Monday, March 06, 2023

THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF THE STATE

CACTUS BEARER
Photo credit: Cbrescia.










February 27, 2023/
by Ed Walker

Related posts

Posts on The Dawn Of Everything: Link
Posts on Pierre Bourdieu and Symbolic Violence: link
Posts trying to cope with the absurd state of political discourse: link
Posts on Freedom and Equality. link

In Chapter 10 of The Dawn Of Everything the authors, David Graeber and David Wengrow, take up the search for the origins of the state. They discuss current theories of the nature of the state. They provide a different framework for understanding the term in ancient times, and even suggest that the earliest versions of these organizational structures were part-time, just as agriculture was part-time. Then they give examples of how their theory works.

Theories of the State

Today almost everyone lives under the governance of a nation-state. The generally accepted definition was suggested by Rudolph von Ihering in the late 1800s and is now associated with Max Weber: “… any institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive force within a given territory….” P. 359. But that’s not the way things worked in the earliest large groups.

Marxists suggested that states emerged to protect the power of an emerging ruling class, but the authors reject this theory.

A third theory is quite common: as the population in any area increases, you need top-down authority to coordinate and plan. But, as we’ve seen, this isn’t right, because a large number of ancient polities operated quite well without an autocratic leader endowed with the power of violence.

The authors suggest that at least for ancient societies we should consider three factors:Sovereignty, meaning the control of violence directed at members of the group and the right to authorize other to inflict violence;
Administration, meaning control over information. This can be of two kinds. Frequently it means factual information necessary to keep things operating, for example taxes due and collected, or corvée obligations. Particularly in early societies it means esoteric or cultic knowledge, for example, explanations of the cosmos and the roles of people in it.
Charisma, meaning a personal power of persuasion that enables one to dominate others.

Each of these factors is a form of dominance, which the authors see as the basis of the state. The authors rephrase the search for the origins of the state from their perspective:

How did large-scale forms of domination first emerge, and what did they actually look like? What, if anything, do they have to do with arrangements that endure to this day? P. 370.

Dominance in early societies


This material takes up most of the chapter. The authors give examples of societies organized under one form of dominance, which they call First-Order Societies, then societies with two of the forms of dominance, Second-Order Societies. The material is fascinating, and the examples support the use of their categories. I’m only going to discuss one illustration, the Chavin Culture, a pre-Inca group located on the western slopes of the Andes down to the sea near what is now Lima Peru.

This culture seems to have arisen around 3000 BCE, and flowered around 1200 BCE. It lasted another 800 years before disappearing. The authors say there is little evidence of the use of violence, no evidence of a formal bureaucracy, and no evidence of a monarch with sovereign or political power.

The archaeological record is dominated by imagery, primarily carved stone. Here’s a description.


Crested eagles curl in on themselves, vanishing into a maze of ornament; human faces grow snake-like fangs, or contort into a feline grimace. No doubt other figures escape our attention altogether. Only after some study do even the most elementary forms reveal themselves to the untrained eye. With due attention, we can eventually begin to tease out recurrent images of tropical forest animals – jaguars, snakes, caimans – but just as the eye attunes to them they slip back from our field of vision, winding in and out of each other’s bodies or merging into complex patterns. P. 388.

The authors characterize these as “shamanic journeys to the world of chthonic spirits and animal familiars.” The society was held together by rituals and cultic knowledge. The people seem to have enjoyed rituals oriented to hallucinogenic substances made from local plants.

This is an example of a First-Order Society.

Discussion

1. I do like the idea of a stoner kingdom.

2. The authors possibly think that societies are held together through domination. Like power, this is a term they don’t discuss. I did a digression on power, link above. I’ve discussed Pierre Bourdieu’s work on domination, link above. And I’ve discussed some current ideas about freedom, which is the complement to the idea of both, link above.

But they give plenty of examples where that isn’t so. In fact, they seem to think we’d be better off if we lived without domination, or at least in a society where decisions are made in a more democratic system. That contradiction is confusing.

3.

Very large social units are always, in a sense, imaginary. Or, to put it in a slightly different way: there is always a fundamental distinction between the way one relates to friends, family, neighbourhood, people and places that we actually know directly, and the way one relates to empires, nations and metropolises, phenomena that exist largely, or at least most of the time, in our heads. P. 276.

Large social units may exist in the imagination, but they have roots in reality. I live in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago. I only know a few of my neighbors, but we are bound together by a number of links. We care about local schools, local traffic, local businesses and our parks in a particular way. If these are threatened, say by a local developer trying to replace a park or increase the traffic burden, we cooperate to deal with it.

I’m bound to other Chicagoans by crucial ties: they staff my doctor’s office, my dry cleaner, and my grocery store, and everything else I need. My life is smooth and pleasant because of them. I care that they are safe and healthy. I care that they have paved streets so they can get to work, and so I care about the people who pave those streets, clear off the snow, fill the potholes, and replace the bulbs in the stoplights. I want everybody’s kids to have good schools, just like I want good schools for my grandkids.

We have other ties. We like brats and argue about pizza. We ride public transport and we talk about the best way to get around in our miserable traffic. We go to movies, theater, concerts, and restaurants together. We can always talk about something here that affects us all, the latest corruption story, property taxes, who the Bears should draft, and the weather.

As I read it, the authors think those ties are strong enough to pull us together as a group without a dominating force.

4. Each of the societies described in the book has a mental component that goes deeper than just being neighbors. They share rituals, cosmologies, stories about themselves as a people, cultic practices, and there’s a shared understanding of themselves as a group. These are taught to children and reinforced by ritual and practice throughout the lives of members. They are at least as important to the maintenance of the group as any of the forms of dominance.

The Founders rejected the idea of a state religion, and we’ve mostly abandoned cultic practices. I think we Americans share a sort of secular religion based on the founding myths of our country and a weak allegiance to what Jefferson called “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence. The latter is a formulation that originally meant Natural Law but I think now includes a science-based mental stance and values based on a vaguely Christian moral sense. The founding myths include our commitment to freedom, as “all men are created equal”; a government of laws, not of men; a form of capitalism; and representative democracy.

This, roughly, is the mental component that up til now has bound us into a nation. I think the authors miss this point.

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TWO OF JIM JORDAN’S SO-CALLED WHISTLEBLOWERS ARE UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR IMPROPER TREATMENT OF FBI FILES

As a number of outlets have covered (Rolling Stone did a particularly good story), Democrats on the Insurrection Protection Committee released a report on the only three witnesses — whom Jim Jordan dubiously claims are whistleblowers — who have yet to be formally deposed by the committee. Not only does the report seriously question their claims to be whistleblowers (in part because they have little, if any, firsthand knowledge of the issues about which they claim to be reporting), but the report shows that all three are pro-insurrection conspiracy theorists.

I’ve already written about one, Stephen Friend, who balked that some Three Percenters with ties to the Oath Keepers and Kremers were being treated as a domestic terror threat.

The other two are George Hill, a recently retired Supervisory Intelligence Analyst whose embrace of false flag theories around January 6 should invite defendants in the Boston area to ask for discovery on his potential involvement in any cases, and Garret O’Boyle, an anti-vaxer who refused to take an investigative step against two apparent January 6 leads but suffered no consequences as a result.

I’d like to point out two functional details of the report: as the report describes, two witnesses are under investigation for mishandling FBI files, and those same two witnesses received payments from Trump-related funds, funds that are likely part of the larger January 6 investigation.

JIM JORDAN’S WITNESSES ARE ALLEGED TO BE ACCESSING OR SHARING INFORMATION NOT NECESSARY FOR THEIR JOB

First, the substance of this testimony involves records that were either improperly accessed or outside the witnesses’ job description.

Friend, for example, admitted that he was suspended, in part, for improperly removing parts of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide and other internal documents from the FBI system.

Friend has publicly stated that his security clearance was suspended because he improperly accessed material on FBI computer systems, 220 and during his testimony, he admitted that while a Special Agent at the Daytona Beach Resident Agency, he accessed and removed documents marked “For Official Use Only” from a classified FBI system.221 Specifically, he admitted that in September 2022, he accessed the classified system to get “information about the employee handbook and disciplinary processes,” “a flow chart of the way the Inspection Division works and the OPR [Office of Professional Responsibility] process works,” and “copies of the last five OPR quarterlies as a go by for precedent for punishment for my situation.”222 He also accessed and removed elements of the then-current version of the FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.223

Remember that Intercept source Terry Albury did prison time, in part, for taking and leaking the DIOG; so any complaint that Friend is disciplined for this amounts to a complaint that he’s being subjected to the same standard as Albury was.

Similarly, O’Boyle was suspended  last year based on allegations he was leaking to the press.

He applied for and was accepted to a new unit in Virginia and was scheduled to begin work there on September 26, 2022.90 His security clearance was suspended that day.91

O’Boyle told the Committee that his suspension notice stated that “an unidentified person … made an allegation that [he] had been making unprotected disclosures to the media,” and that because of this he was “no longer deemed fit to hold a security clearance.”92 He denied having made such disclosures, and he explained that instead he believed that he had been retaliated against because he “had been coming to Congress… for nearly a year.”93 He described this as being a “weaponization of the [security] clearance” process.94 He has appealed that suspension and, to his knowledge, the appeal process is still ongoing.95

[snip]

O’Boyle did confirm that he corresponded with staff of both Rep. Ron Estes and then-Ranking Member Jim Jordan probably “more than 20” times in 2022 and produced “maybe around” 50 documents to them.104 O’Boyle’s attorney advised him “not to talk about specifics of any of his disclosures to Congress … because those are confidential” and in fact prohibited him from describing the substance of any of his communications with the offices of Rep. Estes or then-Ranking Member Jordan.105

O’Boyle has some unspecified role in material that got forwarded from an eGuardian tip, possibly via Jim Jordan, to Project Veritas. PV’s coverage falsely claimed that the FBI had labeled a group called American Contingency a Domestic Violent Extremism group. In reality, the FBI investigated the group’s founder, Mike Glover, and concluded he did not present a threat.

Nevertheless, Jordan cited PV’s coverage in a complaint to Christopher Wray.

O’Boyle admitted that, even though he had no role in this investigation, he was involved somehow in the dissemination of information about it.

Q Did you know anything about the investigation or what has been described as an investigation into him [Mike Glover] prior to having this letter put in front of you today?

A I did.

Q And what did you know?

A Pretty much mostly what’s in here.

Q And that – how did you learn that information?

BINNALL: Prior to our previous instructions, you can answer to the extent it’s appropriate.

A This is one of the protected disclosures that I made.

Q Okay. And it involves Mr. Glover?

A Uh-huh.

Q But you … were not personally involved in any matters involving Mr. Glover in your capacity as an FBI employee?

A Right. I never investigated him.

Q Okay. And what about American Contingency?

A Correct. No.

Q Okay. So you don’t have firsthand knowledge of anything that the FBI may have – may or may not have done?

BINNALL: You can answer to the extent that it doesn’t violate my previous instructions.

A I mean, I guess, in accordance with my work and my protected disclosure, I had some knowledge of what the FBI had done.

BINNALL: And don’t go any further than that.135

It’s unclear whether this is the leak investigation that led him to lose his security clearance. When asked about it, O’Boyle claimed he was set up by someone irked that he was feeding information to Congress for the prior year, but he did not take that complaint through proper channels, to the DOJ IG or Inspection Division. He refused to tell Democrats on the committee what the allegations about leaking pertain to.

Instead, he went to Donald Trump’s lawyer, Jesse Binnell.

Among the claimed whistleblower complaints O’Boyle shared (the other involves vaccine denialism) is that a WFO Special Agent sent him two leads, one based on an anonymous tip, apparently of January 6 suspects.

But I received a lead about someone based on an anonymous tip, and in law enforcement anonymous tips don’t hold very much weight, especially without evidence that you can corroborate pretty easily.

I wasn’t able to corroborate anything they said, even after speaking with the person they alleged potential criminal behavior of.

While I’m trying to figure all that out, I get another lead from the same agent who sent me that lead.108

He explained that he decided to call the agent who had sent him the lead:

Q [A]fter talking to her, my mind was blown that she was still trying to get me to do some legal process on the guy that I got the anonymous tip on. … And so I ended up writing that all up and denying it. …

When we got off the phone, I was like, “I’m just going to close this.” She still wanted me to do what she wanted me to do in the lead, and I was like, no. I can’t…

Q So, to your knowledge, that case was closed?

A To my knowledge, yeah.109

To suggest that anonymous tips related to January 6 were particular unreliable does not hold up against the record of the investigation. This exchange makes him sound just like Friend — someone who refused to investigate suspected perpetrators of January 6, and is trying to launch a career as a far right celebrity as a result.

Finally, there’s Hill, the retired Supervisory Intelligence Analyst who adheres to conspiracy theories about Ray Epps. He reported to the committee on matters he was not personally involved — what sounds like a tip or Suspicious Activity Report from a financial institution pertaining to January 6.

Hill claimed that a financial institution provided a self-generated customer list to the FBI of its own volition, that the Boston Field Office had been asked to conduct seven preliminary investigations based on that list, and that FBI field offices around the country were also asked to open preliminary investigations—according to Hill, the “least-intrusive method” of investigation—based on that list. 32

As noted, Hill explained that he himself did not handle any cases, so his knowledge of the investigations was limited by his role. Moreover, he revealed that he had no information about the origins of the list, he did not recall which entity uploaded the list to the FBI’s system, and, while he viewed an electronic communication referencing the list in the FBI’s case management system, he never opened or viewed the actual list itself. 33

To the committee, attempting to weigh whether there’s merit to Hill’s allegations, this simply reeks of someone reporting on an investigation he was not part of. But it raises real questions why he was monitoring an investigation he was not part of.

In all three cases, people tangentially involved with the January 6 investigation balked at pretty minor investigative steps. And all three at least accessed information outside their job to do so — and in two cases, there are allegations of improper access.

TRUMP-RELATED ORGANIZATIONS PAID TWO OF THESE WITNESSES

The allegations that at least some of these men may have improperly accessed investigative information to which they were not privy is all the more alarming given the detail that two of them — Friend and O’Boyle, the two under more formal investigation by the FBI — have received financial benefits from Trump-related organizations.

Witnesses Garret O’Boyle and Stephen Friend both testified that they have received financial support from Patel, with Friend explaining that Patel sent him $5,000 almost immediately after they connected in November 2022. Patel has also promoted Friend’s forthcoming book on social media.

But Patel’s assistance has not just been financial. He arranged for attorney Jesse Binnall, who served as Donald Trump’s “top election-fraud lawyer” when Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, to serve as counsel for Garret O’Boyle. When Committee Democrats asked O’Boyle about this financial connection, Binnall appeared to surprise his client with an announcement that he was now representing O’Boyle pro bono. Committee Democrats infer that Binnall hoped to distance his connection to Patel and others.

Patel also found Friend his next job. Friend now works as a fellow on domestic intelligence and security services with the Center for Renewing America, which is run by former Trump official Russell Vought and is largely funded by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which itself is run by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Senator Jim DeMint.

This is where the Insurrection Protection Committee more directly ties into Trump’s own defense against charges for his coup attempt.

Jesse Binnall is Trump’s lawyer; he was even interviewed as part of obstruction inquiry related to the stolen document investigation. His firm has been receiving hundreds of thousands in payments from Trump’s two PACs, over $130,000 in both November and December. This is some of the spending that Jack Smith is reportedly investigating for misuse of campaign funds. So there’s the real prospect that O’Boyle, under investigation for leaking details of FBI investigations against January 6 and other right wing figures, is being paid from funds raised by lying about voter fraud.

Similarly, Trump’s Save America PAC gave $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute. Again, that payment is almost certainly part of the Jack Smith investigation. As the Democratic report notes, Vought’s organization has been focusing on precisely this false weaponization claim.

CRA’s President, former Trump administration official Russ Vought, has embraced many of the themes laid out by the witnesses George Hill, Garret O’Boyle, and Stephen Friend, and Vought reportedly pushed Republican leadership to establish the Weaponization Subcommittee at the start of the 118th Congress.397 In the forward to CRA’s 2023 budget proposal for the federal government, entitled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government,” Vought wrote,

On the heels of this wrenching national experience is the growing awareness that the national security apparatus itself is arrayed against that half of the country not willing to bend the knee to the people, institutions, and elite worldview that make up the current governing regime. Instead of fulfilling their intended purpose of keeping the American people safe, they are hard-wired now to keep the regime in power. And that includes the emergence of political prisoners, a weaponized, SWAT-swaggering FBI, the charges of “domestic terrorism” and “disinformation” in relation to adversaries’ exercise of free speech, and the reality that the NSA is running a surveillance state behind the protective curtain of “national security.” The immediate threat facing the nation is the fact that the people no longer govern the country; instead, the government itself is increasingly weaponized against the people it is meant to serve.398

Committee Democrats find the connections between Patel, CRA, and CPI deeply concerning. Evidence suggests that these entities were not just a driving force for creating the Weaponization Subcommittee, but are actively propelling its efforts to advance baseless, biased claims for political purposes. This evidence seriously discredits the work done by Committee Republicans and casts further doubt on the reliability of the witnesses they have put forth.

That suggests the prospect that Trump-related figures are violation campaign finance law to fund an NGO to, in turn, pay for FBI agents under investigation for improperly accessing FBI files to spread conspiracy theories about the investigation into Trump and his supporters.

JORDAN’S IMAGINARY FRIENDS

The combination of alleged leaks with payments from funds raised using false claims of vote fraud makes me even more worried about the witnesses that Jordan won’t let be questioned by the Democrats on the committee.

As the Democratic report notes, Jordan says he has spoken to — and received materials from — dozens of other people claiming tobe whistleblowers.

This partisan investigation, such as it is, rests in large part on what Chairman Jordan has described as “dozens and dozens of whistleblowers… coming to us, talking about what is going on, the political nature at the Justice Department.”1 To date, the House Judiciary Committee has held transcribed interviews with three of these individuals. Chairman Jordan has, of course, refused to name any of the other “dozens and dozens” who may have spoken with him. He has also refused to share any of the documents which these individuals may have provided to the Committee.

Jordan recently sent Christopher Wray a list of 16 Special Agents he demands to interview.

Our need to obtain testimony from FBI employees is vital for carrying out our oversight and for informing potential legislative reforms to the operations and activities of the FBI. From the documentary and testimonial information that we have obtained to date, we have identified several FBI employees who we believe possess information that is necessary for our oversight. Accordingly, we ask that you initially make the following FBI employees available for transcribed interviews with the Committee in the near future:

[16 names redacted]

We anticipate that we may require testimony from additional FBI employees as our oversight continues, and we expect your cooperation in facilitating these future interviews as well.

We are aware that the Justice Department has preemptively indicated that it intends to limit the scope and nature of information available to the Committee as part of our oversight.3
You should know, however, that despite the Department’s assertions to the contrary, congressional committees have regularly received testimony from non-Senate-confirmed and line-level Justice Department employees, including FBI employes [sic], in the past. We expect this past precedent to apply to our oversight as well.

Jordan’s list includes 17 names, including Jack Smith. Eleven of those — including Lisa Page — appear to be related to Mark Meadows’ own investigation of the Russian investigation. Jordan is effectively saying he has the right to interview line agents because Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr let him do so, to undermine the last investigation into Donald Trump.

Jordan provides no basis for needing to interview these people. He doesn’t provide any explanation about how they might provide evidence of improper FBI activity.

According to Breitbart, which claimed to have seen transcripts of the Jordan witnesses interviews, said the 16 people “had been named by the three witnesses in the closed-door interviews.” In other words, three disgruntled FBI agents, two under investigation for wrong-doing, are leading Jim Jordan by the nose to make life hell for their former colleagues.

But those two other details make this different.

These people are being given financial benefits from Trump-related sources, financial benefits that may themselves be part of the crime under investigation.

And at least two of these people — the same two on the grift train — are under investigation for inappropriately removing or leaking sensitive FBI documents.

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Greene to introduce resolution declaring Antifa a terrorist organization

BY LAUREN SFORZA - 03/05/23 

REPEAT AFTER ME; ANTIFA  
MEANS ANTI-FASCIST

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Friday, March 3, 2023.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said on Sunday that she will be introducing a resolution to declare Antifa as a terrorist organization on Tuesday, after blaming the group for protests at a police training facility in Atlanta.

“Antifa are domestic terrorists and I’m introducing my resolution to officially declare them a terrorist organization on Tuesday,” she tweeted on Sunday.



A progressive group called “Stop Cop City” has been protesting against the new training facility being built in the wooded parts of Atlanta since plans for it were announced, arguing it will promote the militarization of the police and may result in environmental concerns.

Fox 5 reported Sunday that the facility was on lockdown after at least one construction vehicle was set on fire amid the latest protests on Sunday.

Greene blamed the far-left organization Antifa for the incident on Twitter, though she did not offer any evidence that Antifa was behind the protests on Sunday.


“This is domestic terrorism. It was planned for weeks and announced on social media. Antifa are self proclaimed communists and consistently organize to attack our government over and over again. They should be taken seriously and not tolerated anymore,” she tweeted.

In January, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) issued a state of emergency after peaceful protests broke out in response to a police shooting of an activist during an operation to clear out the construction site for the facility.

Greene’s resolution would not be the first of its kind. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) introduced a resolution in 2021 to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, but the resolution did not get any traction in the Democrat-controlled House. 




Jimmy Carter’s space policy and the saving of the space shuttle

Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images
Former president Jimmy Carter prior to the game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Cincinnati Bengals at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on September 30, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Former President Jimmy Carter, aged 98, has entered hospice care, signaling to the world that he is experiencing his last days of life. The news has caused a reappraisal of both his presidency and his post-presidency, mainly the latter, which has been exemplary.

Carter’s single term in office is not known for any space initiatives. President Kennedy launched America to the moon. President Nixon started the space shuttle program. President Reagan initiated the program that began the International Space Station. After two false starts under American presidents named George Bush, President Trump and now President Biden have sent America and much of the world on a voyage back to the moon and eventually on to Mars under the Artemis Program.

The Carter presidency, despite a dearth of high-profile new space projects, did have an official, albeit vaguely worded space policy. Carter also made a decision concerning the space shuttle program that affected the course of NASA and American space efforts in a decidedly positive way.

The Carter administration issued its official space policy in the form of Presidential Directive/ NSC 37 on May 11, 1978. The document did not contain any specific proposals. Rather, it listed some general principles that just about any administration of the latter third of the 20th century might have supported.

For example, one of the “basic principles” for the Carter-era space program was “the exploration and use of outer space in support of the national well-being and policies of the United States.” That was nice insofar as it goes, but it lacked detail. What programs included “the exploration and use of outer space?”

The document also stated, “The United States shall conduct civil space programs to increase the body of scientific knowledge about the earth and the universe; to develop and operate civil applications of space technology; to maintain United States leadership in space science, applications, and technology; and to further United States domestic and foreign policy objectives.” The policy directive was not specific as to how the civil space program would do these things.

NASA pursued two major programs whose origins predated the Carter presidency. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched in 1977, beginning a multi-decade voyage of exploration to the outer planets. The space agency also continued to develop the space shuttle, an ostensibly reusable rocket ship that would take humans and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit.

In January 1978, NASA announced a new class of astronauts who would fly the space shuttle, dubbed “The 35 New Guys.” The term was something of a misnomer, as the group contained a number of women, including Sally Ride, who would become the first American woman in space, and Judith Resnick, who would die on board the Challenger.

Carter’s crucial role in developing the space shuttle is not well known. According to Eric Berger, writing for Ars Technica, in 1978, NASA concluded that it could not meet any meaningful flight schedule given the state of the program and the budget it had been allotted. The story has become a far too familiar one for post-Apollo NASA programs, a program fraught with cost overruns and schedule slippages, Then-NASA Administrator Robert Frosch had two options. The space agency could either morph the space shuttle into a purely research vehicle, giving up the idea of it delivering crews and payloads to space, or it could ask for more money. With that choice in mind, Frosch had a meeting with Carter to give him the bad news.

The meeting did not go as Frosch had feared it would. “When Frosch went to the White House to meet with the president and said NASA didn’t have the money to finish the space shuttle, the administrator got a response he did not expect: ‘How much do you need?’”

The president’s response is even more remarkable given the fact that Carter didn’t much care for human spaceflight. He believed that robotic space probes were sufficient to explore the universe at much less cost. Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, was vehemently opposed to the shuttle program, believing that the money spent to sustain it should be instead used to fund social programs.

However, Carter believed that the shuttle was an important national security asset due to its role in launching military satellites. So, he pushed for supplementary funding for the project and saved the shuttle from cancelation. Thus, an unlikely president saved American human space flight. The shuttle and all it accomplished in subsequent decades became a part of Carter’s legacy.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. 

Diversified Canadian banks well protected in tough times: Analysts

Analysts say Canadian banks may be protected by their diversified structures and the delayed impacts from higher interest rates as they report earnings amid ominous headwinds in the global economy.

John Aiken, head of Canada research at Barclays, said Monday that “the beauty” of Canadian banks is that their diverse set of financial activities sets them up well to withstand tough economic times.

“When you look at the banks and what they've cobbled together in terms of their structure, it is very well diversified, and they do have a mix of businesses where if something's not going well in the economy, that is actually promoting another part of the business,” Aiken said in a Monday interview with BNN Bloomberg.

Aiken said U.S. banks, which are not as diversified in their activities, may be more profitable under strong economic conditions, but “Canadian banks always significantly outperform on the down cycles.”

BMO and Scotiabank are due to report results on Tuesday, while earnings from RBC, TD and National Bank are expected on Wednesday. 

CIBC was the first major bank to report on Friday, when adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.94.

The bank’s provisions for credit losses rose $295 million in the quarter, below average estimates for $345 million.

Nigel D'Souza, financial services analyst at Veritas Investment Research, said estimates were likely “too pessimistic” about credit losses, something he said takes time during difficult economic periods, particularly as Canada’s labour market continues to show strong employment numbers.

He said he expects credit losses to build in Canada, but not right away.

“It’s going to take longer than I think consensus expects, because you need unemployment to move higher, and you need debt servicing costs move higher, and both of those metrics are currently near cycle lows,” he said.

HOUSING MARKET IMPACT

Aiken said he’s not worried about the housing market’s impact on Canadian banks, which he said have “a lot of downside protection” from a potential housing market crash – though his research team is not forecasting that scenario at the moment.

“If I were running a Canadian retail bank, I would still be taking any residential mortgage I can put on the books, because when you look at how the market is structured, the banks are very protected against a crash,” he said.

D’Souza observed “limited selling pressure” in Canada’s real estate market, as many mortgage holders are still employed, and higher interest rates brought in by the Bank of Canada have not yet translated into higher mortgage payments for many people.

He said other forms of consumer debt likely pose greater threats to the banks’ bottom lines.

“Residential mortgages aren't the driver of credit losses for the banks,” he said.


“Credit cards, auto loans, unsecured lines of credit, commercial lending, that's where we think the risk is, not in the mortgage book or from real estate.”


Carmaker, Rio Tinto investments give McEwen Copper more time to go public

Investments by European automaker Stellantis NV and mining giant Rio Tinto Group are giving Rob McEwen’s copper venture more breathing space before going public.

The Canadian entrepreneur now expects to hold an initial public offering for his namesake copper unit in the second half of the year instead of the first half. That’s after Stellantis and a Rio unit each took a 14.2 per cent stake in McEwen Copper, providing enough funding for its Argentine project until next year.

“It gives us a lot of additional flexibility depending on what the market is doing,” Michael Meding, who leads the unit, said in an interview alongside McEwen while attending an industry event in Florida.

Stellantis’ entry into McEwen Copper’s shareholder register represents the first major equity investment by a carmaker in a copper company, according to McEwen, the founder of Goldcorp Inc.

If the high attendance of auto executives at this week’s BMO Capital Markets mining event is any measure, it won’t be the last. The auto industry is stepping up efforts to secure supplies of the materials needed to move away from fossil fuels. General Motors Co. is said to be vying for a stake in Vale SA’s base metals unit as Tesla Inc. weighs a takeover of Sigma Lithium Corp.

The transaction with Stellantis gives the maker of Peugeot cars and Jeep sport utility vehicles the right to a portion of future production from the Los Azules deposit in Argentina’s San Juan province. If all goes to plan, the project will start producing in 2028, giving Argentina a source of copper cathode for local industries, Meding said. He expects to file for environmental permits in April.

In terms of the size of the copper unit’s IPO, McEwen said it will be determined by capital needs and ensuring enough of a free float for liquid trading. He expects the offering to take parent company McEwen Mining Inc.’s holding in the unit below the 50 per cent threshold.

Companies must listen to racialized employees in tackling racism at work: experts

Experts say commitments to tackle racism in the workplace have not been met with enough action as a report released Tuesday found more than 70 per cent of Black Canadians still experience racism or microaggressions on the job.

While one-third of respondents to a KPMG survey indicated they experienced less racism at work over the past year, 39 per cent said they faced the same amount or more. Twenty-eight per cent said they experienced no racism.

The survey included 1,001 self-identifying Black employees and was conducted between Dec. 21 and Jan. 9.

Tarisai Madambi, co-lead of KPMG’s Black Professionals Network, said that while many companies have taken steps such as setting diversity targets or establishing employee resource groups to advance racial equity, it's just as important to act on the recommendations of racialized employees.

"This helps organizations better understand the roots of systemic racism and address it," said Madam

"For way too long, many of us racialized individuals have sometimes been led to believe that we're imagining our experiences. The experiences are real and they are valid."

According to the survey, 80 per cent of respondents feel they can speak up about racism at work without being stigmatized and that they have allies who will stand up for them when they witness instances of discrimination.

But more than three-quarters of Black Canadian workers said their company needs a major culture change to become more equitable.

The survey found 88 per cent of Black Canadian workers feel companies need stronger commitments and targets for hiring and promoting Black people. 

Eighty-six per cent called for more appointments of Black people to boards of directors or senior management ranks, while 82 per cent urged more anti-racism education and training for employees and management.

Madambi, KPMG's director of management consulting, said Black Canadians want their employers to "walk the talk" on anti-racism commitments that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd and subsequent calls for change. While she said those commitment have not waned, companies are "struggling in terms of balancing their priorities."

"I think the hardest part is getting the commitment and the conviction that what organizations are doing is the right thing," she said.

"Nobody wants to feel like they are being forced into things. The last thing I would like to see is organizations making commitments because they feel like they're doing this as a checkbox or a compliance matter. It really needs to be something that we believe in."

Gordon Blackmore, a consultant for the Halifax-based Black Business Initiative's Diversity Employment Network, said Black people often stay in jobs where they experience microaggressions due to "fear that things may be worse" elsewhere.

"It's sort of the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t," said Blackmore.

He stressed that companies serious about undergoing institutional change must allocate the same level of resources behind their diversity, equity and inclusion strategies "that they would if they were changing over to a new computer model or a new sort of business process."


"Having your DEI policy is sort of like going to a personal trainer. The personal trainer can develop the plan for you, can let you know what you need to do in order to have success, but at the end of the day, if you don't take that plan and follow it, then you're never going to have the success," said Blackmore.

"Until there's that level of commitment, there's not a lot of positive change that can really happen and I worry that a lot of things will be done as window dressing."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 28, 2023.