guess what could have happened — martial law, civil war. You know, the beginning of authoritarianism…I want people to pay attention to what’s going on here, because that’s as close to fascism as I ever want my country to come to again.”

Okay, the privileged minority of people who have time, energy, and inclination to “pay attention to what’s going on” (I tenuously include myself in that category) look forward to the hearings and findings. But so what if the US House gets its “roof blown off?” What then? Will the media shift from covering the latest horror in Eastern Europe to alert USAers to the crisis of democracy and the steady of advance of fascism at home? (The main domestic political story to challenge World War III for headline coverage in June should be the Republifascist Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and [one would hope] the mass protests that decision could well engender.)

What’s the House going to do with its roof blown off? Convince a half-Republifascist Senate to convict Trump 18 months after the failed putsch in a time when 57% of Republicans think the Capitol Riot was “an act of patriotism”? The savagely gerrymandered lower chamber of Congress is by all indications slated to return to Republifascist, white-nationalist control later this year, and that’s the end of the House Select Committee. The Senate may well also revert to management by the arch-sexist white nationalist party.

The Constitution superfan Raskin says the committee aims to have a report out about their investigation by the end of the summer or early fall. Super. Order your advance copy now: it will no doubt be an indispensable primary source for future historians, assuming we still have historians in coming years. In the meantime, it will look great gathering dust on a shelf next to The Mueller Report.

And what’s with “that’s as close to fascism as I ever want my country to come to again”? Is Raskin paying attention to what’s happening right now across the US and how it all points to a likely Republifascist return to triple-branch governmental power under a President Trump II or DeSantis I in 2025? Amerikaner fascism is marching along quite well underneath the fog of Ukraine, with book and abortion banning in the red state lead. As de Vega noted two days ago, “America’s democracy crisis shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Too many Americans are still in denial about the existential threat that Donald Trump, his movement and the broader white right pose to the future of the United States.” Maybe Raskin would like to put his constitutional and procedural fantasies aside long enough to come out in the streets wearing a green bandana to join Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights (RU4AR) in sending a message to the absurdly far-right Supreme Court: if you insist on subverting the rule of law by overturning Roe v. Wade (a decision still supported by 72% of the US populace), then we intend to shut this country down in holy opposition to the female enslavement of forced motherhood.

Endnotes

+1. The Holocaust Encyclopedia: “On February 27, 1933, the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down. The Nazi leadership and its coalition partners used the fire to claim that Communists were planning a violent uprising. They claimed that emergency legislation was needed to prevent this. The resulting act, commonly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, abolished a number of constitutional protections and paved the way for Nazi dictatorship.”

+2. It was at this absurdly late date that the leading historian of European fascism Robert Paxton, author of the widely read volume The Anatomy of Fascism, finally stood down from his denial of Trump’s fascism. See Robert Paxton, “I’ve Hesitated to Call Donald Trump a Fascist. Until Now,” Newsweek, January 11, 2021. The third chapter, titled “The Anatomy of Fascism Denial,” of my new book This Happened Here is a rigorous and sometimes amusing survey and critique of the often preposterous lengths many mostly older, white, and male academics (20^th Century European historians especially), pundits, and “left”-identified commentators went to deny, misunderstand, and underestimate the fascist essence of Trump and Trumpism.

Paul Street’s latest book is This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America (London: Routledge, 2022).

Oyster reefs in Texas are disappearing. Fishermen there fear their jobs will too


Oyster harvester Johny Jurisich empties a dredge filled with oysters onto his boat near Texas City, Texas.

Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media

April 29, 2022
KATIE WATKINS

FROM

At Johny Jurisich's family dock in Texas City, more than a dozen empty oyster boats with names like Sunshine and Captain Fox lazily float in the marina on a recent Monday morning – an odd sight for what is normally peak oyster harvesting season.

"On a Monday morning, this beautiful weather, they would all be out there (in the bay). This would be an empty marina," says Jurisich, whose family owns the wholesale company US Sea Products and has worked in the oyster business for generations.

Nearby at Misho's Oyster Company in San Leon, mariachi music blares into an empty shucking room, the conveyor belts at a standstill. Just a few dozen oyster sacks line what would normally be a full freezer room.

Currently, 25 of the state's 27 harvesting areas are already closed. The season normally runs from Nov. 1 through April 30, but many of the areas have been closed since mid-December – a move the state says is necessary for future sustainability.

But those in the oyster business worry about the sustainability of their industry and livelihoods — and it's set up a clash between state officials and oyster harvesters over how the resource should be managed.

"We're not making any money"

"It's taken a big toll on me actually," Jurisich says. "I started this right out of high school. So I mean, this is all I've ever done."

Alex Gutierrez, who owns a few oyster boats and has worked as an oyster fisherman for 35 years, says he usually hires between 10-15 people to work with him each season. But recently he's been dipping into his savings and doesn't think he'll be able to afford the annual maintenance on his boats.

"There's just no money to spend on the boats, we're not making any money," he says. "And you don't want to spend the little savings that you might have and then have empty pockets."

The Gulf Coast region produces 45% of the nation's $250 million oyster industry, according to NOAA fisheries. In Texas, the industry contributes an estimated $50 million to the state economy.

The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department decides when to close areas for harvesting using a traffic-light system that went into effect in 2015. If samples taken by state biologists come back with too many small oysters or too few oysters in general the agency closes the area.

Johny Jurisich measures a freshly harvested oyster. He keeps those over 3 inches and puts the smaller ones back into the water.

Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media

Oysters prevent shoreline erosion, closing the harvesting areas are necessary to give them time to repopulate

Jurisich and others from the industry disagree with how the state takes the samples and also with the system itself. They say by closing some bays, it forces all of the boats into just a few areas, inevitably overwhelming those reefs as well.

"We feel that it's been somewhat abused, and just mishandled and the data is skewed," Jurisich says. "It forces too many boats in small areas, and then upsets the recreational fishermen."

Christopher Steffen, a natural resource specialist with Texas Parks & Wildlife, says the agency takes samples based on where harvesting happens.

"If an area's being fished quite a bit and there's a lot of fishing pressure, then we'll go back out and resample that area," he says. "If it's below the threshold, then that area can close in response to the decreased number of oysters."

Steffen says the closures are necessary to give oysters time to repopulate. Oysters prevent shoreline erosion and help filter the water, but unlike fish, they can't swim away to escape poor conditions.

While it's unusual to have so many closures, Steffen says it's also in line with the trends the agency has been seeing in oyster populations.

That's because Texas oysters have been having a rough decade, enduring hurricanes, flood events, and drought, says Jennifer Pollack with the Harte Research Institute.

ENVIRONMENT
Volunteers are growing oyster gardens to help restore reefs

NATIONAL
Florida Closes Iconic Apalachicola Oyster Fishery

Across the Gulf Coast region about 50-85% of the original oyster reefs have disappeared

"Oyster reefs really just aren't able to recover from the things that we see happening to them," Pollack says.

Across the Gulf Coast region, an estimated 50-85% of the original oyster reefs have disappeared, according to a report by the Nature Conservancy. They've been hit with hurricanes, flood events, droughts and the BP oil spill.

In Galveston, Hurricane Ike in 2008 was particularly devastating, destroying more than 6,000 acres of oyster habitat there, according to TPWD.

"We have all these disturbances that knock the reefs back, we have harvesting that continues, that probably keeps them at maybe a lower abundance level of oysters in the bay," Pollack says. "They just can never climb back out so they're a little bit less resilient next time something happens."

A lot of these conditions – droughts, heavier rainfall – are only expected to be exacerbated by climate change.

Beyond the temporary closures, Texas Parks & Wildlife is also studying the permanent closure of three bays.

Oyster fishermen like Antonio Ayala worry that would push the industry even closer to the brink.

"They're punishing us, instead of helping us," Ayala says in Spanish.

Like oysterman Alex Gutierrez, Ayala says he's also had to dip into his savings just to pay the bills. He's thought about getting another job, but after 30 years harvesting oysters, this is all he knows.

"Nobody wants to hire an old man," he says.

A story in USA TODAY sparked Oprah Winfrey's new documentary on – and battle against – racial bias in health care

The Color of Care is a disturbing film about racial disparities in health care and loss in the pandemic. 'I was haunted by the words of the story and that picture,' Oprah said of the USA TODAY piece.

Nicole Carroll

USA TODAY

I'm USA TODAY editor-in-chief Nicole Carroll, and this is The Backstory, insights into our biggest stories of the week. If you'd like to get The Backstory in your inbox every week, sign up here.

In late March 2020, Gary Fowler, 56, went to three Detroit emergency rooms looking for care. His father had COVID-19 and was in the hospital on a ventilator. Now Fowler had a fever and was feeling ill as well. He wanted a coronavirus test, and he needed help with his breathing.

Three times, he was turned away.

Fowler's son, Keith Gambrell, explained what happened  in interviews with reporter Kristen Jordan Shamus of the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network.  

At the first hospital, "He tells them, 'My father has the coronavirus. I would like to get a test because I am showing symptoms. I am coughing,' " Gambrell said. "He had a fever of 101. He had shortness of breath. He was showing all the signs.

"They tell him, 'Sir, more than likely the fever is from bronchitis.' And they tell him to go home. But they also give my dad a piece of paper saying to act like you have the virus."

Fowler was not tested for COVID-19. 

He continued to seek medical care in the following days, Shamus wrote, going to another emergency room with a 100.7 degree fever and shortness of breath. There, Gambrell said, his father was told he'd get better care at a facility three miles away.

We’re not going back to normal:We died in normal. America needs to face health inequity

So they drove him the roughly three miles to the next ER, where Gambrell said his father explained: " 'My chest hurts. I can't breathe. I have a fever that has not broke. I've been taking Tylenol, I've been drinking stuff and it is not breaking. I think I have the virus because my father tested positive for it and I saw him ... the day he went to the hospital.'

"But it was the same thing. They tell him: 'You're fine. You have bronchitis. Go home. Drink water. Act like you have the virus.' "

He followed instructions. He went home. He couldn't breathe well, so he slept upright in a blue recliner by his bed.

That's where he died on April 7.

"My dad passed at home, and no one tried to help him," Gambrell said. "He asked for help, and they sent him away. They turned him away."

USA TODAY ran the story on the front page on April 22, 2020. That is where Oprah Winfrey read it. She said she couldn't get it out of her mind. 

She talked to Shamus recently about her story.

"I was haunted by the words of the story and that picture," Winfrey said of Gambrell, who was photographed by Free Press photographer Ryan Garza staring through the window of his northwest Detroit home. "In the middle of the night, I woke up thinking about that."

She said the story humanized how the pandemic disproportionally sickened and killed people of color and clearly showed the racial bias in health care.

"It was so vivid in my mind that I thought, 'Oh, this would make its own movie. This would make its own film if you could tell the story,' " Winfrey said.

"I ... sent the story to everybody I knew, digitally. I sent it to one of my producers who's worked with me for years for the Oprah show. And I said, 'Gee, you know, I wish there were something we could do about this story.' ... Then, when I was talking to my team about documentaries and what kind of work we wanted to do and I said, 'I can't get the story of Gary Fowler out of my head.' There have to be more Gary Fowlers,' and that's how it happened.

"It" is The Color of Care, a disturbing new documentary that details racial disparities in health care and the families who lost loved ones in the pandemic. Winfrey's Harpo Productions partnered with the Smithsonian on the documentary.

But it's just the start of her push for change. 

"It's a moment to ignite a cultural conversation around this public health crisis, and ... to move the conversation forward because there's so many people who aren't even aware that this is what is happening," Winfrey told Shamus.

A preexisting condition:How America's racist policies fueled high COVID-19 deaths in communities of color

Winfrey would like to get the film shown in medical schools, to professional health care networks, nonprofits and to health care journalists.

"I want people to be aware that because of the color of your skin, there are disparities in your ability to receive your rightful health care. What we're trying to do is have this campaign, ... it's a yearlong campaign, reach current and future medical professionals."

That campaign kicked off Wednesday night at the documentary's premiere at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. Gambrell was there.

He was wore two teddy bear necklaces around his neck. One contained ashes of his father, the other of his grandfather. 

I asked him how he got involved in the documentary. He said Harpo first called him in August 2020.

"I was sitting on the porch with my mom and they were like, 'We saw your picture in USA TODAY. Would you be interested in doing the film?' They didn't say it was Harpo, but I was like, yeah, sure. I just want to get the story out there."

The next day, they called him back and said the film would be produced by Harpo. "And I was like, are you serious? It was major. I would say it's a blessing. I hate that it's for my dad, but I'm glad it's for him. You know, look what's happened. They're raising awareness of these issues.

I asked him what his dad would think of the film, of the campaign, of the change that is to come.

"I think he'd be proud," Gambrell said. "I know he'd cry for sure."

And what does he want to come from this?

"I hope that with this film, doctors and nurses will treat people like human beings. Take away a person's color or religion and treat them as a human being. Stop telling someone what you think is wrong with them and let them tell you what's bothering them because no one knows your body like you know your body."

Shamus asked Winfrey the same thing: What are you hoping that the documentary will accomplish?

"I'm hoping that it becomes more than a film," she said, "just like your words became more than a story and how your words got passed on to me and then I now have created this film that passes it on in a different language."

Journalists want to make a difference. That's why so many do what we do, including Shamus. 

"It's incredible," she said about the documentary and the campaign. "We all hope that when we write stories that they will affect people, that they will impact the community, that they will make change and help us become a better society.

"But when you actually see something tangible come from your work, there's just no way to describe how good that feels."

Backstory:You can talk about suicidal thoughts and depression. USA TODAY editor shares advice after her mother's death by suicide.

Backstory:'Take a chance': Lessons from Simone Biles, Melinda French Gates, Nina Garcia and other USA TODAY Women of the Year

"The Color of Care" premieres on May 1 at 8 p.m. Eastern on the Smithsonian Channel.

Nicole Carroll is the editor-in-chief of USA TODAY. Reach her at EIC@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter here. 

Thank you for supporting our journalism.

Russia’s Antiquated Nuclear Warning System Jeopardizes Us All

As the war in Ukraine’s pits Russia against the West, it’s time to look at Moscow’s weak satellite systems, which raise the chances of nuclear conflict.

by David K. Shipler

April 29, 2022

WASHINGTON MONTHLY

In this photo released by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operation test at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021. The missile was successfully launched from California in a test of the defense system, the U.S. Air Force said Wednesday. 

(Brittany E. N. Murphy / U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command via AP)


Since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a heightened nuclear alert level, much of the world has worried that he might go nuclear in his war against Ukraine. But there is another concern: a false alarm from Russian early-warning systems, which experts believe are dangerously vulnerable to errors.

The risk of a catastrophic mistake has been a threat since the outset of the nuclear age, but miscalculation becomes more likely in a period of heightened Russian-American tension. Leaders would have only minutes to make fateful decisions, so each side needs to be able to “see” clearly whether the other has launched missiles before retaliating. Ambiguity in a moment of “crisis perception,” the Rand Corporation has noted, can spark “conflict when one nation misinterprets an event (such as a training exercise, a weather phenomenon, or a malfunction) as an indicator of a nuclear attack.”

Russia and the United States are the most heavily armed of the nine nuclear powers, which include China, France, the United Kingdom, North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Israel. (Iran is poised to join the club.) But only the U.S. has comprehensive surveillance of the globe, provided by three active geosynchronous satellites, with two in reserve, whose infrared receptors can spot missile plumes. That data is supplemented by radar, which gives the U.S. the capacity to double-check that a launch has actually occurred.

Specialists call this verification by both satellite and radar “dual phenomenology.” The Russians don’t have it, at least not reliably. They lack adequate space-based monitoring to supplement their radar.

What they have is a “terrible and dangerous technology shortfall,” according to Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT and a former scientific adviser to the chief of naval operations.

He believes that Russian satellites are handicapped by their inability to look straight down and distinguish the infrared signature of a missile launch against the Earth’s terrain. “Imagine that you took a photograph of a complex and rocky area of ground,” he explained in an email to me. To pick out an ant, you’d need to find it in “some very small pixel in a vast array of pixels.” In the infrared part of the spectrum, you need multiple high-quality sensors, each with a small enough field of view to discriminate between the background and a rocket plume and to avoid a false detection from reflected sunlight or extraneous interference.

American satellites look down with sophisticated sensors and orbit in fixed positions relative to the Earth’s surface. By contrast, Postol says, Russian satellites have to look sideways, along a line that forms a tangent over American ICBM missile fields in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. Nine Russian satellites in elliptical orbits take turns observing small areas, looking horizontally for missiles that rise above the horizon to spot their plumes against the dark background of space.

The slanted perspective is less reliable, Postol said. First, it covers only a minuscule segment of North America. Second, it won’t see missiles until they reach higher altitudes, where the rocket plumes are dimmer and harder to define. Third, “luminosity from atmospheric phenomena causes background effects that can lead to false detections.” The mirage effect can be seen in a recent image from a newer Russian satellite. Finally, he said, if a missile is not launched precisely where the satellite’s tangent of sight meets the Earth’s surface, the rocket might never rise above the horizon.

That might seem to give the U.S. an advantage of a surprise attack. But if Russian radar picked up a missile later, the time before impact would shrink dangerously—to just over 10 minutes from a U.S. submarine near Norway, about 17 minutes from Wyoming—with little chance to double-check that the launch is authentic. Without global coverage, Russian satellites cannot see submarine launches carrying ballistic missiles with multiple warheads until the missiles enter Russian radar. Knowing their system’s limitations, Moscow might strike quickly, even letting lower officials make the call.

“There is not adequate decision-making time for leaders in Moscow to understand what might be happening if it looked like there was a general attack on Russia,” Postol observed. “They would have no ability to assess the situation. If they want to have the option to assure that they can retaliate, they will have to pre-delegate launch authority to people in the field. If you do that, you run the risk of a gigantic, spasmodic launch of all your nuclear forces.”

Another specialist, Pavel Podvig, agrees on the time problem but argues that geography is the main obstacle to double verification. He is a Moscow-trained physicist and arms control specialist who heads a Geneva-based project analyzing Moscow’s nuclear forces. “The radar warning comes too late to provide a useful check of the satellite information,” he told me in an email—although radar did exactly that in 1983.

In the early morning of September 26, 1983, a Soviet satellite signaled that five American ICBMs had been launched. Officers in Serpukhov-15, a command bunker near Moscow, watched in horror as electronic maps pulsated and lights flashed. “For fifteen seconds, we were in a state of shock,” recalled Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who would pass his assessment to the general staff, who would convey it to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.

For five minutes, a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other, Petrov tried to interpret the cascade of warnings. Two things didn’t add up. One, “when people start a war, they don’t start it with only five missiles,” he told the Washington Post reporter David Hoffman. Two, Soviet radar didn’t see any missiles flying. Through a veil of high tension, “I had a funny feeling in my gut,” Petrov recalled. Balancing the odds at 50-50, he deemed it a false alarm. An investigation found that the warnings had been triggered by sunlight reflecting off clouds.

Since then, and following the early-warning system’s decline during Russia’s economic crisis in the early 1990s, the country has surely advanced. But how far? Podvig and Postol disagree on the state of satellite technology. Podvig told me in several email exchanges that the newer Tundra satellites “appear” to have look-down capability. However, he stopped well short of backing up his assertion with hard information, much of which is probably classified and inaccessible.

For his part, Postol cited circumstantial evidence of shortfalls. “If the new Tundra satellites were able to look down at the Earth,” he said, “only two or three of such satellites would be needed.” The Russians have nine, and they orbit through staggered observation slots lasting two and a half hours each, consistent with less reliable tangential lines of observation.

So Russia relies heavily on radar, which cannot detect anything over the horizon. A missile would not be seen until it passed rapidly through the radar station’s fan of surveillance. That would add another minute for tracking a target, defining it, and calculating its trajectory. Also, radar can be blinded by ionized air from a high-altitude nuclear detonation, and radar disruption from another cause might be mistaken for a prelude to a nuclear attack.

Russia’s nuclear early-warning system pose two big questions: Who decides to launch, and on what basis? Postol imagines that Moscow might adopt a pre-delegation posture that would decentralize or automate Russia’s launch authority—raising the likelihood of error. And what would the trigger be? Podvig argued in 2016 that under Moscow’s doctrine dating from Soviet days, Russian commanders would delay a retaliatory launch until after “signs of the actual attack (such as nuclear explosions).”

If that wait-and-see doctrine existed, it appears to have been revised. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reported recently that in June 2020, Putin updated the nuclear deterrence procedures, which permit a launch only under certain conditions. The first of those reads: “arrival of reliable data on a launch of ballistic missiles attacking the territory of the Russian Federation and/or its allies.” That echoes the dangerous launch-on-warning doctrine that makes inadvertent war more likely—and early-warning systems more crucial.

Then, too, pre-delegation seems to contradict what is known of Moscow’s standing procedures. Leonid Ryabikhin, an expert in missile technology and arms control who taught at the Soviet Air Force Academy, wrote in 2019 that a nuclear launch would require encoded authorization from at least two of the three portable terminals controlled by the president, the defense minister, and the chief of the general staff.

Only if the government were decapitated by, say, a first strike on Moscow would a backup system kick in. Known in the West as the “Dead Hand” and in Russia as “Perimeter,” it has been understood as a computer process that would launch automatically if command-and-control connections with the leadership were destroyed.

But is it fully automated? Not necessarily. A 2003 book by Russian Colonel Valery Yarynich, who served in the central command of the Strategic Rocket Forces, reported that human intervention would still be required at “the super hardened radio command and control center,” located somewhere underground. “The [Perimeter] system has no capability for preparing a launch order automatically without the participation of the center’s crew,” he wrote. “If, with[in] a certain period of time, there is no evidence of actual nuclear explosions” from seismic shock, a spike in air pressure, or radioactivity, no missiles would be launched.

U.S.-Russia arms control treaties address the numbers and deployment of various nuclear weapons but have left Moscow and Washington capable of obliterating humanity many times over. The chance of error remains unaddressed.

The probability of nuclear war by accident would be reduced if Russia and the U.S. shared surveillance information, a proposal discussed in 1998 by President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. A brief experiment in cooperation was held from December 1999 to January 2000 to avoid Y2K computer problems at the turn of the millennium. Eighteen Russian officers spent about three weeks at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado to ensure that nothing went awry.

The permanent Joint Data Exchange Center, as it was to be named, fell victim to U.S.-Russian tensions following Putin’s election in 2000. By the time President George W. Bush met Putin in 2001, the late John Steinbruner wrote, “the building designated to house JDEC sat abandoned in Moscow on an overgrown lot and was reportedly being used by local teenagers as a drinking hangout.”

Postol believes that to help Russia avoid error, the U.S. must provide it with infrared sensors to differentiate a missile plume from background terrain. “Possessing the sensors gives you no information about how to fabricate them,” he said, “and therefore does not release any sensitive technology secrets.”

That’s a voice crying in the wilderness. Imagine how hard it would be to achieve such cooperation today, just when it’s needed most.

DAVID K. SHIPLER
David K. Shipler is a Washington Monthly contributing writer; Pulitzer Prize–winning author of seven books, including Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams; and former Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. He blogs at The Shipler Report and cohosts the podcast Two Reporters. Follow David on Twitter @DavidShipler.

Texas stumbles in its effort to punish green financial firms

NPR
April 29, 2022
MARIO ALEJANDRO ARIZA
MOSE BUCHELE

Fossil fuels power the Texas economy, accounting for some 14% of gross state product between 2019 and 2020. Now, Texas is the first state in the nation to pass anti-divestment laws for fossil fuels.

Gregory Bull/AP

For years, fossil fuel producing states have watched investors shy away from companies causing the climate crisis. Last year, one state decided to push back.

Texas passed a law treating financial companies shunning fossil fuels the same way it treated companies that did business with Iran, or Sudan: boycott them.

"This bill sent a strong message to both Washington and Wall Street that if you boycott Texas energy, then Texas will boycott you," Texas Representative Phil King said from the floor of the Texas legislature during deliberations on the bill, SB 13, last year.

But the Lone Star state is straining to implement the law. Loopholes and exceptions written into the law could sap its impact on financial firms that have aggressive climate policies.

This March, the Texas State Comptroller began sending letters out to financial institutions, probing their climate policies. Leslie Samuelrich, president of Green Century Capital Management, a fossil fuel-free mutual fund, says her firm recently received its letter.

"It felt very politically motivated," she says. Samuelrich says she plans to ignore the one she got.

Even so, Samuelrich says the law could have a "chilling effect" on some investment firms.

Despite Texas's emerging problems in implementing the first law penalizing companies for fossil fuel divestment, the concept of boycotting green finance is spreading. At least seven other states are now considering or have passed similar legislation, raising the prospect of a coalition of fossil fuel producing states putting pressure on Wall Street.

"The state of Texas is a large state with a lot of money," says Rob Greer, associate professor in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. "They can certainly sort of make a difference. But when you're talking about the largest financial institutions...the global trends are going to be those that dictate a lot of this - and the state of Texas may maybe be out of sync with some of those global trends."

A popularity contest

Fossil fuels help to power the Texas economy, employing some 14% of Texas workers in 2019, according to the American Petroleum Institute. They also power the state's politics. The new law was written by Jason Isaac, a former legislator whose foundation takes money from the fossil fuel industry.

The law bars Texas's state retirement and investment funds from doing business with companies that the State Comptroller says are "boycotting" fossil fuels. The funds are worth approximately $330 billion, though it's not clear how much of them is invested in companies Texas plans to boycott. The law applies to new or existing contracts greater than $100,000.

Texas applies the term "boycott" liberally. Because of how the law is written, even firms that invest their customer money in fossil fuels but also offer fossil-fuel free financial products could be considered boycotters.

Vehicles drive along Congress Avenue that leads to the Texas Capitol building in Austin. Last August, Texas hired MSCI, a financial ratings firm that analyzes green investments, to aid it in drawing up a list of which firms it should boycott, public records obtained by Floodlight show.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Since Texas passed its bill, at least seven other states have either considered or passed similar legislation. Last fall, a coalition of 15 treasurers from mostly Republican-led states published a letter saying they would stop banking with financial institutions engaged in "boycotting" fossil fuels.

But if the state boycotts are spreading, so too is the popularity of green investing. In 2014, there were some $52 billion dollars divested from fossil fuels worldwide, according to the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Commitment Database. By 2022, that number stood at $40.43 trillion.

Experts are skeptical about the Texas law's chances of success. They point to gaping loopholes in the legislation. They say that the climate risks to the financial system are so huge that there's no real way to stop financial firms from pricing them in - and going greener in the process.

"I see this as just the next or one of many symbolic actions," says David Spence, a law professor at The University of Texas, Austin.

New documents obtained by the investigative reporting group Floodlight reveal just how much trouble the Lone Star State has had in trying to figure out who to stop working with.

The Comptroller's Dilemma

When the Texas state legislature originally debated its fossil fuel boycott bill, representatives from the State Comptroller's office pointed out an obvious issue: nobody had ever come up with a list of companies like this before.

"This is not obvious, you're really going to have to do a lot of research," says Sheri Greenberg, a former Democratic Texas state lawmaker who used to help oversee pension fund investments.

Texas is now learning how hard it is to sort out which financial firms are actually going green. There are no national standards for companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions.

A spokesman for the comptroller's office says the process "has proven challenging."

This spring, however, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it will begin standardizing how financial firms must disclose risks and opportunities from climate change.

But for now, figuring out who is really doing climate-conscious finance is actually quite tricky. So tricky, in fact, that the new law might even snare consultants the state hired to help.

Last fall,Texas hired MSCI Inc., a financial ratings firm that analyzes green investments, to provide data about financial firms, public records obtained by Floodlight show.

But there was a problem: MSCI is precisely the kind of company Texas officials are looking to boycott: it is committed to carbon neutrality before 2040.

Floodwaters cover an access road to oil refineries in Port Arthur, Texas in the aftermath of 2005's Hurricane Rita.

Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images

That's the sort of thing that can now get you in trouble in Texas. In emails, a lawyer at the Comptroller's office worried the state might not be allowed to work with MSCI under the new law.

The lawyer's solution was to keep the contract cheap - under the amount at which the new law kicks in. After email negotiations on August 26th, MSCI agreed to drop its price from $100,000 to $95,000, emails show. The contract squeaked under the bar set by the new law, and was signed.

"The simple truth is that the creation of this list would present no challenge whatsoever if these companies were open, transparent and honest about their position on the fossil fuel sector," a spokesman for the comptroller's office wrote in a statement.

But the trouble with MSCI's contract is just the first hurdle the state can expect as it attempts to stem the tide of climate-conscious investing.
Loopholes and carve-outs

Because of the way that Texas has defined the term "boycott" in the law, financial companies that are merely investing in other funds that shun fossil fuels could possibly run afoul of the statute.

"Let's take Wells Fargo, for instance," says Greenberg, the former state pension overseer. "If they have any mutual funds or exchange traded funds in their portfolios that prohibit or limit investment in fossil fuels, then that is problematic." But the law also contains myriad carve-outs. For example, companies that want to work with Texas can still avoid investing in fossil fuels as long as they are doing so for strictly financial, rather than ethical or environmental, reasons.

"It's smart business to not invest in fossils," says Robert Schuwerk, executive director of the North American office of Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank that studies the green energy transition.

If a company believes that its fossil fuel assets are going to be worth less in the future because of things like carbon taxes, or more powerful natural disasters caused by climate change, then it makes sense for a company to sell those assets now, Schuwerk explains.

The Texas comptroller's office did not comment on the effect of exemptions in the law. A spokesman for the office directed questions about those exceptions to the legislature.

"We don't know what the impact will be to corporate behavior and wouldn't want to speculate on how companies will respond," the spokesman says.

Other states that have passed similar laws argue that allowing some exceptions won't weaken the effort.

"If they're making a business decision," says Riley Moore, the state treasurer of West Virginia, "somebody comes in for a loan for a coal company, and they decide that it's a big credit risk, and they don't want to do it, then that's fine."

Moore says he sees the law applying directly to companies' public statements.

"(If) they're saying we, as a financial institution, will not lend money to coal, for instance. That is a blanket statement that is a problem for the state of West Virginia," Moore says.

Samuelrich, the mutual fund manager, says that for her firm, being listed as a boycotted entity might not be such a bad thing.

"I don't think this is going to affect demand at all," she says. "In fact it might spur more people to realize that they can invest fossil fuel free."

This story is a collaboration with Floodlight, a non-profit environmental news organization.

UN experts press for action over “terror” designations


Maureen Clare Murphy 

Rights and Accountability 

28 April 2022

Israeli occupation forces stand guard in front of Havat Ma’on settlement in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills in October 2021. Keren ManorActiveStills

A dozen UN human rights experts are calling on governments to resume and increase funding to prominent Palestinian organizations designated by Israel as “terrorist groups” in October.

The experts, who include Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, say that “the information presented by Israel” fails to substantiate its accusations against the groups.

The targeted organizations – Addameer, Al-Haq, Defense for Children International-Palestine, Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees – include human rights groups engaged with the International Criminal Court’s Palestine investigation into war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

No government has thrown its support behind the Israeli designations. But states that have funded the targeted Palestinian groups have yet to explicitly reject the move or even give Israel a deadline to present credible evidence supporting its claims.

Ned Price, a US State Department spokesperson, said on Tuesday that the Biden administration was still reviewing the information provided by “our Israeli partners.” Price said that such a review can be a “lengthy” process because it involves multiple departments and agencies. He added that the US government doesn’t fund any of the targeted groups.

Belgium is so far the exception, having announced last month, following an internal investigation, that there was no basis to the Israeli allegations and that Brussels would not take any action against the targeted Palestinian organizations.
“Incalculable impact”

The UN experts called on those governments “to announce that they will continue to financially and politically support these organizations and the communities and groups they serve.”

The experts note that the European Union suspended funding to two of the organizations and other funders have delayed their contributions while they investigate the Israeli claims.

“This has undermined the work of these Palestinian organizations and has had an incalculable impact on the communities they support,” the experts said.

By suspending or delaying support, funders of the Palestinian organizations are presuming guilt despite the vague allegations, which Israel says is based on secret evidence.

The American Bar Association – which describes itself as “the world’s largest voluntary association of attorneys and legal professionals” – has raised concerns over the fairness of the Israeli actions against the groups.

In a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett last week, the president of that association questioned whether “an impartial and administrative review” of the terror designations is possible given that the targeted groups are not able to access the supposed evidence against them.

“Secret evidence” is an essential tool in Israel’s arsenal of repression tactics that it uses against Palestinians living under its regime of occupation, apartheid and settler-colonization.

Israel indefinitely detains hundreds of Palestinians without charge or trial at any given time under administrative detention orders issued by military courts on the basis of secret evidence.
Trial balloon

“Secret evidence” is also the grounds on which Israel has detained Mohammed El Halabi, a humanitarian worker from Gaza, for nearly six years.

Human Rights Watch called on Israel to immediately release El Halabi, the head of the Gaza office of World Vision, an international Christian charity, this week.

Arrested in 2016, El Halabi has been on a seemingly unending trial, with his case going to court around 170 times.

The manufactured case against El Halabi can be viewed as a trial balloon as Israel seeks to consolidate its control by criminalizing charity workers and human rights and social service organizations.

Israel’s goal is to further isolate Palestinians, wielding the specter of terrorism to scare off international funders and supporters.

The lack of international pressure over El Halabi, hailed as a humanitarian hero by the UN in 2014, has emboldened Israel to crack down on prominent and well-regarded Palestinian groups that stand in its way of effectively annexing the West Bank.

An external audit commissioned by the Australian government – which provided significant funding to World Vision’s budget in Gaza prior to El Halabi’s arrest, after which the charity’s activities in the territory were suspended – found no evidence to support Israel’s claims that the charity worker diverted humanitarian funds to armed groups.

Pressure to confess

Israel is prolonging El Halabi’s detention to pressure him to accept a deal that would see him sentenced to time served and his release on condition of pleading guilty to a lesser charge.

El Halabi, insisting on his innocence, refuses to profess guilt of crimes he says he did not commit.

The charity worker is currently awaiting a verdict on his trial, which concluded in July last year.

This week, European Union diplomats paid a visit to El Halabi’s family in Gaza, noting that he “has been in Israeli prison for almost six years without a verdict.”

The EU stated that international law requires a “fair and impartial judicial process within a reasonable time frame” and acknowledged that “this has clearly not been respected in Mohammed’s case.”

What the EU did not concede, however, is that the unconditional support for Israel that comes from Brussels contributes to Israel’s confidence that it can trample the rights of any Palestinian with total impunity.

“El Halabi’s outrageously long prosecution combines many of the hallmarks of Israel’s rigged justice system against Palestinians, including mistreatment, secret evidence and prolonged pre-trial detention to coerce pleas” according to Omar Shakir, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Israel-Palestine program.



“The case underscores why other countries should push back when Israel hurls wild allegations against staff of civil society organizations that serve Palestinians,” he added.Maureen Clare Murphy's blog

Altercation: AIPAC Goes Full Trump

It endorses most of the GOP representatives who voted to overturn the Electoral College results—but not pro-Israel hawk Liz Cheney.

BY ERIC ALTERMAN
APRIL 29, 2022

EVAN VUCCI/AP PHOTO
Then–Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the 2016 AIPAC Policy Conference at the Verizon Center, March 21, 2016, in Washington.

AIPAC has been in the news lately, and not in a good way. After decades of pretending that it would not know a political contribution if it bumped into one and broke its nose, it ended the charade and announced in December 2021 that it would be creating a super PAC to donate directly to congressional candidates. Having raised nearly $16 million in its first quarter of existence, it has now endorsed 109 of the 147 Republican congressmen who supported Donald Trump’s campaign to try to overturn the Electoral College’s results on January 6th, along with a few Democrats. “Our goal is to make America’s friendship with Israel so robust, so certain, so broadly based, and so dependable that even the deep divisions of American politics can never imperil that relationship and the ability of the Jewish state to defend itself,” it explains.

In a Boston Globe op-ed by Alan Solomont and Nancy Buck (both associated with J Street), however, we learn that “AIPAC’s new endorsees include such allies of Donald Trump as Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who refuses to cooperate with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol; Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, who met with ‘Stop the Steal’ leaders just days before the insurrection; and Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who has echoed white nationalist conspiracies about ‘replacement theory’ and compared Democratic leaders to the Nazis.”

Read more Altercation

And guess which Republican AIPAC apparently forgot to include? That’s right. The rather crazily “pro-Israel” Lynn Cheney is being blackballed. In the past, Cheney has taken the AIPAC line down the line. Even before she was in Congress, she represented the Republican Party at an AIPAC Policy Conference panel and (falsely) complained of Obama: “There is no president who has done more to delegitimize and destabilize the State of Israel in recent history than President Obama.” She also attacked Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, in a manner consistent with AIPAC’s attacks on them. But now, apparently because she’s become persona non grata with the people out to destroy American democracy, she’s getting stiffed.

Cheney is understandably pissed, accusing AIPAC’s leadership of “playing a dangerous game of politics.” AIPAC’s behavior has also angered many people who would normally be inclined to march in step with it. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, termed AIPAC’s list “morally bankrupt and short-sighted.” Even former Anti-Defamation League leader Abe Foxman could not stomach it, calling the endorsements a “sad mistake.”

Given that a mere 4 percent of American Jews, in 2022, put Israel at the top of their list of concerns (and they are divided on the issue), and that the vast majority voted for Joe Biden and oppose Trump and the Republicans, what AIPAC shamelessly calls its “United Democracy Project” is clearly not only undermining its bona fides as a supporter of American democracy; it is also renouncing whatever claim it had to represent the values, and interests, of American Jewry.

Then again, it’s not as if AIPAC, its allies in Congress, and the rest of the world of establishment Jewish organizations can claim to care about democracy inside Israel, either. After all, there can be no argument that the laws under which the Palestinians are forced to live in the West Bank are even remotely subject to democratic rule. Did you know, for instance, that if a West Bank Palestinian marries an Israeli Arab citizen, they are not allowed to move in with their spouse inside the Green Line? And did you also know that at Palestinian universities faculty are not allowed to invite speakers to their classes who are not preapproved by Israel’s minister of defense? This past February, the Israeli occupation authorities quietly issued a new 97-page ordinance called “Procedure for Entry and Residence for Foreigners in Judea and Samaria Area,” (which is what Israel calls the West Bank) demanding that “Foreign-passport holding Palestinians must provide information—for visa purposes—on an application for approval prior to travel, which includes the names and national ID numbers of “first-degree” relatives, or other non-relatives with whom they may stay or visit.” This article notes that the rules also “complicate and formalise written and unwritten entry restrictions for foreigners wishing to visit, do business, reunite and reside with their Palestinian families, work or volunteer in the West Bank, or study or teach at Palestinian academic institutions.” These are actually relatively minor examples recently in the news. One could list the hundreds of ways in which Palestinians are not allowed to exercise the same rights that extend not only to Israelis but also to settlers.

It’s not as if AIPAC, its allies in Congress, and the rest of the world of establishment Jewish organizations can claim to care about democracy inside Israel, either.

Yet the vast majority of establishment Jewish organizations in the United States, including but hardly limited to AIPAC, are spearheading legislation to demand that both the federal government and state authorities treat the West Bank as indistinguishable from Israel. For instance, last month Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) introduced legislation prohibiting participation in boycotts or requests for boycotts of “a country which is friendly to the United States” that are “enforced by foreign governments or international organizations.” It includes a section to prevent “U.S. citizens and companies and federal and state governments from providing information to foreign governments and international organizations that assist boycotts of friendly countries.”

OK, that’s anti–free speech and all, but it also insists that the legislation label the U.N. Human Rights Council’s creation of a database of companies doing business in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights as an act of BDS. “Too many, even in the halls of Congress, have emboldened antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric by accepting the BDS movement,” Zeldin said. “This legislation not only reinforces congressional opposition to the BDS movement but protects American companies from being forced to provide information to international organizations that peddle this hate-filled movement and holds those who attempt to violate that protection accountable.” (Much the same law was introduced in 2018 by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob Portman (R-OH), and earned 58 Senate co-sponsors—42 Republicans, 15 Democrats, and one independent—and 292 House co-sponsors—216 Republicans and 76 Democrats. Another earlier version was introduced by Zeldin in 2020, when it enjoyed 63 Republican co-sponsors and one Democrat, and died in committee. I wrote of my opposition to both BDS as well as these laws here.)

Recall that last year, the liberal ice cream impresarios Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield announced that they would no longer allow their ice cream to be sold in the occupied territories, though it remained widely available across Israel itself. In doing so, they spoke in the traditional terms of American liberal Zionists. Describing themselves as “proud Jews” and “supporters of the State of Israel,” they said they simply wished to voice their opposition both to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which targets all of Israel, and to an Israeli policy that “perpetuates an illegal occupation that is a barrier to peace and violates the basic human rights of the Palestinian people who live under the occupation.”

And yet in his recent book, It Could Happen Here, Jonathan Greenblatt, who replaced Foxman as the ADL’s CEO, termed Cohen and Greenfield’s decision “an insidious effort to delegitimize the Jewish state.” Pro-Israel lobbyists have demanded—and won—divestment from whatever investments countless states hold in their pension funds in the ice cream company’s parent company, Unilever. These and other punitive actions were taken because the two men took a position that Israel and the occupied territories should be treated as separate entities—that the West Bank was not “Israel,” and vice versa. They did so, moreover, at a moment when most Americans, including 58 percent of American Jews, wanted the United States to restrict its aid to Israel to prevent it from being spent on settlements.

Never mind that, though, according to William Daroff, CEO of the 53-member Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the umbrella group for mainstream Jewish leaders. “With Ben & Jerry’s, it’s not just about Unilever,” he explained in a February interview. “It’s about every other multinational company that may come under pressure from fringe elements. And we want them to see the tsuris … that’s the technical term—that has been caused for Unilever in state capitals, where 33 states have effected some sort of action to push back against boycott, divestment and sanctions.”

In other words, their purpose was clear: intimidation.

Never mind, also, that you can still buy Ben & Jerry’s pretty much everywhere in Israel today. It is only in the West Bank where it has been withdrawn. So the only way you can complain about a boycott of “Israel”—much less bigotry, etc.—is if you believe there is no distinction to be made between Israel and its occupied territories. And if you believe that, well, you can’t possibly argue that Israel is a democracy. In fact, there’s a word defined in the 1988 Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court that defines “inhumane acts” undertaken “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Want to guess what that word is?

US economy contracts for first time since mid-2020

By AFP
April 29, 2022

Washington: The US economy shrank in the first quarter of 2022 as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus hampered activity and companies bought more foreign products to rebuild depleted inventories, in the latest complication for a country already struggling with record inflation.

Analysts however downplayed the likelihood that a recession was coming, noting that the Commerce Department data released Thursday showed consumers and businesses stepping up spending in the first three months of the year -- both indicators of economic health.

The 1.4 percent decline in GDP was nonetheless unwelcome news for President Joe Biden, who has struggled to convince Americans that he can be trusted to preside over the world´s largest economy.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Biden said he was "not concerned" about the possibility of a recession, pointing to the rise in spending as well as low unemployment as evidence of the economy´s health.

"What you´re seeing is enormous growth in the country that was affected by everything from Covid and the Covid blockages that occurred along the way," he said.

After the economy expanded 6.9 percent in the final quarter of 2021, forecasters were bracing for weak growth in the first three months of this year as the country dealt with a renewed wave of Covid-19 cases and government aid programs lapsed.

The contraction was worse than expected and the first since the months of 2020 when the pandemic was at its worse, but Lydia Boussour of Oxford Economics said the data "isn´t as worrisome as it looks."

"Beneath the weak headline print, the details of the report point to an economy with solid underlying strength and that demonstrated resilience in the face of Omicron, lingering supply constraints and high inflation," she said in an analysis.

After mass layoffs and a record economic collapse after Covid-19 broke out in 2020, the United States has recovered strongly, with the unemployment rate almost back to where it was before the pandemic and GDP expanding 5.7 percent over the course of last year.

But it has been buffeted by external and internal shocks that have fueled a wave of inflation not seen since the 1980s.

These include global supply chain snarls and shortages of components like semiconductors, successive waves of Covid-19, Russia´s invasion of Ukraine and its disruptions to prices for fuel and other commodities, and pandemic lockdowns in China that complicated trade.

The Commerce Department said the decrease in GDP was the result of less private inventory investment and exports, as well as a jump in imports.

Also contributing to the decrease was the spread of the Omicron variant and the expiration in the first quarter of aid programs approved under the American Rescue Plan bill last year, which Biden mounted an unsuccessful effort to extend.

However, consumer spending picked up by 2.7 percent while business spending rose 7.3 percent, both increases from the prior quarter, the data said. Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said last quarter´s shortfall was partially a result of companies importing more to stock their shelves

and keep factories running, and growth could rebound in the second quarter of 2022.

"The economy is not falling into recession. Net trade has been hammered by a surge in imports, especially of consumer goods, as wholesalers and retailers have sought to rebuild inventory," he wrote in an analysis.

The economy is now bracing for the Federal Reserve to make its next move to fight inflation next week, likely by increasing interest rates by a half-percentage point -- twice as much as when it last month made its first hike since the pandemic began.

Despite the GDP surprise, Rubeela Farooqi of High Frequency Economics said the report will likely convince central bankers the economy can handle higher rates.

"For policymakers, more than the overall decline, a positive trend in consumer spending and business investment will be important and will keep the Fed on track to continue to normalize policy over coming months," she said in a note.