The Rwanda Genocide’s Origins Are in Resource Extraction and US Militarism
February 25, 2020
Judi Rever's book “In Praise of Blood” connects the modern scramble for control of African resources to the Rwandan genocide and sets the record straight about its alleged hero, Paul Kagame.
THE CLINTON HUMANITARIAN WARS
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Jacqueline Luqm…: This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network. The scramble between global powers to control resources on the African continent is the cause of as much suffering today as colonization caused in the past. Judi Rever has written the book In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Patriotic Front to highlight one chapter of that modern scramble for resources and the suffering it’s caused and to set the record straight about it. Judi, thanks so much for joining me.
Judi Rever: Thank you Jacqueline.
Jacqueline Luqm…: So I think we have to get a clear understanding of why this issue is important today. First, because we are talking about the Rwandan genocide that happened back in the ’90s. So I think we have to start with a little bit of history to set the stage. Now, the US under president Bill Clinton and please correct me if I’m wrong, at any point. The US under president, Bill Clinton began to pave the way for a giant resource grab in the Congo, which is the most resource rich country on the planet basically, in the early 90s. And back the Rwandan Patriotic Front or the RPF forces that were led by Paul Kagame who was then trained in intelligence at Fort Leavenworth here in the United States and the RPS takeover of Rwanda. I’m I on track so far?
Judi Rever: That’s a pretty good synthesis. We had Paul Kagame and his rebel troops invading Northern Rwanda in 1990 and there was already, as you mentioned. Paul Kagame had been trained in the United States. So the US had decided that this was someone that it was willing and very interested in supporting. So we had already in the late ’80s, early ’90s the US very interested in militarily and politically supporting Uganda.
It was through Uganda that the United States ended up supporting Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic army, which enabled him of course to invade Rwanda in 1990 engaged in a scorched earth campaign for almost four years. That created the context for the Rwandan genocide. And of course we know we have enough evidence now know that Paul Kagame and is true having assassinated the Hutu president on April 6, 1994. That was the act that triggered the Rwandan genocide. So all the while getting very solid support from the US.
Jacqueline Luqm…: So you mentioned the assassination of the Hutu president, the former president of Rwanda by Paul Kagame and that was president Juvenal Habyarimana. I think we need to put this in a little bit of context because the reason this was done was at the time technology was becoming a big economic driver in global markets. And much like European great powers after the 1885 Berlin conference wanted to control and exploit the resources of African continents for their own economic needs.
The same was true about the quest for resources in the Congo, so the assassination of president Habyarimana was done because he would not step down at the request of president Bush. This campaign to install a more US friendly government in Rwanda was continued under Clinton and it is largely believed that the plane that was carrying the former president was shot down as they were returning from a peace conference. In which they had signed a peace treaty between the Hutus and the Tutsis was the plane was shot down over Kigali returning from that peace conference as a way to get rid of the former president. Does that sound like that’s accurate?
Judi Rever: Well, in terms of a strategy of, I would say US militarism and global capitalism, if you want to look at the root of some of the drivers of the conflict, you have to go back. We’ve talked a little bit about the 1980s and the 1990s what you’re seeing in the 1990s is… Well, actually it started in ’89 with the coup in Sudan. So you had the United States becoming very interested in containing Islamic insurgency or Islamic power on the continent with the coup and with the rise of Omar El Bashir in 1999.
At the same time we saw in the 1990s certainly copper and cobalt plummet. The production of those two strategic minerals plummet in Congo. Okay. So we have a set of circumstances which was of concern to the United States and the United States at that time in the late ’80s and 1990s decided to play chess in the sense they decided on who their strategic players would be. Who were the guys that they were going to support.
So number one, Yoweri Museveni president of Uganda. He was going to help contain the rise of Islam in Africa because of his strategic placements in Uganda next to Sudan. Of course Sudan had oil resources and that was interesting for the United States. Now in Congo where there is 24 million, excuse me, in Congo where there is an estimated $24 trillion in untapped mineral wealth, it’s almost unfathomable. The United States was very interested there. As I said in the early 1990s we saw copper and cobalt climate under Mobutu.
So it was becoming impossible for the United States and for Western nations to do business in Congo under Mobutu, he was becoming intractable, he was becoming an obstacle and multinationals were no longer able to do business. The United States wanted Congo open for business. So that was part of the larger strategy. So supporting Museveni, supporting Paul Kagame who was at that time, Paul Kagame was a rebel and he was already waging war in Northern Rwanda. It was clear that I think the United States had a plan to support these men and make central Africa a place where it was easier to do business.
Jacqueline Luqm…: That groundwork, that foundation and that history is incredibly important because that is the foundation or the pathway to the Rwandan genocide in which more than 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus died. Now where does your book come in to this history? Because what we understand in the United States, Judi, is that Paul Kagame, who was the current president of Rwanda was the hero of the conflict. We’re told that he ended the Rwandan genocide, but your book reveals a different perspective on that narrative. So what is that perspective?
Judi Rever: My book fundamentally challenges the official narrative. Maybe it defeats the narrative. What my book says, my research says is that Paul Kagame, did not stop the genocide. He did not stop the violence. He ignited the genocide by killing Juvenal Habyarimana, the Hutu president. He also fueled the genocide against Tutsi by sending in his Tutsi commandos. Infiltrating the Hutu militia and assisting directly in the killing of Tutsi. So he augmented. He potentiated, the Tutsi genocide.
I also say in my book based on years and years of research that Paul Kagame Tutsi army committed genocide against Hutus as well and this was not in retaliation. These were operations that will preemptive and proactive. As soon as the Hutu president Habyarimana was killed and those operations to systematically kill Hutu leaders and Hutu peasant from the North down the Eastern coast or down the Eastern border in the South and then back up to the Northwest. That that was highly orchestrated, very organized and the killings of Hutus continued after the genocide.
Jacqueline Luqm…: Right now that narrative is not only being challenged by the Kagame administration in several different ways, but here in the United States you have been going on some speaking tours, promoting the book, talking about this issue. There are sometimes people in attendance and I attended one of these events who will directly challenge of the information that you are revealed in your book. They say that there was no genocide, that Kagame committed. They say that your information is false. They said that you’re spreading lies. What is your response to those allegations that the information you’re providing that Kagame was actually not a hero ending the Rwandan genocide, but he participated and that he committed genocide himself, what’s your response to those allegations that that information is not true?
Judi Rever: Well as you said, Jackie, you were there in Washington and one of Kagame supporters mentioned the Byumba Stadium massacre, which occurred in April, 1994. I talk about this briefly massacre by the Rwandan Patriotic Front of Hutus civilians, men, women, children and babies. He said it was a myth that it never happened and a lot of people were shocked. I said to him that there was so much evidence, incredible amount of evidence of this massacre at the Byumba Soccer Stadium in 1994. There was evidence that was in the UN documents… Documented at the UN tribunals. One of the investigators that I spoke to who worked at the UN tribunals that set up to prosecute the most serious crimes of the genocide said never in his life had he collected so much evidence on a massacre that it was a mass killing. Thousands of victims were killed.
He had people who were members of the RPA stationed outside the stadium. He had collected testimony from them. He collected testimony from some of the soldiers inside the stadium who killed these Hutu civilians. He had testimony. This is a UN investigator I’m talking about, had testimony from soldiers who brought the bodies, the corpses out of the stadium, transported them on trucks to bury them. I mean it was incredible. Never in his life as an investigator at the tribunals did he collect so much evidence and of course I interviewed a number of people who were at the scene of the crime as well.
Jacqueline Luqm…: The interesting thing about the exchange that you’re talking about that I was a witness to. But that I’ve also seen critics of your book use online and the response that you give and that you document in your book is that this is not information that is hearsay. There are eye witness accounts that have been documented not just by you in interviewing survivors, but also the United Nations has documented.
Collected this evidence have interviewed survivors. I have confirmed that these people they have interviewed are survivors and the evidence according to the UN is insurmountable. But still there are critics who decry the idea that Kagame was not the hero that the United States and other Western nations make him out to be. To the point that now Judi, there is repression of people who are openly challenging Kagame in Rwanda who are being targeted by his administration. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Judi Rever: Well, sadly this is the ongoing, his repression, his terror inside the country ever since he took power. But increasingly Tutsi and Hutus, but interior Tutsi survivors are targeted in Paul Kagame Rwanda. Within the last few days a very much loved Tutsi survivor, a gospel singer named Kizito Mihigo died in a military detention, police detention. It is believed that he was murdered. Most people believe he was murdered. This man was very much admired and talked about the importance of ethnic reconciliation. He also challenged the official narrative. He said that Hutus died as well during the genocide and their deaths mattered.
Remember he was a Tutsi survivor. He lost many family members during the genocide. So people saw him as a symbol of hope and reconciliation and millions of Rwanda’s inside the country and abroad are crying this week. Their son that Paul Kagame and his henchments could stoop so low as to apparently murder this person. So Rwandans in general, especially those who tried to speak out or might be seen as potential dissidents inside the country are very much living in fear. We have Kagame death squads operating outside the country. Many people have called the RPF and Kagame criminals without borders and so no one is beyond his limits.
Jacqueline Luqm…: That is absolutely horrifying that people just recently as a few days ago are still being targeted by this regime and it truly is a regime that’s not a word I use lightly. Judi, what does these issues, what does this information mean? What should it mean to people watching this interview right now? Why should people be concerned about what happened in the Rwanda and the ongoing legacy of the Kagame regime? Why should the people be concerned about this in their everyday life right now?
Judi Rever: It’s very serious. I mean, I’ve studied these questions of the political and security issues, plaguing Central Africa for a few decades now. I’m very much concerned, but I think we should all be concerned as global citizens. One of the things I’d like to say is that there are so many troubling… There has been a history of troubling concealing, hiding Kagame crime. Oppressing them, dismissing them, minimizing them, and even justifying those times by our Western governance, particularly by the United States government.
I think as American citizens and people who are listening to your interviews, I would think that people should be concerned about what their government does and how US policies have fueled the conflict in central Africa. Remember, by supporting militarily and politically supporting Paul Kagame and his troops to unleash the genocide. And by giving them tremendous amount of support and cover for the invasion of Congo, overthrowing Mobutu’s and waging wars there, over the last 23 years. Where millions of people have died and that conflict is still raging. So these are all pressing issues. They’re burning issues that I think enlightened Americans should be concerned about.
Jacqueline Luqm…: Yes, definitely. Especially, since the resources that are coming out of the region that is affected by these conflicts are in our hands every day, are on our desks every day. We watch them every day. Cell phones, laptops, televisions, other kinds of electronics, batteries, even electric motor cars. So Judi, how can people, number one, support the journalists, dissidents, and activists who are actively speaking out against the Kagame regime, both in Rwanda and outside of the country? What can people do also, if they want to participate in bringing accountability to the Kagame regime?
Judi Rever: It’s very important for people who are interested in these issues to press Congress and speak up about the military cooperation agreement that the United States government has with Rwanda. Press Congress to halt that agreement. We know that through Africom, the United States has more operations in Africa and is using Rwanda as an integral part of Africom, more operations in Africa than it does in the middle East. The United States has to draw back, diminish Africom and stop funding and militarily supporting Rwanda.
The other thing that’s important to do is to change the narrative, get people to understand that the official narrative is in on a number of levels based on lies. Kagame did not stop the genocide. He ignited the genocide and continues to destabilize the region. I also think it’s important for Americans and for media to listen to people who flee. Rwandans who flee the country. It’s only in fleeing that Rwandans have been able to talk about what’s really going on. So doing research and prosecuting crimes inside Rwanda based on testimony there doesn’t give us a real picture, a complete picture of what went on in the genocide and what continues to go on in the country.
Jacqueline Luqm…: Judi Rever thank you so much for taking this time to talk about this very, very important issue and to talk about your book In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of The Patriotic Front. I absolutely encourage all of our viewers to secure a copy of this book and read it. Thank you so much, Judi, for joining me today to talk about all of this.
Judi Rever: Thanks Jacqueline for having me.
Jacqueline Luqm…: Thank you for watching. This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network in Washin
Sunday, March 01, 2020
Unreported Opposition Violence Continues in Venezuela
February 21, 2020
Venezuela’s opposition has a long history of burning government buildings, health clinics, and the local headquarters of the country's social missions. The violence continues, but these acts of opposition violence are rarely covered in the press.
Story Transcript
Mike Fox: On the evening of February 8, a warehouse belonging to Venezuela’s National Telephone Company, Cantv and its affiliate Movilnet, was set on fire in the state of Carabobo. According to the Venezuelan government, all of the equipment there was destroyed. The government denounced the attack as an attack of sabotage and terror.
For those not following Venezuela closely, this may seem a strange occurrence, but in fact, ongoing violence and attacks by the U.S.-backed opposition are quite common in Venezuela, although you rarely hear about them in the mainstream press.
This was the scene last year, on a random weekend in Caracas, at the local headquarters of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in the working-class neighborhood of San Augustin.
Marvi Devia, Resident: At about 3am, we smelled some very thick smoke. And some neighbors realized that they were burning tires. So we ran downstairs, with fire extinguishers, and we were able to put out the fire. But 21 families live here and we have little children and grandparents. So it was very scary to be in this situation.
Orlando Acevedo, Community Member, PSUV: They tried to burn down this headquarters, which is the home of all of spaces of representation of the community, and where people live upstairs. The idea was to burn down this headquarters with the people inside.
Mike Fox: Those responsible were not caught, but they left threatening fliers, demanding Maduro’s removal.
This was far from the first time.
Venezuela’s opposition has a long history of burning government buildings, community health clinics, and the local headquarters of its social missions. Such incidents happen continuously, but flared up particularly during the opposition’s months-long street blockades, known as “guarimbas,” in 2014 and 2017.
On the day of the failed April 30 coup, last year, by opposition leader Juan Guaido, members of the opposition raided this neighborhood center, in the working class Caracas barrio of Caricuao, where numerous social offices and community programs are held.
The forces behind these violent actions are the same, linked to Juan Guaido, who was recently heralded by both U.S. president Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a democrat and a freedom fighter.
Acts of opposition violence are rarely covered in the press. What is covered, often ad nauseum, are the pro-government collectives from 23 de Enero, a working class neighborhood, and long-time bastion of support for the Bolivarian process.
The opposition and most mainstream outlets says these collectives are armed and dangerous — shock troops at the service of the governments.
Jose Lugo, from the Alexis Vive collective, says they have it all wrong.
Jose Lugo, Alexis Vive: If it’s alright, let me take you to our weapons facility. Come with me, please. I am going to show you the weapons park of the collectives.
Here we have the area where we cut the pieces of the collective. We are making shirts. Shirts for our country’s boys and girls.
Over here, [indicating a sewing machine] we have an AK47. Oh, sorry, this is a 757K, which is a machine that is called Overlock.
Over here, we have another weapon [indicating another sewing machine]. It’s a 757K. This fires almost 500 projectiles per second. Can you shoot it, Margarita? She’s firing.
Mike Fox: This sewing collective is just one piece of El Panal commune, which was founded by the Alexis Vive collective over a decade ago.
Jose Lugo, Alexis Vive: [Walking onto a basketball court] Here we have a youth concentration camp. Be careful here, because the youth here are all in prison, and chained, in this concentration camp. Look how we make them play basketball and listen to music.
This is part of the social and economic development. This is a court we built with our own resources, thanks to the effort of Alexis Vive. This collective of assassins made this court here.
There’s also a communal bank and a community radio.
Lina Arregocés, El Panal Border Studies and Research Center: Wherever we go, we are spreading the word. We have a local research center and a radio through which we share information. And this information isn’t for the libraries and the intellectuals. It’s knowledge for the people.
Jose Lugo, Alexis Vive: We are Alexis Vive and we are the commune. We are the same people from the community. There is no separation. There is no difference. You can’t see us as separate from 23 de Enero.
There is no difference.
Mike Fox: Down the hill, the collective as the Coordinador Simon Bolivar took over a former police headquarters and interrogation center and converted it into a neighborhood center.
Juan Contreras, Coordinador Simon Bolivar: This is the Francisco Miranda community school of modern languages. Here is the infocenter, with more than 30 computers. A community bookstore. The local civil registry office. A community radio. Over there, you have an elderly club and a neighborhood veterinarian.
This is the center of grassroots organization in the sector of La Cañada in the region of 23 de Enero. And I would dare to say that it has an important impact on all of 23 de Enero.
Mike Fox: These neighborhood groups continue with their ongoing community work and services. But they’re still demonized in the press. Meanwhile, the violence sown by Juan Guaido’s opposition is ignored and overlooked.
Michael Fox for The Real News, Caracas, Venezuela.
February 21, 2020
Venezuela’s opposition has a long history of burning government buildings, health clinics, and the local headquarters of the country's social missions. The violence continues, but these acts of opposition violence are rarely covered in the press.
Story Transcript
Mike Fox: On the evening of February 8, a warehouse belonging to Venezuela’s National Telephone Company, Cantv and its affiliate Movilnet, was set on fire in the state of Carabobo. According to the Venezuelan government, all of the equipment there was destroyed. The government denounced the attack as an attack of sabotage and terror.
For those not following Venezuela closely, this may seem a strange occurrence, but in fact, ongoing violence and attacks by the U.S.-backed opposition are quite common in Venezuela, although you rarely hear about them in the mainstream press.
This was the scene last year, on a random weekend in Caracas, at the local headquarters of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in the working-class neighborhood of San Augustin.
Marvi Devia, Resident: At about 3am, we smelled some very thick smoke. And some neighbors realized that they were burning tires. So we ran downstairs, with fire extinguishers, and we were able to put out the fire. But 21 families live here and we have little children and grandparents. So it was very scary to be in this situation.
Orlando Acevedo, Community Member, PSUV: They tried to burn down this headquarters, which is the home of all of spaces of representation of the community, and where people live upstairs. The idea was to burn down this headquarters with the people inside.
Mike Fox: Those responsible were not caught, but they left threatening fliers, demanding Maduro’s removal.
This was far from the first time.
Venezuela’s opposition has a long history of burning government buildings, community health clinics, and the local headquarters of its social missions. Such incidents happen continuously, but flared up particularly during the opposition’s months-long street blockades, known as “guarimbas,” in 2014 and 2017.
On the day of the failed April 30 coup, last year, by opposition leader Juan Guaido, members of the opposition raided this neighborhood center, in the working class Caracas barrio of Caricuao, where numerous social offices and community programs are held.
The forces behind these violent actions are the same, linked to Juan Guaido, who was recently heralded by both U.S. president Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a democrat and a freedom fighter.
Acts of opposition violence are rarely covered in the press. What is covered, often ad nauseum, are the pro-government collectives from 23 de Enero, a working class neighborhood, and long-time bastion of support for the Bolivarian process.
The opposition and most mainstream outlets says these collectives are armed and dangerous — shock troops at the service of the governments.
Jose Lugo, from the Alexis Vive collective, says they have it all wrong.
Jose Lugo, Alexis Vive: If it’s alright, let me take you to our weapons facility. Come with me, please. I am going to show you the weapons park of the collectives.
Here we have the area where we cut the pieces of the collective. We are making shirts. Shirts for our country’s boys and girls.
Over here, [indicating a sewing machine] we have an AK47. Oh, sorry, this is a 757K, which is a machine that is called Overlock.
Over here, we have another weapon [indicating another sewing machine]. It’s a 757K. This fires almost 500 projectiles per second. Can you shoot it, Margarita? She’s firing.
Mike Fox: This sewing collective is just one piece of El Panal commune, which was founded by the Alexis Vive collective over a decade ago.
Jose Lugo, Alexis Vive: [Walking onto a basketball court] Here we have a youth concentration camp. Be careful here, because the youth here are all in prison, and chained, in this concentration camp. Look how we make them play basketball and listen to music.
This is part of the social and economic development. This is a court we built with our own resources, thanks to the effort of Alexis Vive. This collective of assassins made this court here.
There’s also a communal bank and a community radio.
Lina Arregocés, El Panal Border Studies and Research Center: Wherever we go, we are spreading the word. We have a local research center and a radio through which we share information. And this information isn’t for the libraries and the intellectuals. It’s knowledge for the people.
Jose Lugo, Alexis Vive: We are Alexis Vive and we are the commune. We are the same people from the community. There is no separation. There is no difference. You can’t see us as separate from 23 de Enero.
There is no difference.
Mike Fox: Down the hill, the collective as the Coordinador Simon Bolivar took over a former police headquarters and interrogation center and converted it into a neighborhood center.
Juan Contreras, Coordinador Simon Bolivar: This is the Francisco Miranda community school of modern languages. Here is the infocenter, with more than 30 computers. A community bookstore. The local civil registry office. A community radio. Over there, you have an elderly club and a neighborhood veterinarian.
This is the center of grassroots organization in the sector of La Cañada in the region of 23 de Enero. And I would dare to say that it has an important impact on all of 23 de Enero.
Mike Fox: These neighborhood groups continue with their ongoing community work and services. But they’re still demonized in the press. Meanwhile, the violence sown by Juan Guaido’s opposition is ignored and overlooked.
Michael Fox for The Real News, Caracas, Venezuela.
International Banks and Law Firms Are at the Heart of South Africa’s Corruption
February 21, 2020
In South Africa, corruption is called state capture. A new report by Shadow World Investigations reveals how world bankers, lawyers, and accountants manipulate politicians.
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Mark Steiner: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Mark Steiner, good to have you all with us. In South Africa, they call corruption in politics state capture, and it’s at the heart of the political struggle in South African politics now. Because it refers to the idea that government cannot act in the interest of the public if it’s fully in the pocket of powerful business people.
It was one of the main issues in the last May’s national elections in South Africa, and the reason that the ruling ANC, the African National Congress, that led the revolution against the apartheid state, received fewer votes than ever before, while maintaining its majority, a 62% majority. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, promised to fight against state capture, but he himself was accused of doing the bidding of capital groups like the Gupta brothers.
Now, Cyril Ramaphosa has gone, went from a revolutionary leader of the mine workers, to himself becoming a wealthy owner and investor in mines. Former South African president Jacob Zuma has been under investigation for corruption. And last week, the court issued an arrest warrant against him, to force him to appear before the court, and answer allegations of corruption. Here is Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge [Vaya Palay 00:01:09].
Vaya Palay: in this instance, Counsel for Mr. Zuma was notified in advance, in the middle of January, that this document, or that sound evidence is required to justify his absence from court. And without that evidence, this court cannot do anything else but issue a warrant of arrest.
Mark Steiner: A new report, which was just published by Open Secrets and Shadow World Investigations, deals with the issue of state capture on South Africa, but from a very different angle. It’s entitled The Enablers, a report which focuses not on the direct relationship between capitalists and politicians, but rather on the people in between layers, the lawyers, the accountants, the bankers who enable this relationship to flourish.
One of the authors of that report is Andrew Feinstein, who is of Shadow World Investigations, is now joining us to discuss the report. He’s the Executive Director of Corruption Watch UK, and author of The Shadow World Inside The Global Arms Trade, which was the basis of a documentary film, that explores world’s largest and most corrupt arms deals that took place.
And previously, Andrew Feinstein worked with the ANC, under the previous South African presidents, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, and Andrew, welcome. Good to have you back on The Real News.
Andrew Feinstei…: Thank you. Good to be here.
Mark Steiner: Let’s start with some background very quickly for our viewers. And let’s take a look at who the Gupta brothers are, and what went on with the former president, Jacob Zuma, who’s now being called before the commission, and what led us to this in the first place, what this means.
Andrew Feinstei…: So I think the situation is that the Gupta brothers are two brothers from India, previously based in Delhi, I think, where they ran a company called Sahara Computers. They got involved, in a peripheral way in South Africa, under the previous president, Thabo Mbeki, who, one of his ministers actually first introduced them into South Africa.
And they forged relationships across the AMC, most importantly, with then-Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Zuma toppled Mbeki from power. And when he moved into the Union Buildings, our presidential house in Pretoria, it was as though he took with him the Gupta brothers. And the process of what we described as state capture is really the process of giving state contracts to private interests, who are both unable to deliver on those contracts, but also pocket enormous amounts of money for those contracts.
So, an enormous number of very large government contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of South African Rand, were given to Gupta companies, many of them established as special purpose vehicles only for that contract. In the majority of cases, very little if anything was delivered, and hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, in fact, was siphoned out of the South African state, and into bank accounts around the world, most prominently in Dubai.
Mark Steiner: So let’s go to the report itself for a moment. I mean, I everybody agrees that capitalists have to be exposed for giving bribes, and controlling the political world, and controlling government. And politicians have to be exposed for betraying the trust of voters and promoting the interests of those capitalist powers, instead of the people themselves.
But why did you focus on the accountants, the bankers, the lawyers that hammered out these deals, and did it in secret? So talk about the focus of this, and why that happened, and the way you did it. And what’s the significance?
Andrew Feinstei…: So we have done a series of reports, on various of these instances, of what we refer to as state capture. But what was apparent to us, in every single case, is there was very prominent South African, and global financial institutions, auditing firms, law firms and management consultants, who made tens of millions of dollars, out of effectively facilitating these contracts that undermined the state. In addition to which, they played the crucial role in laundering the illicit proceeds from these contracts, that accrued to the Gupta brothers, but also to key South African politicians, who had awarded the Gupta brothers these contracts.
And without those enablers or facilitators, it would have been far more difficult for this phenomenon of state capture to have taken place, and especially to have taken place to the extent that it has. Because during the Zuma years, Jacob Zuma was president of South Africa for eight years, it is estimated that around one-third of the country’s GDP has been lost to state capture.
That could never have happened without the involvement of banks like HSBC, The Bank of Baroda, standard bank here in South Africa, and a bank called First National Bank, global law firms, consultancies, particularly Bain Consulting, and McKinseys, and a variety of others.
The audit firms that we’ve all heard about, KPMG, Deloitte, PWC, all of these entities, played an absolutely essential role at every part of the process of state capture. And while we are demanding that the South African judicial process deals with the politicians, who have been the recipients of the bribes paid by the Guptas, it is as important, not just for South Africa, to ensure that state capture comes to an end in this country, but for many other countries around the world, including the United States of America, which you could argue, under President Trump, is also experiencing state capture, to ensure that these companies to face prosecution, both in South Africa and in their home markets, wherever those might be.
Mark Steiner: So, [inaudible 00:07:39], so clearly, the Gupta brothers, the way you’re describing things, are, on the face of this, and you can… But from what you’ve just said, I mean this, this goes way deeper, much deeper than the Gupta brothers, much deeper in their relationship with Zuma. This has to do with the role, or the way you’re describing it, of international capital of the banks, of the finance industry, or the international arms industry, I’m sure, which you’ve covered intensely in your work before.
Andrew Feinstei…: Yeah.
Mark Steiner: So this is, this really it goes to the heart of, what we talked about even before you got on the air, which is, one of the reasons why, when the AMC finally took control of South Africa and ended the apartheid state, it was almost impossible to take on these capitalist powers who really were controlling everything. And what you are doing is uncovering what that really means. Am I right?
Andrew Feinstei…: Absolutely. So we have a situation where the apartheid state, too, wasn’t able to survive, and sadly, prosper, through the role of international banks, international lawyers, foreign governments, and a variety of foreign companies who broke the UN oil embargo against South Africa, and of course the UN arms embargo, against apartheid South Africa.
Now, the system of apartheid was not only morally corrupt, as a racist oligarchy, it was materially corrupt as well. About 50% of the budget was off the book, and was used for indecent, corrupt purposes. And that was facilitated and enabled by the private sector around the world. Sadly, what happened in South Africa was the corruption of the later apartheid period, alighted into our democratic era.
So, when I was an ANC member of Parliament in this country, I tried to investigate an arms deal, in which we bought $10 billion of weapons that we had absolutely no need of, and that we barely used today.
It’s estimated that around three to $400 million of bribes were paid on those deals. But the intermediaries, who enabled and facilitated those deals, like Barclays Bank, in the United Kingdom, like certain arms dealers based in Germany, and Belgium, and various other parts of the world. These were the same people who had enabled and facilitated the corruption of the apartheid era.
So had we dealt with the economic dimensions of apartheid during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it is quite likely that this massive arms deal, which was really the point at which the AMC and our nascent democracy lost its innocence, lost its moral compass, it is quite likely that that would not have happened. So that his vision is absolutely crucial.
And from the arms deal, which was the point at which the AMC made clear, that it was fine to plunder the state treasury, for personal and party political gain. From that point on, it was inevitable that we would reach the point we did under Jacob Zuma, where effectively, the state became a tool in the hands of private interests, the Gupta brothers, but also, all of these companies, who were making millions and millions of dollars, out of corrupting the South African state.
Mark Steiner: Which is why your report is so important, because it goes beyond the Gupta brothers into what really fueled all of this, and how it actually happened. And also explains, when you open your report, and as we conclude this, I mean, you talk about the human cost of this corruption.
You just mentioned, one-third of the GDP being the being, becoming part of this corruption, in lots of South Africa, means that, as you wrote about, millions of people are trapped in poverty. People die because of this. This is, this has a huge human and societal cost.
Andrew Feinstei…: Mark, the arms deal that I mentioned, the first point of the corruption of the democratic South African state, took place at a time when our then-President Thabo Mbeki, told the six million citizens of our country, who were living with HIV or AIDS, that we could not afford to buy the antiretroviral medication.
I remember him alive. As a consequence of which, according to a study undertaken at Harvard, over the following five years, 365,000 South Africans died avoidable deaths. Thirty-two thousand babies every year were born HIV positive, because we couldn’t afford mother to child transmission treatment, but we could afford to spend billions on jet fighters, that we can’t afford to fuel, let alone fly. And as we go into the state capture of the Guptas, every single dollar that is stolen from the Ciscos in this country, means that the two million people who require housing are less likely to get that housing.
That’s the millions of school children, who either don’t have a school, or have an inadequate school, and inadequate teaching. I’m likely to get a decent education, but those people who require public healthcare are unlikely to get it.
So quite literally, our own politicians, aided and abetted by these global banks, lawyers, auditing firms and management consultancies, are effectively stealing the livelihood out of the pockets of ordinary South Africans. So anybody who believes that corruption is a victimless crime need only look at South Africa.
The complicity of American and global companies in these crimes cannot be avoided. And so, what we are stating in this report, is that those companies too must face the legal consequences of their corrupt activities.
Mark Steiner: Well, Andrew Feinstein, I really look forward to seeing how this unfolds more, as this report comes out, and we see how South Africa wrestles with this, and the work that you do, and the work that other people are doing in the mine workers union, to equate a really true democratic South Africa, that comes to the fore.
And look forward to many more conversations, and just seeing where this takes South Africa and the world. Andrew, thanks so much for your work, and thank you for being with us today.
Andrew Feinstei…: Thank you so much for your time.
Mark Steiner: It’s been my pleasure. And I’m Mark Steiner here, for The Real News Network. Thank you all for joining us. Please let us know what you think. Take care. with Andrew Feinstein, the report's author.
February 21, 2020
In South Africa, corruption is called state capture. A new report by Shadow World Investigations reveals how world bankers, lawyers, and accountants manipulate politicians.
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Mark Steiner: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Mark Steiner, good to have you all with us. In South Africa, they call corruption in politics state capture, and it’s at the heart of the political struggle in South African politics now. Because it refers to the idea that government cannot act in the interest of the public if it’s fully in the pocket of powerful business people.
It was one of the main issues in the last May’s national elections in South Africa, and the reason that the ruling ANC, the African National Congress, that led the revolution against the apartheid state, received fewer votes than ever before, while maintaining its majority, a 62% majority. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, promised to fight against state capture, but he himself was accused of doing the bidding of capital groups like the Gupta brothers.
Now, Cyril Ramaphosa has gone, went from a revolutionary leader of the mine workers, to himself becoming a wealthy owner and investor in mines. Former South African president Jacob Zuma has been under investigation for corruption. And last week, the court issued an arrest warrant against him, to force him to appear before the court, and answer allegations of corruption. Here is Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge [Vaya Palay 00:01:09].
Vaya Palay: in this instance, Counsel for Mr. Zuma was notified in advance, in the middle of January, that this document, or that sound evidence is required to justify his absence from court. And without that evidence, this court cannot do anything else but issue a warrant of arrest.
Mark Steiner: A new report, which was just published by Open Secrets and Shadow World Investigations, deals with the issue of state capture on South Africa, but from a very different angle. It’s entitled The Enablers, a report which focuses not on the direct relationship between capitalists and politicians, but rather on the people in between layers, the lawyers, the accountants, the bankers who enable this relationship to flourish.
One of the authors of that report is Andrew Feinstein, who is of Shadow World Investigations, is now joining us to discuss the report. He’s the Executive Director of Corruption Watch UK, and author of The Shadow World Inside The Global Arms Trade, which was the basis of a documentary film, that explores world’s largest and most corrupt arms deals that took place.
And previously, Andrew Feinstein worked with the ANC, under the previous South African presidents, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, and Andrew, welcome. Good to have you back on The Real News.
Andrew Feinstei…: Thank you. Good to be here.
Mark Steiner: Let’s start with some background very quickly for our viewers. And let’s take a look at who the Gupta brothers are, and what went on with the former president, Jacob Zuma, who’s now being called before the commission, and what led us to this in the first place, what this means.
Andrew Feinstei…: So I think the situation is that the Gupta brothers are two brothers from India, previously based in Delhi, I think, where they ran a company called Sahara Computers. They got involved, in a peripheral way in South Africa, under the previous president, Thabo Mbeki, who, one of his ministers actually first introduced them into South Africa.
And they forged relationships across the AMC, most importantly, with then-Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Zuma toppled Mbeki from power. And when he moved into the Union Buildings, our presidential house in Pretoria, it was as though he took with him the Gupta brothers. And the process of what we described as state capture is really the process of giving state contracts to private interests, who are both unable to deliver on those contracts, but also pocket enormous amounts of money for those contracts.
So, an enormous number of very large government contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of South African Rand, were given to Gupta companies, many of them established as special purpose vehicles only for that contract. In the majority of cases, very little if anything was delivered, and hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, in fact, was siphoned out of the South African state, and into bank accounts around the world, most prominently in Dubai.
Mark Steiner: So let’s go to the report itself for a moment. I mean, I everybody agrees that capitalists have to be exposed for giving bribes, and controlling the political world, and controlling government. And politicians have to be exposed for betraying the trust of voters and promoting the interests of those capitalist powers, instead of the people themselves.
But why did you focus on the accountants, the bankers, the lawyers that hammered out these deals, and did it in secret? So talk about the focus of this, and why that happened, and the way you did it. And what’s the significance?
Andrew Feinstei…: So we have done a series of reports, on various of these instances, of what we refer to as state capture. But what was apparent to us, in every single case, is there was very prominent South African, and global financial institutions, auditing firms, law firms and management consultants, who made tens of millions of dollars, out of effectively facilitating these contracts that undermined the state. In addition to which, they played the crucial role in laundering the illicit proceeds from these contracts, that accrued to the Gupta brothers, but also to key South African politicians, who had awarded the Gupta brothers these contracts.
And without those enablers or facilitators, it would have been far more difficult for this phenomenon of state capture to have taken place, and especially to have taken place to the extent that it has. Because during the Zuma years, Jacob Zuma was president of South Africa for eight years, it is estimated that around one-third of the country’s GDP has been lost to state capture.
That could never have happened without the involvement of banks like HSBC, The Bank of Baroda, standard bank here in South Africa, and a bank called First National Bank, global law firms, consultancies, particularly Bain Consulting, and McKinseys, and a variety of others.
The audit firms that we’ve all heard about, KPMG, Deloitte, PWC, all of these entities, played an absolutely essential role at every part of the process of state capture. And while we are demanding that the South African judicial process deals with the politicians, who have been the recipients of the bribes paid by the Guptas, it is as important, not just for South Africa, to ensure that state capture comes to an end in this country, but for many other countries around the world, including the United States of America, which you could argue, under President Trump, is also experiencing state capture, to ensure that these companies to face prosecution, both in South Africa and in their home markets, wherever those might be.
Mark Steiner: So, [inaudible 00:07:39], so clearly, the Gupta brothers, the way you’re describing things, are, on the face of this, and you can… But from what you’ve just said, I mean this, this goes way deeper, much deeper than the Gupta brothers, much deeper in their relationship with Zuma. This has to do with the role, or the way you’re describing it, of international capital of the banks, of the finance industry, or the international arms industry, I’m sure, which you’ve covered intensely in your work before.
Andrew Feinstei…: Yeah.
Mark Steiner: So this is, this really it goes to the heart of, what we talked about even before you got on the air, which is, one of the reasons why, when the AMC finally took control of South Africa and ended the apartheid state, it was almost impossible to take on these capitalist powers who really were controlling everything. And what you are doing is uncovering what that really means. Am I right?
Andrew Feinstei…: Absolutely. So we have a situation where the apartheid state, too, wasn’t able to survive, and sadly, prosper, through the role of international banks, international lawyers, foreign governments, and a variety of foreign companies who broke the UN oil embargo against South Africa, and of course the UN arms embargo, against apartheid South Africa.
Now, the system of apartheid was not only morally corrupt, as a racist oligarchy, it was materially corrupt as well. About 50% of the budget was off the book, and was used for indecent, corrupt purposes. And that was facilitated and enabled by the private sector around the world. Sadly, what happened in South Africa was the corruption of the later apartheid period, alighted into our democratic era.
So, when I was an ANC member of Parliament in this country, I tried to investigate an arms deal, in which we bought $10 billion of weapons that we had absolutely no need of, and that we barely used today.
It’s estimated that around three to $400 million of bribes were paid on those deals. But the intermediaries, who enabled and facilitated those deals, like Barclays Bank, in the United Kingdom, like certain arms dealers based in Germany, and Belgium, and various other parts of the world. These were the same people who had enabled and facilitated the corruption of the apartheid era.
So had we dealt with the economic dimensions of apartheid during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it is quite likely that this massive arms deal, which was really the point at which the AMC and our nascent democracy lost its innocence, lost its moral compass, it is quite likely that that would not have happened. So that his vision is absolutely crucial.
And from the arms deal, which was the point at which the AMC made clear, that it was fine to plunder the state treasury, for personal and party political gain. From that point on, it was inevitable that we would reach the point we did under Jacob Zuma, where effectively, the state became a tool in the hands of private interests, the Gupta brothers, but also, all of these companies, who were making millions and millions of dollars, out of corrupting the South African state.
Mark Steiner: Which is why your report is so important, because it goes beyond the Gupta brothers into what really fueled all of this, and how it actually happened. And also explains, when you open your report, and as we conclude this, I mean, you talk about the human cost of this corruption.
You just mentioned, one-third of the GDP being the being, becoming part of this corruption, in lots of South Africa, means that, as you wrote about, millions of people are trapped in poverty. People die because of this. This is, this has a huge human and societal cost.
Andrew Feinstei…: Mark, the arms deal that I mentioned, the first point of the corruption of the democratic South African state, took place at a time when our then-President Thabo Mbeki, told the six million citizens of our country, who were living with HIV or AIDS, that we could not afford to buy the antiretroviral medication.
I remember him alive. As a consequence of which, according to a study undertaken at Harvard, over the following five years, 365,000 South Africans died avoidable deaths. Thirty-two thousand babies every year were born HIV positive, because we couldn’t afford mother to child transmission treatment, but we could afford to spend billions on jet fighters, that we can’t afford to fuel, let alone fly. And as we go into the state capture of the Guptas, every single dollar that is stolen from the Ciscos in this country, means that the two million people who require housing are less likely to get that housing.
That’s the millions of school children, who either don’t have a school, or have an inadequate school, and inadequate teaching. I’m likely to get a decent education, but those people who require public healthcare are unlikely to get it.
So quite literally, our own politicians, aided and abetted by these global banks, lawyers, auditing firms and management consultancies, are effectively stealing the livelihood out of the pockets of ordinary South Africans. So anybody who believes that corruption is a victimless crime need only look at South Africa.
The complicity of American and global companies in these crimes cannot be avoided. And so, what we are stating in this report, is that those companies too must face the legal consequences of their corrupt activities.
Mark Steiner: Well, Andrew Feinstein, I really look forward to seeing how this unfolds more, as this report comes out, and we see how South Africa wrestles with this, and the work that you do, and the work that other people are doing in the mine workers union, to equate a really true democratic South Africa, that comes to the fore.
And look forward to many more conversations, and just seeing where this takes South Africa and the world. Andrew, thanks so much for your work, and thank you for being with us today.
Andrew Feinstei…: Thank you so much for your time.
Mark Steiner: It’s been my pleasure. And I’m Mark Steiner here, for The Real News Network. Thank you all for joining us. Please let us know what you think. Take care. with Andrew Feinstein, the report's author.
Ilhan Omar’s ‘Pathway to Peace’ Would Revolutionize US Foreign Policy
February 20, 2020
The seven bills would steer US foreign policy towards international norms and remove support for human rights violators. While the chances are slim that these bills will pass, they outline a progressive foreign policy.
Story Transcript
GREG WILPERT: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Greg Wilpert in Arlington, Virginia.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota introduced a package of seven bills last week, which she calls the Pathway to Peace. This legislation, if it were passed, would mean nothing short of a revolution in the way that U.S. foreign policy is conducted. Last year, Omar already said that she plans to make U.S. foreign policy more ethical.
ILHAN OMAR: I want to make sure that here in the United States we understand that there are other countries who take in so many people of the world’s most pained people, and in the United States we could do better.
GREG WILPERT: The package of seven bills would end arm sales to countries that violate human rights, provide foreign aid to youth in developing countries, shift $5 billion from the Pentagon to the state department for a global peace building fund and grant Congress oversight over U.S. economic sanctions. Also, the bills would have the U.S. sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a global migration agreement, and the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court.
Joining me now to analyze Representative Ilhan Omar’s proposal is Kate Kizer. She’s the Policy Director at Win Without War, a national grassroots advocacy organization that works to help establish a more progressive foreign policy for the United States. Thanks for joining us today, Kate.
KATE KIZER: Thanks for having me.
GREG WILPERT: The chances that this package of bills would be approved by congress, particularly by the Republican controlled senate, and then not be vetoed by the president, is pretty slim. So what’s the significance of Representative Omar’s Pathway to Peace?
KATE KIZER: It’s a really important marker of what Progressive’s want to see on foreign policy. For a long time there’s been little to no debate within the Democratic Party of how we would actually reform U.S. foreign policy to meet the values that the U.S. says it stands for. So it’s very exciting to see Representative Omar lay down such bold markers of how we would change U.S. engagement with the world, and not only to socialize these ideas amongst her peers in Congress, even if they won’t end up becoming law this year, but also to signal what we would expect to see from a progressive White House in the future.
GREG WILPERT: Now, in an article that you wrote for The American Prospect about the Pathway to Peace, you point out that the United States has historically pushed for a rules-based international system, but you also point out that the U.S. has at the same time considered itself to be an exception to these rules and not bound by them. For example, the U.S. is the only country in the world not to have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and one of the few that hasn’t supported the International Criminal Court or the UN compact on migration.
Now, getting the U.S. to abide by these UN conventions would imply a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy. Is there support among the Democratic Party and presidential candidates for such a shift, and if not, how might such support be built?
KATE KIZER: In rhetoric, I think there absolutely is support for these ideas of being an internationalist, of being a multilateralist in foreign policy. The U.S. government says it supports the multilateral system, but as you just mentioned, it’s my analysis that we actually act to undermine it, which weakens that system, and prevents us from actually positively reforming the system to meet the needs of the 21st century.
So it’s been very exciting to see Senator Warren and Senator Sanders on the campaign trail really stake out an internationalist position that supports multilateralism, and it would absolutely require the U.S. to not only join these international conventions that set out the rule of the road, but also to establish more norms and standards that it not only holds itself accountable to but other countries. Without holding ourselves accountable to these standards, we can’t then act for accountability for other countries. Ultimately, that undermines any U.S. power to implement these rules of the road.
GREG WILPERT: Now currently, not only hasn’t the U.S. signed these conventions that we mentioned, but it also flaunts international law when it imposes unilateral economic sanctions on countries such as on Venezuela, Russia, or Iran. That is, according to the UN charter it is illegal for countries to engage in collective punishment. Now, the Pathway to Peace includes a bill that would require Congress to approve of economic sanctions, but it would still mean that sanctions could violate international law actually. I mean wouldn’t a bill that would outlaw all non-UN-approved sanctions be better?
KATE KIZER: I think that the fact that U.S. sanctions has really become a reflexive tool in the toolkit that many policymakers don’t see as a form of warfare, is very problematic. I think Congresswoman Omar recognized this. She’s obviously been an advocate for an end to U.S. blanket sanction regimes that violate international law and cause undue hardship to regular people in sanctioned countries. But I think she’s strategic in that she recognizes that many members of Congress in particular are not ready to just do away with all U.S. sanctions power.
So what she is doing is really staking out what a first step in sanctions reform look like. First Congress must A, have to affirmatively vote to approve any sanctions. In doing so it would force Congress with having to reckon with whether or not sanctions actually can achieve the policy goals that they say they want to achieve, which the academic literature indicates they can’t and don’t. And they would also have to reckon with the humanitarian impact of sanctions, which Congress largely ignores at this point, and it has led to some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises as we’re seeing in Venezuela, and North Korea, and Iran.
GREG WILPERT: Now, while the U.S. sanctions governments it does not like, it actually arms governments that it does like such as Saudi Arabia, and it arms them to the teeth even when they violate human rights or wage war. Now, one of these bills in Omar’s package, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act, would dramatically change this practice, and require the president to certify whether countries engage in human rights abuses lest they be cut off from U.S. arms.
Now, if this bill were to become law, we can though be fairly certain I would say that a president such as Trump would not rule a country such as Israel or Saudi Arabia to be a violator of human rights. Wouldn’t it be better to have an independent commission make such a judgment on human rights abuses?
KATE KIZER: Actually, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act would establish an independent human rights commission that’s been modeled off of the international commission for religious freedom. How that works in practice is, there is independent commissioners who evaluate the human rights records and evidence of human rights abuses of a subject country, and they would essentially tier them on whether or not they meet the threshold for a cutoff of assistance.
The nice thing about this bill is, despite the fact that there are human rights protections in current U.S. foreign assistance and arm sales laws, they’re not regularly enforced because they’re so broadly and generally written that they’re difficult to enforce, and the incentive at the state department and the department of defense is to continue sending out weapons and other assistance to countries versus trying to halt assistance.
So this would take those decisions out of the hands of those bureaucracies and instead provide independent analysis to determine whether or not countries are violating the thresholds that Miss Omar’s bill identifies. So, again, it would be a really strong step in the right direction in that it would essentially provide a huge way for civil society to influence whether or not the U.S. is providing security assistance, police officer training, or weapons to a subject country, and create a much more transparent process.
GREG WILPERT: Okay. Well, we’re going to leave it there for now, but we’ll continue to see how this bill fares in Congress. I was speaking to Kate Kizer, Policy Director at Win Without War. Thanks for joining us today Kate.
KATE KIZER: Thanks for having me Greg.
GREG WILPERT: Thank you for joining The Real News Network.
February 20, 2020
The seven bills would steer US foreign policy towards international norms and remove support for human rights violators. While the chances are slim that these bills will pass, they outline a progressive foreign policy.
Story Transcript
GREG WILPERT: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Greg Wilpert in Arlington, Virginia.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota introduced a package of seven bills last week, which she calls the Pathway to Peace. This legislation, if it were passed, would mean nothing short of a revolution in the way that U.S. foreign policy is conducted. Last year, Omar already said that she plans to make U.S. foreign policy more ethical.
ILHAN OMAR: I want to make sure that here in the United States we understand that there are other countries who take in so many people of the world’s most pained people, and in the United States we could do better.
GREG WILPERT: The package of seven bills would end arm sales to countries that violate human rights, provide foreign aid to youth in developing countries, shift $5 billion from the Pentagon to the state department for a global peace building fund and grant Congress oversight over U.S. economic sanctions. Also, the bills would have the U.S. sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a global migration agreement, and the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court.
Joining me now to analyze Representative Ilhan Omar’s proposal is Kate Kizer. She’s the Policy Director at Win Without War, a national grassroots advocacy organization that works to help establish a more progressive foreign policy for the United States. Thanks for joining us today, Kate.
KATE KIZER: Thanks for having me.
GREG WILPERT: The chances that this package of bills would be approved by congress, particularly by the Republican controlled senate, and then not be vetoed by the president, is pretty slim. So what’s the significance of Representative Omar’s Pathway to Peace?
KATE KIZER: It’s a really important marker of what Progressive’s want to see on foreign policy. For a long time there’s been little to no debate within the Democratic Party of how we would actually reform U.S. foreign policy to meet the values that the U.S. says it stands for. So it’s very exciting to see Representative Omar lay down such bold markers of how we would change U.S. engagement with the world, and not only to socialize these ideas amongst her peers in Congress, even if they won’t end up becoming law this year, but also to signal what we would expect to see from a progressive White House in the future.
GREG WILPERT: Now, in an article that you wrote for The American Prospect about the Pathway to Peace, you point out that the United States has historically pushed for a rules-based international system, but you also point out that the U.S. has at the same time considered itself to be an exception to these rules and not bound by them. For example, the U.S. is the only country in the world not to have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and one of the few that hasn’t supported the International Criminal Court or the UN compact on migration.
Now, getting the U.S. to abide by these UN conventions would imply a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy. Is there support among the Democratic Party and presidential candidates for such a shift, and if not, how might such support be built?
KATE KIZER: In rhetoric, I think there absolutely is support for these ideas of being an internationalist, of being a multilateralist in foreign policy. The U.S. government says it supports the multilateral system, but as you just mentioned, it’s my analysis that we actually act to undermine it, which weakens that system, and prevents us from actually positively reforming the system to meet the needs of the 21st century.
So it’s been very exciting to see Senator Warren and Senator Sanders on the campaign trail really stake out an internationalist position that supports multilateralism, and it would absolutely require the U.S. to not only join these international conventions that set out the rule of the road, but also to establish more norms and standards that it not only holds itself accountable to but other countries. Without holding ourselves accountable to these standards, we can’t then act for accountability for other countries. Ultimately, that undermines any U.S. power to implement these rules of the road.
GREG WILPERT: Now currently, not only hasn’t the U.S. signed these conventions that we mentioned, but it also flaunts international law when it imposes unilateral economic sanctions on countries such as on Venezuela, Russia, or Iran. That is, according to the UN charter it is illegal for countries to engage in collective punishment. Now, the Pathway to Peace includes a bill that would require Congress to approve of economic sanctions, but it would still mean that sanctions could violate international law actually. I mean wouldn’t a bill that would outlaw all non-UN-approved sanctions be better?
KATE KIZER: I think that the fact that U.S. sanctions has really become a reflexive tool in the toolkit that many policymakers don’t see as a form of warfare, is very problematic. I think Congresswoman Omar recognized this. She’s obviously been an advocate for an end to U.S. blanket sanction regimes that violate international law and cause undue hardship to regular people in sanctioned countries. But I think she’s strategic in that she recognizes that many members of Congress in particular are not ready to just do away with all U.S. sanctions power.
So what she is doing is really staking out what a first step in sanctions reform look like. First Congress must A, have to affirmatively vote to approve any sanctions. In doing so it would force Congress with having to reckon with whether or not sanctions actually can achieve the policy goals that they say they want to achieve, which the academic literature indicates they can’t and don’t. And they would also have to reckon with the humanitarian impact of sanctions, which Congress largely ignores at this point, and it has led to some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises as we’re seeing in Venezuela, and North Korea, and Iran.
GREG WILPERT: Now, while the U.S. sanctions governments it does not like, it actually arms governments that it does like such as Saudi Arabia, and it arms them to the teeth even when they violate human rights or wage war. Now, one of these bills in Omar’s package, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act, would dramatically change this practice, and require the president to certify whether countries engage in human rights abuses lest they be cut off from U.S. arms.
Now, if this bill were to become law, we can though be fairly certain I would say that a president such as Trump would not rule a country such as Israel or Saudi Arabia to be a violator of human rights. Wouldn’t it be better to have an independent commission make such a judgment on human rights abuses?
KATE KIZER: Actually, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act would establish an independent human rights commission that’s been modeled off of the international commission for religious freedom. How that works in practice is, there is independent commissioners who evaluate the human rights records and evidence of human rights abuses of a subject country, and they would essentially tier them on whether or not they meet the threshold for a cutoff of assistance.
The nice thing about this bill is, despite the fact that there are human rights protections in current U.S. foreign assistance and arm sales laws, they’re not regularly enforced because they’re so broadly and generally written that they’re difficult to enforce, and the incentive at the state department and the department of defense is to continue sending out weapons and other assistance to countries versus trying to halt assistance.
So this would take those decisions out of the hands of those bureaucracies and instead provide independent analysis to determine whether or not countries are violating the thresholds that Miss Omar’s bill identifies. So, again, it would be a really strong step in the right direction in that it would essentially provide a huge way for civil society to influence whether or not the U.S. is providing security assistance, police officer training, or weapons to a subject country, and create a much more transparent process.
GREG WILPERT: Okay. Well, we’re going to leave it there for now, but we’ll continue to see how this bill fares in Congress. I was speaking to Kate Kizer, Policy Director at Win Without War. Thanks for joining us today Kate.
KATE KIZER: Thanks for having me Greg.
GREG WILPERT: Thank you for joining The Real News Network.
Trump’s War Budget Slashes Support for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
February 13, 2020
Trump promised he would not touch Social Security and Medicare. He lied. Now we have deficit spending with no social benefits and Democrats fooled into a compromise that allowed the military budget to soar.
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Marc Steiner: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Good to have you all with us. Trump announced a $4.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting October the 1st. It is a budget that only marginally increases spending for the military because they don’t have to, by a lot, because he and Congress did that last July. But it does increase Homeland Security and gets his wal, while slashing programs like children’s health insurance, Medicaid. Even though he promised otherwise in his State of the Union speech, his budget attacks and cuts Medicare and Social Security.
Donald Trump: We will always protect your Medicare, and we will always protect your Social Security, always.
Marc Steiner: On top of that, deficit spending despite his promises, soars adding $1.9 trillion to our deficits over 10 years. Deficits not only because of increased spending, but because he slashed taxes for the wealthy, and in a bone to the voters, the middle-class. Less revenue or military spending equals deficits without lifting the lives of our fellow citizens. We’re joined by Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works. Alex, welcome. Good to have you with us.
Alex Lawson: Thanks for having me.
Marc Steiner: And of course, Bill Black is an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He’s a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and author of one of my favorite titles, law books of all time, The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One, and of course, a regular contributor here at Real News. Bill, welcome back.
Bill Black: Thank you.
Marc Steiner: Let’s just begin to talk a bit and throw this to you first Bill. It’s just, I really want to explain something here. You and I in the past have talked about deficits, right?
Bill Black: Right.
Marc Steiner: Let’s listen to, to your friend Donald Trump for just a moment and talk about deficits and debt and what they really mean.
Donald Trump: You know, I’m the King of debt. I understand debt better than probably anybody on the … It’s literally first grade business. It’s so simple. Hundreds of billions of dollars of money, and let’s call it tax money could come from other countries when we stop them from ripping us off. So, you wouldn’t have to play around with Medicaid and Medicare and things that really are dear to people’s hearts. If you look at some of these agencies, how big and fat they are, you can cut and have them run better than they’re running right now. When I heard we were going to Iraq, somebody said, “Oh, we’re going to the oil.” I said, “Huh, that makes sense.” That’s smart. $15 trillion. That does a lot to solve our deficit problem, doesn’t it? I’d like to pay off debt. I’d like to-
Speaker 5: We got a lot of it.
Donald Trump: Look at a lot of this and pay interest.
Speaker 5: Well, we got a lot of it.
Donald Trump: We dim and we’re going to start reducing costs now that we took care of our military.
Marc Steiner: That’s Donald Trump trying to explain deficits and debts over the last nine years, Bill. Talk a bit about, I mean one of the things we’ve talked about over the time together is that you don’t necessarily see deficits as a bad thing, but talk about the comparison between which you’re talking about were deficits and what he’s doing.
Bill Black: All right. The thing that’s consistent in all of those vignettes is that Trump knows absolutely nothing about business, absolutely nothing about economics, absolutely nothing about deficits. He was mushing together a whole bunch of different things. He knows a little bit about owing money to people because he owes tremendous amounts of money and he stiffs them. He stiffs the banks. He stiffs the workers, et cetera, et cetera. He files for bankruptcy, and eventually the bankers cut you off in those circumstances if you don’t pay your debt, and that’s why we’ve done series in the past that the only entity that will loan to him still is arguably the most corrupt bank in the world, Deutsche Bank. That’s his aspect of finances. Then he goes through a bunch of things, including trade that have nothing to do with the deficits, in terms of budget. Then he goes through this idea, hey, if we just stole other people’s property, right, then we’d have a lot more property and we’d be richer.
We steal their oil, except that A, violates all the rules of war and B, people tend to fight back and you end up spending billions, indeed trillions of dollars and losing hundreds of thousands of lives. This is just all the stupidity, the lack of care about humans, unwillingness to read a briefing paper if it’s longer than literally one paragraph. What is different is federal deficits. When you have a sovereign currency like the United States, have with a broad range, not very much to do with producing inflation. We’ve seen that of course. Trump has run very, very large deficits. Unemployment has been, in fact, at historically low levels and inflation hasn’t even reached the tiny amount that the Federal Reserve Watts says makes the economy work better. So, the inflation isn’t the problem. The deficit per se isn’t the problem.
The problem is twofold. One, Trump doesn’t spend things where we should be spending things, like on helping poor people, like on building infrastructure, like on dealing with climate disruption and such. He does spend money stupidly, on things like his wall and such. That isn’t a deficit question. That is a stupidity question. We can’t afford to do dumb things with real resources. When we create his wall, we absolutely waste resources and that’s a dumb thing that we should stop.
Marc Steiner: When you look at this, and Alex let me bring you in here. I mean when you look at this, what he just did here, increasing military spending by just 0.3% to $740.5 billion, while lowering the non-defense budget by 5% to $590 billion. The interesting part here to me is that when he does this and makes this horrible slashing of things, is that, and we’ll get into that in a moment, is that what we forget about, is that last July we increased the military budget more than it has been since the Vietnam and Korean war. The Democrats signed on to that because they said he wasn’t going to cut social services. He wasn’t going to cut these programs and it wasn’t going to cut social security. But in fact that’s what he’s done. They got hoodwinked into an old budget to increase military spending. Now they’re stuck with this new budget. I mean, there’s a history of why this is happening this way as well, that I think is important to remember. Give us your perception of this.
Alex Lawson: I think that the president’s budget, which is a statement of his values, is really clear. It’s pandering to defense contractors and Wall Street billionaires. It has, it basically decimates Medicaid, almost $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, the largest provider of longterm care in this country. It cuts tens of billions of dollars out of Social Security, around three quarters of $1 trillion out of Medicare. The list of programs that have cuts that would be existential, goes on and on. Those are all aimed at satisfying his two criteria or two-pronged criteria. They have to be both stupid and cruel. Though, it has to be cruel in that it really hurts people.
Marc Steiner: Right.
Alex Lawson: But it has to be stupid because supposedly it has something to do with the deficit. But all of these cuts are penny wise, pound foolish. They would actually cost way more money in the long run or in social securities case, have absolutely nothing to do with the deficit. What we’re looking at is why the congressional Democrats ever bargain in good faith with the congressional Republicans is beyond me. But I wouldn’t say that the president’s budget is separate from that conversation in many respects. But it definitely shows you exactly where the Republican Party’s vision is. It’s why Donald Trump goes out of his way to lie about what he actually proposes. In the days before releasing it, he says he’s not going to cut Social Security and Medicare as you noted. But he does exactly that.
Marc Steiner: This is what he had to say at Davos.
Speaker 7: Entitlements ever be on your plate?
Donald Trump: At some point they will be. It’ll be toward the end of the year. The growth is going to be incredible, and at the right time we will take a look at that. You know that’s actually the easiest of all things, if you look because it’s such a [crosstalk 00:08:53].
Speaker 7: But you’re willing to do some of the things that you said you wouldn’t do in the past though in terms of Medicare.
Donald Trump: We’re got to look. We also have assets that we never had. I mean we never had growth like-
Marc Steiner: Such a disingenuous human being at best. I mean, when we say that the … That just cues me, ask you both this question is what you just said Alex, but when we say that what happened last July, I mean it seems to me in many ways the Democrats were, some of them, a lot of most progressive Democrats were complicit in this because they thought they had a deal, that will give you all this money for the military, which they shouldn’t have done the first place, many people would argue, as long as you don’t cut this. I mean, they were set up and now we are facing, this battle is going to take place in the midst of an election, where I could see them shutting down government, other things happening to battle over this budget. I mean this budget is going to play out in 2020, which is going to be a very tense and tight election. Who wants to go? Bill, you want to jump in this first and go to Alex?
Bill Black: Okay, so first it’s of course a reminder of why appeasement strategies when you’re dealing with dishonest, awful, evil people never work. As Churchill said, “The idea is you feed the crocodile other people, hoping that you know that he’ll get too full and won’t eat you at the end of the process.” Well guess what? He’ll get around to you eventually in these circumstances. So yes, the whole Biden thing about I can work with people is just a soccer strategy in these circumstances when people aren’t honest that you’re bargaining with. Then they take what you give the first time and they take the second time. They do. From their view, you’re not reasonable. You’re a chump, and they love to take advantage of chumps. Second point, this is a political gift to Democrats if they take it.
Marc Steiner: If they take it.
Bill Black: If they take it, right, and then run with it because this is horrific stuff, absolutely indefensible. The Democrats need to be talking about this every day. But the third thing is it really displays Trump’s true base, right? The base that the people usually talk about are the faces at his MAGA rallies, right? They’re the faces of people who are typically don’t have all that much money, all that much education, and they’re screaming, ranting and raving. That is a base and it’s critical to his ability to win elections. But the real base of Donald Trump is the absolute sleaziest CEOs in the world, primarily Americans, but not exclusively Americans. That’s why the tax cut was his top priority, and why the tax cut was unbelievably weighted towards the wealthiest people. There’s an interesting Pew study of the really, really rich people, and they’re different than normal people. The deficits really, supposedly drive them crazy.
But what really, really drive them crazy is the idea of anybody poor getting money, right? They hate the entitlement programs and such. They in particular, they hate Medicaid because that goes to poorer people and food stamps because that goes to poorer people and such. Therefore, it is no coincidence they, after first doing the massive payoff to that base, the kleptocratic wealthy, Trump is then following through with their greatest desires, which is a combination of screwing the poor but also taking all the protections away, like the EPA. So, it’s no surprise that he’s absolutely destroying the ability of the EPA, not just now, but for all time, is his goal, to protect the public.
Marc Steiner: When you saw that the EPA and Alex, when you talked about the EPA, they cut the EPA by 26.5%, Health and Human Services by 9%, education 8%, interior 13.4%, so he can drill more oil wherever he wants to. House and Urban Development goes down by 15.2%. State Department and AID gets slashed to the bone with 22%. What’s the response to this and what happens to Social Security, which you spend your life working on, your work working on? What is the political response?
Alex Lawson: I think that there is a key player in this who is incredibly important and also incredibly dishonest. That’s the corporate media. I actually will say that many Democrats take the fact that Donald Trump is targeting Social Security and Medicare so squarely, and he needs seniors to win elections. Republicans need seniors to win elections, and his policies are disastrous for seniors. But if the media is just telling, repeating Donald Trump’s lies, then the people will not know actually what he’s doing. This is not theoretical. Donald Trump tweeted, my budget is not going to cut Social Security and Medicare, basically. He just stated that, and he released a budget that decimates those programs and the AP reported it in the headline and in the tweet as his budget basically left Social Security and Medicare alone. In the story it details the cuts, but you do a quick new search right now, and guess what they actually copied as it went around the country? The headline.
It seems like the media is reporting basically, press releases, except now Donald Trump just tweets them directly to them. Instead of taking five minutes to look at the tables in the back and actually tell the American people what Donald Trump is actually doing. So, without independent media voices getting the truth out there, unfortunately too many of the American people don’t actually know that Donald Trump is literally right now, in implementing a Social Security rule alongside his budget, alongside the Medicaid block granting, reaching his hand into our pockets and stealing our earned benefits, all for the benefit of his billionaire paymasters on Wall Street, who want the money. They’re greedy. They want the money. But I also agree with Bill that there is a bit of a sadism and it as well. They actually want these policies to be cruel. The cruelty is part of the point of them.
Marc Steiner: So just quickly, Alex talk a bit about exactly what he’s done to Social Security and Medicare.
Alex Lawson: In the assault on both Social Security and Medicare is actually on multiple fronts and Medicaid as well. Medicaid is the largest provider of longterm care in this country. For millions of Americans it actually doesn’t matter. For a senior in a nursing home, they don’t care if it’s Medicaid paying for it or if it’s Medicare or which piece the different program covers. Medicaid covers this. Medicare covers that. If you cut $1 trillion out of Medicaid and then you, a senior gets thrown out of their nursing home, they don’t care if it’s one program or the other. It’s the totality of the attacks on the entire system. With Social Security, you’re seeing a bunch of different ways of going at it.
The union-busting inside to decimate the workforce, at the same time as continually slashing the budget, which is what we see in the budget, as well as restricting … They actually put in new rules, which we know exactly what they do because Ronald Reagan also put them in, and it’s to create a bureaucracy that’s so complex that people can’t access their benefits and they lose them. People who are currently have the benefits lose those. It’s a full-fledged assault on our Social Security system. Medicaid, it’s just a total destruction of it. Medicare, they’re trying to cut it to the bone and actually transfer people from the traditional Medicare side over to what are called Medicare Advantage, which are just private insurance companies. So, across the entire system, what you see is a push to move people from systems that work, into systems that profit a tiny sliver of billionaires on Wall Street.
If they can’t prioritize something like Social Security, if they don’t think that’s politically feasible, they just try to destroy the system, so that people lose faith in it, and actually will allow a political change that cuts benefits or decimates the system even further.
Marc Steiner: I’m going to conclude with this. I mean, it’s when you even look at the Wall Street Journal, they wrote about this today saying that the proposals cut $4.4 Trillion over a decade. $2 trillion come from mandatory spending programs, but they can ramp up the money, almost $1.5 trillion over the next two years to push up the Pentagon and build the wall and do the rest. In those customers, people forget is also Veterans Administration’s inside those cuts. What is the political response? Let’s talk a bit about that just before we have to close. Bill, I’ll let you start. I mean because this is, the Democrats seem to me often stumble over themselves, at least the establishment does to respond and not respond, a lot of these things just to go when they’ve been given a golden age to talk to the American people with.
Bill Black: Right, Right now there is no real democratic leader. You could see during some of the impeachment stuff, when you actually had someone who had a leadership position and an opportunity to think strategically and think about how to make a presentation to the public. They’re actually not as horrific as they usually are when you see them in these five minute increments at hearings, where it’s often farcical. This is something that the billionaires and millionaires, instead of the ads that they’re doing can really hammer on if they want to be useful. They can go through and present those tables that he was just talking about and show, Hey, he said, there are no cuts here. This is where the cuts actually are, and here’s what Medicaid is and this is what it’s going to be your life. But not just tables. Do what Trump did with that ad in the Superbowl. One black woman-
Marc Steiner: Oh yes, that ad.
Bill Black: [crosstalk 00:19:57] type of thing. We as human beings, we respond to narrative, to stories, to empathy about individuals. Think of it that way. Think of the, there are literally millions of people, actually there are literally tens of millions of people that will suffer really severe harm. Tell the stories.
Marc Steiner: Bill, that is so critical what you just said to learn that lesson. Alex, a very quick thought before we finish.
Alex Lawson: I just would say that if you want to see, I think really perfect messaging on this, if you look at the ads that Bernie Sanders was running in Iowa, right at the end of Iowa, that we’re teeing up Trump on Social Security and Medicare, and counter posing Bernie Sanders, decades-long championing of these programs, not just defending from cuts but working to expand the programs against Donald Trump’s attacks on these programs. That is a political message that wins and is breaking through, and is easy for the American people to see whose side, which politician is on. Donald Trump wants to cut your Social Security. Bernie Sanders wants to expand your social security. That kind of messaging breaks through.
Bill Black: I also want to see ads with US soldiers, and the aid that is critical to them as well, a counterpunch to their gut.
Marc Steiner: Absolutely. Well, let’s say that they listened to us. Alex Lawson, Bill Black. Thank you both so much. We’ll pick up on this together again soon. Appreciate your time.
Bill Black: Thank you.
Alex Lawson: Thanks.
Marc Steiner: Folks, we will stay on this. Our future’s at stake. I’m Marc Steiner for the Real News Network. Thank you for joining us. Take care.
February 13, 2020
Trump promised he would not touch Social Security and Medicare. He lied. Now we have deficit spending with no social benefits and Democrats fooled into a compromise that allowed the military budget to soar.
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Marc Steiner: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Good to have you all with us. Trump announced a $4.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting October the 1st. It is a budget that only marginally increases spending for the military because they don’t have to, by a lot, because he and Congress did that last July. But it does increase Homeland Security and gets his wal, while slashing programs like children’s health insurance, Medicaid. Even though he promised otherwise in his State of the Union speech, his budget attacks and cuts Medicare and Social Security.
Donald Trump: We will always protect your Medicare, and we will always protect your Social Security, always.
Marc Steiner: On top of that, deficit spending despite his promises, soars adding $1.9 trillion to our deficits over 10 years. Deficits not only because of increased spending, but because he slashed taxes for the wealthy, and in a bone to the voters, the middle-class. Less revenue or military spending equals deficits without lifting the lives of our fellow citizens. We’re joined by Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works. Alex, welcome. Good to have you with us.
Alex Lawson: Thanks for having me.
Marc Steiner: And of course, Bill Black is an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He’s a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and author of one of my favorite titles, law books of all time, The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One, and of course, a regular contributor here at Real News. Bill, welcome back.
Bill Black: Thank you.
Marc Steiner: Let’s just begin to talk a bit and throw this to you first Bill. It’s just, I really want to explain something here. You and I in the past have talked about deficits, right?
Bill Black: Right.
Marc Steiner: Let’s listen to, to your friend Donald Trump for just a moment and talk about deficits and debt and what they really mean.
Donald Trump: You know, I’m the King of debt. I understand debt better than probably anybody on the … It’s literally first grade business. It’s so simple. Hundreds of billions of dollars of money, and let’s call it tax money could come from other countries when we stop them from ripping us off. So, you wouldn’t have to play around with Medicaid and Medicare and things that really are dear to people’s hearts. If you look at some of these agencies, how big and fat they are, you can cut and have them run better than they’re running right now. When I heard we were going to Iraq, somebody said, “Oh, we’re going to the oil.” I said, “Huh, that makes sense.” That’s smart. $15 trillion. That does a lot to solve our deficit problem, doesn’t it? I’d like to pay off debt. I’d like to-
Speaker 5: We got a lot of it.
Donald Trump: Look at a lot of this and pay interest.
Speaker 5: Well, we got a lot of it.
Donald Trump: We dim and we’re going to start reducing costs now that we took care of our military.
Marc Steiner: That’s Donald Trump trying to explain deficits and debts over the last nine years, Bill. Talk a bit about, I mean one of the things we’ve talked about over the time together is that you don’t necessarily see deficits as a bad thing, but talk about the comparison between which you’re talking about were deficits and what he’s doing.
Bill Black: All right. The thing that’s consistent in all of those vignettes is that Trump knows absolutely nothing about business, absolutely nothing about economics, absolutely nothing about deficits. He was mushing together a whole bunch of different things. He knows a little bit about owing money to people because he owes tremendous amounts of money and he stiffs them. He stiffs the banks. He stiffs the workers, et cetera, et cetera. He files for bankruptcy, and eventually the bankers cut you off in those circumstances if you don’t pay your debt, and that’s why we’ve done series in the past that the only entity that will loan to him still is arguably the most corrupt bank in the world, Deutsche Bank. That’s his aspect of finances. Then he goes through a bunch of things, including trade that have nothing to do with the deficits, in terms of budget. Then he goes through this idea, hey, if we just stole other people’s property, right, then we’d have a lot more property and we’d be richer.
We steal their oil, except that A, violates all the rules of war and B, people tend to fight back and you end up spending billions, indeed trillions of dollars and losing hundreds of thousands of lives. This is just all the stupidity, the lack of care about humans, unwillingness to read a briefing paper if it’s longer than literally one paragraph. What is different is federal deficits. When you have a sovereign currency like the United States, have with a broad range, not very much to do with producing inflation. We’ve seen that of course. Trump has run very, very large deficits. Unemployment has been, in fact, at historically low levels and inflation hasn’t even reached the tiny amount that the Federal Reserve Watts says makes the economy work better. So, the inflation isn’t the problem. The deficit per se isn’t the problem.
The problem is twofold. One, Trump doesn’t spend things where we should be spending things, like on helping poor people, like on building infrastructure, like on dealing with climate disruption and such. He does spend money stupidly, on things like his wall and such. That isn’t a deficit question. That is a stupidity question. We can’t afford to do dumb things with real resources. When we create his wall, we absolutely waste resources and that’s a dumb thing that we should stop.
Marc Steiner: When you look at this, and Alex let me bring you in here. I mean when you look at this, what he just did here, increasing military spending by just 0.3% to $740.5 billion, while lowering the non-defense budget by 5% to $590 billion. The interesting part here to me is that when he does this and makes this horrible slashing of things, is that, and we’ll get into that in a moment, is that what we forget about, is that last July we increased the military budget more than it has been since the Vietnam and Korean war. The Democrats signed on to that because they said he wasn’t going to cut social services. He wasn’t going to cut these programs and it wasn’t going to cut social security. But in fact that’s what he’s done. They got hoodwinked into an old budget to increase military spending. Now they’re stuck with this new budget. I mean, there’s a history of why this is happening this way as well, that I think is important to remember. Give us your perception of this.
Alex Lawson: I think that the president’s budget, which is a statement of his values, is really clear. It’s pandering to defense contractors and Wall Street billionaires. It has, it basically decimates Medicaid, almost $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, the largest provider of longterm care in this country. It cuts tens of billions of dollars out of Social Security, around three quarters of $1 trillion out of Medicare. The list of programs that have cuts that would be existential, goes on and on. Those are all aimed at satisfying his two criteria or two-pronged criteria. They have to be both stupid and cruel. Though, it has to be cruel in that it really hurts people.
Marc Steiner: Right.
Alex Lawson: But it has to be stupid because supposedly it has something to do with the deficit. But all of these cuts are penny wise, pound foolish. They would actually cost way more money in the long run or in social securities case, have absolutely nothing to do with the deficit. What we’re looking at is why the congressional Democrats ever bargain in good faith with the congressional Republicans is beyond me. But I wouldn’t say that the president’s budget is separate from that conversation in many respects. But it definitely shows you exactly where the Republican Party’s vision is. It’s why Donald Trump goes out of his way to lie about what he actually proposes. In the days before releasing it, he says he’s not going to cut Social Security and Medicare as you noted. But he does exactly that.
Marc Steiner: This is what he had to say at Davos.
Speaker 7: Entitlements ever be on your plate?
Donald Trump: At some point they will be. It’ll be toward the end of the year. The growth is going to be incredible, and at the right time we will take a look at that. You know that’s actually the easiest of all things, if you look because it’s such a [crosstalk 00:08:53].
Speaker 7: But you’re willing to do some of the things that you said you wouldn’t do in the past though in terms of Medicare.
Donald Trump: We’re got to look. We also have assets that we never had. I mean we never had growth like-
Marc Steiner: Such a disingenuous human being at best. I mean, when we say that the … That just cues me, ask you both this question is what you just said Alex, but when we say that what happened last July, I mean it seems to me in many ways the Democrats were, some of them, a lot of most progressive Democrats were complicit in this because they thought they had a deal, that will give you all this money for the military, which they shouldn’t have done the first place, many people would argue, as long as you don’t cut this. I mean, they were set up and now we are facing, this battle is going to take place in the midst of an election, where I could see them shutting down government, other things happening to battle over this budget. I mean this budget is going to play out in 2020, which is going to be a very tense and tight election. Who wants to go? Bill, you want to jump in this first and go to Alex?
Bill Black: Okay, so first it’s of course a reminder of why appeasement strategies when you’re dealing with dishonest, awful, evil people never work. As Churchill said, “The idea is you feed the crocodile other people, hoping that you know that he’ll get too full and won’t eat you at the end of the process.” Well guess what? He’ll get around to you eventually in these circumstances. So yes, the whole Biden thing about I can work with people is just a soccer strategy in these circumstances when people aren’t honest that you’re bargaining with. Then they take what you give the first time and they take the second time. They do. From their view, you’re not reasonable. You’re a chump, and they love to take advantage of chumps. Second point, this is a political gift to Democrats if they take it.
Marc Steiner: If they take it.
Bill Black: If they take it, right, and then run with it because this is horrific stuff, absolutely indefensible. The Democrats need to be talking about this every day. But the third thing is it really displays Trump’s true base, right? The base that the people usually talk about are the faces at his MAGA rallies, right? They’re the faces of people who are typically don’t have all that much money, all that much education, and they’re screaming, ranting and raving. That is a base and it’s critical to his ability to win elections. But the real base of Donald Trump is the absolute sleaziest CEOs in the world, primarily Americans, but not exclusively Americans. That’s why the tax cut was his top priority, and why the tax cut was unbelievably weighted towards the wealthiest people. There’s an interesting Pew study of the really, really rich people, and they’re different than normal people. The deficits really, supposedly drive them crazy.
But what really, really drive them crazy is the idea of anybody poor getting money, right? They hate the entitlement programs and such. They in particular, they hate Medicaid because that goes to poorer people and food stamps because that goes to poorer people and such. Therefore, it is no coincidence they, after first doing the massive payoff to that base, the kleptocratic wealthy, Trump is then following through with their greatest desires, which is a combination of screwing the poor but also taking all the protections away, like the EPA. So, it’s no surprise that he’s absolutely destroying the ability of the EPA, not just now, but for all time, is his goal, to protect the public.
Marc Steiner: When you saw that the EPA and Alex, when you talked about the EPA, they cut the EPA by 26.5%, Health and Human Services by 9%, education 8%, interior 13.4%, so he can drill more oil wherever he wants to. House and Urban Development goes down by 15.2%. State Department and AID gets slashed to the bone with 22%. What’s the response to this and what happens to Social Security, which you spend your life working on, your work working on? What is the political response?
Alex Lawson: I think that there is a key player in this who is incredibly important and also incredibly dishonest. That’s the corporate media. I actually will say that many Democrats take the fact that Donald Trump is targeting Social Security and Medicare so squarely, and he needs seniors to win elections. Republicans need seniors to win elections, and his policies are disastrous for seniors. But if the media is just telling, repeating Donald Trump’s lies, then the people will not know actually what he’s doing. This is not theoretical. Donald Trump tweeted, my budget is not going to cut Social Security and Medicare, basically. He just stated that, and he released a budget that decimates those programs and the AP reported it in the headline and in the tweet as his budget basically left Social Security and Medicare alone. In the story it details the cuts, but you do a quick new search right now, and guess what they actually copied as it went around the country? The headline.
It seems like the media is reporting basically, press releases, except now Donald Trump just tweets them directly to them. Instead of taking five minutes to look at the tables in the back and actually tell the American people what Donald Trump is actually doing. So, without independent media voices getting the truth out there, unfortunately too many of the American people don’t actually know that Donald Trump is literally right now, in implementing a Social Security rule alongside his budget, alongside the Medicaid block granting, reaching his hand into our pockets and stealing our earned benefits, all for the benefit of his billionaire paymasters on Wall Street, who want the money. They’re greedy. They want the money. But I also agree with Bill that there is a bit of a sadism and it as well. They actually want these policies to be cruel. The cruelty is part of the point of them.
Marc Steiner: So just quickly, Alex talk a bit about exactly what he’s done to Social Security and Medicare.
Alex Lawson: In the assault on both Social Security and Medicare is actually on multiple fronts and Medicaid as well. Medicaid is the largest provider of longterm care in this country. For millions of Americans it actually doesn’t matter. For a senior in a nursing home, they don’t care if it’s Medicaid paying for it or if it’s Medicare or which piece the different program covers. Medicaid covers this. Medicare covers that. If you cut $1 trillion out of Medicaid and then you, a senior gets thrown out of their nursing home, they don’t care if it’s one program or the other. It’s the totality of the attacks on the entire system. With Social Security, you’re seeing a bunch of different ways of going at it.
The union-busting inside to decimate the workforce, at the same time as continually slashing the budget, which is what we see in the budget, as well as restricting … They actually put in new rules, which we know exactly what they do because Ronald Reagan also put them in, and it’s to create a bureaucracy that’s so complex that people can’t access their benefits and they lose them. People who are currently have the benefits lose those. It’s a full-fledged assault on our Social Security system. Medicaid, it’s just a total destruction of it. Medicare, they’re trying to cut it to the bone and actually transfer people from the traditional Medicare side over to what are called Medicare Advantage, which are just private insurance companies. So, across the entire system, what you see is a push to move people from systems that work, into systems that profit a tiny sliver of billionaires on Wall Street.
If they can’t prioritize something like Social Security, if they don’t think that’s politically feasible, they just try to destroy the system, so that people lose faith in it, and actually will allow a political change that cuts benefits or decimates the system even further.
Marc Steiner: I’m going to conclude with this. I mean, it’s when you even look at the Wall Street Journal, they wrote about this today saying that the proposals cut $4.4 Trillion over a decade. $2 trillion come from mandatory spending programs, but they can ramp up the money, almost $1.5 trillion over the next two years to push up the Pentagon and build the wall and do the rest. In those customers, people forget is also Veterans Administration’s inside those cuts. What is the political response? Let’s talk a bit about that just before we have to close. Bill, I’ll let you start. I mean because this is, the Democrats seem to me often stumble over themselves, at least the establishment does to respond and not respond, a lot of these things just to go when they’ve been given a golden age to talk to the American people with.
Bill Black: Right, Right now there is no real democratic leader. You could see during some of the impeachment stuff, when you actually had someone who had a leadership position and an opportunity to think strategically and think about how to make a presentation to the public. They’re actually not as horrific as they usually are when you see them in these five minute increments at hearings, where it’s often farcical. This is something that the billionaires and millionaires, instead of the ads that they’re doing can really hammer on if they want to be useful. They can go through and present those tables that he was just talking about and show, Hey, he said, there are no cuts here. This is where the cuts actually are, and here’s what Medicaid is and this is what it’s going to be your life. But not just tables. Do what Trump did with that ad in the Superbowl. One black woman-
Marc Steiner: Oh yes, that ad.
Bill Black: [crosstalk 00:19:57] type of thing. We as human beings, we respond to narrative, to stories, to empathy about individuals. Think of it that way. Think of the, there are literally millions of people, actually there are literally tens of millions of people that will suffer really severe harm. Tell the stories.
Marc Steiner: Bill, that is so critical what you just said to learn that lesson. Alex, a very quick thought before we finish.
Alex Lawson: I just would say that if you want to see, I think really perfect messaging on this, if you look at the ads that Bernie Sanders was running in Iowa, right at the end of Iowa, that we’re teeing up Trump on Social Security and Medicare, and counter posing Bernie Sanders, decades-long championing of these programs, not just defending from cuts but working to expand the programs against Donald Trump’s attacks on these programs. That is a political message that wins and is breaking through, and is easy for the American people to see whose side, which politician is on. Donald Trump wants to cut your Social Security. Bernie Sanders wants to expand your social security. That kind of messaging breaks through.
Bill Black: I also want to see ads with US soldiers, and the aid that is critical to them as well, a counterpunch to their gut.
Marc Steiner: Absolutely. Well, let’s say that they listened to us. Alex Lawson, Bill Black. Thank you both so much. We’ll pick up on this together again soon. Appreciate your time.
Bill Black: Thank you.
Alex Lawson: Thanks.
Marc Steiner: Folks, we will stay on this. Our future’s at stake. I’m Marc Steiner for the Real News Network. Thank you for joining us. Take care.
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