At most they said it would hinder us, and we, wanting to believe the experts who daily warn of something to fear – overripe bananas, marginal risks of severe weather, squirrel flu, spiders in tight pants, the wrong mascara, fear of falling in loose pants – accepted. Now we are huddled against the onslaught, gasping at the fury that imprisons us.

No one can sleep with the roar and rapping all around. Dawn comes slowly and dark. We huddle around our dinguses to link us to a world we cannot see or hear. They don’t ding. We have lost power. Someone wonders if the satellites are still up, but the sky is too dark for auguries. We listen to the clatter of an eerie silence. Our silence. We are all unknowingly holding our breaths. Another says, I think our phones are wasted, it feels like digital death. The dogs nod.

It is getting harder and harder to hear. Beethoven was so young to become deaf to the world. Someone says this for some unknown reason. She is old. She then says he said, “I will take fate by the throat, it shall not overcome me … I feel that I am not made for a quiet life.” The kids laugh. The windows and roof shake, the dogs howl, I think how true. For me, at least.

Yesterday the Israelis killed 104 Palestinians in Gaza. Par for the course, a daily occurrence. Many children among them. Did those kids hear the bombs and bullets coming? Were they gasping for breath? They are no longer breathing.

Did they call out to God? Do hundreds call out? Thousands call? Millions? Which God? The slaughterer’s made them dead on prayers to their genocidal God who lives in Tel Aviv.

God help us. How? The phones are wasted. Where is the Good God hiding? How can we call him?

The immigrant grandmother, hiding here from Trump’s masked thugs, says through her tears, do any of you remember how in Columbia 25,000 people, 8,00 children, all innocent, died, none of whom are calling out now, as the survivors did when they asked the great good God, why these savage deaths, after the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted and stuffed their mouths with mud, courtesy of Vulcan, the God of fire, courtesy of God Almighty.

No one answers her. Her prayers are singed with a cynicism that she hates. We can’t answer. Most don’t remember. Who will tell her why the good God, the good Earth, their mother rose up to bury so many in mud? Who can tell the survivors’ families why Our Lady of Guadalupe rose and drowned their loved ones recently?

Who is this person called Fate who knocks at our doors? Mother Nature? Father Grinning Jackal in suit and tie with blood oozing through his fake teeth, talking casually about nuclear war and slaughtering the innocent?

An old man says, let’s listen, we must defy fate. He puts a record on the battery operated record player. The wind is howling hideously so he turns the sound up to full volume. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C minor rocks the room, the walls shake like dice in a cup, tossing us on such swells of feeling that time is arrested in its turning. One hears the call to revolution.

Suddenly it is October 1962, a man is time-travelling. The Cuban Missile Crisis – real fear everywhere. Fate knocking on the door, obedient men propped at flashing boards, in Moscow and Washington, D.C., awaiting orders. They are still waiting.

There was a call then. A few men heard it. It was soul deep. In those days there were humans who could recite poetry, grasp the meaning of madness. We survived and have moved on. They call it progress. Technological progress. The machines have the answers to all our questions, except the important ones.

Who will answer the wailing voices seeking answers? Who can tell them why the good God, the good earth their mother rose up to bury them in mud and water? Who dare answer the 1,000,000 Pakistani dead, drowned on November 13, 1970 beneath a cyclone driven tidal wave? Or maybe it was two or three million. Who knows? Who cares to ask: Was it an act of Mother Nature, of God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? Tell me, who the hell is responsible?

It is getting harder and harder to breathe. The world grows smaller as storms gather. We have been wasted by the phones, dinguses that will not save us from the nuclear weapons that the jackals with polished faces have prepared. Dead men sit at flashing boards awaiting orders. It is depressing but true, and while naturally we cannot stop nature from devouring her children, we can stop the human killers from their appointed task to close down the world and engender all a silent void.

Long later, hours, years – who knows when? – the unexpected storm abated, the roads out were cleared. It was still hazardous to try. The old man who played Beethoven said as we were leaving that we must take fate by the throat and hear the silent cries of all the people desperate for peace on earth.

“Oh, it is so beautiful to live – to live a thousand times. I feel that I am not made for a quiet life.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

“Criminalizing vague and undefined forms of ‘fake news’ without proper judicial oversight risks silencing critical journalism and creates a chilling effect among journalists,” said Kunāl Majumder, CPJ’s India representative. “The Karnataka government must ensure that any legal measures to address misinformation fully safeguard press freedom and uphold journalists’ right to report without fear of reprisal.”

According to several media reports, the draft bill, parts of which were reportedly leaked, proposes penalties of up to seven years in prison and fines of 1 million rupees  (US$12,000) for those found guilty of spreading “fake news” online. It also outlines broad categories of prohibited content, including material deemed “anti-feminist” or “disrespectful of Sanatan (Hindu) symbols.” The bill proposes a state-appointed authority, led by politicians and government officials, to determine what qualifies as misinformation. It stipulates the creation of special courts and limits anticipatory bail for those accused.

State Information Technology Minister Priyank Kharge said the bill’s current version is an early internal draft, and that broader consultation will occur before any formal introduction. Kharge claimed that the law aims to counter harmful misinformation, especially during elections, and invited input from journalism groups.

Despite these assurances, the proposed law has drawn strong criticism from civil society groups. 

“The bill provides no clear methodology or standards for how the authority or special courts will fact-check and discern false content,” Apar Gupta, founder and director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, an Indian digital rights nonprofit, wrote in an op-ed for the Karnataka-based Deccan Herald newspaper. 

The state government’s proposed law has drawn comparisons to the Indian federal government’s controversial Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules of 2021, particularly provisions that allow government authorities to unilaterally label online content as “fake” and compel its removal. These rules were partly struck down by the Bombay High Court in January 2024, and later stayed by the Supreme Court that March. 

Kharge did not respond to CPJ’s email and text message requesting comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their ‘criticisms’ of the genocide – just as they earlier coordinated on their support for the slaughter

After 19 months of being presented with dissembling accounts of Gaza from their governments, western publics are now being served up a different – but equally deceitful – narrative.

With the finishing line in sight for Israel’s programme of genocidal ethnic cleansing, the West’s Gaza script is being hastily rewritten. But make no mistake: it is the same web of self-serving lies.

As if under the direction of a hidden conductor, Britain, France and Canada – key US allies – erupted this week into a chorus of condemnation of Israel.

They called Israel’s plans to level the last fragments of Gaza still standing “disproportionate”, while Israel’s intensification of its months-long starvation of more than two million Palestinian civilians was “intolerable”.

The change of tone was preceded, as I noted in these pages last week, by new, harsher language against Israel from the western press corps.

The establishment media’s narrative had to shift first, so that the sudden outpouring of moral and political concern at Gaza’s suffering from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney – after more than a year and a half of indifference – did not appear too abrupt, or too strange.

They are acting as if some corner has been turned in Israel’s genocide. But genocides don’t have corners. They just progress relentlessly until stopped.

The media and politicians are carefully managing any cognitive dissonance for their publics.

But the deeper reality is that western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their “criticisms” of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – just as they earlier coordinated their support for it.

As much was conceded by a senior Israeli official to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Referring to the sudden change of tone, he said: “The past 24 hours were all part of a planned ambush we knew about. This was a coordinated sequence of moves ahead of the EU meeting in Brussels, and thanks to joint efforts by our ambassadors and the foreign minister, we managed to moderate the outcome.”

The handwringing is just another bit of stagecraft, little different from the earlier mix of silence and talk about Israel’s “right to defend itself”. And it is to the same purpose: to buy Israel time to “finish the job” – that is, to complete its genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The West is still promoting phoney “debates”, entirely confected by Israel, about whether Hamas is stealing aid, what constitutes sufficient aid, and how that aid should be delivered.

It is all meant as noise, to distract us from the only pertinent issue: that Israel is committing genocide by slaughtering and starving Gaza’s population, as the West has aided and abetted that genocide.

PR exercise

With stocks of food completely exhausted by Israel’s blockade, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC on Tuesday that some 14,000 babies could die in Gaza within 48 hours without immediate aid reaching them.

The longer-term prognosis is bleaker still.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to let in a trickle of aid, releasing five trucks, some containing baby formula, from the thousands of vehicles Israel has held up at entry points for nearly three months. That was less than one percent of the number of trucks experts say must enter daily just to keep deadly starvation at bay.

On Tuesday, as the clamour grew, the number of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza reportedly climbed to nearly 100 – or less than a fifth of the bare minimum. None of the aid was reported to have reached the enclave’s population by the time of writing.

Netanyahu was clear to the Israeli public – most of whom appear enthusiastic for the engineered starvation to continue – that he was not doing this out of any humanitarian impulse.

This was purely a public relations exercise to hold western capitals in check, he said. The goal was to ease the demands on these leaders from their own publics to penalise Israel and stop the continuing slaughter of Gaza’s population.

Or as Netanyahu put it: “Our best friends worldwide, the most pro-Israel senators [in the US] … they tell us they’re providing all the aid, weapons, support and protection in the UN Security Council, but they can’t support images of mass hunger.”

Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, was even clearer: “On our way to destroying Hamas, we are destroying everything that’s left of the [Gaza] Strip.” He also spoke of “cleansing” the enclave.

‘Back to the Stone Age’

Western publics have been watching this destruction unfold for the past 19 months – or at least they’ve seen partial snapshots, when the West’s establishment media has bothered to report on the slaughter.

Israel has systematically eradicated everything necessary for the survival of Gaza’s people: their homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries, water systems and community kitchens.

Israel has finally implemented what it had been threatening for 20 years to do to the Palestinian people if they refused to be ethnically cleansed from their homeland. It has sent them “back to the Stone Age”.

A survey of the world’s leading genocide scholars published last week by the Dutch newspaper NRC found that all conclusively agreed Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Most think the genocide has reached its final stages.

This week, Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s main centrist party and a former deputy head of the Israeli military, expressed the same sentiments in more graphic form. He accused the government of “killing babies as a hobby”. Predictably, Netanyahu accused Golan of “antisemitism”.

The joint statement from Starmer, Macron and Carney was far tamer, of course – and was greeted by Netanyahu with a relatively muted response that the three leaders were giving Hamas a “huge prize”.

Their statement noted: “The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable.” Presumably, until now, they have viewed the hellscape endured by Gaza’s Palestinians for a year and a half as “tolerable”.

David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary who in the midst of the genocide was happy to be photographed shaking hands with Netanyahu, opined in parliament this week that Gaza was facing a “dark new phase”.

That’s a convenient interpretation for him. In truth, it’s been midnight in Gaza for a very long time.

A senior European diplomatic source involved in the discussions between the three leaders told the BBC that their new tone reflected a “real sense of growing political anger at the humanitarian situation, of a line being crossed, and of this Israeli government appearing to act with impunity”.

This should serve as a reminder that until now, western capitals were fine with all the other lines crossed by Israel, including its destruction of most of Gaza’s homes; its eradication of Gaza’s hospitals and other essential humanitarian infrastructure; its herding of Palestinian civilians into “safe” zones, only to bomb them there; its slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of children; and its active starvation of a population of more than two million.

Played for fools

The three western leaders are now threatening to take “further concrete actions” against Israel, including what they term “targeted sanctions”.

If that sounds positive, think again. The European Union and Britain have dithered for decades about whether and how to label goods imported from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The existence of these ever-expanding settlements, built on stolen Palestinian territory and blocking the creation of a Palestinian state, is a war crime; no country should be aiding them.

In 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that it must be made clear to European consumers which products come from Israel and which from the settlements.

In all that time, European officials never considered a ban on products from the settlements, let alone “targeted sanctions” on Israel, even though the illegality of the settlements is unambiguous. In fact, officials have readily smeared those calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel as “Jew haters” and “antisemites”.

The truth is that western leaders and establishment media are playing us for fools once again, just as they have been for the past 19 months.

“Further concrete actions” suggest that there are already concrete actions imposed on Israel. That’s the same Israel that recently finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest. Protesters who call for Israel to be excluded from the competition – as Russia has been for invading Ukraine – are smeared and denounced.

When western leaders can’t even impose a meaningful symbolic penalty on Israel, why should we believe they are capable of taking substantive action against it?

No will for action

On Tuesday, it became clearer what the UK meant by “concrete actions”. The Israeli ambassador was called in for what we were told was a dressing down. She must be quaking.

And Britain suspended – that is, delayed – negotiations on a new free trade agreement, a proposed expansion of Britain’s already extensive trading ties with Israel. Those talks can doubtless wait a few months.

Meanwhile, 17 European Union members out of 27 voted to review the legal basis of the EU–Israel Association Agreement – providing Israel with special trading status – though a very unlikely consensus would be needed to actually revoke it.

Such a review to see if Israel is showing “respect for human rights and democratic principles” is simple time-wasting. Investigations last year showed it was committing widespread atrocities and crimes against humanity.

Speaking to the British parliament, Lammy said: “The Netanyahu government’s actions have made this necessary.”

There are plenty of far more serious “concrete actions” that Britain and other western capitals could take, and could have taken many months ago.

A flavour was provided by Britain and the EU on Tuesday when they announced sweeping additional sanctions on Russia – not for committing a genocide, but for hesitating over a ceasefire with Ukraine.

Ultimately, the West wants to punish Moscow for refusing to return the territories in Ukraine that it occupies – something western powers have never meaningfully required of Israel, even though Israel has been occupying the Palestinian territories for decades.

The new sanctions on Russia target entities supporting its military efforts and energy exports – on top of existing severe economic sanctions and an oil embargo. Nothing even vaguely comparable is being proposed for Israel.

The UK and Europe could have stopped providing Israel with the weapons to butcher Palestinian children in Gaza. Back in September, Starmer promised to cut arms sales to Israel by around eight percent – but his government actually sent more weapons to arm Israel’s genocide in the three months that followed than the Tories did in the entire period between 2020 and 2023.

Britain could also stop transporting other countries’ weapons and carrying out surveillance flights over Gaza on Israel’s behalf. Flight tracking information showed that on one night this week, the UK sent a military transport plane, which can carry weapons and soldiers, from a Royal Air Force base on Cyprus to Tel Aviv, and then dispatched a spy plane over Gaza to collect intelligence to assist Israel in its slaughter.

Britain could, of course, take the “concrete action” of recognising the state of Palestine, as Ireland and Spain have already done – and it could do so at a moment’s notice.

The UK could impose sanctions on Israeli government ministers. It could declare its readiness to enforce Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes, in line with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, if he visits Britain. And it could deny Israel access to sporting events, turning it into a pariah state, as was done to Russia.

It could announce that any Britons returning from military service in Gaza risk arrest and prosecution for war crimes.

And of course, the UK could impose sweeping economic sanctions on Israel, again as was done to Russia.

All of these “concrete actions”, and more, could be easily implemented. The truth is there is no political will to do it. There is simply a desire for better public relations, for putting a better gloss on Britain’s complicity in a genocide that can no longer be hidden.

Wolf exposed

The problem for the West is that Israel now stands stripped of the lamb’s clothing in which it has been adorned by western capitals for decades.

Israel is all too evidently a predatory wolf. Its brutal, colonial behaviours towards the Palestinian people are fully on show. There is no hiding place.

This is why Netanyahu and western leaders are now engaged in an increasingly difficult tango. The colonial, apartheid, genocidal project of Israel – the West’s militarised client-bully in the oil-rich Middle East – needs to be protected.

Until now, that had involved western leaders like Starmer deflecting criticism of Israel’s crimes, as well as British complicity. It involved endlessly and mindlessly reciting Israel’s “right to defend itself”, and the need to “eliminate Hamas”.

But the endgame of Israel’s genocide involves starving two million people to death – or forcing them out of Gaza, whichever comes first. Neither is compatible with the goals western politicians have been selling us.

So the new narrative must accentuate Netanyahu’s personal responsibility for the carnage – as though the genocide is not the logical endpoint of everything Israel has been doing to the Palestinian people for many decades.

Most Israelis are on board, too, with the genocide. The only meaningful voices of dissent are from the families of the Israeli hostages – and then chiefly because of the danger posed to their loved ones by Israel’s assault.

The aim of Starmer, Macron and Carney is to craft a new narrative, in which they claim to have only belatedly realised that Netanyahu has “gone too far” and that he needs to be reined in. They can then gradually up the noise against the Israeli prime minister, lobby Israel to change tack, and, when it resists or demurs, be seen to press Washington for “concrete action”.

The new narrative, unlike the worn-thin old one, can be spun out for yet more weeks or months – which may be just long enough to get the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza either over the finish line, or near enough as to make no difference.

That is the hope – yes, hope – in western capitals.

Blood on their hands

Starmer, Macron and Carney’s new make-believe narrative has several advantages. It washes Gaza’s blood from their hands. They were deceived. They were too charitable. Vital domestic struggles against antisemitism distracted them.

It lays the blame squarely at the feet of one man: Netanyahu.

Without him, a violent, highly militarised, apartheid state of Israel can continue as before, as though the genocide was an unfortunate misstep in Israel’s otherwise unblemished record.

New supposed “terror” threats – from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran – can be hyped to draw us back into cheerleading narratives about a plucky western outpost of civilisation defending us from barbarians in the East.

The new narrative does not even require that Netanyahu face justice.

As news emerges of the true extent of the atrocities and death toll, a faux-remorseful Netanyahu can placate the West with revived talk of a two-state solution – a solution whose realisation has been avoided for decades and can continue to be avoided for decades more.

We will be subjected to yet more years of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” finally being about to turn a corner.

Even were a chastened Netanyahu forced to step down, he would pass the baton to one of the other Jewish supremacist, genocidal monsters waiting in the wings.

After Gaza’s destruction, the crushing of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem will simply have to return to an earlier, slower pace – one that has allowed it to be kept off the western public’s radar for 58 years.

Will it really work out like this? Only in the imaginations of western elites. In truth, burying nearly two years of a genocide all too visible to large swaths of western publics will be a far trickier task.

Too many people in Europe and the US have had their eyes opened over the past 19 months. They cannot unsee what has been live-streamed to them, or ignore what it says about their own political and media classes.

Starmer and co will continue vigorously distancing themselves from the genocide in Gaza, but there will be no escape. Whatever they say or do, the trail of blood leads straight back to their door.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

“Inspectors General are crucial parts of the apparatus that keep the government accountable to everyday people. IG offices investigate real cases of fraud, waste and abuse, and work to remedy them. Unlike DOGEーthe agents of rampant destruction that are running amok across Donald Trump’s governmentーIGs use disciplined investigative approaches to ensure that government works for real people.”

“Instead of investing in those offices, their leaders, and their crucial work, Donald Trump has fired most of them, and in their stead offered brazen partisans with records of using their positions to allegedly engage in nepotism and outright theft. For many years, those holding this position were held to a particularly high standard of ethics and public service. Now, having a besmirched legacy is not seen as an automatic disqualifier, but is seemingly viewed as an asset for a potential Trump administration Inspector General.”

“The Revolving Door Project will continue to track the bad actors running these offices, because the decimation of the institutions structured to hold the government to account impacts us all. IGs have long been bulwarks against the use of public offices and public funds for self-enrichment schemes, for personal gain, for personal retribution and more, and their replacement is a crucial part of the Trump corruption project. Should Trump succeed in staffing them with loyalists and crooked characters, another barrier in the way of autocracy will fall. We encourage all those committed to covering the Trump administration’s abuses to avail themselves of this resource.”

The tracker can be viewed here and will be regularly updated to reflect changes made by the Trump administration.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

This past Thursday, April 17, 2025, marked Palestinian Prisoners’ Day amid the height of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the West Bank. Commemorated since 1974, this day honors the central role of Palestinian political captives in the struggle for national liberation. It is also a date etched in sorrow as well as resistance. Nearly one million Palestinians have been imprisoned since 1948—teachers, farmers, health workers, children, artists, and leaders. Today, nearly 10,000 remain behind bars, including 3,500 held in administrative detention without charge or trial, 400 children, and 29 women. Many more abducted from Gaza are held in secret military facilities like Sde Teiman, where they endure severe torture, starvation, and denial of medical care. Nearly 40% of Palestinian men in the occupied territories have been imprisoned at least once. These are not statistics. They are fathers, daughters, poets, farmers- lives interrupted, families torn apart, futures deferred.

Palestinian prisoners are not only victims but leaders of the resistance. From inside the prisons, they organize, write, educate, and inspire movements beyond the prison walls. Their leadership is visible not only in political statements and hunger strikes, but also in the forging of cultural and educational collectives that have spread through refugee camps and solidarity tents. During annual commemorations, family members-especially women-gather in massive numbers, surrounding tents and camp walls covered with portraits of imprisoned, martyred, and disappeared loved ones. These gatherings reflect a deep communal identification with the imprisoned, who are seen as both symbols and agents of resistance. In some cases, imprisoned men have smuggled out sperm to enable their wives to conceive, a powerful act of defiance against a system intent on severing family continuity and reproductive futures.

Administrative Detention in Israel

Israel’s policy of administrative detention allows for the imprisonment of individuals without charge or trial, often based on “undisclosed evidence”. This practice has been widely criticized by human rights organizations. As of early 2025, reports indicate that over 10,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, with many detained under administrative orders. Detainees endure harsh conditions, including inadequate food, medical care, and reports of physical abuse.(AP, 2025)

The trauma experienced by detainees frequently extends beyond their captivity, a captivity never justified (Guardian, 2025). Former prisoners have reported severe psychological effects, such as insomnia, anxiety, and difficulty reintegrating into family life. For instance, Amer Abu Hlel, after over a year in administrative detention without charges, suffered from physical injuries and profound psychological distress, leading to social withdrawal and fear of re-arrest. Palestinian captives speak of beatings, deprivation, torture, rape: Palestinians speak of the ‘hell’ of Israeli prisons. (Le Monde, 2024)

Gendered Violence in Israeli Colonial Prisons

In the landscape of Israeli colonial repression, the prison emerges not merely as a site of incarceration, but as a gendered apparatus of control. Palestinian feminist scholars and human rights researchers have long argued that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is not incidental, but structural to the Israeli occupation regime. From degrading strip searches to sexual torture, these acts serve as tools of humiliation, discipline, and subjugation, part of a calculated strategy to dominate and destabilize both individuals and the broader Palestinian social fabric.

Such acts are not random- they are calculated forms of domination. Sexualized violence against male prisoners is used to demasculinize the colonized subject, to strip away dignity and humiliate in ways that destabilize identity and community. This strategy echoes other colonial regimes where emasculation and rape were used not only to extract confessions but to degrade the captive into an object of scorn-even in their own eyes. On the other side of this gendered war is the violation and control of women’s bodies, used to rupture kinship lines and reproductive futures. As Palestinian feminist scholars have long argued, this is not merely about torture-it is about reconfiguring power through gendered, sexualized trauma.

Palestinian criminologist Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2009) has been at the forefront of theorizing sexual violence as a pillar of settler-colonial governance. In her foundational study, Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case-Study, she documents how the Israeli state weaponizes threats of rape, sexual humiliation, and coercive tactics such as isqāt siyāsī (political subjugation) to recruit collaborators and terrorize communities. Through a decolonial feminist lens, Shalhoub-Kevorkian contends that sexual violence is not an aberration but a “normal” extension of colonial power, aimed at dismantling kinship structures, eroding resistance, and reinforcing both Israeli domination and internal patriarchal controls (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2009).

Sociologist Nahla Abdo (2014) expands this analysis through her historical account of Palestinian women political prisoners in Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System. Drawing on oral histories and testimonies, Abdo reveals how Palestinian women have endured sexual torture, harassment, and invasive bodily violence as tools of repression. The story of Rasmea Odeh-who was raped, tortured, and later exiled-stands as a harrowing example of how the Israeli prison system targets women’s bodies to punish political dissent and stigmatize resistance. For Abdo, gendered violence is not just about physical harm-it is an assault on Palestinian womanhood itself, aimed at “criminalizing” female fighters and instilling collective fear (Abdo, 2014).

Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian feminist, former political prisoner, and human rights advocate, contributed further to this field with a 2023 report for the Independent Commission for Human Rights. Based on firsthand accounts from detainees during Israel’s war on Gaza, the report catalogues gendered violations against women, men, and children alike-including threats of rape, verbal sexual degradation, forcible removal of veils, and collective strip searches. Jarrar situates these acts within the framework of colonial gendered violence, emphasizing that such humiliations are not isolated misconduct but “systematic strategies of domination” meant to erode identity and social integrity (Jarrar, 2023).

International findings echo these feminist insights. The 2024 United Nations Commission of Inquiry report on the Occupied Palestinian Territory explicitly recognized the use of sexual and gender-based violence by Israeli forces. It concluded that such acts are “intrinsically linked” to the broader framework of occupation and racial domination. The report confirmed the use of rape, sexual torture, and humiliation against both men and women in detention-including forced nudity in front of family members and rape threats used to extract confessions or silence dissent. These findings offer international validation of long-standing feminist critiques, emphasizing that the body-especially the colonized body-becomes a battleground where control is exercised and trauma inscribed (UN COI, 2025).

Together, these scholarly and investigative efforts reveal a disturbing consistency: Israeli prisons and detention centers function as laboratories of colonial violence where gender and sexuality are weaponized with precision. Whether by emasculating men through sexual torture or stripping veiled women to break cultural codes, these acts aim to humiliate and destroy the social and psychological fabric of Palestinian life. Feminist theorists like Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Abdo remind us that this is not merely about individual suffering; it is about domination through intimate, bodily terror. (Abdo, 2014)

Ultimately, the violence meted out in these carceral spaces must be understood as political and gendered. It is not accidental that Palestinian children, women, and men emerge from Israeli detention systems with scars-visible and invisible-that reshape families and futures. Nor is it incidental that these abuses often go unpunished and unacknowledged. As this feminist and decolonial analysis shows, sexual violence is not a side effect of war-it is a core tactic of colonial rule, designed to break resistance from the inside out.

The Machinery of Dehumanization: The Children

​A 2013 UNICEF report concluded that the ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention is “widespread, systematic and institutionalized.” The report documented practices such as night arrests, physical violence, blindfolding, and coercive interrogations without legal counsel or parental presence. It also noted that children were often forced to sign confessions in Hebrew, a language they did not understand.

Israel’s prison system is not merely punitive-it is a pillar of its colonial regime. It functions to exhaust and disempower a people fighting for freedom. Military courts convict 99% of Palestinians. (Aljazeera, 2018) Children as young as 12 are tried as adults. “Since 2000, an estimated 12,000 Palestinian children have been arbitrarily detained in Israel’s military detention system. They are mostly charged for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, an act punishable by up to maximum 20 years in prison.” (Justice for All, Canada, 2024) Torture, including beatings and stress positions, is routinely used in interrogations-93% of Palestinian children report experiencing it. (Jabr, 2024)

Incarceration becomes a method not only of silencing dissent but of waging psychological warfare.

Solitary Confinement as Torture: Over 500 Palestinian captives are held in solitary confinement, sometimes for months or even years. According to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules), solitary confinement exceeding 15 days constitutes torture. (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). More than 1400 Palestinians are held in solitary confinement (B’tselm, 2014). Prolonged isolation has severe psychological consequences-ranging from depression and hallucinations to long-term cognitive damage. (Reiter, et al, 2020) In many documented cases, Palestinians with developmental or psychiatric disorders have been subjected to repeated humiliation and neglect rather than care. Ahmad Manasra, arrested at 13 and later suffered serious psychological consequences, in part as a result of prolonged solitary confinement. He is one of many who have suffered under such conditions. (Amnesty, 2023, Abu Sharar, 2021)

Medical Neglect: Writer Walid Daqqa spent 38 years in prison and died in 2024 after Israeli authorities denied him treatment for leukemia. “They are killing me slowly,” he wrote in his final letter, “but my ideas will outlive them.” In March 2025, 17-year-old Walid Ahmad from the West Bank died in Megiddo Prison after six months of detention without charge. An autopsy observed by an Israeli doctor indicated that severe malnutrition and untreated colitis likely contributed to his death. Ahmad had shown signs of starvation, scabies, inflammation of the colon, and overall physical frailty, exacerbated by inadequate food, poor sanitary conditions, and possibly contaminated meals during Ramadan.

Deliberate Disease: In 2024, a scabies outbreak spread to 800 captives in Naqab. Guards withheld medicine and hygiene supplies, leaving detainees to scratch their skin raw. An investigation by Haaretz revealed that a quarter of Palestinian captives in Israeli prisons have been infected with scabies in recent months. Prison authorities have been accused of allowing scabies to spread by restricting inmates’ water supply and depriving them of clean clothes and medical care. Without treatment, these wounds become infected. Left untreated in overcrowded, unsanitary cells, even a condition as treatable as scabies becomes a source of ongoing pain and torture, as a result of systemic neglect. These infections are not incidental-they reflect a broader strategy of dehumanization through deliberate medical denial.

Stolen Childhoods: Palestinian children are the only children in the world systematically prosecuted in military courts. Every year, between 500 and 700 are arrested-most during night raids. They are often blindfolded, shackled, and transported to interrogation centers where they are beaten, threatened, denied access to a lawyer, and coerced into signing confessions in Hebrew, a language many do not understand (DCIP-Military Detention).

In 99% of cases, these children are convicted for minor acts such as throwing stones or posting comments on social media. In 2016, the Israeli Knesset passed legislation allowing children as young as 12 to be sentenced to prison, including life imprisonment. This law has been used to target Palestinian children specifically, violating multiple international legal standards (Time, 2025).

In July 2019, a four-year-old boy named Muhammad Rabi’ Elayyan from Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem was summoned for interrogation by Israeli authorities after allegedly throwing a stone. A dozen armed officers arrived at his home (Middle East Monitor, 2019). The child cried in terror. His father accompanied him to the police station where he was questioned. While he was ultimately not charged, the event reflects the extreme and surreal nature of repression faced even by toddlers.

Ahmad Manasra, arrested at age 13, became a global symbol of this brutality. Severely injured and interrogated while bleeding in custody, his forced confession was broadcast publicly. After nearly a decade of unjust incarceration, solitary confinement, and deteriorating mental and physical health, Ahmad was released on April 10, 2025. Despite evidence that he did not participate in the 2015 stabbing incident in Jerusalem, he was sentenced to 12 years (later reduced to 9.5), following a trial that violated his rights as a child. During his imprisonment, Ahmad was subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, denied adequate medical and psychological care, and endured treatment condemned by international human rights organizations. His release came without proper coordination; he was left alone, disoriented, and deeply distressed in the desert near the prison. He was later reunited with his family and continues to receive psychological support. Ahmad’s case remains a haunting emblem of the systemic “unchilding” of Palestinian youth and a call to end the imprisonment of children under military occupation.(Palestine-Global Mental Health Network, 2025)

Ahed Tamimi, detained at 16 after slapping an Israeli soldier in the wake of her cousin being shot in the face with a rubber bullet, spent eight months in prison. Her case drew international attention, not just for the injustice she endured, but for her defiance. “They think they broke me,” she said upon release. “But this generation was born from the womb of the Intifada” (The Guardian, 2018).

The Psychological Toll of Imprisonment on Palestinian Children

Physical and Emotional Abuse: A 2023 report by Save the Children revealed that 86% of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention experienced physical violence, and 69% were strip-searched. Nearly half (42%) sustained injuries during arrest, including gunshot wounds and broken bones. Such traumatic experiences contribute to long-term psychological distress (Save the Children, 2023).

Psychological Distress and Alienation: The same report highlighted that detained children often suffer from anxiety, depression, and a sense of alienation upon release. Many struggle to reintegrate into their communities, with feelings of fear and mistrust persisting long after their detention (Save the Children, 2023).

Impact on Future Aspirations: A 2023 study titled “Injustice: Palestinian children’s experience of the Israeli military detention system” found that imprisonment disrupts children’s education and future plans. One child expressed, “After you are released from prison you start racing against time trying to catch up… Whatever you had in your mind before your arrest just passed you by” (Save the Children, 2023).

BDS: Breaking the Chains of Complicity

If prison is Israel’s tool of domination, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) is our collective tool of resistance.  BDS calls for economic and cultural pressure on Israel until it complies with international law.

At this moment in history-when the genocide in Gaza continues unabated, when the bodies of the dead and maimed outnumber the living, when fascism parades through global capitals and tyrants rule with impunity-it is easy to lose hope. When every weapon is being waged against our Palestine and her people, when those who speak are censored or arrested, when friends hide their articles and delete their words, and when we all feel we are waiting our turn to be plucked from the path of resistance—it is tempting to believe that our struggle is lost.

But it is not. It is not lost when we remain on the path of steadfastness (sumud), of clarity, of collective care.

History is our witness:

+ Apartheid South Africa was brought to its knees by coordinated global boycott, cultural isolation, and a refusal to normalize oppression.

+ British colonial rule in India fell after decades of economic noncooperation and moral resistance.

+ The U.S. Civil Rights Movement broke segregation’s legal backbone with sustained boycotts and protests.

+ Chile’s Pinochet regime, Argentina’s military dictatorship, and East Germany’s Stasi rule all crumbled in the face of international solidarity and internal resistance.

These movements teach us that boycott, divestment, and sanctions are not abstract theories-they are tools that have toppled empires. Yet we must also recognize that such victories are not permanent. The recent far-right resurgence in Argentina under Milei and the dismantling of civil rights protections in the U.S. under Trump remind us that gains can be reversed when fascism reasserts itself. That is why the fight for Palestinian freedom must be connected to broader global anti-fascist and anti-colonial movements-because the forces we confront do not remain in one place. They metastasize.

And so it is with BDS. Launched in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, BDS is our weapon and our lifeline. If Israel’s tools are walls, prisons, and erasure, ours are presence, refusal, and solidarity.

BDS has already shown its power:

+ AXA Insurance divested from Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.

+ Ben & Jerry’s halted sales in illegal settlements, stating, “It’s inconsistent with our values.”

+ Veolia lost over $20 billion in contracts and withdrew completely from Israel.

+ G4S, under pressure, sold its Israeli prison operations.

+ Dozens of universities, churches, and pension funds have divested from companies profiting from apartheid.

This is not symbolic. This is material. Every contract canceled, every artist who says no, every pension fund that walks away-weakens the machinery of domination.

Freedom Is the Only Antidote

Palestinian captives are not just victims. They are witnesses. They are leaders. They are the barometers of our shared humanity.

When a blindfold is tightened on a child in the dark, it is our moral vision that is obscured. When a prisoner is denied medicine, our silence sharpens the knife.

BDS is not a slogan. It is a form of care. It is a nonviolent weapon in a world that knows only violence.

As Assata Shakur, a Black activist, author, and former member of the Black Liberation Army, wrote:

The chains will break. The cell door will rust.
And we will still be here,
roots deeper than their prisons.

And so we return to the knock on the door—a summons in the dead of night that, for too many Palestinian families, has become the echo of generational pain. These prisons, with their barred cells and perpetually shadowed halls, are meant to vanish people and break their spirits. But from these very sites of despair come the songs, letters, smuggled stories, and steadfast courage that galvanize a global movement.

This article aims to name the systematic brutality against Palestinian prisoners for what it is—an intentional, gendered, colonial assault designed to cripple an entire people’s struggle for self-determination—and, at the same time, to honor the indomitable spirit that refuses to submit. By shining a light on the prison system and the suffering within it, we also illuminate a path of resistance and solidarity. When we choose Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, we choose a peaceful but potent form of collective action—one that can weaken the pillars of apartheid just as similar movements have toppled oppressive regimes worldwide.

What is at stake here is not just the fate of the imprisoned, but the moral fabric that binds us all. Each time a child is blindfolded or a woman is threatened with sexualized violence, our collective conscience is tested. Each time we stay silent or look away, we risk allowing injustice to calcify into permanence. But every refusal to be silent—every poem written on contraband paper, every protest sign raised in the streets, every institution that cuts ties with profiteers of apartheid—becomes proof that solidarity can transcend walls and barbed wire.

If these prisons exist to bury hope, then hope must outgrow the walls. If this system thrives on complicity, then let our voices, our actions, and our global alliances sever the chains. In the unbreakable words of Palestinian prisoners and in the unwavering commitment of those who stand with them, we find the enduring truth: that freedom is both a right and a responsibility. We owe it to one another—and to all who have been caged—to turn each knock at the door into a rallying cry for liberation.

The post A Knock at the Door appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Lama Khouri.

This week Cambodia marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the murderous Khmer Rouge, and Vietnam celebrates the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in April 1975.

They are being commemorated very differently; after all, there’s nothing to celebrate in Cambodia. Its capital Phnom Penh was emptied, and its people had to then endure the “killing fields” and the darkest years of its modern existence under Khmer Rouge rule.

Over the border in Vietnam, however, there will be modest celebrations for their victory against US (and Australian) forces at the end of this month.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua liberation reports

Yet, this week’s news of Indonesia considering a Russian request to base aircraft at the Biak airbase in West Papua throws in stark relief a troubling question I have long asked — did Australia back the wrong war 63 years ago? These different areas — and histories — of Southeast Asia may seem disconnected, but allow me to draw some links.

Through the 1950s until the early 1960s, it was official Australian policy under the Menzies government to support The Netherlands as it prepared West Papua for independence, knowing its people were ethnically and religiously different from the rest of Indonesia.

They are a Christian Melanesian people who look east to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Pacific, not west to Muslim Asia. Australia at the time was administering and beginning to prepare PNG for self-rule.

The Second World War had shown the importance of West Papua (then part of Dutch New Guinea) to Australian security, as it had been a base for Japanese air raids over northern Australia.

Japanese beeline to Sorong
Early in the war, Japanese forces made a beeline to Sorong on the Bird’s Head Peninsula of West Papua for its abundance of high-quality oil. Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam served in a RAAF unit briefly stationed in Merauke in West Papua.

By 1962, the US wanted Indonesia to annex West Papua as a way of splitting Chinese and Russian influence in the region, as well as getting at the biggest gold deposit on earth at the Grasberg mine, something which US company Freeport continues to mine, controversially, today.

Following the so-called Bunker Agreement signed in New York in 1962, The Netherlands reluctantly agreed to relinquish West Papua to Indonesia under US pressure. Australia, too, folded in line with US interests.

That would also be the year when Australia sent its first group of 30 military advisers to Vietnam. Instead of backing West Papuan nationhood, Australia joined the US in suppressing Vietnam’s.

As a result of US arm-twisting, Australia ceded its own strategic interests in allowing Indonesia to expand eastwards into Pacific territories by swallowing West Papua. Instead, Australians trooped off to fight the unwinnable wars of Indochina.

To me, it remains one of the great what-ifs of Australian strategic history — if Australia had held the line with the Dutch against US moves, then West Papua today would be free, the East Timor invasion of 1975 was unlikely to have ever happened and Australia might not have been dragged into the Vietnam War.

Instead, as Cambodia and Vietnam mark their anniversaries this month, Australia continues to be reminded of the potential threat Indonesian-controlled West Papua has posed to Australia and the Pacific since it gave way to US interests in 1962.

Russian space agency plans
Nor is this the first time Russia has deployed assets to West Papua. Last year, Russian media reported plans under way for the Russian space agency Roscosmos to help Indonesia build a space base on Biak island.

In 2017, RAAF Tindal was scrambled just before Christmas to monitor Russian Tu95 nuclear “Bear” bombers doing their first-ever sorties in the South Pacific, flying between Australia and Papua New Guinea. I wrote not long afterwards how Australia was becoming “caught in a pincer” between Indonesian and Russian interests on Indonesia’s side and Chinese moves coming through the Pacific on the other.

All because we have abandoned the West Papuans to endure their own “slow-motion genocide” under Indonesian rule. Church groups and NGOs estimate up to 500,000 Papuans have perished under 60 years of Indonesian military rule, while Jakarta refuses to allow international media and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit.

Alex Sobel, an MP in the UK Parliament, last week called on Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner to visit but it is exceedingly rare to hear any Australian MPs ask questions about our neighbour West Papua in the Australian Parliament.

Canberra continues to enhance security relations with Indonesia in a naive belief that the nation is our ally against an assertive China. This ignores Jakarta’s deepening relations with both Russia and China, and avoids any mention of ongoing atrocities in West Papua or the fact that jihadi groups are operating close to Australia’s border.

Indonesia’s militarisation of West Papua, jihadi infiltration and now the potential for Russia to use airbases or space bases on Biak should all be “red lines” for Australia, yet successive governments remain desperate not to criticise Indonesia.

Ignoring actual ‘hot war’
Australia’s national security establishment remains focused on grand global strategy and acquiring over-priced gear, while ignoring the only actual “hot war” in our region.

Our geography has not changed; the most important line of defence for Australia remains the islands of Melanesia to our north and the co-operation and friendship of its peoples.

Strong independence movements in West Papua, Bougainville and New Caledonia all materially affect Australian security but Canberra can always be relied on to defer to Indonesian, American and French interests in these places, rather than what is ultimately in Australian — and Pacific Islander — interests.

Australia needs to develop a defence policy centred on a “Melanesia First” strategy from Timor to Fiji, radiating outwards. Yet Australia keeps deferring to external interests, to our cost, as history continues to remind us.

Ben Bohane is a Vanuatu-based photojournalist and policy analyst who has reported across Asia and the Pacific for the past 36 years. His website is benbohane.com  This article was first published by The Sydney Morning Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography

Although it surely was not intended, Trump’s tariff plan may have opened the door for the Democrats to push for and win Medicare for All(M4A), a longstanding goal for progressives. It does this in two ways. First Trump was able slip by this massive tax scheme with almost no attention from the media. Democrats should demand Trump treatment when they push M4A.

The second reason is that Trump’s tariffs show that it is politically acceptable to tax the middle-class. Trump’s tariff scheme is a tax increase for middle-income households of several thousand dollars annually. If that is politically acceptable, then surely much smaller tax increases that may be needed to cover M4A would surely be politically feasible.

On the first point, Trump did talk about tariffs in his campaign, but there was very little written about how big his tariffs would likely be and how large a hit they would be to middle and moderate-income households. For this reason, most people, including those who follow the news closely, were shocked by the size of Trump’s tariffs. This is why the stock market crashed immediately after Trump’s tariff speech. If investors had expected anything like the tariffs Trump is putting in place, the market would have already priced in the impact of the tariffs.

To be clear, the media did note Trump’s call for tariffs, but they never demanded or received any specificity from Trump. By contrast, any time Vice-President Harris put forward a proposal, like her plan for covering assisted living for senior citizens, the media demanded to know exactly how she would pay for it.

Democrats have to learn to be Trumpian in dealing with the media. They can say we will have M4A, in fact improved M4A that covers dental, vision, and hearing, and we will find ways to pay for it because we’re a rich country: end of story. The days where we just accept that the media demand higher standards from Democrats than Republicans must be over. Trump gets to say f**k you when he doesn’t feel like answering a question. The Democrats need to do this also.

The second takeaway is that it is apparently not politically deadly to talk about tax increases on the middle-class. Trump and every Republican in Congress are just fine with a huge tax increase on the middle-class in the form of his massive tariffs.

In principle, most of the cost of M4A should be covered by lower payments for drugs and medical equipment, by bringing the pay of our doctors and dentists in line with their pay in other wealthy countries. We also will save hundreds of billions of dollars annually by getting rid of private insurers and replacing them with the far more efficient Medicare system.

But we are still likely to need additional revenue. Most of this money should come from the rich, who have been the big winners in the economy over the last half century. But it is likely that we won’t be able to get as much as we need exclusively from taxing the rich.

As our Modern Monetary Theory friends remind us, the purpose of taxation is to reduce demand in the economy and thereby prevent inflation. If we raise another $10 billion a year from increasing the taxes paid by Elon Musk, it’s not clear how much we will reduce demand. Musk will probably continue to consume at pretty much the same level as he did before the tax hike, although he may reduce his campaign contributions to right-wing candidates by some amount.

By contrast, if we raise an additional $10 billion in tax revenue from the middle-class, we can be pretty sure that we will be reducing demand by close to $10 billion, because middle-class people spend the bulk of their income. In the last two decades, Democrats have treated it as sacred first principle that they could never increase taxes on people earning less $400,000 a year.

Since Trump’s tariffs have shown that a large tax increase on the middle-class is just fine politically, they need not fear putting forward a modest one to two percentage point tax increase in order to give people near-free health care. Whatever they do put forward they can put in terms of the Trump tariffs. For example, they could put a ceiling on any middle-class tax hike, saying it will be no more than one-quarter of the tax hit from Trump’s tariffs.

In addition to being good policy, M4A should be great politics. People have come to like Obamacare over the fifteen years since it was made into law. It is now so popular even Trump doesn’t openly talk about ending it. The idea of extending Medicare to cover the whole population is likely to be extremely popular and it is a simple proposal that can be easily understood. M4A is a perfect bumper sticker slogan for cars and pickup trucks all across the country. It tells everyone what Democrats will do for them if they are put in office.

While it certainly was not Trump’s intention, his looney tariff scheme may have opened the door for M4A in a way that normal presidency never would. If democracy survives, we may get some real gains as a result of the Trump presidency.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The post Trump’s Tariffs Open the Door for Medicare for All appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dean Baker.

“Contrary to what Trump, Musk, and even neoliberals claim, a strong civil service is critical to the country. Few innovations have served the public interest more than the government permitting public employees to band together and create the protection of a union against politicians carrying water for America's most rapacious and least moral corporations. And the advent of DOGE makes the protections of a union even more critical to ensuring public servants can work for the broader public and rein in favors for Trump’s elite donors like Musk.

It is time for all decent forces to condemn Trump and Musk's unlawful actions and decry the assault on the right of public employees to organize.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“Lawmakers cannot be surprised at the wanton disregard Elon Musk now shows for the law when he has spent decades ignoring it. Billionaires like Musk and Donald Trump have been enabled at every turn by a judiciary in the pocket of big business, legislators beholden to corporate interests, and law enforcement officials too cowardly to prosecute powerful people for their misconduct.”

Hauser continued: “What Musk is doing now is horrifying to anyone invested in stable governance, effective regulation and the well being of American democracy. But we cannot ignore the fact that this behavior is not new. Musk, like countless other oligarchs, has been enabled at every turn by weak enforcement of federal laws and regulations. On the rare occasion that he or his companies do face penalties for flouting the rules, it is almost always a slap on the wrist – teaching him that he is above the dominion of our nation’s laws.”

“Lawmakers and law enforcement officials must learn that weak enforcement of corporate crime begets further erosion of the rule of law. We at The Revolving Door Project have long called upon attorneys general and regulators to properly enforce the law. We now do so again, with this existential crisis standing as an example of what will happen when billionaires are empowered to disregard the law. We hope this tracker will help reporters, legislators and the public understand how weak enforcement of rules led to Musk’s sense of total impunity, and his hatred of the administrative state.” concluded Hauser.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

An executive order that purports to combat antisemitism on university campuses is likely to chill free speech and target students for pro-Palestine, antiwar and anti-racist views. The order, signed by President Trump, threatens to deport noncitizen college students and other international visitors who take part in protests considered antisemitic under a broad and contested definition of the term. Though the order gives them new teeth, these threats of deportation are not new, as our guest Momodou Taal, a doctoral student at Cornell University who was threatened with deportation last year, can attest. While public outcry forced Cornell to lift Taal’s suspension and allow him a limited return to campus, he is still effectively banned from campus life and blocked from teaching positions. “There’s somewhat of a great irony that students who were protesting apartheid are now subject to forms of exclusion bordering on apartheid,” says Taal about his ongoing exclusion.

Rights groups and legal scholars say the new executive order violates constitutional free speech rights and would likely draw legal challenges if implemented. “This is basically a textbook authoritarian playbook meant to stifle any criticism of what’s going on in Israel,” explains our other guest, Etan Nechin, a New York correspondent for Haaretz. Students like Taal, however, say they will not allow the government and their administrations to prevent them from speaking out. Taal says his pro-Palestine activism comes out of his obligations as “a human being” and that “when fascism is at the door, what we do is come together and unite even stronger.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Donald Trump has now illegally fired multiple Democratic members of independent agency boards, including Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and Jocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burrows from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, years before their actual term expiry dates. In so doing, Trump has demonstrated yet again, an abject disregard for the basic rule of law, as well as an apparent willingness to engage in authoritarian-esque hostile takeovers of any part of the government able to provide a check to his power.

Congressional Democrats (and theoretically independent-minded Republicans) cannot let such an overt power grab, and such a tangible disregard for settled federal law, go without a fight. Make no mistake, though often overlooked, the actions of independent agencies have the power to shape nearly every part of public life, and the officials who staff them have genuine authority to hold corporations, including those owned by Trump’s own friends and advisors, accountable to the public they seem intent to abuse.

It is exactly this power that Trump seeks to fundamentally corrupt.

Senators could fight back with the full extent of the power that remains in their hands to engage in principled and coordinated opposition to these authoritarian power grabs. Indeed, recent years have already demonstrated masterful tactical obstructionism without any electoral consequence. It’s time to take note.

"Minority Commissioner appointments can and do matter greatly,” said Jeff Hauser, Revolving Door Project’s founder and Executive Director. “Rohit Chopra’s stint at the Federal Trade Commission under the Trump majority not only instigated substantive enforcement of existing law to the benefit of the public, but also included bringing Lina Khan onto the staff. Legacies can be made and the trajectory of policy changed by minority commissioners, which is why Trump’s corporate puppets are causing the administration to behave in such an undeniably illegal manner. People of goodwill can and should fight back.”

As we always, the Revolving Door Project will continue to track independent agencies, their personnel, their activities, and attempt our best defense of their crucial work, at AgencySpotlight.org.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The Court’s ruling is an important victory for fair taxation, as invalidating the tax would have given about 400 multinational corporations a collective $271 billion tax break. The Court ruled narrowly and chose not to rule on the issue of whether broader federal taxes on unrealized income or wealth would be constitutional.

STATEMENT FROM ITEP EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AMY HANAUER:

“Today’s ruling is a win for anyone who didn’t shelter income in offshore tax havens before 2018. It preserves close to $300 billion of tax revenue paid by some of the biggest and most profitable corporations in human history. If the Court had retroactively repealed this one-time tax, any other way of making up the resulting shortfall would have fallen far more heavily on middle-and-low-income families and small businesses.

The Supreme Court also could have taken an activist turn of the worst kind by preemptively ruling federal wealth taxes unconstitutional today. To its credit, the Court did not do so.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ken Klippenstein.

“The CFPB’s new proposed overdraft fee rule is an excellent effort to close a major loophole that has allowed Big Banks to rake in billions in predatory junk fees. Contrary to the banking lobby’s claims, these excessive surcharges are not necessary for the industry’s survival and are rarely properly disclosed to consumers. They are an exploitative invention of industry consultants that disproportionately punish the poorest and most vulnerable consumers. By refusing to cave to Wall Street’s well-funded lobbying campaign against overdraft fee rulemaking, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra has proved again why he is consumers’ best ally and corporate predators’ worst nightmare.”

Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser issued the following statement:

“The CFPB is doing what it was designed to do, and now the biggest threat is that America’s most exploitative companies want payoff for decades of corrupt investment in our nation’s courts by having the Supreme Court gut the Bureau itself. Civil society must plan to bring enormous pushback on Supreme Court Justices and other judges corrupted by the likes of Charles Koch and Harlan Crow if any of the CFPB’s common sense consumer protections are overturned by our sadly activist judiciary.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

North Korea’s leading propaganda website DPRK Today has removed its “reunification” section, as confirmed Thursday. Earlier this week, the section was still accessible. The website is operated under the supervision of North Korea’s United Front Department, with the primary aim of disseminating Pyongyang’s favored vision of reunification with the South.

The erased section had displayed the history of every inter-Korean agreement, ranging from the July 4 Joint Statement in 1972 to the latest September 19 Pyongyang Joint Declaration in 2018. 

It also contained details on North Korea’s reunification policy, advocating for the reunification under a federal structure based on the “one nation, two systems” principle, wherein the governments of both countries retain sovereignty over their respective regions.

Last week, North Korea also removed the reunification section from other propaganda platforms, including the Uriminzokkiri.

Such moves came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed his intention to discard the idea of “one people” shared with the South during the major policy meeting held last year. 

“Reflecting on the long history of inter-Korean relations, our conclusion is that unification can never be achieved with South Korea,” said Kim, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Dec. 31,  as North Korea wrapped up its Central Committee Plenary Meeting of the Workers’ Party Korea. 

South Korea’s reunification policy “starkly contrast with our nation’s unification policy based on the principles of one people, one state, two systems,” he added, noting that he would start treating the North’s relations with the South as a state-to-state relations and that he no longer views the South as the same Koreans.

In a separate report on Jan. 1, KCNA also reported that North Korea’s Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, along with the head of the United Front Department Ri Son Gwon, hosted a meeting to discuss ways to deliver Kim’s orders to restructure organizations involved in South Korean affairs.

Since then, North Korea’s state-run media outlets have been consistently calling South Korea by its formal name “Republic of Korea.” Pyongyang had rarely referred to the South as the ROK, typically calling it as “Namjoseon,” which means “South of North Korea” in Korean. This terminology implied, albeit rhetorically, that both were parts of the same nation.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul who had advised South Korean administrations, said the move may harbor dual implications.

“Previously, North Korea described its nuclear arsenal as the ‘treasure of the entire Korean people,’ subtly implying that they were not intended for use against the South,” said Yang. 

“However, recent developments indicate a shift in this stance. As North Korea no longer views the South as part of the same people and nation, it raises the possibility that the North might consider using its nuclear weapons against the South,” he added.

In fact, on Wednesday, Kim has declared that South Korea is now officially Pyongyang’s “principal enemy,” openly stating his readiness for war. 

“Another goal could be Pyongyang’s effort to lessen its reliance on the South and highlight its self-reliance to the domestic audience,” Yang said.

“North Korea may aim to delay addressing unification issues and justify the enhancement of its nuclear capability. Additionally, this strategy could be viewed as a means to reinforce regime unity domestically by fostering anti-South sentiment among its population.”

Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Jeong-Ho for RFA.

Less than a month before a door plug on a Boeing aircraft blew off midflight, employees at Spirit AeroSystems, a subcontractor for Boeing, had tried to warn corporate officials about serious safety problems with parts for 737 MAX jets. But those warnings went unheeded, and the employees were told to falsify records, according to a new investigation by The Lever on a federal complaint filed by workers at Spirit. “In some cases, workers were retaliated against for trying to raise those alarms,” says journalist David Sirota. “These workers in this federal complaint are alleging essentially a culture of defects, a culture of fraud, a culture of retaliation.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph Source: Vincent Hauser – CC BY 2.0

Democracy or plutocracy? Which label better fits today’s US of A? An apt question to contemplate as we enter what could turn out to be our most harrowing political year since Abe Lincoln’s election. Where to begin this contemplation? How about we take a stab at some definitions.

In a democracy, people identify the problems they face and, working together, try to fashion solutions. In a plutocracy, by contrast, a society’s richest employ their power to exploit the most pressing problems their nation faces — and keep real solutions off the table.

Where do these definitions leave the 21st-century United States? In deep plutocratic doo. Consider, for instance, how we’re responding, as a nation, to our contemporary housing crisis.

For younger American families, the classic American dream — a home of your own! — has become an ongoing nightmare. Some 20 percent of young American men between 25 and 34 lived with their parents last year, 12 percent of young women. America’s multigenerational household population, the Pew Research center notes, has quadrupled since the early 1970s.

What explains these stats? The simple story: Fewer and fewer American young people can afford a home of their own. Overall, an Amherst Group analysis has found, some 85 percent of renting households cannot “qualify for a mortgage.” America’s most typical first-time homebuyers last year, adds the National Association of Realtors, had already turned 36 years old. Young people a generation ago were becoming first-time homebuyers in their 20s.

The economic reality behind all these stats: the shrinking share of America’s wealth that belongs to average Americans. Back in the mid-1990s, America’s “middle class” — the middle 60 percent of U.S. households by income — held double the wealth of the nation’s richest 1 percent. Last year, Fed Reserve researchers calculate, top 1 percenters held more wealth than our entire middle 60 percent.

And America’s richest aren’t just enjoying that turnaround. They’re exploiting it — on a wide variety of housing-related fronts.

Some rich are busy turning the 20th-century dream of owning your own home into the grubby 21st-century reality of renting your own home forever. These rich and the corporations they run have spent recent years buying up homes for sale and turning their new purchases into rental properties.

The post The Rich Who Own the Home Next Door appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sam Pizzigati.

The Grants Pass Daily Courier newsroom in Oregon was vandalized on Dec. 8, 2023, when an unknown person threw a brick — marked with a vulgar message naming a member of the newsroom — through the glass entrance doors to the building.

The Courier reported that an employee was working in the building when at around 10:45 p.m. they heard a loud bang and shattering glass. The employee called 911 and police found that a brick had smashed through one of the front doors, as well as a separate glass pane in the vestibule.

Courier Editor Scott Stoddard told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that the attack caused approximately $1,500 in damage to the building, which the newspaper has occupied for nearly 75 years. Police are still investigating the vandalism.

The newspaper is not releasing the details of the message or the name of the journalist in order to avoid further targeting, Stoddard said. He added that staff had met to review safe locations and exits, in case of a future attack.

“We are not a sleepy newspaper, we cover local topics aggressively,” he told the Tracker. “There are multiple factions in town that are not happy with the paper because of the level of reporting we do.”

The Courier also quoted Stoddard as saying, “I want to assure our readers that we are not going to be silenced by anyone who tries to intimidate us or infringe on the press freedoms that are guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

“Regulators taking positions with the industries that they were recently charged with reigning in is corrosive to good governance and public trust in government. This issue is magnified with the Commodities Future Trading Commission—an agency tasked with regulating the derivatives industry that crashed the global economy in 2007 and one that Behnam has thrust forward as a potential chief regulator of the fraudulent world of cryptocurrency.”

“Despite what many in Washington seem to believe, the revolving door between private industry and government not only has the image of impropriety, it is a genuine hindrance to effective policymaking. Government officials who know they will seek post-government employment with the industries they have regulated are incentivized to maintain a friendly if not openly deferential relationship.”

“Behnam’s choices at the CFTC could easily be seen through this prism. His recent decision to vote with Republican CFTC commissioners to enact a Trump administration-proposed weakening of swaps regulation well into the Biden administration is a great example of this, as is his cozy relationship with cryptocurrency companies including the now-bankrupt FTX and its criminal former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.”

“If Behnam does leave the CFTC years before his term expires to pursue a lucrative job with the industries he recently oversaw, President Biden should seize the opportunity to fill his vacated seat with a public servant dedicated to the furtherance of the public good rather than their own financial situation.”

The Revolving Door Project has submitted a FOIA request seeking records of communications between Behnam and the CFTC Acting Inspector or CFTC Agency Ethics Officials to monitor any official ethics disclosures on his potential future employment and will continue to file updated FOIA requests in the coming months. Any disclosures uncovered by these requests will be shared with the media immediately.

The Revolving Door Project’s Henry Burke and Kenny Stancil wrote a piece for The American Prospect on the potential of Behnam leaving the CFTC and the relative odds of his post-government employment. The piece can be read here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Who was first in line to carry out the Holocaust? The authoritarian voter next door. Survivors described how their neighbors turned on them, throwing rocks through their windows. That’s who Trump is appealing to, driving out people who have existed throughout history: longing for a strongman to crush their enemies, and put mouthy women, smug nonwhite people, those pesky gays, and don’t forget entitled refugees in their place. These are the “vermin” Trump scapegoats as he travels the country, amplifying Russian disinformation, and consolidating his base: the authoritarian voter next door. 

Reality Winner, the patriotic whistleblower who confirmed extensive Russian hacking of our election systems after government officials tried to downplay it, has faced far harsher punishment than violent coup plotter Trump with his 91 criminal indictments. The American people see the threat to our democracy clearly, which is why they’ve built resilient grassroots power that ushered in yet another historic Blue Wave. The latest victory in a long list: Dauphin County, PA flipped to Democratic control for the first time in 100 years. We the People have done significantly more to protect our democracy than Merrick Garland’s DOJ. 

Given the immense power we’ve shown, it’s time to abolish the Electoral College, a monument to slavery, and agitate for other reforms to modernize the United States government. Gaslit Nation is working on a special series on how to Trump-proof our democracy, protecting us and future generations from his massive cult that ensures succession is guaranteed. Even after Trump is gone, another cultist will take his place. So it’s time to expand our historic Blue Wave energy into overdue government reform. The nonsense press release from the Supreme Court pretending to care about ethics is not what we’re talking about. 

As a thank you to our Gaslit Nation community on Patreon, look out the weekend after Thanksgiving for a special MAKE ART workshop in the form of a podcast that you can download and try at your own leisure. We’re all natural born artists, and this act of self-care and meaningful therapy reminds us that our voices matter and that we’re needed now more than ever. In his brilliant resistance pocket guide On Tyranny, historian Timothy Snyder urges us to be visible, and that visibility comes through creativity, as we use our voice for our collective good. The model of this has always been embedded in this show that has featured interviews with extraordinary artists like Nelson George, a writer of the hip-hop movement and Andrea’s longtime mentor, and filmmaker Oleg Sentsov who survived a Siberian prison by writing a novel, stories, and directing a film.

Yes, art matters. Art is survival. And each of us, to navigate these civilization-making-or-breaking years ahead, can embrace our inner artist to create a sustainable, livable future together. Artists imagine and show that another world is possible. As Sentsov said on our show: Dictators die. Art is forever. Look out for that special MAKE ART workshop next week! To get access to that, bonus shows, all episodes ad free, and more, subscribe to join our community of listeners at Patreon.com/Gaslit 

This week’s bonus show will look at the latest in the Israel-Hamas war, troubling jumps in A.I., and answer questions from listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher. Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you! 

If you’re in NYC, stop by 42 Second Avenue, between 2nd & 3rd Streets, to see a giant photograph of a “car cemetery” in Irpin, Ukraine, an area that suffered greatly during the early days of Russia’s total war genocide. The photographer is Phil Buehler, and more of his work can be seen here: https://modern-ruins.com/irpin-ukraine-please-dont-forget-us/

You can also join Andrea this Thursday at NYU to check out a talk by Terrell Starr of the Black Diplomats podcast. Details here: https://twitter.com/terrelljstarr/status/1724146505001422925

Andrea joined Jennifer Taub, author of Big Dirty Money: Making White Collar Criminals Pay, on her podcast Booked Up. Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andrea-chalupa-on-dictatorship-is-easy/id1651929984?i=1000634521344

SHOW NOTES:

MUST WATCH: Missing in Brooks County by Lisa Molomot and Jeff Bemiss https://www.missinginbrookscounty.com/

MUST WATCH: John Oliver on the Israel-Palestine Conflict https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ9PKQbkJv8

Opening Clip: Trump in New Hampshire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE3S2_zWEIc

Supreme Court Announces Ethics Code for Justices The decision comes after revelations about undisclosed property deals and gifts have intensified pressure on the court to adopt such a code. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/us/politics/supreme-court-ethics-code.html

Supreme Court approval ratings at record lows, new Gallup poll shows https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/02/politics/supreme-court-record-lows-gallup/index.html

In a Historic First, the Supreme Court Has Adopted a Code of Ethics The code, which does not include any enforcement mechanism, comes after ProPublica and other outlets disclosed that justices had repeatedly failed to disclose gifts and travel from wealthy donors. https://www.propublica.org/article/supreme-court-adopts-ethics-code-scotus-thomas-alito-crow

FROM AXIOS: “Driving the news: In a Veterans Day speech in New Hampshire on Saturday, Trump vowed to "root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections." He then posted the same message on Truth Social, including the word "vermin" often used by Hitler and Mussolini to denigrate Jews and their political enemies. Trump went on to say that "the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within." The big picture: Trump's increasingly violent rhetoric — calling for a U.S. military leader to be executed, mocking a near-fatal assault on a congressional spouse, urging police to shoot potential shoplifters — has become a staple of his brand as he faces the threat of conviction in four different criminal cases.” https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-vermin-fascist-language-speech

“The institutional right is screening a “pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists” that, if elected, Trump plans to use to unleash DOJ on his political enemies, create deportation camps for millions of immigrants, and generally turn his whim into law.”  https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1724037010183123157

We encourage you to check out the sponsor of this week’s episode: 

Our listeners can go to HelloFresh.com/gaslitfree and use code “gaslitfree” for FREE breakfast for life! One breakfast item per box while subscription is active. Thank you so much for our sponsor, HelloFresh, America’s #1 Meal Kit 

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

To date, 2023 is the deadliest year on record for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, largely due to the Israeli regime’s violent operations in Jenin and Nablus to suppress Palestinian mobilization and armed resistance. While the Palestinian Authority (PA) was largely absent during the Israeli army’s raids, it quickly sought to re-establish the guise of control following their conclusion. Shortly after Israeli withdrawal from Jenin in July, PA President Mahmoud Abbas visited the city for the first time since 2012, accompanied by a slew of Palestinian security forces. Days later, the PA began a crackdown campaign of its own, arresting members of Islamic Jihad and other factions across Jenin and throughout the West Bank. 

Such a cycle encompasses a critical component of PA-Israeli security coordination: the revolving door/al-bab al-dawaar. This policy memo examines the protocol, situating it within the wider “collaboration paradigm.¹” It details what the revolving door looks like in practice, and offers recommendations to both Palestinian leadership and civil society for ways forward that may help to establish accountability, redress, and reconciliation.

What is the Revolving Door?

Security coordination was the defining feature of the Oslo Accords, and continues to be a crucial part of stability, peace, and state-building, according to its proponents. It is widely perceived by these actors as an indication of the PA’s capacity to govern and ensure the preservation of the status quo. Indeed, the PA has itself argued that security coordination “is part and parcel of our liberation strategy.”²

The revolving door policy highlights the shared interests of both the PA and Israeli regime: to suppress and silence Palestinian resistance
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Coordination between the PA and Israeli regime manifests itself in a number of ways. One key element is the revolving door policy. This mechanism is transactional and operational, whereby Palestinian activists, resistance fighters, and members of opposition are imprisoned by either Israeli or Palestinian authorities and then indirectly handed over to the other once released. 

For example, the PA may search for, arrest, and imprison an individual for a period of time. Shortly following their release, the individual will then be detained by Israeli authorities, at which time the PA will share the detainee’s security file with Israeli counterparts. The revolving door policy works in reverse as well: once Palestinians are released from Israeli prisons, the PA’s security forces may subsequently detain them. 

While independent human rights organizations have long-documented the revolving door policy in practice, PA leadership and members of the security establishment continue to deny its existence. Instead, they accuse any critical voice on this subject of being politically-driven that is motivated by factionalism. Nonetheless, ample evidence exists pointing to the policy’s implementation. 

A Case of Shared Interests

Security coordination criminalizes Palestinian resistance, professionalizes Palestinian authoritarianism, and denies the safety of the Palestinian people, while adding further layers of repression to an already highly-oppressive context. Specifically, the revolving door policy highlights the shared interests of both the PA and Israeli regime: to suppress and silence Palestinian resistance. 

Importantly, it does so in such a way that preserves the PA’s plausible deniability vis-à-vis locating Palestinian targets on behalf of Israel. By using resources to catch and release Palestinians under the guise of its own security interests, the PA serves as a subcontractor of the Israeli regime while keeping its hands ostensibly clean from such explicit coordination and prisoner transfer.

The revolving door is most often utilized during periods of increased Palestinian organizing and popular resistance. Over the past decade, waves of PA arrests have often followed major Israeli military operations, with campaigns of Israeli arrests occurring shortly thereafter. Since 2022, PA forces have carried out increasing raids across Jenin and Nablus, renewing accusations of the revolving door’s practice, and condemnation of the PA’s continued complicity in the Israeli regime’s settler colonial project. 

Recommendations

• The PA should comply with Palestinian popular opinion and halt all security coordination with Israel, including abandonment of the revolving door policy. Doing so would be a critical step in facilitating a process of national reconciliation. 
• Palestinian leadership and its security establishment should reject any external intervention or political conditioning of aid that attempts to invest in and sustain security coordination. 
• Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations should continue to document the implementation and implications of the revolving door policy as a way to hold the PA and its security establishment accountable to Palestinian Basic Law. 
• PA leadership must engage in a constructive and responsible conversation with Palestinian civil society groups about harm caused by security coordination, including the revolving door policy. Accountability is sorely missed in Palestinian governance: a policy dialogue regarding these harms offers an opportunity to redress some of the PA’s wrongdoings that have long hindered the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation.

The post The PA’s Revolving Door: A Key Policy in Security Coordination appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Alaa Tartir.

The Declaration for American Democracy (DFAD), a coalition of over 260 groups, said in a statement it was "deeply concerned" about the bill, warning that "the benign-sounding name of this legislation cloaks an extremist, anti-voter effort to increase the role of megadonors in our elections and encourage deliberate barriers to make it harder for eligible voters to cast their ballot."

"This bill would amplify the influence of corporations and billionaires by raising contribution limits and reducing reporting and transparency requirements, opening the floodgates to even more secret money in our elections," DFAD said. "Increasing the role of big money donors in our politics prevents Congress from taking action on the issues that matter most to Americans, such as healthcare, reproductive rights, gun safety, and the environment."

"The ACE Act would disenfranchise millions of voters by encouraging restrictive anti-voter policies that have a disproportionate impact on Black, Indigenous, young, and new American voters," the coalition continued, stressing that widespread U.S. voter fraud doesn't exist. "The bill would be a huge federal government overstep into the governance of Washington D.C., overturning laws that have been enacted to expand and strengthen democracy in the district."

The leftist think tank Dēmos tweeted that "the anti-voter ACE Act is an extremist power grab that would overturn laws that strengthen democracy in D.C. and open the floodgates to secret money. District residents deserve self-determination. The only people cheering this bill are billionaires and corporations."

Fellow coalition members—including Indivisible, NextGen America, and Public Citizen—and other critics also took aim at the GOP bill.

Steil introduced the bill during a field hearing for the committee he leads in Atlanta. During that event and in an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner, the panel chair heralded the Georgia GOP's Senate Bill 202—a sweeping measure passed in 2021 that led to a "staggering" increase in voter suppression, according to a Mother Jones analysis.

"Many of the bill's requirements would replicate Georgia's laws, which already ban outside election funding, require voter ID, and prohibit noncitizen voting," The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported Monday, noting that the state's Republicans enacted S.B. 202 in response to right-wing complaints about former President Donald Trump's loss in 2020.

The federal proposal comes as the twice-impeached, twice-indicted former president leads the crowded field of candidates for the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination—despite arguments that Trump's "Bie Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen from him incited the January 6, 2021 insurrection, so under the 14th Amendment, he is barred from holding public office again.

The Republican nominee is widely expected to face President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection. The AJC pointed out that "the bill's rollout in Georgia, a swing state that... Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, creates a contrast between the two political parties ahead of another presidential election year."

When Democrats narrowly controlled both chambers of Congress early last year, right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) joined with then-Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)—who has since become an Independent—to help the GOP block the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, a package designed to boost federal protections, limit dark money in politics, and restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Now, the Republicans have a divided majority in the House, while Democrats still have a slim advantage in the Senate, making it highly unlikely that any election-related legislation will make it to Biden's desk for the rest of this congressional session. Still, opponents of the ACE Act urged federal lawmakers to come out against it.

"Congress must reject these efforts to disenfranchise voters and worsen the problem of big money in politics," DFAD said. "To truly increase confidence in our elections, Congress should pass popular, common-sense reforms like those in the Freedom to Vote Act in order to reduce the influence of big money out of politics, ensure our freedom to vote, and guarantee that congressional districts are drawn to give fair representation for all."

"No matter our color, party, or ZIP code," the coalition added, "we all deserve to live in a democracy that represents, reflects, and responds to all of us."

Some Democrats in Congress are speaking out, including U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, who represents Georgia's 5th District, which includes much of Atlanta.

"Extreme MAGA Republicans are at it again: this time attempting to obstruct voting rights to appease extremist election deniers," she tweeted. "S.B. 202 led to the biggest racial turnout gap in decades and they want to Copy+Paste at the federal level."

Democratic members of the Committee on House Administration declared Monday that "today's hearing is an attempt to appease election deniers."

"President Biden won the 2020 election. The election was secure. The results were accurate. It is undisputable," the panel's Democrats added. "No anti-voting, pro-corruption, #BigLieBill can change that."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says New Zealand’s largest ever trade delegation to China has been “knocking on open doors”.

Hipkins held a media briefing yesterday on the final day of his week-long trip to China.

Hipkins has headed the trade delegation to China and has had successful meetings with top-ranking politicians, including Chinese President Xi Jingping.

• READ MORE: Other NZ-China relationship reports

He said it had been a great trip, and he had been heartened by the positive reaction business leaders in the delegation had received.

“There is a huge market here for New Zealand products and services and so I think for me one of the big insights was the door is wide open.”

Hipkins said he had had the opportunity to see just how thriving the relationship between New Zealand and China was, “particularly building on a very successful event last night which had hundreds of local and New Zealand business people able to get together”.

The relationship with China was “in good heart”, he said.

He said he had navigated the relationship with China in the same way New Zealand always had, “to be open, to be candid, to be transparent and to be consistent in our position”.

Watch the media briefing:

“We knew it was going to be a bit of a bumpy road when we reopened the border and had this huge backlog to work our way through — particularly in areas like international student visas for example, which can be quite time consuming to process because there’s a lot more in them.

“The timeliness around international student visa applications is looking pretty good, the timeliness around business visas is improving, the timeliness around visitor visas remains a challenging area for us because there’s a high volume of them and obviously the frequency with which they are flooding in continues to put the system under pressure.”

He said things like identity verification were causing delays, but “certainly we’re working hard to try and speed that up”.

A ‘very positive vibe’
Sealord chairperson Jamie Tuuta, the head of the business delegation, said there had been a “very positive vibe”.

“It’s been wonderful to be part of the delegation, really promoting Aotearoa New Zealand as one and I think it’s been a real success.”

He said the fact the prime minister had access to the top three politicians in China had been very important for business in China and economic relationships.

“I think it really just demonstrates the longstanding relationship that New Zealand has had with China.”

He said New Zealanders probably did not understand the level of coverage the trip has brought to the Chinese people in the media and social media, and said the large size of the delegation has been very beneficial.

Tuuta said the feedback from everyone on the trip is that it has been “a great success and the nature of the conversations that have been had are warm and constructive, are such where actually it’s positioned us well as a country and as businesses to grow trade and to work constructively with our customers and market”.

He said looking at other countries doing business in China, New Zealand businesses did punch above their weight.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The post Has the Putin-Prigozhin Confrontation Opened a Door for Negotiation? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

Kannada News channel News First tweeted the aforementioned video on June 19 with a caption in Kannada that can be translated as: “The door of the KSRTC bus was broken due to the large number of women who had come for the free bus journey. The incident took place at a bus stand in Malavalli town of Mandya district.  #newsfirstkannada #newsfirstkannada #KSRTC #bus #mandya #ViralVideos #CongressGuarantee #KarnatakaNews”. (Archive)

ಉಚಿತ ಬಸ್ ಪ್ರಯಾಣಕ್ಕೆ ಅತಿ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಸಂಖ್ಯೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಮಹಿಳೆಯರು ಬಂದಿದ್ದಕ್ಕೆ ನೂಕು ನುಗ್ಗಲು ಉಂಟಾದ ಪರಿಣಾಮ ಕೆಎಸ್ಆರ್​ಟಿಸಿ ಬಸ್​ನ ಬಾಗಿಲು ಮುರಿದು ಹೋಗಿದೆ. ಈ ಘಟನೆಯು ಮಂಡ್ಯ ಜಿಲ್ಲೆಯ ಮಳವಳ್ಳಿ ಪಟ್ಟಣದ ಬಸ್ ನಿಲ್ದಾಣದಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆದಿದೆ. #newsfirstkannada #newsfirstkannada #KSRTC #bus #mandya #ViralVideos… pic.twitter.com/tUnQ3dyRXn

— NewsFirst Kannada (@NewsFirstKan) June 19, 2023

BJP member Shakunthala also shared a screengrab from the video in question on June 17 with the following caption in Kannada, “The self-respecting women team of the state performed Shakti under Shakti Yojana”. (Archive)

ಶಕ್ತಿ ಯೋಜನೆಯಡಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಶಕ್ತಿ ಪ್ರದರ್ಶನ ಮಾಡಿದ ರಾಜ್ಯದ ಸ್ವಾಭಿಮಾನಿ ಮಹಿಳಾ ತಂಡ .. pic.twitter.com/eu83681N4f

— ಶಕುಂತಲShakunthala (@ShakunthalaHS) June 17, 2023

TV9 Kannada uploaded the video on their YouTube channel and claimed in the ‘description’ section that the door had been broken due to the rush of women passengers. The video description in Kannada can be translated as: “The women broke open the door of the bus in their eagerness to board the bus. Another door of a KSRTC bus broke to nari shakti. The incident took place at the KSRTC bus stand in Malavalli town of Mandya district. Just a few days ago, the door of the KSRTC bus was knocked off due to the women’s push at the Kollegal bus stand.” (Archive)

A few other users, such as @MadhukumarVP1 and news portals like Asianet Suvarna News, Udayan Digital News and Garuda Voice also shared the video with similar claims.

Fact Check

After breaking down the video into several key-frames and running a reverse image search on some of them, we came across a news report from the Kannada newspaper Prajavani which carried a screengrab from the viral video.

The headline of the reports can be translated as: “Malavalli | Women did not break the bus door: Transport agency staff clarified”. The newspaper spoke to the depot manager Sivakumar, who told them that the bus door was changed since the older one had already reached the stage of removal. The changing of doors was done within the bus stand so that no problems arise for the passengers during the journey, he added.

We also reached out to a bus stand official in Mandya district where the incident happened. He confirmed that the breaking of the bus door had got nothing to do with the large number of female passengers boarding the bus. The door was already in a vulnerable state and needed to be changed, he added.

Therefore, the claim that women passengers in Karnataka broke the door of a KSRTC bus at Malavalli, Mandya, is false. The changing of the broken bus door is in no way related to the excess number of female passengers availing of free bus rides.

The post KSRTC bus door in Mandya didn’t break owing to rush of woman passengers appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

“There are three aspects to the substance and coverage of this debate that have been infuriating.”

“First, the notion that `modest cuts’ to spending are inconsequential. As we’ve sought to make clear in the past few weeks—indeed, the past several years—any deal is a disaster since most government departments and agencies are currently severely underfunded. `Non-defense discretionary spending’ is a bloodless way to refer to the agencies required to ensure clean air, safe food, safe workplaces, and protect Americans from all forms of corporate abuse. These agencies bore the brunt of the Obama-Boehner budgets, were thrashed further by the kleptocratic administration of President Trump, and have seen their purchasing power undercut by inflation. These agencies require redoubled investment rather than capricious cuts, and it is the role of the media to make the reality of the work these agencies do clear to the public that depends upon them.”

“Second is the role of inflation. Spending in fiscal year 2023 was negotiated in calendar 2022, and the nominal amounts negotiated in the fall of 2022 are now going to become ceilings for spending throughout most of 2025 even as it’s likely that inflation will undercut the budget’s actual spending power by 7-10 percent. Additionally, the population of the United States is likely to increase by approximately 1 percent over that time. As such, `flat spending’ implies a further reduction in real government funding per person after a decade of Obama-Boehner austerity, followed by Trump’s assaults on the administrative state. This deal would be a catastrophe for government capacity, and coverage that ignores the role of inflation (hardly a low profile issue in 2023!) is wildly and indefensibly misguided.”

“Third, the notion that the President was trapped under the gun of McCarthy is ridiculous. Because the debt ceiling is an unconstitutional, incoherent excuse for a law and because there is an active lawsuit from the National Association of Government Employees, Biden’s status as a hostage merely reflects an advanced case of Stockholm Syndrome. As many have argued (e.g., read here and here), Biden has a wide number of ways out from the debt ceiling and no legal way to implement it. As we have been emphasizing, the National Association of Government Employees lawsuit is sound, and indeed, has been all but endorsed by the President himself. President Biden and Attorney General Garland have no reason to defend the nonsense which is the debt ceiling, besides a vague sense of formality and tradition driven by elite political etiquette that Republicans have long since abandoned. The media needs to quit deferring to the debt ceiling’s political theater and engage more with the essentially uncontroverted legal experts pointing out that it cannot be implemented in a constitutional manner.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

There are a lot of things you could say about the GOP’s proposed plan to reduce the deficit. But if we want to be more expansive than just calling it “batshit crazy” and washing our hands of the whole clown show, as we think Biden can and should,then we could point out that the GOP plan is an expression of profound hostility to the idea of a federal government that serves anyone besides war profiteers.

Their proposal illustrates the party’s commitment to a government that fails Americans in many important ways, because the party’s only strategy to preserve power is to harness people’s anger and fear. How better to make people fear that things will be taken away from them than by actually taking things away, and then diverting the blame?

The Republican-proposed cuts to discretionary spending would harm millions of people, invariably causing losses of health, home, life, and opportunity. I’ll dig into the specifics below. A helpful visual representation of the proposed cuts from The New York Times estimates that the GOP plan would cut discretionary spending across the board by an average of 18 percent. But the GOP is also claiming that they would spare defense, veterans’ health and border security from those cuts. If you exclude military spending from cuts, then all the other federal departments and agencies would have their budgets cut by 51 percent. At that point, you might as well throw in the towel, because public services are as good as dead.

The Republican-proposed cuts to discretionary spending would harm millions of people, invariably causing losses of health, home, life, and opportunity.

Forget about avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Forget about public infrastructure projects. Forget about federal student aid. Forget about clean air and clean water and cleaning up contaminated lands. Forget about space exploration. Forget about loans for farmers. Forget about food and workplace safety inspections. Forget about growing union power. Forget about cracking down on corporations when they jack up prices or steal wages or spill a bunch of toxic chemicals in your town or oil in the sea. The U.S. government would pretty much solely be an insurance company with a massive army, as no doubt the founding fathers intended. Right?

Now, there’s no good reason for Biden to concede to these agents of chaos masquerading as serious people. Several legal scholars have spent considerable amounts of time charting the least-harmful path out of this thicket. Most recently, eminent legal scholar Laurence Tribe joined the chorus calling for the U.S. to ignore the debt ceiling and continue to pay its bills. But while the GOP’s plan deserves no serious consideration, it is worth talking about how budget cuts harm federal departments and agencies, and by extension, the public.

There’s no good reason for Biden to concede to these agents of chaos masquerading as serious people.

For so many people, the executive branch is basically a black box: its internal mechanisms mysterious, its value unclear. Earlier this spring, 21 federal departments wrote letters laying out explicitly what 22 percent budget cuts would do to their work. (22 percent is the White House Office of Management and Budget’s estimate of the first year of budget cuts under the GOP plans, with the cuts growing deeper each year.) Among other things, these letters make the case for the value of federal agencies to the American people in franker terms than we usually get from the spokespeople of the administrative state.

So, according to the agencies themselves…

The Harms of the GOP Budget Cuts Include:

• The firing of 1,800 food inspectors who conduct mandatory food inspections would cause a shortage of meat, poultry, and eggs available for consumers, and estimated lost production volumes of more than 11.5 billion pounds of meat, 11.1 billion additional pounds of poultry, and over 590 million pounds of eggs, equivalent to a loss of over $89 billion for the industry. It would also cause over $2.2 billion in lost wages for furloughed industry employees.

• Funding cuts would have “dramatic impacts” on western states impacted by drought, including by undermining ongoing programs that support 489 dams and 338 reservoirs delivering water to more than 31 million people and 1 of every 5 western farmers. In just one example, spending cuts would increase the likelihood that the water levels in Lake Mead decline to the point that water allocations from the reservoir are no longer possible, and people could lose power from inadequate amounts of water passing over dams. About 25 million people rely on the water from Lake Mead.

• Funding cuts at Health and Human Services would cause, among many other impacts, over a million households to be unable to afford to heat their homes; a million elderly adults to no longer receive meals they depend on; and hundreds of thousands of children to lose critical early childhood care that’s often necessary for their parents to be able to work.

• Reducing funding for fighting wildfires on public lands by nearly 40 percent across the fire programs, and cutting as many as 1,754 of the 4,468 full-time firefighting positions at Interior, would have devastating ecosystem impact and increase the danger to people in high fire-risk areas. An additional 2,200-2,700 wildland firefighters with the Forest Service would also be furloughed.

• Funding cuts would cut off over one million women, infants, and children from a supplemental nutrition program; non-breastfeeding postpartum women, unhoused and migrant individuals, and children would be the first to lose benefits.

• Funding cuts would allow more species to go extinct, as the Fish and Wildlife Service’s implementation of the Endangered Species Act is already significantly underfunded and “does not keep pace with current demand” for species to receive critical protections to avoid extinction.

• About $156 million in back wages for 135,000 private sector workers would not be recovered because the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division would have to reduce its compliance actions, investigations, and targeted inspections.

• Alaskan Natives whose lands are contaminated by arsenic, asbestos, lead, mercury, pesticides, and various petroleum products would lose a significant new program intended to clean up this contamination.

• Funding cuts to a rental assistance program that serves approximately 1.3 million families would represent a “historically unprecedented loss of existing affordable housing, a breach of federal contracts, and a repudiation of decades of long-term bipartisan federal investment.” Cuts would likely lead to tens of thousands of evictions.

• Funding cuts to the Education Department would impact an estimated 25 million children by cutting more than 60,000 teachers and aids from classrooms serving low income students. It would also decrease aid to all 6.6 million Pell Grant recipients and eliminate Pell Grants for 85,000 students, eliminate FWS financial support for approximately 11,000 students, and eliminate Work-Study financial support for approximately 85,000 students, among other impacts.

And all of this doesn’t even include the damage that the GOP is intending to do to the U.S.’s only piece of climate legislation.

Among the many things you could say about the GOP’s proposed plan to reduce the deficit, then, you could say that it is senselessly cruel, wildly irresponsible, and embarrassingly uninformed.

All of this doesn’t even include the damage that the GOP is intending to do to the U.S.’s only piece of climate legislation.

You could say that it targets the most vulnerable Americans, whether that means vulnerability to wildfires and drought and rising seas, or vulnerability to food and housing insecurity, or to environmental hazards or pollutants, or systemic barriers to education and workplace access, or to wage theft or unsafe working conditions.

You could even say that any child in our underfunded public school system could do better, fairer, and more discerning math. And unlike our political media, children would probably be more likely to cover this calamity as a serious story with real-world impact, rather than assessing it primarily within the context of Biden’s re-election campaign, Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to maintain Speaker, and the stock market.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Hannah Story Brown.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and DOJ Antitrust Division have long served as an essential stop for antitrust experts looking to maximize opportunities, influence, and compensation at BigLaw firms and monopolistic corporations. By spending some time learning the ins and outs of government investigations and enforcement efforts, revolvers are seen by potential corporate employers to be better equipped to assist corporations in antitrust lawsuits against their former government employers.

This well-trodden path of revolvers has weakened enforcement at the agencies, creating a crisis of incentives for officials who want to build up their credentials while in public service but don’t want to do too effective of a job for fear of upsetting potential future corporate employers. But the stakes have changed now that Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter are at the helm of the FTC and Antitrust Division. The agencies are attempting to reverse a 40 year trend of ineffectual antitrust enforcement and rooting out officials who settled into an enforcement complacency that benefited corporations on merger sprees. Big moneyed interests are not pleased with their loosened hold on the antitrust enforcers, and they're doing everything they can to undermine the credibility of these agencies and their leadership.

To this end, the revolvers are speaking loudly in service of their employers’ interests—and corporate media eats it up. Media organizations love to bring on former government officials as expert opinions—especially when those supposed experts served under Democratic administrations and are now attacking progressive antitrust measures. This tactic has become commonplace as the agencies are fulfilling a mandate that has “no more tolerance for abusive actions by monopolies, [or] bad mergers that lead to mass layoffs, higher prices [and] fewer options for workers and consumers alike.” This is the type of antitrust enforcement that Biden has called for and that the American people need and want, but corporations–and the revolvers they employ–do not.

Media organizations love to bring on former government officials as expert opinions—especially when those supposed experts served under Democratic administrations and are now attacking progressive antitrust measures.

These former regulators are rarely described as anything other than ex-officials. The oft-undisclosed truth is that they have glaring conflicts of interest that may account for their aversion to breaking up monopolies, preventing corporate mergers, or implementation of new rules that protect workers and consumers.

Doug Melamed’s Ties To Monopolistic Corporations Are Stronger Than His Public Service Record

Take Douglas Melamed, for instance. Once dubbed by a former colleague the “Michael Jordan of the legal profession”. From Straight Arrow News, to CNBC, to The Seattle Times, to The New York Times, Melamed is regularly quoted in the media as an expert on all things antitrust. In doing so, reporters tend to reference his past experiences as the acting assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division during the high-profile 1990s Microsoft trial, or his current position as a Stanford Law School professor. However, what usually goes unmentioned is Melamed’s long career as a corporate lawyer, assisting would-be monopolies navigate antitrust law in order to secure mergers and acquisitions.

Prior to joining the DOJ in 1996, Melamed spent 25 years at BigLaw firm WilmerHale (f.k.a. Wilmer, Cutler, & Pickering). In his first stint with the firm, Melamed defended corporate clients in cases against regulatory agencies. Melamed represented media conglomerate Capital Cities, which owned ESPN and ABC, in a 1990s lawsuit against the FTC. He and his colleagues managed to convince the FTC that the College Football Association, which was marketing college football games to television networks for millions of dollars, was outside the FTC’s jurisdiction because it was nominally a non-profit entity. As if college football programs are not avid profit-seekers engaged in high-profile and highly remunerative commerce! In other words, Melamed was talented at convincing people to accept absurd arguments on behalf of the powerful.

Melamed spent the bulk of his career helping powerful corporations get even more powerful—i.e., helping Goliaths fend off Davids.

Following his stint at the DOJ, Melamed took his connections and knowledge of government back to WilmerHale to serve as chair of their antitrust practice, where he defended corporations from accusations of anti-competitive practices. For example, Melamed served as lead counsel for Rambus Incorporated in a case seeking to overturn the FTC’s finding that Rambus had engaged in anti-competitive practices. He represented Verizon in its acquisition of MCI and Bayer in its acquisition of Aventis. In short, Melamed spent the bulk of his career helping powerful corporations get even more powerful—i.e., helping Goliaths fend off Davids.

Melamed then left WilmerHale to serve as in-house counsel for tech giant Intel shortly after the company was fined $1.45 billion by the European Commission for anti-competitive practices. Under Melamed’s leadership as Senior Vice President of Intel’s legal department, the company was sued by the FTC for “abusing its market dominance to stifle competition.” Melamed called the suit “misguided and unwarranted” — despite Intel commanding an astounding 81% of the computer chip market. Such a quote is unsurprising from the counsel defending a corporation, but it certainly does raise questions about his efficacy as an antitrust expert in the media today.

The Revolving Door Leads To Big Tech Dollars

Melamed may be the go-to revolver for corporate media, but he’s not the only former antitrust official that has cashed out on his government credentials. Former regulators are often given op-eds to sound the alarm on potential regulation of Big Tech monopolies, despite having (undisclosed) financial interests in those matters.

In 2019, Fiona Scott Morton, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division, penned an op-ed in the Bezos-owned Washington Post titled, “Why ‘breaking Up’ Big Tech Probably Won’t Work.” As The American Prospect pointed out, Scott Morton failed to disclose that she was a consultant for Apple at the time. Scott Morton feigned ignorance, claiming the piece did not warrant a disclosure. Not only is Apple obviously a Big Tech giant, and the break up of one tech giant could lead to industry-wide scrutiny, but Scott Morton also defends Apple in the article, stating, “[...] Apple owned the tablet market in 2011. If a product gets a big share because it is good and popular — but its maker has not behaved anti-competitively toward its rivals — it has not violated our antitrust laws.” Obviously, Scott Morton wasn’t going to mention Apple’s slew of anti-competitive practices in various areas—music streaming, app store rules, Apple Pay—but denying a conflict of interest is absurd on its face. Scott Morton has since gone on to also consult for Amazon, so it’s no wonder that she opposed any break up of Big Tech monopolies.

More recently, former FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “How Congress Can Protect Your Data.” Leibowitz’s bio under the piece only lists his experience as an FTC chair and commissioner, saying nothing of his work with the broadband provider trade group 21st Century Privacy Coalition that includes data collectors Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. The group opposed privacy laws that were rolled back under Trump’s FCC, a move that led to widespread outrage among advocates and consumer groups.

At the time, Leibowitz spoke to CNN about the roll back and said consumer fears were misplaced. CNN did not initially disclose Leibowitz’s financial interest in the matter, before later included a mention of his work with the trade group. In the WSJ article, Leibowitz does ultimately favor increased data protection, but warns that the FTC will “go farther” than Congress if it fails to act and “[FTC] regulation isn’t an optimal approach.” Leibowitz’s undisclosed conflicts of interests leave one to wonder whether he truly thinks legislation (which Big Tech would inevitably lobby Congress to make weaker) is the best approach, or is merely worried that an FTC rule will impact him financially.

Attacks On Progressive Antitrust Are Not Credible

Given what we know about their work history, it comes as no surprise that these revolvers use their media appearances to attack progressive antitrust enforcement. For example, the FTC recently lost its challenge of Meta’s acquisition of Within, the virtual reality company behind a popular fitness app. But Khan said the challenge itself sends a message that enforcers think there is a problem in the market and believes that a loss is still valuable, as it sends a message to Congress that stronger legislation is needed. As Matt Stoller observed following the judge’s ruling, the loss might be a “Pyrrhic victory for big tech and dominant firms […] it’ll be the kind of stinging opinion that a lot of enforcers will cite going forward.”

Melamed, however, called Khan’s train of thought “kind of nutty.” Melamed’s former employer Intel partnered with Meta to use their Wi-fi cards in Meta’s virtual reality headset, but this conflict of interest goes unmentioned. In 2020, when the DOJ was preparing its antitrust lawsuit against Google, Melamed defended the tech giant, stating that Google’s acquisitions were likely lawful and that forcing divestitures should be approached “with great care.” Did he disclose that Intel and Google are partnered on cloud infrastructure and work together on a variety of products? Nope.

Even when regulators don’t get mainstream media appearances, they still find other venues to undermine antitrust leadership in service of their current jobs as corporate lawyers.

Even when regulators don’t get mainstream media appearances, they still find other venues to undermine antitrust leadership in service of their current jobs as corporate lawyers. The legal trade publication Law360 gave a platform to David Gelfand, the deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division under Obama. Gelfand, who has spent the majority of his career as a BigLaw attorney helping corporations complete mergers, used his op-ed to lambast Kanter’s Antitrust Division for blocking too many mergers.

Law360 also published an article that quoted Debbie Feinstein, former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, after her comments at Tulane Law School’s Corporate Law Institute Conference. Feinstein expressed concern that the DOJ is bringing lawsuits to prevent mergers, when previous administrations would have cleared the deals. To its credit, Law360 did mention that Feinstein is a lawyer at Arnold & Porter. However, Law360 does not mention that Arnold & Porter itself has been sued by a different DOJ division, nor that Feinstein was lead counsel for Arnold & Porter’s antitrust team when it worked with O’Melveny & Myers to represent Penguin Random House against the DOJ. Of course Feinstein isn’t in favor of the DOJ’s new direction—it blocked her client’s $2.2 billion deal!

These former Democratic regulators are not alone in their critiques of progressive antitrust enforcement— they’re joined by their Republican counterparts who share an affinity for both monopolies and revolving to the private sector.

Deborah Garza, former Antitrust Division assistant attorney general under George Bush, baselessly called the new antitrust direction an “unholy alliance” between MAGA and progressives. This is absurd on its face, but even more so considering that Trump’ own FTC appointees Chistine Wilson and Noah Phillips relentlessly criticized Khan’s leadership. Wilson, who recently resigned, spent the last of her four year tenure complaining about FTC Chair Lina Khan’s pivot away from the consumer welfare standard. Former FTC Chair Timothy Muris, who previously joined Melamed in Verizon’s legal defense during its MCI acquisition, regularly criticizes Khan’s leadership. It turns out that if you spend your career revolving between representing corporations and regulating corporations, you tend to favor a lax regulatory framework that allows corporate power to flourish.

Conclusion

Many former Democratic regulators have spent their careers practicing a form of antitrust law enforcement that benefits corporations. It is pro-industry and pro-consolidation, so long as firms pinky promise not to raise prices for consumers. This is just one approach to antitrust enforcement — an interpretation that is, in fact, at odds with the Biden administration’s stated goals of expansive antitrust enforcement.

It turns out that if you spend your career revolving between representing corporations and regulating corporations, you tend to favor a lax regulatory framework that allows corporate power to flourish.

Because these former officials are ostensibly Democrats, the media attempts to frame these viewpoints as that of a level-headed expert attempting to rein in his own party’s excesses. As we pointed out in The American Prospect, certain media types love to harp on “friendly fire” from Democratic revolvers, despite their allegiances to corporations over the Democratic party and its goals. It’s clear that Melamed and company are more interested in running cover for corporations with monopolistic intentions than helping Democrats pursue the type of antitrust regulations that Americans want. Those that fail to acknowledge this point when quoting former regulators — especially when contrasting their opinions with those of more progressive antitrust enforcers like Lina Khan — run the risk of losing credibility and laundering conservative legal thought under the guise of neutral “expertise.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by KJ Boyle.

Nearly 700 former Pentagon officials, congressional lawmakers and staffers, and other federal employees now work for major military contractors, primarily as lobbyists, confirming that the revolving door between the U.S. government and the weapons industry is "still spinning rapidly" and must be closed through "legislative and regulatory overhauls."

That's according to Pentagon Alchemy: How Defense Officials Pass Through the Revolving Door and Peddle Brass for Gold, a report published Wednesday by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel.

"The abuse of the revolving door between government service and the private sector can corrupt government decision-making," says the report. "When government officials cash in on their public service by lobbying, advising, or serving as board members and executives for the companies they used to regulate, it undermines public officials' integrity and casts doubt on the fairness of government contracting. This problem is incredibly concerning and pronounced in the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the United States' defense industry."

Warren's analysis found "672 cases in 2022 in which the top 20 defense contractors had former government officials, military officers, members of Congress, and senior legislative staff working for them as lobbyists, board members, or senior executives. In 91% of these cases, the individuals that went through the revolving door became registered lobbyists for big defense contractors."

"The sheer size of America's military budget provides ample and lucrative opportunities for former government officials," the report notes. "Last year Congress gave the DOD over $851 billion in total funding. The DOD is also the largest federal contracting agency: Of the total $692.3 billion in contracts awarded by the federal government in FY 2021, 61% were awarded by DOD amounting to $386.9 billion."

That almost 40% of Pentagon contracts were awarded to just 10 corporations is "unsurprising" given the consolidation of the arms-making business, states the report. "After waves of mergers and acquisitions, competition has decreased significantly—from over 50 firms to just five large rivals—decreasing DOD's ability to choose from a broad range of competitors."

It goes without saying that injecting more competition into the contracting process would not necessarily address the more fundamental problem of escalating military spending, which is what private companies—big and small alike—are feasting on.

The largest war profiteers, however, often hire the most revolving-door lobbyists and put the most ex-government officials on their boards, the analysis points out, increasing their chances of appropriating more public money.

According to the report, Boeing, Raytheon, and General Electric (GE) employed the most former government officials as of last year. Boeing has hired 85, including six high-ranking executives, two board members, and 77 registered lobbyists. Raytheon has hired 64, including one executive, three board members, and 60 registered lobbyists. GE, for its part, has hired 60 revolving-door lobbyists.

Those three corporations are far from alone. Pentagon contractors in general are hiring hundreds of former military and civilian officials from both major parties and across administrations into executive roles, board positions, and lobbyist jobs.

As the report makes clear, "This practice is widespread in the defense industry, giving, at minimum, the appearance of corruption and favoritism, and potentially increasing the chance that DOD spending results in ineffective weapons and programs, bad deals, and waste of taxpayer dollars."

Notably, the Pentagon recently failed its fifth consecutive annual audit while nearly 40 million people in the U.S. languish in poverty.

According to the report:

Current federal ethics laws that are supposed to regulate the revolving door are overly complex and often insufficient to prevent conflicts of interest. Indeed, even though the DOD has improved certain practices, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that DOD could further enhance its compliance efforts by amending regulations to require contractors to demonstrate their employees' compliance with post-government employment lobbying restrictions established in the National Defense Authorization Act. Post-government employment restrictions remain an impossibly confusing "tangled mess" that hinders effective implementation and compliance—and keeps the revolving door spinning.

The revolving door swings both ways. For instance, before U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was nominated by President Joe Biden to lead the Pentagon, the retired Army general was a member of Raytheon's board of directors.

During a Wednesday hearing of her Senate Armed Services subcommittee, Warren questioned Pentagon staff and ethics experts about revolving-door hiring, new revelations about former U.S. government officials working for foreign governments, and the problems posed by current executive branch personnel owning stock in companies affected by their decisions.

The lawmaker reiterated her demand for far-reaching ethics reforms at the Pentagon and across the federal government.

While Warren's Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act aims to increase transparency and combat conflicts of interest throughout Washington, her Department of Defense Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act, introduced in 2019 and again in 2022, is tailored to cleaning up issues at the Pentagon.

As the report explains:

This legislation would impose a four-year ban on giant contractors from hiring DOD officials and prevent them from hiring former DOD employees who managed their contracts. The act would also require defense contractors to submit detailed annual reports to DOD regarding former senior DOD officials who are subsequently employed by contractors. The act also bans senior DOD officials from owning any stock in a major defense contractor and bans all DOD employees from owning any stock in contractors if the employee can use their official position to influence the stock's value. Lastly, the act raises the recusal standard for DOD employees by prohibiting them from participating in any matter that affects the financial interests of their former employer for four years.

"These safeguards would slow the revolving door, improving government ethics and bolstering the integrity of the DOD contracting process—actions that, as this investigation demonstrates, are desperately needed," the report concludes.

Last year, the Institute for Policy Studies' National Priorities Project published a report showing that the U.S. has spent more than $21 trillion on militarization since September 11, 2001.

Citing that analysis, Jacobin's Luke Savage argued at the time that the nation's military spending—now even higher than it was at the height of the Cold War—is not only wasteful but also inherently anti-democratic:

Military spending allocated for 2022 considerably exceeds the cost of five separate Green New Deal bills. For a miniscule fraction of what America spent on the two-decade-long "war on terror," it could have fully decarbonized its electricity grid, eradicated student debt, offered free preschool, and funded the wildly popular and effective Covid-era's anti-poverty child tax credit for at least a decade. Spending public funds so lavishly on war inevitably means not spending them elsewhere, and it's incredible to imagine what even a fraction of the money sucked up every year by America's bloated military-industrial complex could accomplish if invested differently.

Fundamentally, however, the case against the Pentagon's ever-expanding budget is a democratic one. Every year, the government of the world's most powerful country now allocates more than half of its discretionary funds to what is laughably called "defense spending"—regardless, it turns out, of whether the nation is at risk of attack or officially at war.

"Corporate capture of Congress is a problem in most major policy areas," wrote Savage, "but defense contractors and other military concerns have a stranglehold that is arguably unmatched."

Approximately 55% of all Pentagon spending went to private sector military contractors from FY 2002 to FY 2021, according to Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute. If that privatization of funds rate continues this year, weapons dealers can expect to rake in well over $400 billion of the current $858 billion military budget.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

The American Clean Power Association has been billed as "the nation's top renewable energy trade group," but lurking beneath its green luster is a dirty reality.

That's according to the Revolving Door Project, which published a memo on Thursday to expose what is calls ACP's "close ties to the fossil fuel industry and an 'all of the above' energy agenda that allows for massive new fossil fuel development and environmental damage, as long as clean energy also benefits."

While ACP "does represent many clean energy companies, it is also a conglomeration of executives and corporations that are directly and indirectly tied to (and benefit from) the fossil fuel industry," states the memo.

"America needs a strong political force fighting for renewable energy, but American Clean Power doesn't fit the bill."

To take just one recent and prominent example of ACP's pro-fossil fuel advocacy, the group has lobbied for H.R. 1, the so-called "Lower Energy Costs Act" passed last month by House Republicans. Progressives have condemned the legislation they call the "Polluters Over People Act"—a sprawling package of 15 separate bills and two resolutions primarily aimed at deregulating fossil fuel production and exports—as a "giveaway to Big Oil" that threatens to exacerbate the climate and biodiversity crises while saddling U.S. households with higher energy bills.

In addition, prior to the introduction of H.R. 1, ACP championed permitting reform bills proposed last year by Senate Republicans and corporate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia—a coal profiteer and Congress' top recipient of fossil fuel industry cash in the 2022 election cycle.

Other key findings of the 19-page memo include:

• ACP's board has over a dozen members with fossil fuel ties;
• ACP's annual conferences were sponsored by a number of fossil fuel entities;
• Apparent member groups of ACP include Shell, Ameresco, Duke Energy, Exelon, Lockheed Martin, BlackRock, and Amazon;
• ACP operates a "Clean Power PAC" that has received and contributed to many fossil fuel-tied entities;
• Current ACP CEO Jason Grumet co-founded the fossil fuel-friendly Bipartisan Policy Center and influenced the 2005 Energy Policy Act as executive director of the National Commission on Energy; and
• Former ACP CEO (2020-22) Heather Zichal is a revolver and has a long professional history of advancing fossil fuel interests in the name of clean energy.

Because of ACP's green public image, many people were shocked last month when Grumet, the organization's CEO, released a statement praising H.R. 1.

"The Lower Energy Costs Act contains important provisions and reforms that will help advance clean energy in the United States," said Grumet. "This legislation would create a predictable and timely federal permitting framework which is critical to the future development of America's vast clean energy resources."

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has described H.R. 1 as "dead-on-arrival." In the off chance it does reach the Oval Office, President Joe Biden—hardly a friend to the climate justice movement, according to green groups—has vowed to veto what the White House characterizes as "a thinly veiled license to pollute" that "would take us backward."

ACP, meanwhile, has had nothing critical to say about the legislation. In Grumet's words, "We look forward to working with Congress to build on this important effort."

Revolving Door Project, for its part, was not surprised by Grumet's vocal support of the package and unveiled its new memo as ACP "holds a lobby week" in Washington, D.C. "to push for a set of permitting reforms that have been criticized as being too friendly to the fossil fuel industry at the expense of environmental justice communities and climate action across the country."

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said Tuesday at the launch of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "Permit America to Build" campaign that the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a hearing on permitting reform on April 26 and plans to hold additional hearings in May.

With House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the GOP's deficit hawks threatening to withhold their support for raising the nation's arbitrary debt ceiling unless congressional Democrats and Biden agree to their reactionary policy agenda, Capito said that trying to force through all of H.R. 1—legislation the Congressional Budget Office estimates would increase the federal deficit by $2.4 billion from 2023-33—"is a bite of the apple a little bit too big, but if we can narrow down to meaningful permitting reform that might be enough to satisfy some folks."

Revolving Door Project warned Thursday that as GOP operatives pressure Senate Democrats in particular to support legislation designed to "loosen federal permitting rules for fossil fuel projects and allow industry to cut through communities without proper public input, ACP has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for their efforts."

Grumet, for instance, spoke at the same event as Capito earlier this week. Notably, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) recently described the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as "the number one political obstruction in the path of climate progress."

"Supporting an 'all-of-the-above' energy strategy to expand fossil fuels is like pushing for healthier school lunches with a side of cigarettes."

In a Thursday statement, Revolving Door Project's climate research director Dorothy Slater said that "it's easy to take American Clean Power at face value—it would be nice if it was actually the strong industry voice for clean and renewable energy it claims to be."

"But ACP is not that," Slater continued, "and the media has a responsibility to be skeptical about the truthfulness of ACP's intentions considering the economic well-being of its members and leadership is so closely tied to the continuance of the fossil fuel era."

Responding to the memo's findings, Collin Rees, United States program manager at Oil Change International, stressed that "America needs a strong political force fighting for renewable energy, but American Clean Power doesn't fit the bill."

"Supporting an 'all-of-the-above' energy strategy to expand fossil fuels is like pushing for healthier school lunches with a side of cigarettes," said Rees. "Congress and the White House must ignore ACP's fossil fuel boosterism, reject Manchin and the GOP's dirty energy packages, and support renewable energy to help people, not polluters."

That message was echoed by Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's energy justice program.

"Despite its name, American Clean Power is yet another fossil fuel lobbying group trying to trick people into believing its greenwashing," said Su. "Any political leader who claims to care about the planet's future should shun this organization and work with groups truly fighting for just, renewable energy."

"It's disgraceful that we need a report to expose this group and its mendacity," she added, "but thank goodness for it."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Gun control advocates were among the progressives calling for criminal charges on Sunday for a Kansas City, Missouri resident who allegedly shot a Black teenager last week when the 16-year-old mistakenly knocked on his door.

Ralph Yarl reportedly meant to pick up his two younger brothers at a home on 115th Terrace in Kansas City on Thursday evening, but accidentally went to a house on 115th Street and rang the doorbell.

A suspect who has not been identified allegedly opened the door and shot Yarl once in the head and then in the arm after he had fallen to the ground.

Attorneys for Yarl's family say the shooter was a white male.

Yarl was able to run to three different neighbors' houses before finally reaching someone to ask for help, and has been hospitalized with a "life-threatening injury," according to The Guardian.

Protests broke out in the city over the weekend after the suspect was released, under Missouri law, from a "24-hour hold" and allowed to walk free without being charged.

Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves has said the police department is currently compiling evidence and needs a victim's statement in order to press charges, but attorneys for Yarl's family have joined local community members and gun control advocates in demanding a prompt investigation and charges for the suspect.

"There can be no excuse for the release of this armed and dangerous suspect after admitting to shooting an unarmed, non-threatening, and defenseless teenager that rang his doorbell," said civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who has been retained by Yarl's family.

The Kansas City Defender, a local news outlet, reported that community members assembled in front of the house where Yarl was shot on Sunday, holding a protest that "was absolutely unprecedented in this area of Kansas City."

Shannon Watts, founder of the national gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said volunteers with her organization joined the protest, where supporters called on prosecutors to charge the suspect with a hate crime.

Graves said in a statement that police are investigating whether the suspect may be protected legally by Missouri's "stand your ground" law, which permits residents to use deadly force if they believe they are at risk of a crime including a robbery, burglary, or murder. A defendant in a stand your ground case only needs to convince a jury that they believed their safety was at risk before they shot someone, not that they were actually in danger.

Missouri also has a law called the "castle doctrine," which allows a person to use deadly force to protect their home from an intrusion.

Benjamin Crump, another civil rights attorney who is representing Yarl's family, told the Kansas City Star that prosecutors should charge the man regardless of Missouri's pro-gun laws.

"You can't just shoot people without having justification when somebody comes knocking on your door and knocking on your door is not justification," Crump said. "This guy should be charged."

As Common Dreamsreported last year, a study by public health researchers found that stand your ground laws that went into into effect between 2000 and 2016 were linked to an "abrupt and sustained" 11% spike in gun deaths.

Missouri saw one of the most dramatic increases in gun deaths over those years, with a 31% rise.

Civil rights advocate Bernice King noted that justice is "a continuum" and won't be secured in Yarl's case just through criminal charges for the suspect.

Justice, she said, "means the man who did this should be charged AND we need to work for the legislative and heart change to prevent these tragedies."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be impeached by the U.S. House in the wake of ProPublica reporting that exposed the judge's billionaire-funded luxury vacations.

"This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking—almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached," Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who demanded Thomas' resignation last year amid a separate ethics scandal, wrote on Twitter.

"Barring some dramatic change," she added, "this is what the Roberts court will be known for: rank corruption, erosion of democracy, and the stripping of human rights."

The new investigative reporting revealed that Thomas has taken trips funded by billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow "virtually every year" for more than two decades.

Thomas did not disclose any of the vacations, which experts and watchdog organizations said is likely a violation of federal law.

"Thomas failed even to follow the obscenely weak ethics standards on the books for Supreme Court justices," Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, said in a statement.

"If the information in this report is correct—and there is no reason at all to believe that it isn't—and if the point of the United States judiciary is still to neutrally interpret and uphold the law, then it is obvious what should happen next," said Hauser. "The House of Representatives must immediately draw articles of impeachment against Justice Clarence Thomas."

This isn't the first time Thomas has come under fire for failing to adhere to federal disclosure requirements, which were recently strengthened for Supreme Court justices and other federal judges thanks to a pressure campaign led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

Between 1997 and 2007, Thomas failed to disclose income that his wife, right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, received from the conservative Heritage Foundation and other sources. The justice amended his disclosures in 2011, claiming he misunderstood the filing instructions—an explanation that watchdogs met with skepticism.

And while ProPublica's reporting offered the most detailed look yet at Thomas' relationship with Crow, the ties between the two were spotlighted more than a decade ago by The New York Times, which noted in a 2011 story the billionaire "has done many favors for the justice and his wife... helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass, and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group."

"These actions are part of a pattern of corruption that betrays Thomas' deep-seated contempt for the rule of law."

Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs for the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said Thursday that Thomas' repeated failure to disclose gifts from Crow represents "a shameless abuse of power and an affront to the American people."

"Sadly, these actions are part of a pattern of corruption that betrays Thomas' deep-seated contempt for the rule of law. No one is above the law—not even Supreme Court justices," said Edkins. "Our highest court must be held to a higher ethical standard. Congress has a constitutional duty to act quickly by passing a Supreme Court code of ethics and investigating the full extent of Justice Thomas' wrongdoing."

The Supreme Court is the only court in the U.S. that does not currently have a binding ethics code, opening the door to the kinds of conflicts of interest that have plagued the powerful judicial body for decades.

Hauser argued that because the House is highly unlikely to launch impeachment proceedings given the GOP's control of the chamber, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) should "immediately begin extensive investigations into Thomas' violations of ethics laws and norms as well as the broader collapse of the Supreme Court's integrity."

"Anyone who believes that the law is only legitimate if it applies to everyone should understand and endorse that Durbin must immediately investigate these allegations, that the House must immediately draw articles of impeachment, and that if this information proves accurate, Thomas must immediately leave the bench," Hauser said. "Moreover, it should be indisputable that the judiciary as a whole, and the Supreme Court especially, needs far stronger ethical rules and enforcement."

In a statement, Durbin said that Thomas' behavior is "simply inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a justice on the Supreme Court."

"The ProPublica report is a call to action," he added, "and the Senate Judiciary Committee will act."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The United States is in the middle of a long-overdue resurgence in labor organizing, antipathy to corporate power, and class analysis. This is terrifying to business executives and the ultra-rich, especially those affiliated with the Democratic Party. What was once the party of Bill Clinton sounds more and more like the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt again, as ever-greater numbers of Democratic voters bring back good-old American "us vs. the bosses" economic populism.

I'm no psychoanalyst. But I do know that when people have an anxiety which they can't say out loud, they tend to sublimate it into public anger about something else. Many wealthy Democrats don't want to say out loud that they're mad about growing worker power, or they'll be correctly labeled union-busters and oligarchs by their co-partisans. So instead, they've begun to scream about things that are only somewhat related, and much, much sillier: work-from-home policies and "quiet quitting" (a term I don't think I've ever heard an actual worker use unironically.)

Over the last two years, we've seen op-ed after op-ed after study after op-ed claiming white-collar workers absolutely must stop working from home and get back into the office, under their manager's watchful and loving eye, as soon as possible. The New York Times published a representative entry in the genre on Wednesday, an op-ed entitled "Is Working From Home Really Working?" (The metaphysics implied by the question is not explored in the op-ed.)

Many wealthy Democrats don't want to say out loud that they're mad about growing worker power, or they'll be correctly labeled union-busters and oligarchs by their co-partisans.

The piece is written by Steven Rattner, a billionaire who is Michael Bloomberg's personal money manager. Rattner once settled a combined $16.2 million worth of lawsuits over running a pay-to-play scheme with the New York state pension fund, and was banned from the financial services industry for two years. All of this was omitted from his bio, because why let defrauding the elderly keep a man from the most-prized real estate in New York journalism?

Rattner is worried that the pandemic has changed American job habits for the worse, most especially by allowing desk workers to work from home. "The question lurking in the minds of many with whom I've spoken (as well as my own)," Rattner writes, "is 'Has America gone soft?''"

No, America has not gone soft. (And as long as we're talking psychoanalysis, what a choice of words!) American workers have just started getting the barest minimum of a few lucky breaks. But that is terrifying to Rattner and his fellow moguls, so they need some sort of rational argument for why these bare scraps of power are actually bad for everyone.

If Rattner and pals could just rationalize their anxiety about their employees working from home, then they wouldn't have to think about what that anxiety indicates about who they really are. If working from home truly is bad, then maybe Rattner and pals actually aren't the beneficiaries of decades, if not centuries, of class dominance!

Unfortunately for Rattner, his argument in the Times is hilariously unpersuasive. He can't manage to articulate a good case for forbidding work from home. And he can't rationalize away his agita about losing power over workers, because the current rebalancing is just and overdue.

If working from home truly is bad, then maybe Rattner and pals actually aren't the beneficiaries of decades, if not centuries, of class dominance!

Rattner's best evidence against flexible work policies is (tellingly) a string of anecdotes about his fellow business elites' feelings. According to Rattner, JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg all feel like their employees are less productive when they work from home.

Okay. So what? These aren't rigorous, peer-reviewed studies, they're the subjective feelings of CEOs who have obvious, vested interests in directly monitoring their employees — if the boss can come around to your desk at any time, it's a lot harder to complain about him. (Also, I thought Zuckerberg's whole pitch for the Metaverse was working wherever you want?) On the flip side, many workers would say they are actually more productive working from home, which is borne out by data collected by Stanford Professor Nicholas Bloom.

More to the point, even if JPMorganChase, Salesforce, and Meta employees are less productive when they're at home, what's it matter? These are multibillion-dollar companies with monopolistic or oligopolistic positions. Their product quality hasn't suffered. And there's been no connection between productivity and wages for decades now. Sure, the CEOs themselves want their workers to be more productive, but that's only a relevant social goal to those CEOs, not the average Times reader.

Rattner does try to make the reader care…through some of the funniest slippery slope arguments I've seen in ages. He warns that the now-shuttered Silicon Valley Bank wrote in its annual report last month that it "may experience negative effects of a prolonged work-from-home arrangement." Yeah, Steve, I'm sure that's what did in SVB. The interest rate hikes, undiversified depositor base, and tech winter had nothing to do with it. I'm sure the lack of a chief risk officer barely mattered. And pay no attention to those payouts to insiders either. We all know that employees watching YouTube on the clock is what causes bank runs.

His other slippery slope invokes the corporate class's go-to justification for terrible ideas these days: you don't want us to lose to China, do you? "The Chinese expression '996' means working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. While the Chinese government has been trying to curb this practice as part of a series of labor market reforms, in my many interactions with businessmen and investors there, I still find the prevailing work ethic extraordinary," Rattner writes.

So by Rattner's own admission, China is also trying to improve its work-life balance, and Chinese business leaders also find this irritating. Sounds like our nations are striving toward the same policy! However one feels about China, I really don't think that the decisive factor of 21st-century Great Power competition will be whether American desk workers get to work from home sometimes. There are a few dozen potential military conflicts, weapons technologies, and international trade agreements that seem a bit more relevant, no?

And as long as we're doing international comparisons, let's look at the U.S.'s fellow liberal democracies. Americans famously work more hours with fewer vacations and worse benefits than our peers in Europe. Rattner points out that Europeans have returned to the office at higher rates than Americans — before noting that Europeans tend to live in smaller homes than Americans, making work-from-home less comfortable in the first place. I'd add that European countries also generally have more wealth equality, stronger unions, better regulation, more leisure time, and far larger welfare states. If working from home feels like clawing a tiny bit of your life back from your boss, then Europeans are simply a lot farther along in clawing their lives back than Americans.

Yet Rattner apparently has never considered that spending less of one's life at work improves one's life a whole lot. "Less output — whether a consequence of fewer hours or lower efficiency — eventually means a lower standard of living (or a less quickly rising one)," he warns.

If working from home feels like clawing a tiny bit of your life back from your boss, then Europeans are simply a lot farther along in clawing their lives back than Americans.

This is a classic case of an economist using a technical proposition to imply a more philosophical argument that he can't support on its own merits. Sure, less total economic output might eventually mean that American companies will, say, develop products more slowly. But is that really what matters the most to most people? Doesn't a high standard of living also mean more leisure time? Which would improve the average American's life more: a slightly better iPhone camera, or more time with their families?

Rattner also conveniently forgets about how wages have been untethered from rising productivity for decades now. Similarly, the best wage gains in 30 years have coincided with the rise of work-from-home policies. And companies don't seem to be suffering, given record corporate profits.

The most telling lines of Rattner's piece are the ones that have nothing to do with working from home at all. He informs us that a Wall Street Journal study found 38 percent of workers and managers say the importance of work diminished to them during the pandemic, and notes that Americans now have about $900 billion more in savings than they did before the Covid-19 stimulus bills. Neither of these facts has anything to do with work-from-home policies, which are the focus of Rattner's argument.

The fact that they're in the piece implies that Rattner's real issue isn't flexible work; it's general worker power. If people care less about work post-pandemic, they'll be less likely to accept exploitation from their employers. If workers have more savings, especially amid a hot job market, then they're better able to use their best countermeasure against their bosses: threatening to quit. (That is, threatening to actually quit, not threatening to…just do the job they were hired for.)

The average American absolutely does not want to be working as much as they are, but they simply have no choice with the way our society has been deliberately constructed.

This is the real terror for Rattner; that workers aren't going to put up with whatever he and his fellow bosses throw at them anymore. Castigating work-from-home policies is more socially acceptable in Democratic circles than saying "I should be able to force my employees to do whatever I want." But if Rattner won his oh-so-minor victory against flexible work policies, it wouldn't satisfy the real source of his frustration.

He has a telling turn of phrase right after his obligatory reference to John Maynard Keynes' prediction of the 15-hour workweek. The United States could have taken the path Keynes predicted, Rattner writes, but "Instead, we chose to keep working in order to enjoy greater material rewards."

No, Steven, "we" didn't "choose" that. Your pals in the C-Suites and Congress chose it for the rest of us. And when we protested, you crushed unions, deregulated industry, and shriveled employment opportunities through corporate trade deals. The average American absolutely does not want to be working as much as they are, but they simply have no choice with the way our society has been deliberately constructed.

At long last, though, they're starting to change the rules of society and rebalance the scales in the workplace. Whether that happens in office buildings or home desks, it isn't going to stop. For their own mental health, Rattner and his friends better grow up and get used to it.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Max Moran.

Taking aim at "conflicts of interest and flat-out falsehoods in economics reporting and the so-called experts who perpetuate them," the Revolving Door Project on Wednesday launched a new website, Hack Watch, to name and shame Wall Street-friendly experts pushing often harmful neoliberal financial theories as absolute truths.

"Anyone who claims they have the absolute answer to every economic question isn't being honest with you. They're being a hack, and they shouldn't be considered serious sources," Max Moran, the personnel team director at Revolving Door Project (RDP), said in a statement introducing the new site.

"Economists like to sound certain, and they like to ridicule anyone who disagrees with them."

A follow-up to RDP's wildly successful Hack Watchnewsletter—which began by scrutinizing former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, often called "Wall Street's favorite economist," and his cryptocurrency partnerships—the website features an FAQ section on the federal debt as well as a "Trope Tracker" meant to dispel "common fallacies, falsehoods, and framing mistakes in economics coverage."

"Economists like to sound certain, and they like to ridicule anyone who disagrees with them," said Moran. "This can incline reporters, especially reporters who worry that they don't understand economics very well, to defer to economists unquestioningly."

Moran continued:

In the neoliberal age, economic analysis (from the right kind of neoclassical economists) was considered scientific truth. This is nonsense. Economics isn't a hard science, it's a method of analysis—a set of tools that help us to understand a few particular ways of how the economy works. Deciding what's actually right or wrong for the economy is always, ultimately, a matter of values and philosophy, which we express through politics.

"Top hacks" who already have bios on the new site include Summers, 2009 auto industry bailout architect Steven Rattner, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget president Maya McGuineas, and senior vice president Marc Goldwein.

"Economics isn't a hard science, it's a method of analysis—a set of tools that help us to understand a few particular ways of how the economy works."

"When these hacks receive air time, they often present the existing socio-economic order as a natural phenomenon, softly echoing Margaret Thatcher's famous 'no alternative' declaration," said Dylan Gyauch-Lewis,who co-leads the Hack Watch project, in a reference to the former right-wing British prime minister's infamous neoliberal slogan.

"In a time of crisis after crisis, we cannot afford to restrict the public's imagination to the world as it was in 1992," Gyauch-Lewis asserted. "The staid old guard not only restricts the public conception of what economic policy can be, it misleads about what that view already is."

"To allow the same few Clintonian New-Democrats to monopolize discourse does viewers, policymakers, and the world a great disservice," he added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The post Michigan Opens the Door to Restoring Union Power appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

Commissioner Christine Wilson's "noisy exit" from the Federal Trade Commission officially has an end date. On March 2, she submitted her official resignation to President Biden announcing she will step down on the last day of the month, and she couldn't help but take some final shots at her apparent nemesis, Chair Lina Khan. Evidently, Wilson still has a bad case of "Lina Khan Derangement Syndrome."

Wilson doubled down on the grandstanding and baseless accusations she lodged in the Wall Street Journal last month, where she claimed Khan has abused government power (the details of which Wilson conveniently claims she cannot disclose), ignored ethics rules (an idea put forth by the very monopolies avoiding regulation), and flaunted the due process rights of Facebook (though both the Commission and a judge determined Khan need not recuse herself). These accusations are, of course, without merit. Wilson can't be outright in stating her real issue with Khan's leadership—the fact that the FTC is now aggressively cracking down on the entrenched monopolies that have flourished under both Wilson's and her predecessor's watch.

Wilson's Record: Deregulation and Corporate Consolidation

No stranger to the revolving door, Wilson joined BigLaw firm Kirkland & Ellis after her first stint in the FTC as Chief of Staff for former Chair Timothy Muris, who established an "economics-driven antitrust" agenda at the FTC. Muris, himself a student of the right-wing jurisprudence crafted by Robert Bork, focused on deregulation and allowing monopolies to flourish so long as they did not directly harm consumers. This approach to antitrust—if it can even be called antitrust—began in the 1980's and led to the widespread adoption of the consumer welfare standard, a notion that mergers should only be challenged if they will cause prices to rise. Many economists and historians have pushed back against the efficacy of this criterion, arguing that it is too narrow in its assessment of economic impact and largely favors big business. As a result of the consumer welfare standard, regulators abandoned the antitrust tradition that took on monopolies like Standard Oil and the railroad industry, leading to the widespread corporate concentration we have today.

A quintessential revolving door figure, Wilson's tenure was only useful to her job prospects once she decided it was time to leave the FTC.

Since the emergence of the consumer welfare standard, 75% of industries are more concentrated and markups have increased from 21% to 61%. One would be hard pressed to claim this has been a benefit to consumers. Muris mentored other key FTC regulators and since leaving the agency, helped to establish a pipeline for would-be antitrust experts entering public service through the Antonin Scalia Law School, which is also home to the monopolist-funded Global Antitrust Institute.

After leaving Kirkland, Wilson went in-house at Delta Air Lines before being appointed FTC commissioner by President Trump in 2018. In a clear summation of her views towards antitrust and regulation, Wilson's White House biography described her as "an advocate of the fundamental principle that competition—not regulation—is the best protection for consumers" and her record reflects this attitude. She doesn't believe in regulation, yet she accepted a job as one of the nation's competition regulators.

Throughout her tenure as commissioner, Wilson routinely voted against taking actions against corporations for anticompetitive behavior and lawsuits to block corporate mergers. In fact, Wilson's opinion of the FTC's regulatory role often differed from even her Republican colleagues on the Commission, making her complaints about Lina Khan's so-called radical approach even less credible. For example, Wilson parted from the rest of the Commission, including Republican Chairman fellow Muris protege Joseph Simons and Republican Commissioner Noah Phillips, in a 2020 enforcement action to block the merger of the two largest coal mining companies in the United States. Again breaking from her Republican colleagues, Wilson was the lone dissenting vote in the FTC's 2020 lawsuit to block Procter & Gamble's killer acquisition of a razor blade competitor.

Throughout her tenure as commissioner, Wilson routinely voted against taking actions against corporations for anticompetitive behavior and lawsuits to block corporate mergers.

In addition to her insistence that anticompetitive mergers be waived through, Wilson has dissented against proposed rules that would make the economy more fair and are popular with the American people. Most recently, Wilson opposed the FTC's proposed rule to ban noncompete clauses, which suppress wages and limit labor mobility. Like most actions taken by Khan's revamped FTC, the ban is broadly popular among employed Americans, but presumably less so with the pharmaceutical companies, wholesale trades, and private equity firms that Wilson represented while at Kirkland & Ellis. In October 2022, Wilson dissented regarding a proposed rule regarding "junk fees" aimed at saving U.S. consumers billions on exploitative charges. President Biden highlighted his administration's crackdown on junk fees during the State of the Union and subsequent polls showed overwhelming bipartisan support for these actions. If Wilson had her way with the FTC's rulemaking capacity, Americans would be stuck making low wages, in jobs they don't like, while simultaneously shelling out extra dollars to corporations for services they don't want.

Wilson's Own Conflicts of Interest

Wilson's record demonstrates a concerted effort to weaken the FTC from within. But she can still do plenty of damage from the outside as she looks to return to the private sector. Like Noah Phillips, who left the FTC to join BigLaw firm Cravath Swaine & Moore to assist in the defense of monopolists like Facebook, Google and Amazon, Wilson is poised to return to the world of BigLaw to defend corporate clients.

The Revolving Door Project has filed a number of Freedom of Information Act requests seeking to bring to light Wilson's post-employment plans. Concerningly, when we sought Noah Phillip's post-employment notification statement back in the fall, the FTC redacted the name of his then-future employer. The FTC FOIA Office cited Commissioner Phillips' "right to privacy," despite the information being expressly relevant to Phillip's status as a public figure. We hope that the FTC does not make the same mistake twice and obscure vital information about Wilson's plans. As Wilson continues her duties at the FTC for the rest of the month, the public deserves to know how her decisions might conflict with her future employment plans and corporate clients those plans entail.

The fact is, regardless of where she lands after the FTC, Commissioner Wilson has already faced potential conflicts of interest during her tenure. The most glaring example came in 2019 when Wilson was part of the majority in a 3-2 vote to allow Bristol-Myers Squibb's acquisition of Celgene. Despite previously receiving compensation from Bristol-Myers Squibb for legal services, Wilson did not recuse herself from the case. This is a cut-and-dry ethics problem. Less clear cut, but equally problematic, are the aforementioned examples of her positions towards junk fees and noncompetes. While these are broad FTC rules that apply to a range of industries, the corporations that previously employed Wilson stand to lose out if these rules are enforced. For example, Wilson was employed by Delta prior to joining the FTC. When Biden announced the administration's initiatives to crack down on junk fees, Delta Air Lines' Chief Legal Officer announced that the company would file a formal comment on the FTC's rule and claimed it would "create quite a bit of confusion for consumers."

Are we expected to believe that Wilson's history with Delta had no impact whatsoever on her position towards junk fees? These "legal and yet still obviously problematic" conflicts of interest highlight the problem with the revolving door and underscore the need for more stringent ethics practices regarding recusals.

A Loud Exit for Lousy Reasons

Wilson's tenure was filled with disingenuous complaints about her Democratic colleagues and projection regarding ethics violations, and her resignation letter is simply more of the same. Wilson claims Khan has "scorned and sidelined" FTC staff because of Khan's 2021 moratorium on speaking engagements by staff. This policy stemmed from the severe understaffing and increased merger caseload, not from a lack of confidence in the staff, as Wilson baselessly alleges. It's a bit surprising that Wilson took issue with this attempt to focus resources and work hours on merger enforcement, given the fact that she goes on to lament the decline in enforcement actions in calendar year 2021.

Wilson's tenure was filled with disingenuous complaints about her Democratic colleagues and projection regarding ethics violations, and her resignation letter is simply more of the same.

Wilson cites this enforcement decline to claim that, under Khan's leadership, the agency is less productive than it should be. Notably, the numbers of mergers doubled in 2021. It's unsurprising that, given the lack of staff to evaluate all of these mergers, the FTC focused on quality over quantity. Furthermore, it can take months for the FTC to initiate action against a merger. For example, Illumina filed its acquisition of Grail in September of 2020, but the FTC didn't file its complaint until March 2021. Of course, Wilson is aware of both factors, but is obfuscating the full context in an attempt to delegitimize Chair Khan's necessarily aggressive approach. Wilson also decided to cite calendar year figures, rather than the standard fiscal year, because those numbers are less favorable to her argument.

It's worth mentioning that Wilson's focus on raw enforcement numbers misses one of the most significant impacts of Khan's leadership — her reputation. Simply having Khan at the helm of the FTC is enough to prevent major corporate mergers because they know Khan will fight to block them. Shell and Exxon recently abandoned a $240 million joint pipeline venture because the FTC issued a second request for information about the merger. A merger between two major New York hospitals was dropped after the FTC began investigating its potential effect on healthcare costs and wages. Having Lina Khan as Chair of the FTC acts as a preventative measure against mergers and acquisitions, often negating the need for enforcement actions.

Conclusion

Christine Wilson leaving the FTC is good news for anyone who cares about effective antitrust enforcement. A quintessential revolving door figure, Wilson's tenure was only useful to her job prospects once she decided it was time to leave the FTC.

Wilson leaving the FTC is good news for anyone who cares about effective antitrust enforcement.

Bork's theory of antitrust, perpetuated by Tim Muris and continued by the likes of Wilson, led to forty years of corporate consolidation and soaring profit margins. Wilson is a "habitual naysayer" according to former DOJ's Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer, so it's unsurprising that she has dedicated her parting letter to complaining about Lina Khan. It's Wilson's way of setting the foundation for Congressional Republicans to justify investigations into Khan's leadership now that they are in the majority.

In that vein, the Bork-Muris-Wilson tradition has come full circle—the Wall Street Journal recently gave Robert Bork Jr. space to argue that Congress should investigate Khan, citing Wilson throughout the op-ed. We don't yet know where Wilson will land once she officially resigns, but we welcome her departure and eagerly await more information on the identity of her next BigLaw or corporate employer.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by KJ Boyle.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding, a move that was welcomed by some advocates as an opportunity for the nation's highest court to protect American consumers from a lower court ruling.

The justices will take up the case, Community Financial Services Association v. CFPB, after a panel of three U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges appointed by former President Donald Trump last year sided with the payday lending industry in the ruling by questioning the federal agency's funding model and thereby its authority.

At issue is whether the CFPB's annual funding via the Federal Reserve and not Congress violates the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution. Critics of the October ruling argued that the CFPB's funding mechanism was designed to ensure the agency's independence.

The Biden administration, backed by Democratic attorneys general in 21 states, argues that the 5th Circuit Court's ruling "threatens the validity of all past CFPB actions."

\u201cDespite years of desperate attacks from Republicans & corporate lobbyists, the constitutionality of @CFPB & its funding structure have been upheld. \n\nIf the Supreme Court follows precedent, it will strike down the Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision before it throws our economy into chaos.\u201d

— Elizabeth Warren (@Elizabeth Warren) 1677514309

First proposed by then-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB was established in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in the wake of the 2007-08 global financial crisis. Consumer advocates warn that the 5th Circuit's ruling threatens the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve, as well as agencies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the National Credit Union Administration, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Farm Credit Administration, and the Office of Financial Research.

Consumer advocates reacted to Monday's news by saying the U.S. Supreme Court now has an opportunity to correct what they say is the mistaken logic of the lower court ruling.

"There is no judicially cognizable limiting legal principle that distinguishes between the 5th Circuit's harebrained assault on the CFPB and potential challenges to Social Security or other financial regulators which are funded outside of the annual appropriations process," warned Jeff Hauser, executive director of the watchdog group Revolving Door Project.

Maria Langholz, communications director at the online advocacy group Demand Progress, welcomed the high court's acceptance of the case.

"We are pleased to see that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this important case and expect a correction of the 5th Circuit's misguided attacks on the CFPB," she said in a statement. "In the past twelve years, the CFPB has proven itself as a fierce defender of consumers against unscrupulous creditors that decimated our economy and wreaked havoc on people's lives. The Supreme Court should reject the Fifth Circuit's unprecedented ruling, restoring stability to the marketplace and preserving the CFPB's ability to protect the American people."

\u201cIf the 5th Circuit is correct that the CFPB is funded unconstitutionally, many other federal agencies\u2014including the Federal Reserve\u2014are also unconstitutional. \n\nSo are federal programs like Social Security and Medicare that are funded in perpetuity. https://t.co/qjVIeiQ465\u201d

— Mark Joseph Stern (@Mark Joseph Stern) 1677508306

"Now that it has taken up the case, SCOTUS must move swiftly to overturn this dangerous opinion that could prevent financial regulators, including the Federal Reserve, from doing their jobs to protect American businesses and consumers."

Revolving Door Project researcher Vishal Shankar called the 5th Circuit's ruling "a naked attempt by corporate fraudsters to destroy the only cop on the beat protecting consumers.

Shankar continued:

The case was originally brought by predatory payday lenders and is being supported by giant lobbying groups like the Chamber of Commerce, whose members and executives have a shameless history of breaking the law and ripping off consumers. Multiple Republican lawmakers who have praised the 5th Circuit's ruling—and the far-right judge who wrote it—have taken large financial contributions from these corporate rip-off artists and lobbying giants.

"Following the money confirms what we all know to be true: this case has nothing to do with the constitutional separation of powers and everything to do with destroying an overwhelmingly popular law enforcement agency that has already returned over $13.5 billion in relief to consumers from corporate fraudsters," Shankar added.

"If the Supreme Court has any respect left for the rule of law," he said, "it should overturn the 5th Circuit's radical act of right-wing judicial activism."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday nominated a private equity executive and former Mastercard CEO to lead the World Bank, drawing furious backlash from climate and anti-corruption campaigners who said the pick would ensure the key global financial institution remains a tool of corporate interests and funder of climate chaos.

Ajay Banga's employment history, touted as exemplary by the White House, was the primary source of concern for advocates who were hoping Biden would replace outgoing World Bank head David Malpass—a Trump appointee who recently came under fire for climate denial—with a public servant dedicated to combating the climate crisis, global poverty, and skyrocketing income and wealth inequality.

Before becoming vice chairman of General Atlantic—which one watchdog described as a "rapacious international private equity firm"—Banga worked at Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Citibank. Banga also served on Dow Chemical's board of directors and as chair of the International Chamber of Commerce, a powerful corporate lobbying organization.

"Nothing in Banga's resume inspires confidence that he will turn the World Bank away from a path of neocolonialism and predation by Global North corporations upon Global South countries," said Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser, alluding to the body's history of pushing austerity, advocating for the privatization of critical resources such as water, and financing oil and gas projects.

"Sadly, a vision that those who govern best are those that have profited the most from deregulation, economic predation, and the shrinking of the public sphere seems to be winning out in the Biden administration now. Indeed, this vision, we have argued, is what guides Biden's new Chief of Staff, Jeffrey Zients," Hauser continued. "Biden and [Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen should be ashamed of this choice. Our message in the past was to figure out how to expeditiously fire David Malpass. Our message now is to retract this nomination and simply do better."

Collin Rees, the U.S. program co-manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement Thursday that Biden's selection of Banga is "deeply disappointing."

"This moment demands a World Bank leader who will prioritize the urgency of the climate crisis, not another Big Business executive with no experience in development, environmental work, or the public sector," Rees added. "Banga's long career at predatory banks and corporations does not inspire confidence that he would transform the World Bank into an institution that can work for people and the planet. On the contrary, it's sadly ironic that his past work as a Nestlé executive aligns with the World Bank's damaging history of water privatization."

"He represents U.S. corporations rather than the needs of 8 billion people around the world."

Since the World Bank's inception in 1944, the U.S.—the institution's largest shareholder—has chosen its leader, a "gentleman's agreement" that critics say is deeply undemocratic and partly responsible for the bank's historic fealty to corporate power.

Banga must be confirmed by the World Bank's board, a step that is widely seen as a forgone conclusion given the outsized power the U.S. wields.

Earlier this month, a coalition of civil society organizations urged Yellen and World Bank directors to push for an end to the body's "financing for fossil fuels, industrial animal agriculture, and activities that harm biodiversity."

The coalition also demanded that the World Bank reject "misguided approaches to private finance" and "regressive" policy approaches such as cuts to public services.

But advocates fear their calls for transformative changes at the World Bank will be stymied by the elevation of Banga, who "has no background in public service, mitigating climate change, promoting sustainable agriculture, reducing poverty, or supporting a just energy transition," as Friends of the Earth's Kate DeAngelis put it.

"We don't need another World Bank president who will further corporate interests like fossil fuels and industrial agriculture. The bank should be striving for just, equitable development as part of its vision and purpose to confront global challenges," DeAngelis said. "He represents U.S. corporations rather than the needs of 8 billion people around the world."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

As all eyes were on Ukraine and Chinese balloons in the sky, the Biden administration seemingly shifted America’s longstanding opposition to Israel starting a disastrous war with Iran.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Sunday that “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with [in regards to Iran] and we’ve got their back” — a thinly veiled reference to military action.

These comments do not appear to be outliers. After Israel struck a defense compound in Iran on January 29, the Biden administration uncharacteristically hinted to reporters that the Israeli operation was part of a new joint effort by the U.S. and Israel to contain Tehran’s nuclear and military ambitions. When Secretary of State Tony Blinken was asked about it a day later, he offered no criticism and no concern for the destabilizing potential of the strikes, let alone a condemnation. Instead, he offered what amounts to a defense and justification of the Israeli strike: “[It is] very important that we continue to deal with and work against as necessary the various actions that Iran has engaged in throughout the region and beyond that threaten peace and security.”

A senior Biden administration official tells me that this does not signify a major shift in policy, but, without a public walk-back, such assurances leave much to be desired. From George W. Bush to Barack Obama to even Donald Trump, the U.S. government has sought to prevent Israel from bombing Iran since Washington risked getting sucked into that war — and the end result would most likely be a severely destabilized Middle East and an Iran with a nuclear weapon.

Bush Jr. refused to sell Israel specialized bunker-busting bombs and denied giving Israeli leaders a green light to bomb Iran in 2008, effectively blocking the Israeli plan. President Obama made his opposition to an Israeli strike public, telling CNN in 2009 that he is “absolutely not” giving Israel a green light to attack Iran. The fear of a surprise Israeli attack was so significant during the Obama years that a senior Pentagon official asked to have the moon cycle included in his daily intelligence brief since a unilateraln Israeli attack was deemed more likely to occur during particular moon phases. At one point, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the unusual step of going to the podium in 2012 to condemn Israel’s assassination of an Iranian scientist due to its potentially destabilizing consequences.

And when the Israelis pushed American presidents to take military action, various elements of the U.S. government pushed back — even under Donald Trump. According to Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Trump to strike against Iran after he had lost the 2020 election. Milley resisted, telling Trump at one point that “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war.”

A lot has clearly changed in the past years and months. Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, and, while Biden promised to return to it, the deal is still in limbo. Power in Iran, in turn, shifted back to the conservative hardliners, who fumbled the nuclear talks while increasing the regime’s repression of the Iranian people. This then led to widespread protests and the most significant challenge to the clerical regime in more than a decade.

One thing hasn’t changed, however: War with Iran will be disastrous for the region, for the United States — and for the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom and dignity.

Yet, this appears to be the direction in which the Biden team is going — perhaps inadvertently — by caving to Israel’s longstanding position to deal with Iran’s nuclear program militarily rather than diplomatically. (Incidentally, Netanyahu has been caught on tape boasting that it was he who convinced Trump to quit the Iran nuclear deal.)

This does fit a pattern, however, in which the one area where Biden has most consistently followed Trump’s Middle East policy has been on Israel. Biden has refused to reverse almost all major policy shifts in favor of Israel that Trump put in place – from moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, to recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights (which exposes the blatant double standard in Biden asserting that Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory threatens the “rules-based order”), to embracing and seeking to expand the Abraham Accords, a measure that put the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution by explicitly “moving beyond” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than seeking to resolve it.

Despite this Trump-like deference to Israel — or perhaps precisely because of it — Israel’s Minister of Diaspora affairs did not mince his words slamming the United States when U.S. Ambassador Nides issued a benign criticism of ongoing plans to weaken Israel’s justice system. “Mind your own business,” Amichai Chikli told the U.S. representative via Israeli radio. He later tweeted it as well, just to make sure the message was received by Washington.

Ironically, that is good advice. An America that minds its own business — and by extension prioritizes its own interests — would not only stop undermining its own credibility by condemning Russian illegal annexations while enabling Israeli ones, but it would also block any Israeli attempt to drag America into a disastrous war in the Middle East.

The United States already has its hands full with international crises. Between seeking to defeat Russia in Ukraine and battling China by strangling its high-tech industries, America simply doesn’t have the bandwidth for an Israeli-initiated war with Iran. As Harvard professor and Quincy Institute Distinguished Fellow Stephen Walt told me in an email, “This is lunacy.”

Perhaps Biden should take to heart the true meaning of Minister Chikli’s dismissive advice.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Trita Parsi.

A passenger who recently left China who gave only the surname Su said people she knows are all reporting the same phenomenon.

"If you are due to get on a plane [leaving China], you will get a call from the local police station the day before, asking in great detail where you are going and when you are coming back," Su said.

"I inquired among my friends today, and they said they had all gotten calls from police stations where their household registration is, and asking them when they're coming back," she said.

"If you don't pick up the phone ... they won't let you go through immigration the next day."

The anecdotal reports come as police across China are cracking down on telephone and forced labor scams in Cambodia and other southeast Asian countries, according to the official Minsheng Tianxia account on NetEase.

Police in the central province of Hubei announced on Feb. 7 that non-emergency and non-essential travel to Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Turkey, among other countries, is now banned.

Anyone with an emergency reason for travel must provide detailed documentary evidence to their local police station before they can leave, according to the Minsheng Tianxia post.

Police reviewing travel plans

A Hubei resident who gave only the surname Zhang said the announcement is in line with reports he has heard, too.

"Local police stations are carrying out strict review processes for people leaving China, particularly if they're going to Thailand, Cambodia or other Southeast Asian countries," Zhang said.

"Right now, the airlines transmit your details to your local police station as soon as you buy your ticket," he said.

A post to the social media platform Douyin appeared to corroborate the reports.

"Official news is that going abroad is going to get harder in 2023," the post said. "This is due to the Telecommunications Fraud Law which took effect from Dec. 1. The law clearly stipulates [which departments] are responsible for managing overseas travel."

The post predicted that government departments “will probably allow the neighborhood committees to count whether residents can have passports or not, or even make them turn them in," the post said. "That would be the 'unified management of the documents' mentioned in the [law]."

More power to grassroots level

Chinese police stations have long held the power to prevent overseas travel, but the new rules appear to have devolved such decisions to a more local level, following new rules granting law enforcement powers to "grassroots" government agencies from July 2021.

Bans on nonessential travel also featured heavily during the stringent lockdowns, mass quarantines and compulsory testing of the zero-COVID policy, which ended in early December following nationwide protests.

In May 2022, reports emerged on social media that border police in the southern city of Guangzhou were questioning arriving Chinese citizens about their overseas activities and confiscating or clipping their passports, invalidating them.

Social media reports last month said the Exit-Entry Bureaus across China have now transferred the power to control overseas travel to community committees and police stations, with travelers required to gather 15 items of documentary evidence including labor contracts, return tickets and a commitment not to participate in overseas scams.

Group tours, which have packed itineraries and fairly constant supervision of members on overseas trips, appeared to be going ahead in the wake of the lifting of COVID-related travel bans, however.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on Jan. 20 that it was resuming group tours overseas "on a pilot basis" from Feb. 6, defining package tours as the purchase of "air ticket plus hotel."

Approved destinations for group tours include Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, UAE, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Russia, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Fiji, Cuba and Argentina.

Tour companies are required to "sign travel contracts with tourists in accordance with the law, clarify the rights and responsibilities of all parties, and properly handle travel-related disputes in a timely manner," the ministry said in a directive on its website.

"Travel agencies and online travel companies are not allowed to carry out any outbound group travel and ‘air ticket + hotel’ business in violation of the schedule or beyond the scope of the [permitted] country list," it said.

They must also avoid activities that violate Chinese "laws, regulations and social morality" and are responsible for maintaining an "orderly tourism sector," the ministry warned.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gu Ting for RFA Mandarin.

Last week a shocking story from NPR largely slipped under the radar. The headline: “Why the EPA puts a higher value on rich lives lost to climate change.” Climate Correspondent Rebecca Hersher shared the “twisted tale of math, ethics and climate change” that is the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to decide what’s been called the most important number you've never heard of: the social cost of greenhouse gases.

This is a number—in U.S. dollars—that tries to represent the cumulative cost to humanity of emitting a single ton of a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide each have their own estimated cost. Since a 2007 Ninth Circuit ruling stated that federal agencies must assess the monetary value of carbon emissions reduction, the EPA—as well as an inter-agency working group assembled and disbanded by different administrations over the years—has devised, revised, and revised again this single number.

Obama’s inter-agency working group collaborated with the National Academy of Sciences to decide a whole-of-government estimate of the social cost of carbon. They set it at $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. The Trump administration disbanded the inter-agency working group, and substantially lowered the social cost of carbon to only $7 per ton. They did this by removing damages in countries other than the United States from the analysis and putting less weight on harm to future generations.

President Biden used his first day in office to reinstate the inter-agency working group, directing them to set an interim estimate and develop a new estimate for the social cost of greenhouse gases. The working group has yet to make a proposal, but the EPA has come out ahead of them in proposing its own new evaluation of the social cost of carbon: $190 per ton. EPA also proposed raising the cost of methane emissions to $1,600 a ton, and nitrous oxide to $54,000 a ton—substantial increases from interim estimates putting the cost of carbon at $51 a ton, methane at $1,500 a ton, and nitrous oxide at $18,000 a ton.

This significant increase in the estimated cost of greenhouse gas emissions will impact evaluations of the costs and benefits of proposed federal regulations, communicating more strongly the benefits of reducing emissions and the harms of continuing or increasing current emissions levels. Presumably, this is good news for the planet.

But there’s a problem. Several problems, in fact. The way that the EPA came up with this number, and what it fails to take into account, raises some profound ethical questions.

A Little Background

First of all, it’s worth getting into why federal agencies have a use for this number in the first place. In 1981, the Reagan administration issued Executive Order 12291, which mandated that all “major regulations”—which Reagan defined as having an annual economic impact of $100 million dollars or more—be evaluated using cost-benefit analysis. Cost-benefit analysis is a method used by economists which attempts to convert every impact of a regulation, from the cost of implementing it to how it benefits people’s health, into dollars.

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is the entity responsible for evaluating proposed regulations through cost-benefit analysis. We won’t get further into the weeds on OIRA in this newsletter, but expect more from us on OIRA soon. For those interested in reading more now, we’d recommend our Executive Director Jeff Hauser’s piece “The Little Agency That Could (Block All Good Regulations)” on the agency’s historical impact.

If regulations have to prove their worth in monetary terms—already a flawed and subjective metric to decide what makes a regulation worthwhile—then, the logic goes, it makes sense to try to convert something as important but complex as the impact of greenhouse gas emissions into dollars, because otherwise that impact wouldn’t get taken into account. But reducing complex phenomena to dollars that can be weighed against things that are actually dollar amounts, like the cost to an industry of complying with a new regulation, is a troubled task. The conflations and assumptions that economists have to make in order to turn lives into dollars on a balance sheet often veer far into unethical terrain.

Because the social cost of greenhouse gases is intended for use in cost-benefit analysis, the estimate is based on the inherently problematic “willingness to pay.” Willingness to pay is how cost-benefit analysis tries to represent in dollars how much people value the reduction of various kinds of risks in their life, like the risk of asthma, or a workplace injury, or cancer or premature death. In effect, the social cost of greenhouse gases takes the average across different populations (we’ll get into that soon) of how much economists think (based on surveys or other forms of data) that people would be willing to pay for a reduction in their risk of various harms due to climate change.

This calculation presents all kinds of ethical and moral challenges—an observation that’s hardly new. Cost-benefit analysis as a practice has many critics. One major criticism is that cost-benefit analysis is far more useful to people pushing deregulation, because the financial costs of implementing new rules are so much easier to quantify than the more amorphous benefits. Given the enormity of what the social cost of greenhouse gases purports to represent, it is in some ways a perfect example of the foundational flaws of this kind of economic analysis. This is what Rebecca Hersher’s story last week gestured to, when she characterized the social cost of carbon as both a “powerful tool and ethics nightmare.”

The Value of a Human Life

Hersher noted that “a major reason the EPA's new social cost of carbon is higher is because this is the first time the federal government has added to its calculations the cost of climate-related deaths outside America, including in developing and low-lying countries that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”

This is obviously important—climate change is the definition of a global issue. We all share a global atmosphere, though of course rich countries in the Global North have historically been far more responsible for polluting it than others. Now here’s the catch: “the EPA didn't assign the same dollar value to every life. Instead, a life lost in a lower-income country due to climate change is worth less than a life lost in a higher-income country. The upshot is that the value of a climate-related death in the United States is equal to about 9 deaths in India, or 5 deaths in Ukraine or 55 deaths in Somalia. It also suggests that the life of a person in Qatar is worth almost twice as much as the life of an American.”

Why on earth are people’s lives being valued differently depending on the country they live in? The reason is because of that “willingness to pay” metric. People in higher income countries are assumed to be more willing to pay to reduce their risk of various kinds of injury and death from climate change than people in low income countries…because they have access to more money. The consequence of the EPA’s reliance on the limited tools of cost-benefit analysis is that their model of the social costs of greenhouse gases basically puts a higher value on richer lives. You don’t need us to tell you how messed up that is.

In the NPR piece, Hersher mentions a study from economist Tamma Carleton. Ostensibly she’s talking about this study, which models climate mortality in two ways—one with the “value of a statistical life” adjusted by national income, and one based on global average income, where “the lives of contemporaries are valued equally.” The study found that if all lives around the world were valued equally, the social cost of carbon would approximately double. In other words, the EPA’s refusal to stake an ethical position and declare all lives equally valuable, and all unnecessary deaths equally worth avoiding, also has the consequence of lowering the social cost of carbon, and thus reducing the perceived imperative of mitigating climate change.

Herschel wrote that it’s “unclear why EPA economists didn't choose this route.” Law professor Daniel Hemel speculated that “some policymakers might be concerned about proposing a social cost of carbon that is so high, it appears to require the U.S. to take drastic, and politically unpopular, steps to slash greenhouse gas emissions.” But… if that’s the more accurate social cost of carbon emissions, shouldn’t the EPA use that number, and allow the policy implications to be worked out by the rest of the federal government?

Thanks to the bizarre imperatives of cost-benefit analysis, there are plenty of other flaws in the calculation of the social cost of greenhouse gases, many of them shrouded in technocratic fog. There’s the fact that climate damages are calculated in terms of reduced consumption, as if the point of living were to consume, and climate destruction only significant for getting in the way of goods and services. There’s the fact that these models value present lives more than future lives, when a premature climate-related death today and a death in 50 years are just as impactful, and greenhouse gases are a distinctly intergenerational harm. Emissions are released in an instant, only to persist for generations, shaping the possibilities of life on earth for literal centuries.

And then there’s the matter of equity, which the EPA acknowledges some theorists think “should be addressed directly throughout all elements” of cost-benefit analysis, but which it neglects to incorporate here. The model doesn’t pay attention to intersectional damages, i.e. the accumulation of multiple risk factors for specific communities or regions. It also ignores the historical context of different countries being differently culpable for climate change, with the least responsible populations often the most vulnerable to climate impacts.

The EPA openly acknowledges (see p. 73) that their metric fails to address many known climate change-induced risks including death, illness and injury from air pollutants, infectious disease, allergies, displacement and migration; the availability of safe drinking water and its distribution; extreme precipitation; ozone destruction; threats to biodiversity and the existence of habitats for wildlife, and many others. These omissions aren’t related to a lack of scientific data about the phenomena, but a lack of progress reducing what we know about their harms into dollars that can be plugged into economic analyses.

At several points in the EPA’s November 2022 report on its proposed social cost of greenhouse gases, the agency acknowledges that their metric likely underestimates the true cost of greenhouse gas emissions. This is a gross understatement. And when you take into account the ethical issues inherent to cost-benefit analysis, along withall of the information the social cost of greenhouse gases should account for that doesn’t exist or can’t be converted into dollars, it becomes clear how nonsensical it is that we let economists’ designs be so central to our regulatory processes.

How convenient it is for industry, that all the things which get left out of the equation would increase the social cost of carbon, and compel even steeper systemic change! Of course, corporations are hardly satisfied with their decades-long giveaways. A coalition of Republican attorneys general are currently fighting the Biden administration’s interim estimates for the social cost of carbon ($51/ton), which is only a quarter of the new cost the EPA proposes.

Big picture, these are literally life and death questions that economists are attempting to translate into the stilted language of the U.S. dollar. So literally, that on the bottom of the 61st page of the EPA’s report, there is a random footnote mentioning a 2006 study that “reflects a 91% probability of the human race surviving 100 years.” Don’t worry about that remaining 9%—it’s almost certain that the probability of the survival of the human race can’t be accurately calculated by economists. Worry instead that economists are the ones in charge of designing several tools that shape how actively the government will try to reduce the probability of our planet’s destruction to zero.

Ultimately, the demand for environmental regulation and climate policy to be shaped by ethics—to be guided by a generous, vitalizing sense of responsibility to ourselves and others, near and far, human and non-human, alive today and for generations to come—can only come from the public. No economist will ever suggest that a forest should exist for its own sake, or that people are willing to change the way they’re accustomed to doing things for the wellbeing of their grandchildren’s grandchildren. That will have to come from us.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Emma Marsano.

Progressives are demanding that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg improve rail safety regulations in response to the unfolding public health disaster in East Palestine, Ohio—the site of a recent fiery train crash and subsequent "controlled release" of toxic fumes that critics say was entirely avoidable.

"The Obama administration attempted to prevent dangerous derailments like the one in East Palestine by mandating better brake systems on freight trains," Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, said Tuesday in a statement. "But this effort was watered down thanks to corporate pressure, first by writing in many exemptions to the proposed rules and then, under [former President Donald] Trump, by repealing the requirement altogether."

Recent reporting from The Lever revealed that Buttigieg's Department of Transportation (DOT) "has no intention of reinstating or strengthening the brake rule rescinded under Trump," said Hauser. "Additionally, The Leverreports that the train was not being regulated as a high-hazard flammable train, despite it clearly being both high-hazard and flammable. These types of failures to protect the public are invited by perpetual lax enforcement and laziness toward even getting back to the too-low regulatory standards under Obama."

"Now, all eyes are on Secretary Buttigieg," he continued. "For too long he has been content to continue the legacy of his deregulatory predecessor, Elaine Chao, rather than immediately moving to reverse her legacy upon becoming secretary."

"Norfolk Southern's environmental disaster is the latest in a long string of corporate malfeasance committed right under the secretary's nose," Hauser observed, referring to the company that owns the derailed train. "As I've warned before, corporations do not respect Buttigieg as a regulator."

"Norfolk Southern's environmental disaster is the latest in a long string of corporate malfeasance committed right under the secretary's nose... Corporations do not respect Buttigieg as a regulator."

Noting that "Chao justified letting trains run without proper brakes because the safety requirement failed a so-called cost-benefit analysis," Hauser cautioned that "this type of analysis is invariably weighted against fully accounting for the health and environmental benefits a regulation provides."

"Buttigieg should call out the brake rule repeal for the horrendous decision it was, start working to implement a new rule, take Norfolk Southern to task, and push back on corporations deciding how the DOT regulates them," he added. "Anything short of that only signals to the railroads that this type of incident will be tolerated."

Hauser was joined Tuesday by environmental activist Erin Brockovich, who tweeted, "The Biden administration needs to get more involved in this... train derailment now."

"We are counting on you to break the chain of administration after administration to turn a blind eye," she added. "STEP UP NOW."

After Buttigieg made his first public statement on the East Palestine disaster on Monday night—10 days after dozens of train cars careened off the tracks and burst into flames—The Lever's David Sirota issued a reminder that the transportation secretary is actively considering an industry-backed proposal to further weaken the regulation of train braking systems.

Sirota also urged people to sign his outlet's open letter imploring Buttigieg "to rectify the multiple regulatory failures that preceded this horrific situation," including by exercising his authority to restore the rail safety rules gutted by Trump at the behest of industry lobbyists.

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) wrote Monday night on social media that the freight train crash and ensuing chemical release "will have a significant negative impact on the health and well-being of the residents for decades."

"We need [a] congressional inquiry and direct action from Pete Buttigieg to address this tragedy," added the progressive lawmaker.

Following the February 3 derailment of a 150-car train carrying hazardous materials—described by an inter-union alliance of rail workers as the predictable result of Wall Street-backed policies that prioritize profits over safety—officials ordered emergency evacuations before releasing chemicals into a trench and burning them off to prevent a catastrophic explosion.

It was already known that vinyl chloride, of particular concern to state health officials because exposure to the volatile gas is associated with higher cancer risks, had been released from several cars, and that other dangerous toxins such as phosgene and hydrogen chloride were emitted in large plumes of smoke.

However, citing a list of the derailed car contents that Norfolk Southern provided to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ABC Newsreported Monday night that several more toxic substances were released into the air and soil following the crash than originally thought, including ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, and isobutylene.

As the outlet noted:

Contact with ethylhexyl acrylate, a carcinogen, can cause burning and irritation of the skin and eyes, and inhalation can irritate the nose and throat, causing shortness of breath and coughing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Inhalation of isobutylene can cause dizziness and drowsiness as well, while exposure to ethylene glycol monobutyl ether can caused irritation in the eyes, skin, nose, and throat, as well as hematuria, or blood in the urine, nervous system depression, headache, and vomiting, according to the CDC.

The U.S. EPA said Monday night that it "has not yet detected any concerning levels of toxins in the air quality that can be attributed to the crash since the controlled burn was complete," ABC News reported. The agency continues to screen individual homes in close proximity to the site.

Meanwhile, The Independent reported Tuesday that the Ohio EPA has confirmed the presence of chemicals, including butyl acrylate, in the Ohio River basin, potentially affecting up to 25 million people.

"Rather than spending money to upgrade safety and staffing, Norfolk Southern engaged in stock buybacks and laid off employees... There must be accountability."

Contaminants reached the river from an initial spill caused by the derailment, but officials said they "were in low enough level that the river diluted them and said that downriver communities would not be at risk," the outlet reported. The state agency "has been monitoring water quality throughout the region and has not found contaminant levels at any levels they've deemed concerning."

Nevertheless, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has revealed that at least 3,500 fish have died in Columbiana County, home to East Palestine, since the derailment.

As the full ecological fallout of the disaster continues to come into view, many of East Palestine's roughly 4,700 residents fear that the air and water in the rural town they have been told is safe to return to remains hazardous to their health. At least 2,000 residents have returned, however, due in large part to a lack of viable alternatives owing to their limited resources and incomes.

Norfolk Southern, which reported record-breaking operating revenues of $12.7 billion in 2022, has offered to donate just $25,000 to help affected residents, amounting to roughly $5 per person.

The corporation announced a $10 billion stock buyback program last March and has consistently increased its dividend, rewarding shareholders while refusing to provide its workers with basic benefits such as paid sick leave.

"Rather than spending money to upgrade safety and staffing, Norfolk Southern engaged in stock buybacks and laid off employees," Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) tweeted Tuesday. "Union workers were ignored. The train went up in flames and toxic chemicals are causing a colossal environmental catastrophe. There must be accountability."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Progressives pushed back strongly Thursday to reports that Nancy Pelosi is lobbying the Biden administration to nominate former congressman Sean Patrick Maloney for U.S. labor secretary, with one critic accusing the former House speaker of "doing a last bit of Silicon Valley donor service" for someone who "has no real relationship with labor."

According toNBC News, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been making calls on behalf of Maloney urging the White House and union leaders to back the former five-term corporate Democrat for labor chief. Current Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is expected to resign in the near future so he can take a job heading the National Hockey League Players Association, although the White House has not yet confirmed his departure.

While Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su, a progressive who formerly headed California's labor agency, is believed to be the favorite to replace Walsh, Pelosi's push for Maloney—an adept fundraiser who led the Democrats' campaign arm in the House and was a member of the corporate-friendly New Democrat Coalition—is a cause for concern and consternation among worker advocates.

Opponents of Maloney's nomination noted he's a corporate-friendly centrist who not only lost his midterm reelection bid in "humiliating" fashion but, as ex-chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was widely blamed for his party's failure to hold control of the House.

"Make no mistake, Maloney is a corporate hack: he was a member of the New Democrat Coalition, the caucus of Congressional Democrats that exists to do the bidding of giant companies under a pretense of being 'moderate,'" Max Moran, the personnel team research director at the Revolving Door Project, said in a statement Thursday. "Nothing in his record indicates any unique relationship with labor, but he has quite strong relationships with the CEOs and executives who often try to undermine labor."

"There's no reason for Maloney to wield power or influence over federal politics for the foreseeable future, and certainly no reason to promote him to labor secretary," Moran argued.

Two words dominated the social media conversation surrounding Maloney's prospective nomination: failing upwards.

"If your boss gave you an important assignment that you failed to accomplish, and it made your boss' job immensely harder, would you expect a promotion?" Moran asked rhetorically.

As Moran explained:

As the leader of House Democrats' campaign arm in 2022, Sean Patrick Maloney failed to hold the Democratic majority. He is the first Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair to lose his own race in 40 years. Some of his biggest failures were in his home state of deep-blue New York! This was the guy who was supposed to keep Rep. George Santos [R-N.Y.] from winning! His failure has all but demolished any hopes of major new legislation for the remainder of this Presidential term.

He wasn't trying especially hard at this crucial job: Maloney spent part of October partying with European millionaires under the auspices of fundraising, instead of pumping money into battleground races and campaigning. Imagine promoting a DCCC chair who didn't even campaign in his own district, let alone for his colleagues. Imagine promoting a politician who wasn't even in the country in the home stretch of an election!

"If after his excellent, blue-collar State of the Union, President [Joe] Biden lets a corporate hack fail upwards into the Labor Department, it would send a message to the public to believe exactly none of what he said," Moran added.

On Wednesday, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus endorsed Su for labor secretary, noting there are no Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander cabinet secretaries in the Biden administration.

"Deputy Secretary Su has dedicated her career to the promotion of workers' rights and fair labor practices and to advancing equity and opportunities for all workers, including ones from historically underserved communities," the caucus said in a statement." She would be a stellar, exceptionally qualified candidate to be secretary of labor and would deliver results for American workers and the Biden-Harris administration immediately upon her confirmation."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Last month, the Biden administration unveiled a slate of new agency-level actions it claimed would “protect renters and promote rental affordability.” The announcement followed nearly a year of public pressure from Congressional Democrats and the tenant-led Homes Guarantee campaign to get President Biden to crack down on rent-gouging and unjust evictions. In late January, the campaign sent the White House a list of 11 essential policy directives to include in its tenant protection plan.

Unfortunately, the White House’s final action slate was a far cry from what tenants — millions of whom are only one missed paycheck or life emergency away from eviction — had been asking for. In a press statement, Homes Guarantee campaign director Tara Raghuveer said the White House Plan falls short “of using the full power of the administration to regulate rent and address market consolidation by corporate landlords.” The plan consists largely of voluntary, incremental measures that do almost nothing to help tenants today. Almost all of the campaign’s essential demands are missing from the White House plan, including any material rent regulations or efforts to integrate good cause eviction protections into existing federal housing programs.

In lieu of these measures, the Biden plan includes something called the “Resident-Centered Housing Challenge”, a set of nonbinding voluntary pledges from real estate industry groups to “improve the quality of life for renters.” Among the Challenge’s participants are the National Association of Realtors (NAR), National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), and National Apartment Association (NAA), all groups who (as I’ve previously written in this newsletter) represent corporate landlords whose anticompetitive practices have fuelled the rental housing crisis. These groups spent much of the last year lobbying the White House to ignore tenants’ demands for robust rent regulations and tenant protections. Their efforts ultimately succeeded, with the final Biden plan failing to include the bare minimum that tenants had asked for.

If the White House thought they would be rewarded by the industry for caving to its demands, they were sorely mistaken. NAR and NMHC immediately issued crocodile tear-laden press statements arguing the Biden plan contained “duplicative and onerous regulations” that would “drive housing providers out of the market” (as if private developers are doing a great job solving the crisis on their own currently!). NAA, saying the quiet part out loud, boasted in a press release that their lobbying efforts had “helped avert an executive order advanced by renters advocates and members of Congress, which would have imposed immediate policy changes.” That’s right, they openly bragged about keeping life terrible for tenants through sheer force of Washington muscle.

Journalism should be about holding the powerful accountable, not reprinting their talking points.

Taken together, the real estate industry’s public statements and behind-the-scenes lobbying paint a clear picture of what’s really going on here: corporate lobbyists flexed their power, got the White House to fold, and are publicly warning Biden not to test them again.

Unfortunately, instead of exposing this underlying dynamic or pushing back on the real estate industry’s lies, many media outlets are instead quoting industry press statements without fact-checking their claims or properly reporting on their lobbying work. CNN and Yahoo! News both quoted press statements from NAA President Bob Pinnegar and NAR President Kenny Parcell (not that one) claiming the White House’s plan would increase housing costs for renters and was inferior to supply-focused policy alternatives. Forbes and Marketwatch likewise quoted NMHC’s press release trashing rent control as a “failed policy” and praising the group’s members as “competitive [and] resident centered.”

None of these outlets compared the industry’s “sky is falling” assertions about Biden’s policies (or federal housing regulations in general) to independent economic analyses to assess whether their claims had any merit.

Worse, none of the outlets listed above mentioned these groups’ functions as lobbying fronts for rent-gouging private equity landlords. NAR, for example, was described by CNN and Yahoo! News as merely a “real estate industry representative group,” with no mention of the fact that it was 2022’s biggest lobbying spender in the entire country, includingand spent millions to kill the Build Back Better Act’s sorely-needed investments in public housing supply. Marketwatch characterized NMHC as an “industry group” while Forbes referred to it merely as a “private housing actor.” Neither outlet mentioned that NMHC’s “competitive [and] resident-centered” members are among the nation’s biggest corporate landlords and pandemic evictors, or that NMHC has previously lobbied for lucrative corporate tax loopholes and against the CDC’s eviction moratorium.

Marketwatch likewise referred to NAA as another “industry group,” while CNN and Forbes both described it as a “network of over 95,000 members owning and operating more than 11.6 million apartment homes globally” – a definition taken straight from the group’s own website. Despite quoting NAA’s press statement, it seems none of these outlets read the whole thing: NAA’s open admission in its press statement to killing an executive order on rent-gouging is nowhere to be found in the CNN, Forbes, or Marketwatch coverage.

The media’s deference to industry is nothing new. Last October, I wrote for this newsletter about how the mainstream press often presents real estate lobbying groups as neutral “experts” when reporting on the housing crisis, and fails to disclose their obvious conflicts of interest. Just a month after I wrote that, NPR’s Jennifer Ludden again proved my point by quoting NMHC spokesman Jim Lapides for a story on rent control — without even once explaining what NMHC is or disclosing who its members are.

Even reporting about the industry’s own lobbying efforts lacks vital context. In a Politico story about industry lobbying published one week before the White House plan’s release, RealPage chief economist Jay Parsons told reporter Katy O’Donnell that federal regulation was unnecessary, as “the balance of power [in the market] has shifted toward renters -- they’re going to have more options, more competitive pricing and better deals.” Nowhere in O’Donnell’s piece does she mention that RealPage is currently being sued by renters for seemingly helping a cartel of corporate landlords artificially inflate rents in violation of federal law.

While it’s not inherently a faux pas to quote industry reacting to policies that could affect them, the problem comes when industry’s claims are taken at their word unquestioningly — especially when the same credulity isn’t extended to tenants. It’s fairly common to see groups like the Homes Guarantee campaign referred to as “activist collectives” and the like by the mainstream press, in such a way as to signal to readers that this group has a political perspective and their views should be taken with a grain of salt. That’s fine, but reporters should also apply the same approach when quoting industry groups who have their own political agendas. Too often, if an industry group has an acronymed, dull-sounding name and dresses its lobbyists up in nice suits and clean haircuts, they’re taken as the serious “adults in the room,” even when what they’re saying is utter nonsense.

For examples of good coverage of Biden’s plan, look to alternative media.“Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, for example, spoke to Tara Raghuveer and tenant organizer Davita Gatewood about how Biden’s plan actually measured up to tenants’ material needs and prior asks of the administration (during Goodman’s interview, Raghuveer called out the National Apartment Association by name for its gloating press statement and anti-tenant lobbying work). Similarly, The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein, doing what many mainstream journalists apparently failed to do, actually read the NAA’s full press statement and highlighted the group’s gloating about killing a tenant-backed executive order. Indiana University Law Professor Fran Quigley, writing for Jacobin, likewise cites Raghuveer’s and the housing industry’s reactions as evidence of the weakness of Biden’s plan.

Housing reporters in the mainstream press need to learn from these examples and do a better job of accurately covering the rental housing beat. Organizations like the National Association of Realtors aren’t neutral forums where industry professionals chitchat: they’re lobbying groups which exist to make their members richer, often at the expense of renters. They should be considered just as political as tenant’s advocates, if not more so. Journalism should be about holding the powerful accountable, not reprinting their talking points.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Vishal Shankar.

An analysis published Friday by the nonpartisan watchdog Accountable.US revealed that numerous former fossil fuel lobbyists are being hired to work for the Republican-controlled 118th Congress, including in high-level positions on the House Natural Resources Committee.

"As the Republicans majority begins the new Congress, former oil industry lobbyists will have new and growing influence as top staffers for congressmen on key committees," the analysis states.

Accountable.US detailed the close ties between Nancy Peele—chief of staff to House Natural Resources Committee Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.)—and fossil fuel interests.

"It's no surprise that Big Oil is infiltrating the halls of Congress after spending millions to elect some of the most extreme legislators in American history."

Peele's history includes:

The publication continues:

Majority Leader Steve Scalise's [R-La.] Chief of Staff Megan Bel Miller came to Scalise's office straight out of working as an oil and gas lobbyist... Miller lobbied Congress on behalf of National Oceans Industry Association, a group representing the offshore oil and gas industry. Bel Miller advocated for polluting industry interests on numerous conservation issues, including the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and offshore leasing. Majority Whip Tom Emmer's [R-Minn.] new Policy Director Ian Foley is an energy and mining lobbyist. In 2022, Foley lobbied Congress on behalf of the uranium mining industry and public utilities with oil and gas portfolios.

These are but a handful of the many examples of the revolving door between Big Oil and Congress highlighted in the analysis.

"It's no surprise that Big Oil is infiltrating the halls of Congress after spending millions to elect some of the most extreme legislators in American history," Accountable.US energy and environment director Jordan Schreiber said in a statement. "These lobbyists are not getting hired to advocate for American energy consumers—they will push an agenda that benefits the new majority's donors no matter what it costs taxpayers."

Underscoring the analysis' findings, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed legislation that would require the federal government to lease a portion of public lands and waters for fossil fuel extraction for each non-emergency drawdown of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The bill was introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee and was the top recipient of oil and gas PAC money in the House Republican caucus during the last election cycle.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

According to the international team of 35 scientists who conducted the study, the four most consequential sources of disruption are "edge effects" (forest changes caused by nearby deforestation and the ensuing habitat fragmentation); "selective logging"; and forest fires and extreme droughts intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis.

Based on their analysis of existing data on the extent of edge effects, timber extraction, and fires from 2001 to 2018, researchers found that 5.5% of Amazonian forests are degraded. When data on extreme droughts was considered, their estimate of the total degraded area grew to 38%.

The Guardian, which had early access to the full paper, summarized the scholars' findings as follows on Thursday: "Fires, land conversion, logging, and water shortages have weakened the resilience of up to 2.5 million square kilometers of the forest, an area 10 times the size of the U.K. This area is now drier, more flammable, and more vulnerable than before, prompting the authors to warn of 'megafires' in the future."

A substantial chunk of the world's largest tropical rainforest—nicknamed the "lungs of the Earth" due to its unparalleled capacity to provide oxygen and absorb planet-heating pollution—is "less able to regulate the climate, generate rainfall, store carbon, provide a habitat to other species, offer a livelihood to local people, and sustain itself as a viable ecosystem," The Guardian noted.

Degradation, defined as human-induced changes in forest conditions, has led to carbon emissions equivalent to or greater than those from deforestation, the authors note. As an accompanying statement explains: "Degradation is different from deforestation, where the forest is removed altogether and a new land use, such as agriculture, is established in its place. Although highly degraded forests can lose almost all of the trees, the land use itself does not change."

Co-author Jos Barlow, a professor of conservation science at Lancaster Univerity, said that the cumulative impact of the key degradation factors examined "can be as important as deforestation for carbon emissions and biodiversity loss."

In addition, the paper makes clear that Amazon forest degradation is associated with significant socioeconomic harms that require further investigation.

"Degradation benefits the few, but places important burdens on many," said co-author Rachel Carmenta from the University of East Anglia. "Few people profit from the degradation processes, yet many lose out across all dimensions of human well-being— including health, nutrition, and the place attachments held for the forest landscapes where they live."

"Many of these burdens are hidden at present," Carmenta added. "Recognizing them will help enable better governance with social justice at the center."

"Preventing the advance of deforestation remains vital, and could also allow more attention to be directed to other drivers of forest degradation."

Looking ahead to 2050, the paper projects that the four main drivers of Amazon forest degradation "will remain a major threat and source of carbon fluxes to the atmosphere" regardless of whether deforestation is halted.

"Even in an optimistic scenario, when there is no more deforestation, the effects of climate change will see degradation of the forest continue, leading to further carbon emissions," said lead author David Lapola, a researcher at the Centre for Meteorological and Climatic Research Applied to Agriculture at the University of Campinas. However, "preventing the advance of deforestation remains vital, and could also allow more attention to be directed to other drivers of forest degradation."

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the recently inaugurated leftist president of Brazil—home to roughly 60% of the Amazon—has vowed to make "this devastation" of the forest "a thing of the past."

"There's no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon," Lula said during a mid-November speech at the United Nations COP27 summit—the first he made on the international stage after defeating Brazil's far-right ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro.

The Amazon passed a key tipping point at the tail end of Bolsonaro's four-year reign, during which ecological destruction accelerated as logging, mining, and agribusiness companies routinely violated the rights of Indigenous forest dwellers.

Last week, Lula accused Bolsonaro of committing genocide against the Yanomami people, who are enduring a deadly rise in hunger and disease due to a surge in illegal gold mining.

Lula, who drastically reduced deforestation and curbed inequality when he governed Brazil earlier this century, recently launched the first anti-deforestation raids of his new administration.

"There is hope now, but our paper shows it is not enough to resolve deforestation," Barlow told The Guardian. "There is much more work to be done."

As the new paper notes: "Whereas some disturbances such as edge effects can be tackled by curbing deforestation, others, like constraining the increase in extreme droughts, require additional measures, including global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Curbing degradation will also require engaging with the diverse set of actors that promote it, operationalizing effective monitoring of different disturbances, and refining policy frameworks."

The authors propose creating high-tech systems to monitor forest degradation and implementing policies to prevent illegal logging and better manage the use of fire.

"Public and private actions and policies to curb deforestation will not necessarily address degradation as well," said Lapola. "It is necessary to invest in innovative strategies."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Economic justice advocates on Thursday said that to determine the strength of the Biden administration's new nonbinding push for renter protections from the federal and state governments and private sector, one needs to look only at the elated response from corporate landlords.

The Revolving Door Project (RDP) pointed to comments from the National Apartment Association (NAA) and the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), lobbying groups that represents landlords, that followed the White House's unveiling on Wednesday of its "Resident-Centered Housing Challenge" and "Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights."

"What we can say with certainty is NAA's advocacy helped avert an executive order advanced by renters advocates and members of Congress, which would have imposed immediate policy changes," said the NAA in a statement on Thursday.

"The NMHC—which does the bidding of the nation's leading corporate landlords—celebrated the omission of national rent control from the White House plan while also objecting to other 'onerous regulations' contained in the release, which it claimed would 'discourage much-needed investments in housing supply,'" said Andrea Beaty, research director for the RDP.

"The Biden administration has apparently decided to assume that corporate landlords are good-faith actors with their tenants' best interests at heart, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, and just plain common sense," added Beaty. "The best the Biden administration offered is industry-approved, nonbinding measures that kick the can down the road."

The lobbying groups' response came as housing justice advocates noted that they have spent roughly a year calling on President Joe Biden to do everything in its power to address housing insecurity and the crisis facing households that are rent-burdened.

As Moody's Analytics reported on Thursday, the average U.S. tenant is now rent-burdened, which is defined as paying 30% or more of a household's income on rent.

"Tenant stories and expertise informed these actions, and tenants will continue to be central to policymaking that concerns their lives."

The firm compared the national median household income—$71,721—with 2022's average rent of $1,794. In 2021 the average renter paid 28.5% of their income on rent, and in 2020 they paid 25.7%.

The latest statistics represent "a symbolic threshold, a milestone," Thomas LaSalvia, director of economic research at Moody's, toldThe New York Times.

"The rent-to-income ratio continued to climb up because income growth was not able to catch up with the rent growth," Lu Chen, a senior economist at the firm, told the newspaper.

Following months of meetings between tenant groups and administration officials, as well as advocacy by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on behalf of renters, the White House on Wednesday proposed a number of actions the government will take to gather data about the housing crisis and push federal agencies—but not require them—to consider how they can curb rent costs.

The White House said it had secured commitments from the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to "collect information to identify practices that unfairly prevent applicants and tenants from accessing or staying in housing."

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) said it would "launch a new public process to examine proposed actions promoting renter protections and limits on egregious rent increases for future investments," while a workshop by the U.S. Department of Justice will address "anti-competitive information sharing, including in rental markets."

The Biden administration also said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will propose new rules requiring public housing and rental assistance authorities to provide 30 days' notice before terminating a lease due to rent nonpayment.

The White House also released a nonbinding Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights, affirming tenants have the right to clear and fair leases, to organize, and to have access to safe, quality, and affordable housing. Its Resident-Centered Housing Challenge, starting in the spring, will encourage state and local governments to enhance policies that promote fairness in the rental market, urging them to "make their own independent commitments that improve the quality of life for renters."

People's Action, whose Homes Guarantee campaign helped lead efforts to secure renter protections and rent price regulations, said its organizers helped "shape this policy for the better," and said the commitment from the FHFA offers an opportunity for the agency "to create a policy that helps check the power of landlords."

But as the NAA boasted, People's Action told The Washington Post that the policies will not change "tenants' lives materially today."

"Tenant stories and expertise informed these actions, and tenants will continue to be central to policymaking that concerns their lives," said Tara Raghuveer, director of the Homes Guarantee campaign. "The rent is still too damn high. While the White House announcement affirms a role for the federal government in correcting the imbalance of power between landlords and tenants, the president can do much more to provide relief to tenants. We are counting on this administration to continue working with our campaign to make it happen."

Ahead of Biden's proposal, People's Action led 281 national and local tenant organizations in calling on the White House to direct federal agencies to:

• Protect tenants from unfair, unjust, and unaffordable rent hikes, fines, and fees through rent regulation;
• Expand and enforce tenant protections by defining "good cause" eviction; and
• Address the consolidation of the rental market by corporate landlords.

"Rent is a significant economic issue the Biden administration has the opportunity to tackle. They should take it," Raghuveer said. "These actions are the essential components of any meaningful strategy to protect tenants, and they complement other White House priorities to strengthen and grow the American economy, like their work to limit market consolidation and monopoly price-setting power."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Reports Sunday that President Joe Biden has chosen Jeff Zients to replace outgoing White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain were met with alarm among progressive watchdogs, who pointed to Zients' disastrous tenure as the administration's coronavirus czar as well as his history in the corporate world—where he built a fortune investing in healthcare companies accused of fraud.

Klain, who developed a solid working relationship with progressives in Congress, is expected to depart shortly after Biden's State of the Union address on February 7.

Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser called the elevation of Zients to White House chief of staff a "catastrophic decision," saying in a statement that "the Biden administration has been at its best when it has been on the attack against corporate excesses that wide majorities of Americans find abhorrent."

"Americans are appalled by profiteering in healthcare—Jeff Zients has become astonishingly rich by profiteering in healthcare," said Hauser. "Americans are aghast at how social media companies have built monopolies and violated privacy laws—Zients served on the Board of Directors of Facebook as it was defending itself against growing attacks from both political parties."

The Revolving Door Project's Daniel Boguslaw and Max Moran wrote for The American Prospect last year that Zients—who was replaced as Covid-19 response coordinator back in April—has "controlled, invested in, and helped oversee" healthcare companies that "were forced to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle allegations of Medicare and Medicaid fraud."

"They have also been accused of surprise-billing practices and even medical malpractice," Boguslaw and Moran noted. "Taken together, an examination of the companies that made Zients rich paints a picture of a man who seized on medical providers as a way to capitalize on the suffering of sick Americans. In the end, it seems to have all paid off."

"The most egregious violation is documented in a 2015 Justice Department settlement announcement," they added. "Portfolio Logic—the investment firm Zients founded with his own money—agreed to pay almost $7 million to resolve allegations of fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid billing, involving a subsidiary (Pediatric Services of America Healthcare, or PSA) that it purchased in 2007."

"Hopefully Zients will prove us wrong—but unless that unlikely and fortuitous surprise occurs, Biden will need a quick hook."

Progressives have also been highly critical of Zients' performance in government.

In early 2022, Boguslaw urged the Biden administration to fire Zients over his "failure to "provide the materials necessary to improve the U.S. response" to Covid-19 "or the guidance necessary to keep the pandemic under control."

Following news that he would be leaving the coronavirus response post, Public Citizen's Robert Weissman lamented that Zients "refused to pay appropriate attention to global solutions to the global pandemic, because of political concerns or otherwise."

"And the Zients-led Covid response refused to challenge Big Pharma's monopoly control, in the U.S. and globally, over technologies that relied crucially on public support," Weissman continued. "As a result, the United States and other rich countries failed to expand vaccine supply sufficiently to meet global need. Without adequate supply, efforts to bolster low-income country distribution and delivery systems consequently have lagged and been similarly under-resourced."

During his time as pandemic response coordinator, Zients was far and away the wealthiest member of Biden's cabinet, disclosing assets worth at least $89.3 million and as much as $442.8 million.

Citing the Revolving Door Project's work, progressive strategist Murshed Zaheed said Sunday that "Zients as a businessman embodies much of the corporate misconduct the executive branch led by a Democratic Party ought to be cracking down on."

But the Biden White House doesn't appear remotely concerned about Zients' corporate past.

With Biden expected to launch a bid for reelection in the coming weeks, The New York Timesreported that "the president could lean on" Zients to "help run the government while other advisers focus on the politics of winning a second term."

Hauser said Sunday that "hopefully Zients will prove us wrong—but unless that unlikely and fortuitous surprise occurs, Biden will need a quick hook."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Reports Sunday that President Joe Biden has chosen Jeff Zients to replace outgoing White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain were met with alarm among progressive watchdogs, who pointed to Zients' disastrous tenure as the administration's coronavirus czar as well as his history in the corporate world—where he built a fortune investing in healthcare companies accused of fraud.

Klain, who developed a solid working relationship with progressives in Congress, is expected to depart shortly after Biden's State of the Union address on February 7.

Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser called the elevation of Zients to White House chief of staff a "catastrophic decision," saying in a statement that "the Biden administration has been at its best when it has been on the attack against corporate excesses that wide majorities of Americans find abhorrent."

"Americans are appalled by profiteering in healthcare—Jeff Zients has become astonishingly rich by profiteering in healthcare," said Hauser. "Americans are aghast at how social media companies have built monopolies and violated privacy laws—Zients served on the Board of Directors of Facebook as it was defending itself against growing attacks from both political parties."

The Revolving Door Project's Daniel Boguslaw and Max Moran wrote for The American Prospect last year that Zients—who was replaced as Covid-19 response coordinator back in April—has "controlled, invested in, and helped oversee" healthcare companies that "were forced to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle allegations of Medicare and Medicaid fraud."

"They have also been accused of surprise-billing practices and even medical malpractice," Boguslaw and Moran noted. "Taken together, an examination of the companies that made Zients rich paints a picture of a man who seized on medical providers as a way to capitalize on the suffering of sick Americans. In the end, it seems to have all paid off."

"The most egregious violation is documented in a 2015 Justice Department settlement announcement," they added. "Portfolio Logic—the investment firm Zients founded with his own money—agreed to pay almost $7 million to resolve allegations of fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid billing, involving a subsidiary (Pediatric Services of America Healthcare, or PSA) that it purchased in 2007."

"Hopefully Zients will prove us wrong—but unless that unlikely and fortuitous surprise occurs, Biden will need a quick hook."

Progressives have also been highly critical of Zients' performance in government.

In early 2022, Boguslaw urged the Biden administration to fire Zients over his "failure to "provide the materials necessary to improve the U.S. response" to Covid-19 "or the guidance necessary to keep the pandemic under control."

Following news that he would be leaving the coronavirus response post, Public Citizen's Robert Weissman lamented that Zients "refused to pay appropriate attention to global solutions to the global pandemic, because of political concerns or otherwise."

"And the Zients-led Covid response refused to challenge Big Pharma's monopoly control, in the U.S. and globally, over technologies that relied crucially on public support," Weissman continued. "As a result, the United States and other rich countries failed to expand vaccine supply sufficiently to meet global need. Without adequate supply, efforts to bolster low-income country distribution and delivery systems consequently have lagged and been similarly under-resourced."

During his time as pandemic response coordinator, Zients was far and away the wealthiest member of Biden's cabinet, disclosing assets worth at least $89.3 million and as much as $442.8 million.

Citing the Revolving Door Project's work, progressive strategist Murshed Zaheed said Sunday that "Zients as a businessman embodies much of the corporate misconduct the executive branch led by a Democratic Party ought to be cracking down on."

But the Biden White House doesn't appear remotely concerned about Zients' corporate past.

With Biden expected to launch a bid for reelection in the coming weeks, The New York Timesreported that "the president could lean on" Zients to "help run the government while other advisers focus on the politics of winning a second term."

Hauser said Sunday that "hopefully Zients will prove us wrong—but unless that unlikely and fortuitous surprise occurs, Biden will need a quick hook."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Two years after President Joe Biden was inaugurated, his administration continues to advance Trump-era legal positions in dozens of court cases, a progressive watchdog group revealed Friday.

Former President Donald Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) "consistently made a mockery of the law throughout his four years in power," the Revolving Door Project (RDP) noted in the latest release of its long-running litigation tracker.

Even though "their laughable reasoning and indefensible positions were struck down at a historic rate, many cases were still waiting for Biden," RDP wrote. "Two years into Biden's presidency, an alarming number remain, either in some form of pause or advancing forward with the Biden administration adopting Trump's position."

RDP's litigation tracker, a noncomprehensive database updated Friday to include additional cases and developments, breaks down legal actions across more than a dozen categories. A selection of the Biden administration's moves follows:

Immigration

• Biden's DOJ bowed to Republican pressure and pulled out of settlement talks with migrants whose families were separated at the border;
• The Biden administration continues to misuse Title 42 public health authority, first misused by Trump, to turn away asylum-seekers at the border; and
• The Biden administration continued to defend the practice of violating the legal rights of unaccompanied migrant children under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program.

Environment

• Though Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day as president, his Department of Justice defended the Trump-approved Line 3 pipeline in court; and
• The Biden administration urged an appeals court to overturn an offshore fracking ban once backed by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Education

• Biden's DOJ defended Betsy DeVos and her corrupt Education Department's actions in court.

Voting Rights

• Biden failed to defend voting rights amid historic assault.

Criminal Justice Reform

• Biden endorsed an expansion of police power.

Social Security

• Biden's DOJ defended a Social Security provision that deprives Puerto Rico residents of benefits before the Supreme Court.

Executive Power and Immunity

• Biden's DOJ is defending former President Trump in a defamation lawsuit stemming from a sexual assault accusation; and
• Biden's DOJ argued to toss out lawsuits against Trump and top officials for violently removing protestors ahead of a photo-op.

Death Penalty

• Biden's DOJ asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence in the Boston Marathon bomber case.

International Law/Human Rights

• Biden's DOJ declined to take a position on whether prisoners at Guantánamo have due process rights.

"Fidelity to Trump-era positions takes many forms," RDP pointed out. "Biden's DOJ successfully defended Trump-era warrantless searches of travelers' phones; in 2022, the public learned that customs officials maintain a huge database of travelers' copied phone data. The DOJ continued to prosecute an Indigenous woman arrested while praying on sacred grounds disrupted by Trump's border wall construction. They successfully defended the 17-year allowance Trump's EPA granted to Montana to fail to meet clean water standards for nutrient pollution."

In addition, the Biden White House persists "in siding with the pork industry against California and animal rights groups in a high-profile Supreme Court case, despite dozens of Democratic lawmakers urging a change of course," RDP continued. "National Pork Producers Council v. Ross is not the only animal farming case in which the Biden-Garland Justice Department continues to maintain Trump administration positions. The latest update to the litigation tracker shows the Justice Department continuing to defend multiple Trump-era Department of Agriculture decisions that excuse or enable the cruel treatment of poultry, lab-kept primates, and pigs in slaughterhouses."

In a statement, RDP researcher Ananya Kalahasti said that "as the previous administration violated legal and ethical norms at every turn, Attorney General Merrick Garland's choice of continuity with the Trump DOJ's positions erodes the integrity of the very institution he is determined to protect."

"While the Justice Department makes concerted strides towards a more just application of the law in many cases," Kalahasti added, "it pulls backward in others, muddling the legacy and body of precedent it is shaping in real-time."

RDP researcher Hannah Story Brown observed that although "the Justice Department has chosen continuity with its Trump-era position in amicus filings before the Supreme Court in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross... the Biden administration still has a potent opportunity to chart a better course, with other ongoing cases like Suncor v. Boulder County Commissioners, a climate damages case in which the Supreme Court has solicited the Justice Department's opinion."

Brown made clear that RDP is "watching closely to see whether the Justice Department chooses to break from or maintain the position it first adopted under disgraced former DOJ environmental attorney Jeffrey Clark in related state-level climate cases."

Under normal circumstances, maintaining the previous administration's positions "would be relatively routine," RDP argued. "Even if the White House is shifting from one party to another, it is not generally assumed that all of the federal government's litigation positions will change. Instead of a blanket reversal, each case tends to receive a thorough review before the new administration decides to stay the course or reverse."

"But these are not normal circumstances," the group continued. "At every turn and in every corner of the federal government, the Trump administration gleefully trampled the law. In fact, loyalty to the president's person—which plainly required a willingness to ignore legal constraints—was a nonnegotiable condition of employment. In the wake of such an attack, normal deference is not warranted."

"The Biden administration must move quickly to drop, reverse, or settle the cases that Trump left behind," RDP stressed. "And—we would have thought this wouldn't need to be said—the administration should adopt Trump's positions about as often as a stopped clock is accurate."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

In response to Bloomberg’s report that “Genesis Global Capital is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing as soon as this week,” Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser issued the following statement:

Genesis Global Capital is a key part of the crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, or DCG. DCG would not be as large as it is, and Genesis’ collapse wouldn’t affect as many retail investors as it has, if not for former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ decision to lend his name and reputation to the firm in 2016.”

“For years, Summers advised DCG on the one hand, and made widely-reported positive statements about Bitcoin and the crypto industry on the other. Then, as DCG and the broader crypto market began to crumble a few months ago, Summers slipped out the back door, quietly deleting his name from the DCG website. The media shouldn’t let him wipe his hands of the cryptocurrency industry, or treat his speculation on future economic trends the same as they would someone who didn’t spend years opening doors for crypto barons.”

The Revolving Door Project wrote last week about Summers’ long history with DCG, and how his early partnership with the firm helped legitimate crypto the public in the mid-2010s. In 2021, for instance, Summers said Bitcoin “is here to stay” and implied it was becoming “systemic in [its] importance,” without disclosing his professional connections to DCG or other crypto firms like the Swiss crypto storage firm Xapo.

“As we saw with FTX and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, revolvers like Summers play a critical role in legitimating the crypto industry, and opening doors in public policy and the media.” It’s imperative that the press informs the public of conflicts of interest when reporting on crypto or any industry. Better yet, the media simply shouldn’t offer a platform to someone playacting as a sage economist offering independent analysis when just a few internet searches expose that that person is part of the same industry they’re analyzing,” Hauser said.

“Recall as well that crypto used to market itself as an ‘inflation hedge’ — Summers’ underscrutinized ties to crypto inform even his pronouncements on fiscal and monetary policy. Our message to producers and editors is clear: Larry Summers’ perspective is not irreplaceable, while his conflicts of interest and poor judgment are undeniable. If you need an expert opinion, please find actually neutral experts to quote.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.

A coalition of more than 100 environmental advocacy groups on Wednesday urged the Biden administration to take executive action to stop the Tennessee Valley Authority from building a new fossil gas plant and pipeline to replace a key coal-fired facility.

The TVA, which serves around 10 million people in seven states, announced last October that it would replace its aging coal-fired plant in Cumberland City, Tennessee. Generating enough electricity to power more than a million homes each year, Cumberland is the TVA's largest coal-fired plant. Closing it is part of the agency's plan to shutter all five of its coal-fired facilities by 2035.

"The EPA can either use its legal power to advance the clean energy economy or, given the alternative of no action, can needlessly sign off on dangerous fossil fuel expansion."

To replace Cumberland, TVA plans to build a fossil gas plant in Stewart County that will be supplied by a 32-mile fracked gas pipeline running through three Tennessee counties. Pipeline builder Kinder Morgan has a lengthy history of leaks, pollution, labor violations, and other offenses against the public and nature. Many local residents warily recall a 1992 pipeline explosion that injured five people and burned 400 acres of land less than a mile from the proposed pipeline's route.

The 112 groups argued in a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and a trio of White House advisers that Section 309 of the Clean Air Act stipulates that if the EPA chief "determines that any such legislation, action, or regulation is unsatisfactory from the standpoint of public health or welfare or environmental quality, he shall publish his determination and the matter shall be referred to the Council on Environmental Quality."

Therefore, the letter's signatories want the EPA to refer TVA's proposed plant and pipeline to the council, which is part of the Executive Office of the President.

"This is a matter in which the Biden administration has power—and no required 50th Senate vote as a roadblock—to make good on its promises to tackle the global climate emergency," the letter argues. "It is an issue of legacy where the EPA can either use its legal power to advance the clean energy economy or, given the alternative of no action, can needlessly sign off on dangerous fossil fuel expansion."

According to the watchdog group Revolving Door Project:

The decision to replace two TVA coal plants with a new gas plant and pipeline was made by TVA CEO Jeff Lyash, who was a fossil fuel CEO for 17 years before joining the TVA. Under his leadership, Duke Energy leaked toxic chemicals into the sole source of drinking water for nearly one million North Carolina residents. Lyash's TVA still generates 21% of its energy from coal and 26% from methane gas. It projects that it will emit over 34 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2038.

"The enormous response to this letter from the TVA's own customers, and across the country, shows that Jeff Lyash does not have anything like a popular mandate to expand fossil fuels at the TVA," Revolving Door Project climate research director Dorothy Slater said in a statement. "Administrator Regan needs to step up and faithfully execute the laws, as is his mandate."

TVA is a federally owned electric utility established by Congress 90 years ago during Democratic then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs aimed at tackling the Great Depression. Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, it is the nation's sixth-largest power supplier.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection listed "escape resignations" among its Top 10 Anti-Corruption Buzzwords for 2022, illustrating the concept with an animated GIF showing a briefcase-toting figure making a hasty exit through the Chinese characters for "escape" and "duty."

"Escape resignations" refer to party members and officials who have a chancer mentality, resigning from their posts either to evade accountability or to cash in via resignation or early retirement by netting themselves a job in an industry they were previously responsible for regulating, according to the GIF's explanatory text.

"It's a mutant and invisible form of corruption," the text warns. "It doesn't matter how carefully they hide this behavior, nor how long they try to hide or how many times they try to reinvent themselves, they will find it hard to evade punishment by the party disciplinary agency and law enforcement."

The agency cited as an example Zhang Huayu, former deputy party secretary of China Everbright Bank. An in-depth investigation by Caijing magazine also cited Jia Leng, former director of the Inspection Office at the Agricultural Development Bank of China, Jiang Tingxian, former party secretary and director of the Jiulongpo tourism bureau in the southwestern city of Chongqing, and Zeng Changhong, former first-level inspector of the Investor Protection Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, who was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party in April 2022.

Zeng was accused of cashing in on her former regulatory position by working in due diligence companies issuing securities, Caijing reported.

The disciplinary agency also named and shamed Qiu Jin, the former deputy police chief in Zhejiang's Hangzhou city, for using the "revolving door" linking business and political power and working for numerous companies as a security consultant, the report said.

Meanwhile, the China News Weekly said in a Jan. 3 report that there will be no let-up in the ruling party's pursuit of such practices in the coming year.

Officials who see no prospect of advancement in their political careers are most likely to take this route, media reports said.

Less job satisfaction under Xi

Chen Kuide, executive chairman of the Princeton China Institute, said many officials are also seeking escape from public anger over the disastrous economic impact of Communist Party leader Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy, and the emphasis on the individual political power held by Xi.

"It's as if they're saying, well, you insist on concentrating all that power in your own hands, leaving us with no choice but to do as we're told, with no actual power left in the hands of officials [lower down the hierarchy], or resigning, leaving their post, and trying to make a go of things on their own," Chen said.

"[They think] the people who created this mess in China [ie, Xi Jinping] should be the ones to take the blame for it," he said.

Hu Ping, U.S.-based honorary editor-in-chief of the dissident magazine Beijing Spring, said officials have far less job satisfaction under Xi, who makes everything about ideology and political loyalty to him.

He said three years of draconian lockdowns, mass surveillance and testing under Xi's favored zero-COVID policy had been faithfully implemented by local authorities, which now appear paralyzed amid a nationwide wave of mass infections and death that followed the abrupt lifting of restrictions.

"They were operating so efficiently during zero-COVID, organizing so many people across the country to do COVID-19 tests, building quarantine facilities left and right," Hu said.

"But now that has all been lifted, and there is such a huge demand on medical resources, giving rise to so many problems for people, the government is nowhere to be seen," he said. "It's as if they are incapable of dealing with it."

Centralization of power

Chen said Xi's extreme centralization of power in his own hands and that of a trusted entourage of absolute loyalists has taken a toll further down the ranks of the civil service.

"The fact that Xi Jinping exerts this centripetal force on the whole of officialdom has greatly weakened it," he said. "It makes it hard for the system to function."

Hu agreed, saying Chinese officials only care what their superiors think.

"Officials at all levels are unelected by ordinary people, so they don't care about public opinion at all," he said.

"They are appointed and promoted by those higher up, so they always look to the higher levels, and never at the people, to know what to do," he said. "This is determined by the system they are in."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kai Di for RFA Mandarin.

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives was thrown into chaos Tuesday as a group of far-right lawmakers prevented GOP leader Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker, blocking him in three rounds of voting. This is the first time in a century that the process has gone beyond the first round. Voting for a new speaker is set to resume Wednesday. McCarthy needs 218 votes to become speaker, but with a razor-thin Republican majority of 222 representatives, the roughly 20 right-wing holdouts have essentially ground congressional business to a halt until a speaker is chosen. “Exactly what they’re fighting for is sort of unclear. They only know what they’re fighting against,” says New York Times staff writer Robert Draper. We also speak with The American Prospect’s David Dayen about how Republicans are attempting to eliminate congressional worker unions.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Every day as a pre-teen I’d race from my family’s apartment in the Marlboro Housing Projects in Bensonhurst across the long open-air terrace onto which all the apartments on the floor opened, towards the elevator, straining to reach it before the door slammed shut behind me. If I could beat that door; if I could get there before that door slams, I told myself … if I could push myself hard enough and fast enough then there’ll be no more wars. Everyone would live in peace. Black people will have equal rights. Everyone’s life would be meaningful. If I could only beat that slamming door!

Ever since sixth grade, all the way through High School, I’d invent games in which, in my mind, the future of the Civil Rights movement, or ending the escalating war on Vietnam, or even the good health and happiness of my family would depend on my ability to discipline myself sufficiently to master some seemingly unrelated and irrelevant situation. Going up the stairs, I’d sprint from the downstairs door straining to reach the landing before the door slammed shut. Invariably, I was successful, by a hair’s breadth, and Nazism, racism, or death itself was defeated, dead to the world–at least until the next time I raced the slamming door. Each time I added a greater distance I had to run in order to win. The combination of elation and relief with every “victory” (and this occurred at least once every day for eight or nine years), empowered me over conditions I wanted to change but over which I had no control.

I fought against the temptation to “waste” this effort on minor or personal desires, like getting an A on an exam. These games, in which I was the only one involved but in which every occurrence became some sort of private signal and each re­arrangement of reality became an esoteric omen, were reserved for only the most important world-shaking questions. “If I don’t beat that door, it’ll prove that god exists,” I’d think, and, fancying myself to be of scientific, non-religious mind despite five years in Hebrew school, I’d never fail to beat the slamming door, never fall down, always straining against my own physical limits, never setting it up as an easy goal, and thus, always giving abstract philosophical questions a real physical dependence.

None of my friends believed in god. That was the first philosophical/religious encumbrance we’d discarded before turning the age of 12. I inadvertently caused a school scandal in P.S. 248 when I refused to read a bible passage to the honors assembly at the end of the 6th grade, after having been chosen by the teachers as the best reader in the school. The year before, I had beaten out my best friend Lloyd in the spelling bee by spelling correctly the word he missed “bouquet” before the entire school. I then spelled the word “gymnasium,” which was long but straightforward, and I was crowned the school champ –in the fifth grade!– and sent off to the district contest.

Susan Sussman congratulated me after school. She had a crush on me in fifth grade and I couldn’t care less. By sixth grade, however, our feelings had switched. I thought Susan was adorably cuddly. She had long blond hair, and wore a red velvet dress for special occasions. I dreamed about touching her dress. I called her once to go to the movies with me and my parents, but she didn’t want to. It took me half the day to build up the nerve to call her. By then, it was Susan who couldn’t care less.

My teacher, Edna Capellina, called my parents in to see her. “Your son refuses to read the bible. It’s a non-sectarian passage. It’s from the old testament. It doesn’t mention any one religion or even Jesus Christ.” My parents told her that they would stand by whatever decision I made. My dad went further and said that bible readings of any kind don’t belong in the public schools.

After a few days, Lloyd was chosen to read the bible in my place. Lloyd wasn’t as firm in his beliefs as me concerning god, but he didn’t want to scab on my decision. Out of solidarity he informed the school that, no, he was not going to read it either.

The school principal, Mrs. Manbeck, was scandalized. She now felt she had not only to find a bible-reader but a Jewish kid as well, to avert the innuendos. Finally, they asked Susan Sussman. Susan did believe in god. Her family was very religious. She leapt at the chance to read. Mrs. Manbeck was relieved. Lloyd and I tormented poor Susan by reciting the forbidden word to her: “Ye-Yaw!”, which was a phonetic transliteration from the Hebrew of god’s name that was never, never said under any circumstances; instead, for some peculiar reason, it was read as “Adonoy,” another forbidden word except when praying; we were supposed to say “Adoshem” when we came across the ever-present “Ye-Yaw” which in our minds was “Adonoy.” We also were supposed to write god’s name G-d, said Susan, as if it was a dirty word. “F-k that s-t,” I wrote to her along with “congratulations.” I never wanted to touch her red velvet dress again.

When I was 11 and my brother Robert was 9 we went off to the Boys’ Club camp in Port Jervis for two weeks, our first time away from our parents. Robert and I were the only Jews in the camp, and some antisemitic creep pulled a knife on us, saying “Jewboy, go home.” My parents came and took us home. The next year, we were sent to an all-Jewish camp. Every morning we were supposed to go to the makeshift temple and pray before breakfast. I would refuse to pray. I’d sit there thinking about the family, about being away from home. I could read Hebrew and already knew more Jewish history than the camp officials prodding me to pray. But I didn’t believe in god. Finally, the head counselor decided I was a detrimental influence on the rest of the kids (Jesus, I was only 12!), and banned me from temple; I was only too glad to oblige– it allowed me an extra hour to sleep. Suddenly, the counselor’s office was besieged by kids claiming to be atheists seeking an extra hour of sleep! I had organized my first rebellion without intending to.

Back at home, I tried to figure out what made me Jewish. My Black friends in the projects thought god was a lot of hogwash too, and we’d talk about it as we’d shoot the eyes out of the hoops. I didn’t know any white Protestants. In fact, the only ones I knew who did believe in god were Catholics. “You’re just trying to get on god’s good side ‘cause we’re the chosen people and you’re not,” I’d taunt the Italian Catholic twins, Gerard and Carl, as they beat me up. “Fuckin’ commie-queer-fag-nigger-lover-kike-bastard!” they’d holler. “You killed Jesus!”

But as the years thickened like the plot, it was a rare day in the Projects they’d catch me. I flew behind the cement barrels in the little playground in my Pro-Keds, leapt fences, tore over to my building, number 3, which was sanctuary. Everyone’s own building through number 28 was their own haven; they were untouchable there. . . . until the Italians started beating up the Black kids in their own buildings, and all the rules pried loose from the cross. On the way home, I’d shove the hall door open and tear ass down the terrace, touching my apartment door just before the door slammed shut. “There is no god,” I’d tell myself, again.

I am amazed today at the mind games I put myself through to challenge what I had come to believe. I remember when I was five years old walking with mom on Oceanview Avenue in Brighton Beach. “See that school? That’s P.S. 253, that’s where you are going to start in September,” mom explained to me. I was so excited. I wanted to look at the school from every angle. We walked around it and then over to a mailbox affixed to a cement pole. “I have a letter to mail,” Mom said. “Maybe it’s a letter to me,” I thought. And then the mind game: That’s not my name on the envelope. My name is Mitchel, that’s not “Mitchel” on there. It’s not sent to me. But what if it is? What if my name changes every day, and I wake up believing it’s my real name, and everyone calls me by my new name? How would I know the difference? Would I remember anything of my old name? I promptly banged my head on the bottom of the mailbox, just as I was thinking: Maybe that’s tomorrow’s name for me on the envelope! Mom doesn’t know– or maybe she does! Bonk! Mom was sitting me up on the ground, hugging me. “Are you all right, Mitchel?” “Yea, I’m fine. My head hurts.” It was good to hear my name.

If we believe, with Freud, that there are no accidents in the psychopathology of everyday life, the beliefs and dogmas I’d established for myself– including the uncertainties over “What is my real name?” or the mind-rattling interrogations my brother Robert and I flung at each other: “How do you know that the red light and the green light I see when crossing the street are the same colors that you see? Maybe what I see as red you see as green but call it red?” –needed confirmation.

How desperate my need to move questions and events over which I had no real power or control into my grasp! How overwhelming the drive to have control over everything affecting my life! I became obsessed with testing every question, even when I began to suspect that the path I’d chosen to accomplish that could never really achieve it. But what else could a kid do?

And so, I raced the slam of the door. I strained against my limits. Had a person emerged on the stairs or in my path; had I pulled a muscle or failed to get to the top of the stairs before the door slammed shut, that would have been a signal. But that never happened. If god truly existed, I reasoned, s/he could have prevented me from reaching the top of the landing. After each “test” I’d be almost orgasmically relieved. There is no god, I concluded for the five-hundredth time.

Who says that racing the door is the way to test what you believe?, I asked myself as I got older. By racing a door to find out if racing doors was the answer?

At first, this was a tiny nudge in the back door of consciousness, barely perceptible. Soon it grew into a burning bush, a roar, a tear in the fabric of space-time, and all my questions about the world became meta-questions about process–questions about the procedure for answering all my other questions. Is racing the slamming door the best way to answer these questions? And I answered it… by racing the door!

“Wouldn’t any way of deciding anything need to be proved,” I asked Lloyd as we batted around the paradox along with the baseballs we smacked every day in the cement schoolyard at Lafayette High School. “How can we decide on how to decide about how to decide!?” I felt like I was five years old again. “Who else even thinks about such things?”

“I do,” Lloyd said.

That was all the encouragement I needed. Soon, all my “tests” were over methodology. Maybe god does exist but doesn’t choose to reveal herself to me. Lloyd and I concocted scheme upon scheme to trick God into revealing himself. I longed to stand outside my brain and watch how it worked.

A kid’s mind is filled with wonder, and when we’re older we tend to relegate that intense searching and all of that wisdom to the realm of “cuteness,” which we no longer have time for. The rhythms of daily life don’t allow the type of observations that kids often make. Just by walking everywhere, kids develop a different relationship to the space around them and to time; that all gets lost later amid the goal-oriented auto-culture we live in, with our ability to rush faster and faster to places less and less worth getting to.(1) As we get older, we lose some of the ability to make nonlinear connections between things– dialectical leaps– which are the essence of poetry, science, art, humor … and radical politics. What exactly made Newton think, “Aha! Gravity!” when he saw that apple fall, and not: “Fucking apples all over the lawn. Autumn’s here. Soon it’ll be winter. Gotta rake the leaves?”

NOTES

1. Philip Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mitchel Cohen.

After 72 hours of negotiations ended yesterday, the Social Democratic Liberal Party finally chose the People’s Alliance party and National Federation Party as its coalition partners ending the 16 years of domination by 2006 coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama.

Speaking to the media outside Yue Lai Hotel in Suva last night, Sodelpa head of negotiations team and vice-president Anare Jale said it was not an easy decision to make.

The negotiations team from the ruling FijiFirst Party was led by its party leader and Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama. He was accompanied by FijiFirst general secretary Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

• READ MORE: New chapter for Fiji – Rabuka to lead coalition
• Other Fiji elections reports

“The management board has been meeting for two hours today [Tuesday],” Jale said.

He said they made the decision following presentations from the FijiFirst Party, the People’s Alliance Party and National Federation Party.

“A secret ballot was conducted. There were about 30 members of the management board who voted.

14-16 split vote
“The decision was 14 voted for FijiFirst Party and 16 vote for the People’s Alliance Party.

“Sodelpa will form a coalition with the People’s Alliance Party and National Federation Party to form a new government.

“We have finally came to a decision and it has not been a very easy decision, it took us few days to decide on the way forward for the party, especially the choice of who we are going to form a coalition with to form the next government.

“It was a huge responsibility for Sodelpa and we are so grateful that the end has now come.”

He said the decision was a tough one.

“The decision was taken into account with presentations made to the negotiating team of Sodelpa which we have been receiving over the last three days.

“We analysed the presentations given, we went back to the management board to report to them.

Rabuka for PM
The negotiation team of the People’s Alliance Party was led by party leader Sitiveni Rabuka, who will become the new prime minister. Also a former coup leader, Rabuka was Fiji’s prime minister from 1992 to 1999.

Questions sent to FijiFirst party leader Voreqe Bainimarama and Sayed-Khaiyum remained unanswered when this edition went to press. RNZ Pacific also faced unanswered questions. The FijiFirst Facebook page has not been undated for four days.

The former Sodelpa leader, Ro Teimumu Kepa, said the negotiations were not easy.

Speaking at the news conference last night, she said the lengthy meeting was an indicator of how serious and crucial the meeting was.

“It has not been an easy 72 hours,” Ro Teimumu said.

“We’ve had three management board meetings but that is an indicator of how serious and how crucial and how important it was for us to make the right decision.

“We are factoring in the stability of our country, the way the people have asked us to look at the areas that we needed to look at in terms of where we were to vote today.

“We hope that the way ahead is going to be one that will bring good news to people in terms of the stability of our country, all the things that we’ve been mindful of and complaining about for the last 16 years.”

Ro Teimumu also took time to thank her party supporters.

“I would like to thank our Sodelpa supporters who came through and gave us three seats, which became very crucial in terms of determining the way ahead.

“We wish our parliamentarians especially the new coalition — that is the People’s Alliance Party, and the NFP and Sodelpa — we wish them all the best and we just ask you to keep them in your prayers.”

Rakesh Kumar is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

#FIJITIMESHEADLINES

Bula

The big one on the front page of The Fiji Times for Wednesday, December 21 is on politics.

When it mattered, the powers that be came together and voted for change!#TimesNews #TimesBiz #TimesSports #FijiNews https://t.co/5f0PZX6c3D

— The Fiji Times (@fijitimes) December 20, 2022

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The conventional wisdom among many Washington policymakers is that arms sales are a critical tool of U.S. foreign policy—cementing alliances, projecting power and influence without putting boots on the ground, and fostering regional stability.

The United States has long been the world's largest arms-supplying nation, cornering 39 percent of the market in recent years and providing weapons to over 100 recipient nations.

But as my new paper for the Quincy Institute explains, the risks of arms sales in fueling conflicts, enabling human rights abuses, and drawing the United States into conflicts that don't promote its national interests are too often discounted in favor of their alleged benefits. As a result, the United States has long been the world's largest arms-supplying nation, cornering 39 percent of the market in recent years and providing weapons to over 100 recipient nations.  

Long-term U.S. interests would be much better served by a more restrained approach to arms transfers. Early on, it seemed that the Biden administration recognized this fact and was going to do something about it. As a candidate, Joe Biden said that if he was elected, the United States would "no longer check its values at the door" when it came to selling weapons abroad.  

And he took the occasion of his first foreign policy speech to announce that his administration would end support for offensive operations in Yemen, including relevant arms sales. Following up on that pledge, he briefly suspended sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to conduct a review of the wisdom of U.S. sales to those regimes, which have been the key players in a devastating intervention in Yemen that has resulted in the deaths of nearly 400,000 people through direct and indirect means, including thousands of civilians killed in Saudi airstrikes carried out with U.S.-supplied equipment and logistical support.  

But aside from suspending one bomb deal with Saudi Arabia, the administration cleared both nations for further U.S. sales. This return to business as usual has also encompassed sales to repressive regimes like Egypt, Nigeria, and the Philippines with severely negative human and security consequences and little if any corresponding benefit to the United States.

This is not to suggest that all U.S. arms sales are inherently bad. It makes sense to supply weapons to Ukraine to help it defend itself against the Russian invasion, which the United States has done at near-record levels over the course of just eight months. But even this arms supply raises important issues, including the need to be careful about providing weapons that could be used to strike targets deep inside Russia, and the absence to date of a parallel diplomatic strategy to try to end the war. Pouring in weapons without a larger strategy could be a recipe for ensuring a long, grinding conflict, or a spur to escalation into a U.S.-Russian confrontation that could have unforeseen consequences, including a possible resort to nuclear weapons by Moscow. 

It's important to note that not all U.S. arms sales are determined by a careful consideration of their potential strategic impact or humanitarian consequences. Arms exporting firms like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon profit handsomely from overseas sales, and use their considerable lobbying clout to press for sales to as many countries as possible.  

The most obvious example of corporate lobbying to promote questionable arms deals has been Raytheon's concerted campaign to persuade the executive branch and Congress to sign off on a controversial sale of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration sided with the company when it vetoed a congressional effort to block a tranche of weapons that were proposed in 2019. Similar efforts to persuade Biden to do the same are no doubt still underway, but such lobbying activity often takes place behind closed doors, outside the view of the public and the press.

There is still time for the Biden administration to change course on its approach to arms sales. Its internal debate should come to a head when the administration releases its official arms sales policy directive some time later this year. The mood in Congress is already shifting, most notably as illustrated in calls by key members from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to freeze sales to Saudi Arabia over its collaboration with Russia on reducing global oil output. 

It's long past time for a change in U.S. arms sales policy toward placing greater emphasis on assessing the risks of specific sales rather than their alleged benefits, ensuring greater transparency over how U.S. weapons are actually being used, and enhancing Congress's power to block questionable exports.  

Hopefully, these issues will be thoroughly debated in the run-up to the release of the Biden administration's official arms sales policy. A change in policy is long overdue, both to promote long-term U.S. interests and to reduce the harm to civilians and countries in conflict that comes with unrestrained weapons exports.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by William Hartung.

The post Introducing Giorgia Meloni: How the US Opened the Door for Fascism’s Return to Italy  appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Michael Leonardi.

The Italian Parliamentary election has concluded and the neofascist Giorgia Meloni is ready to emerge as the new prime minister of a divided country with no clear mandate from around 60 percent of eligible voters, in one of the lower voter turnouts in history. The choices were quite grim and the system rigged along the lines of the anti-democratic US election model after years of neoliberal forces working to create a bipolar schizophrenic and easily destabilized political system.

Berlusconianism, the creation of a disastrous neoliberal and US/NATO controlled Democratic Party modeled after the United State’s own corporate-driven party—coupled with a general malaise and degradation of Italian culture—overall have contributed to create the ingredients for the Steve Bannon-groomed Meloni to rise to the top, like a toxic slime on the surface of a sea of contaminated waste.

Italy has become like a country of spoiled children that has lost its identity. It has been colonized and lobotomized by multinational corporate interests, the mythological concept of the American dream, mass consumerism, US/NATO dictated militarism, and crass materialism. For almost 30 years—from Berlusconi’s first election in 1994 and even going back to the post-WWII era when the United States asserted its sphere of influence by steamrolling an anti-communist agenda in order to maintain geopolitical control over the peninsula—Italy has been slowly but steadily pulling out its historical roots and erasing its historical memory.

Giorgia Meloni is the aggressive, bombastic, volatile, and narcissistic woman that leads the far right, racist, anti-immigrant, anti LGBTQ+, Italian first, neofascist party called Fratelli di Italia (Brothers of Italy). Several of her party’s candidates have been arrested for corruption scandals as recently as last week, and it is a political party with strong ties to Italy’s organized criminality.

The other political choices have inspired little to no enthusiasm after the technocratic Center Right/Neoliberal disaster led by the former president of the European central bank, Mario Draghi, whose coalition government included components from all stripes of the Italian political spectrum from the populist 5 Star Movement, to the xenophobic Lega with the Democratic Party and always more incoherent Berlusconi and his Forza Italia in between.

Meloni’s popularity, with around 25% support from the electorate, is based on her fiery rhetoric and sloganeering, feeding on the spiraling discontent of an increasingly ignorant populace. Wages have been stagnant for decades, the post Covid-19 bailouts from the EU are drying up and the cost of everything is on the rise. The Italian people are suffering a major increase in economic hardship from the criminal and stratospheric rise of energy prices leading to crippling inflation across the board, all compounded by the disastrous war in Ukraine where Italy does whatever the United States government dictates. This has allowed for Meloni to ride a populist wave of anger as her political party strategically positioned itself as the opposition to the unfolding neoliberal disaster that has set the Italian and European economy back decades.

There are small glimmers of resistance. There is the Green/Italian Left that has a broad-based social democratic platform based on a socially just ecological transition, however, they are schizophrenically aligned with the Democratic Party whose leadership openly declared that they were only in coalition with them for useful votes to defeat the threat of Meloni and that they would then again push the neoliberal NATO dominated Draghi agenda and largely ignore their Green/Left counterparts. Then there is Unione Popolare (Popular Union) that has a broad-based transformative program led by the former mayor of Naples, Luigi DeMagistris, though they were lucky to get 1 percent of the vote. This week they garnered the support of Ken Loach and the embattled former pro-immigrant mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, but their campaign has been barely perceptible.

And then there is the newly reorganized 5 Star Movement now led by former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, which has splintered with the components that were supportive of the Draghi neoliberal agenda. But after 5 Star’s meteoric populist rise a decade ago, it has proven to be an incoherent and hypocritical flop in implementing any effective policies and has betrayed its promise of political purity by forming coalitions with parties from across the entire political spectrum from the far-right to the extreme center in order to maintain its political survival.

Another political alliance that has developed is the former prime minister and former leader of the Democratic Party, Matteo Renzi, and a newer crook on the scene named Carlo Calenda who is a senator and recent candidate for mayor of Roma. Renzi’s political party, Italia Viva, caused the fall of the popular Conte government at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and Calenda considers himself a "liberal globalist." This pair like to depict themselves as the grand center representing a Clintonesque approach to governance. Renzi is known for his shady alliances with the House of Saud and a series of corruption scandals that have made him quite unpopular. This alliance has the tendency to serve US interests at all costs and push a neoliberal agenda that favors corporate-driven reform. For an example of their backwardness, Calenda—embracing a false narrative of ecological transition—has called for the building of nuclear power plants across the peninsula to help confront the newly created energy crisis.

So, in coalition with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo’s Salvini's xenophobic Lega, Meloni and the Brothe'’s of Italy/Fratelli di Italia have received around 45 percent of the vote. Meloni's party is likely to earn around 25 percent making Fratelli di Italia the most popular party in Italy and insuring that Meloni will become the first woman prime minister of the country.

Italy is one of the most beautiful countries in the world with a love for good food, good wine, and a historic rootedness in the land and sea that surrounds it. The sea is, unfortunately, contaminated and increasingly filled with plastic pollution. The climate crisis is creating havoc with ever more extreme weather conditions by the day. Floods, droughts, fires, and extreme heat are the new normal. The political leadership is leading the country in the opposite direction of where it needs to go. Profits for the weapons makers, profits for the fossil fuel producers, and the insanity of nuclear power still dominate across the political spectrum. The United States dictates the politics in this subordinated outpost of empire. Thousands of people migrating from extreme and deadly conditions in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East die each year trying to reach Europe from across the Mediterranean. Instead of acting as a neutral party and demanding a pathway for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, the Italian government is a pawn on the American chess board ready to declare checkmate on the climate and on the future.

While visiting Italy and the Venice film festival a month back Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the Italian national newspaper Corriere Della Sera that Meloni being elected would be a positive thing. Clinton said that anytime a woman is elected to a position of power it is a step forward for women around the world. A fitting statement coming from the woman who brought us Donald Trump with her campaign's pathetic pied piper strategy to elevate what they thought was the weakest candidate. And this is a fitting conclusion, as the United States has effectively opened the door for fascism's return to Italy.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Michael Leonardi.

Image by Jeremy Bezanger.

In Vienna, China’s permanent mission to the United Nations has been rather exercised of late. Members of the mission have been particularly irate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General, Rafael Grossi, who addressed the IAEA’s Board of Governors on September 12.

Grossi was building on a confidential report by the IAEA which had been circulated the previous week concerning the role of nuclear propulsion technology for submarines to be supplied to Australia under the AUKUS security pact.

When the AUKUS announcement was made in September last year, its significance shook security establishments in the Indo-Pacific. It was also no less remarkable, and troubling, for signalling the transfer of otherwise rationed nuclear technology to a third country. As was rightly observed at the time by Ian Stewart, executive director of the James Martin Center in Washington, such “cooperation may be used by non-nuclear states as more ammunition in support of a narrative that the weapons states lack good faith in their commitments to disarmament.”

Having made that sound point, Stewart, revealing his strategic bias, suggested that, as such cooperation would not involve nuclear weapons by Australia, and would be accompanied by safeguards, few had reason to worry. This was all merely “a relatively straightforward strategic step.”

James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was far less sanguine. “[T]he nonproliferation implications of the AUKUS submarine deal are both negative and serious.” Australia’s operation of nuclear-powered submarines would make it the first non-nuclear weapon state to manipulate a loophole in the inspection system of the IAEA.

In setting this “damaging precedent”, aspirational “proliferators could use naval reactor programs as cover for the development of nuclear weapons – with the reasonable expectation that, because of the Australia precedent, they would not face intolerable costs for doing so.” It did not matter, in this sense, what the AUKUS members intended; a terrible example that would undermine IAEA safeguards was being set.

A few countries in the region have been quietly riled by the march of this technology sharing triumvirate in the Indo-Pacific. In a leaked draft of its submission to the United Nations tenth review conference of the Parties to the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT RevCon), Indonesia opined that the transfer of nuclear technology for military purposes was at odds with the spirit and objective of the NPT.

In the sharp words of the draft, “Indonesia views any cooperation involving the transfer of nuclear materials and technology for military purposes from nuclear-weapon states to any non-nuclear weapon states as increasing the associated risks [of] catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences.”

At the nuclear non-proliferation review conference, Indonesian diplomats pushed the line that nuclear material in submarines should be monitored with greater stringency. The foreign ministry argued that it had achieved some success in proposing for more transparency and tighter scrutiny on the distribution of such technology, claiming to have received support from AUKUS members and China. “After two weeks of discussion in New York, in the end all parties agreed to look at the proposal as the middle path,” announced Tri Tharyat, director-general for multilateral cooperation in Indonesia’s foreign ministry.

While serving to upend the apple cart of security in the region, AUKUS, in Jakarta’s view, also served to foster a potential, destabilising arms race, placing countries in a position to keep pace with an ever increasingly expensive pursuit of armaments. (Things were not pretty to start with even before AUKUS was announced, with China and the United States already eyeing each other’s military build-up in Asia.)

The concern over an increasingly voracious pursuit of arms is a view that Beijing has encouraged, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian having remarked that, “the US, the UK and Australia’s cooperation in nuclear submarines severely damages regional peace and stability [and] intensifies the arms race.”

Wang Qun, China’s Permanent Representative, told Grossi on September 13 that he should avoid drawing “chestnuts from the fire” in endorsing the nuclear proliferation exercise of Australia, the United States and the UK. Rossi, for his part, told the IAEA Board of Governors that four “technical meetings” had been held with the AUKUS parties, which had pleased the organisation. “I welcome the AUKUS parties’ engagement with the Agency to date and expect this to continue in order that they deliver their shared commitment to ensuring the highest non-proliferation and safeguard standards are met.”

The IAEA report also gave a nod to Canberra’s claim that proliferation risks posed by the AUKUS deal were minimal given that it would only receive “complete, welded” nuclear power units, making the removal of nuclear material “extremely difficult.” In any case, such material used in the units, were it to be used for nuclear weapons, needed to be chemically processed using facilities Australia did not have nor would seek.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning was less than impressed. “This report lopsidedly cited the account given by the US, the UK and Australia to explain away what they have done, but made no mention of the international community’s major concerns over the risk of nuclear proliferation that may arise from the AUKUS nuclear submarine cooperation.” It turned “a blind eye to many countries’ solemn position that the AUKUS cooperation violates the purpose and object of the NPT.”

Beijing’s concerns are hard to dismiss as those of a paranoid, addled mind. Despite China’s own unhelpful military build-up, attempts by the AUKUS partners to dismiss the transfer of nuclear technology to Australia as technically benign and compliant with the NPT is dangerous nonsense. Despite strides towards some middle way advocated by Jakarta, the precedent for nuclear proliferation via the backdoor is being set.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In Vienna, China’s permanent mission to the United Nations has been rather exercised of late. Members of the mission have been particularly irate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General, Rafael Grossi, who addressed the IAEA’s Board of Governors on September 12.

Grossi was building on a confidential report by the IAEA which had been circulated the previous week concerning the role of nuclear propulsion technology for submarines to be supplied to Australia under the AUKUS security pact.

When the AUKUS announcement was made in September last year, its significance shook security establishments in the Indo-Pacific.  It was also no less remarkable, and troubling, for signalling the transfer of otherwise rationed nuclear technology to a third country.  As was rightly observed at the time by Ian Stewart, executive director of the James Martin Center in Washington, such “cooperation may be used by non-nuclear states as more ammunition in support of a narrative that the weapons states lack good faith in their commitments to disarmament.”

Having made that sound point, Stewart, revealing his strategic bias, suggested that, as such cooperation would not involve nuclear weapons by Australia, and would be accompanied by safeguards, few had reason to worry.  This was all merely “a relatively straightforward strategic step.”

James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was far less sanguine.  “[T]he nonproliferation implications of the AUKUS submarine deal are both negative and serious.”  Australia’s operation of nuclear-powered submarines would make it the first non-nuclear weapon state to manipulate a loophole in the inspection system of the IAEA.

In setting this “damaging precedent”, aspirational “proliferators could use naval reactor programs as cover for the development of nuclear weapons – with the reasonable expectation that, because of the Australia precedent, they would not face intolerable costs for doing so.”  It did not matter, in this sense, what the AUKUS members intended; a terrible example that would undermine IAEA safeguards was being set.

A few countries in the region have been quietly riled by the march of this technology sharing triumvirate in the Indo-Pacific.  In a leaked draft of its submission to the United Nations tenth review conference of the Parties to the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT RevCon), Indonesia opined that the transfer of nuclear technology for military purposes was at odds with the spirit and objective of the NPT.

In the sharp words of the draft, “Indonesia views any cooperation involving the transfer of nuclear materials and technology for military purposes from nuclear-weapon states to any non-nuclear weapon states as increasing the associated risks [of] catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences.”

At the nuclear non-proliferation review conference, Indonesian diplomats pushed the line that nuclear material in submarines should be monitored with greater stringency.  The foreign ministry argued that it had achieved some success in proposing for more transparency and tighter scrutiny on the distribution of such technology, claiming to have received support from AUKUS members and China.  “After two weeks of discussion in New York, in the end all parties agreed to look at the proposal as the middle path,” announced Tri Tharyat, director-general for multilateral cooperation in Indonesia’s foreign ministry.

While serving to upend the apple cart of security in the region, AUKUS, in Jakarta’s view, also served to foster a potential, destabilising arms race, placing countries in a position to keep pace with an ever increasingly expensive pursuit of armaments.  (Things were not pretty to start with even before AUKUS was announced, with China and the United States already eyeing each other’s military build-up in Asia.)

The concern over an increasingly voracious pursuit of arms is a view that Beijing has encouraged, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian having remarked that, “the US, the UK and Australia’s cooperation in nuclear submarines severely damages regional peace and stability [and] intensifies the arms race.”

Wang Qun, China’s Permanent Representative, told Grossi on September 13 that he should avoid drawing “chestnuts from the fire” in endorsing the nuclear proliferation exercise of Australia, the United States and the UK.  Rossi, for his part, told the IAEA Board of Governors that four “technical meetings” had been held with the AUKUS parties, which had pleased the organisation.  “I welcome the AUKUS parties’ engagement with the Agency to date and expect this to continue in order that they deliver their shared commitment to ensuring the highest non-proliferation and safeguard standards are met.”

The IAEA report also gave a nod to Canberra’s claim that proliferation risks posed by the AUKUS deal were minimal given that it would only receive “complete, welded” nuclear power units, making the removal of nuclear material “extremely difficult.”  In any case, such material used in the units, were it to be used for nuclear weapons, needed to be chemically processed using facilities Australia did not have nor would seek.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning was less than impressed.  “This report lopsidedly cited the account given by the US, the UK and Australia to explain away what they have done, but made no mention of the international community’s major concerns over the risk of nuclear proliferation that may arise from the AUKUS nuclear submarine cooperation.” It turned “a blind eye to many countries’ solemn position that the AUKUS cooperation violates the purpose and object of the NPT.”

Beijing’s concerns are hard to dismiss as those of a paranoid, addled mind.  Despite China’s own unhelpful military build-up, attempts by the AUKUS partners to dismiss the transfer of nuclear technology to Australia as technically benign and compliant with the NPT is dangerous nonsense.  Despite strides towards some middle way advocated by Jakarta, the precedent for nuclear proliferation via the backdoor is being set.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Grossi was building on a confidential report by the IAEA which had been circulated the previous week concerning the role of nuclear propulsion technology for submarines to be supplied to Australia under the AUKUS security pact.

When the AUKUS announcement was made in September last year, its significance shook security establishments in the Indo-Pacific.  It was also no less remarkable, and troubling, for signalling the transfer of otherwise rationed nuclear technology to a third country.  As was rightly observed at the time by Ian Stewart, executive director of the James Martin Center in Washington, such “cooperation may be used by non-nuclear states as more ammunition in support of a narrative that the weapons states lack good faith in their commitments to disarmament.”

Having made that sound point, Stewart, revealing his strategic bias, suggested that, as such cooperation would not involve nuclear weapons by Australia, and would be accompanied by safeguards, few had reason to worry.  This was all merely “a relatively straightforward strategic step.”

James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was far less sanguine.  “[T]he nonproliferation implications of the AUKUS submarine deal are both negative and serious.”  Australia’s operation of nuclear-powered submarines would make it the first non-nuclear weapon state to manipulate a loophole in the inspection system of the IAEA.

In setting this “damaging precedent”, aspirational “proliferators could use naval reactor programs as cover for the development of nuclear weapons – with the reasonable expectation that, because of the Australia precedent, they would not face intolerable costs for doing so.”  It did not matter, in this sense, what the AUKUS members intended; a terrible example that would undermine IAEA safeguards was being set.

A few countries in the region have been quietly riled by the march of this technology sharing triumvirate in the Indo-Pacific.  In a leaked draft of its submission to the United Nations tenth review conference of the Parties to the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT RevCon), Indonesia opined that the transfer of nuclear technology for military purposes was at odds with the spirit and objective of the NPT.

In the sharp words of the draft, “Indonesia views any cooperation involving the transfer of nuclear materials and technology for military purposes from nuclear-weapon states to any non-nuclear weapon states as increasing the associated risks [of] catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences.”

At the nuclear non-proliferation review conference, Indonesian diplomats pushed the line that nuclear material in submarines should be monitored with greater stringency.  The foreign ministry argued that it had achieved some success in proposing for more transparency and tighter scrutiny on the distribution of such technology, claiming to have received support from AUKUS members and China.  “After two weeks of discussion in New York, in the end all parties agreed to look at the proposal as the middle path,” announced Tri Tharyat, director-general for multilateral cooperation in Indonesia’s foreign ministry.

While serving to upend the apple cart of security in the region, AUKUS, in Jakarta’s view, also served to foster a potential, destabilising arms race, placing countries in a position to keep pace with an ever increasingly expensive pursuit of armaments.  (Things were not pretty to start with even before AUKUS was announced, with China and the United States already eyeing each other’s military build-up in Asia.)

The concern over an increasingly voracious pursuit of arms is a view that Beijing has encouraged, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian having remarked that, “the US, the UK and Australia’s cooperation in nuclear submarines severely damages regional peace and stability [and] intensifies the arms race.”

Wang Qun, China’s Permanent Representative, told Grossi on September 13 that he should avoid drawing “chestnuts from the fire” in endorsing the nuclear proliferation exercise of Australia, the United States and the UK.  Rossi, for his part, told the IAEA Board of Governors that four “technical meetings” had been held with the AUKUS parties, which had pleased the organisation.  “I welcome the AUKUS parties’ engagement with the Agency to date and expect this to continue in order that they deliver their shared commitment to ensuring the highest non-proliferation and safeguard standards are met.”

The IAEA report also gave a nod to Canberra’s claim that proliferation risks posed by the AUKUS deal were minimal given that it would only receive “complete, welded” nuclear power units, making the removal of nuclear material “extremely difficult.”  In any case, such material used in the units, were it to be used for nuclear weapons, needed to be chemically processed using facilities Australia did not have nor would seek.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning was less than impressed.  “This report lopsidedly cited the account given by the US, the UK and Australia to explain away what they have done, but made no mention of the international community’s major concerns over the risk of nuclear proliferation that may arise from the AUKUS nuclear submarine cooperation.” It turned “a blind eye to many countries’ solemn position that the AUKUS cooperation violates the purpose and object of the NPT.”

Beijing’s concerns are hard to dismiss as those of a paranoid, addled mind.  Despite China’s own unhelpful military build-up, attempts by the AUKUS partners to dismiss the transfer of nuclear technology to Australia as technically benign and compliant with the NPT is dangerous nonsense.  Despite strides towards some middle way advocated by Jakarta, the precedent for nuclear proliferation via the backdoor is being set.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

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As Andrew Montano’s parole date neared, he had two options: spend another year in prison or finish his sentence at a state-funded halfway house.

Fellow inmates cautioned him against entering Colorado’s community corrections system, saying it was overly punitive and too often a ticket back to prison. But after nearly 13 years behind bars — his entire adult life — Montano’s desire to embrace his long-term partner and start a career overshadowed those warnings.

In September 2019, he was accepted into a halfway house outside Denver, then owned by the private-prison operator CoreCivic. The rules were strict. But Montano, 35, who was sent to prison in 2007 for assault with a deadly weapon, a crime he committed as a juvenile, was determined to stay on track.

Four months later, during a routine meeting, Montano’s case manager asked if he’d ever been to a location without prior approval from the facility, a violation of the rules. He answered truthfully: On three occasions, while waiting to catch a bus for the hourlong commute back to the halfway house, he’d used a gas station bathroom.

He left thinking the exchange didn’t have much significance. His prior write-ups had been for minor infractions: failing to make his bed, having a box of raspberries in his room and forgetting to sign off on mandatory chores. But later that day, he was told he couldn’t leave the facility, even for work or mandatory classes. For more than a week, he waited.

“Without even a hearing from the halfway house, without being able to even talk to anybody about it, the cops just came and picked me up,” said Montano, who was sent back to prison after a parole hearing. He was released directly onto parole nearly a year later, in December 2020.

“They want us to change, they want us to grow, they want us to learn, they want us to have integrity and to be honest and truthful and a member of society, but we don’t have the chance to be able to (do) that.”

CoreCivic declined to make a representative available for an interview and did not respond to questions sent by email. In a written statement, a spokesperson said, “The staff and leadership teams at our residential reentry centers in Colorado strictly adhere to the policies and standards established by” the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. “We see our purpose as making sure those in our care are better prepared to succeed no matter where life may take them next. We’re proud of our longstanding track record of delivering high-quality and meaningful residential reentry programs.”

When Colorado formed its community corrections system in 1974, it intended to address prison overcrowding and rehabilitate people in the justice system by providing addiction treatment, job training and other services. Officials saw it as sound fiscal and criminal justice policy: Halfway houses are cheaper to run than prisons, and more assistance would reduce recidivism, meaning fewer people would land back behind bars.

But the reality is more of the people who pass through Colorado’s halfway houses end up incarcerated than rehabilitated. Of every 100 people in a halfway house, only two will be reincarcerated for a new crime, while 26 will fail and likely end up behind bars for technical violations and 14 for running away from a facility.

Among the 57 who do graduate, 22 will be back in the criminal justice system within two years, data since 2009 shows. (Due to rounding, these scenarios add up to 99 people, not 100.)

Colorado’s overall recidivism rate — defined by the Department of Corrections as returning to prison within three years — is 50%, one of the worst in the country, according to a nationwide analysis of recidivism published in 2018 by the Virginia Department of Corrections.

For every 100 people in a halfway house...

“Is that really the results that we are OK with?” asked Terri Hurst, health justice coordinator for the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, a nonprofit group that advocates for policies that decrease reliance on the criminal justice system. “These programs have been operating for years without any sort of transparency or accountability or scrutiny.”

Katie Ruske, manager of Colorado’s Office of Community Corrections within the Division of Criminal Justice, which sets standards for halfway houses and audits for compliance, said her office is wary of requiring certain program completion rates for fear it would come at a cost to public safety. “At times it is in the best interest of other individuals in the program, victims and the community that a person be returned to custody.”

ProPublica spoke with nearly 50 current and former halfway house residents, staff members and experts who attributed Colorado halfway houses’ high rate of failure to numerous and often pointless rules, which can be more punitive than those in prison; a scarcity of employment training; addiction treatment programs that are rudimentary or too brief; and financial costs imposed by the facilities that can sink residents into debt.

As a result, Coloradans are, in effect, paying twice: first to fund residents’ time in halfway houses and again when they end up behind bars. From 2019 to 2021, more than 2,000 people were sent from a halfway house to prison, where the cost to incarcerate them more than doubled, to $56,000 a year, according to a Department of Corrections spokesperson.

“By and large,” said state Rep. Leslie Herod, a Denver Democrat, halfway houses “have become just another place to warehouse people, to profit off of people’s misfortune.”

There are three ways people typically end up in Colorado’s 26 state-funded halfway houses. Diversion clients are sentenced by a judge to community corrections in lieu of jail or prison. Transition clients apply to finish their prison sentence there. And some former prisoners are required to complete a halfway house program as a condition of parole.

The time it takes to complete a program varies, but it averages around eight months. And afterward, many diversion clients remain on “non-residential status” for an additional nine months on average, according to a 2018 state report, meaning they no longer live at the facility but report to their case manager and are subject to drug and alcohol testing. (The state’s data excludes those who participate in lengthier specialty treatment programs.)

Over the past three years, Colorado averaged about 6,000 halfway house stays annually. A majority of Colorado’s halfway houses are owned by companies specializing in detention and community-based supervision. Three — CoreCivic, Advantage Treatment Center Inc. and Intervention Inc. — operate 15 of the 26 state-funded facilities.

This fiscal year, community corrections will receive $87.7 million in state funding — or nearly 16% of the state’s public safety budget — to cover operational costs and treatment services. The facilities aren’t required to report in detail to the state oversight agency or lawmakers what they do with the funding.

“There are, at times, various things that we require them to show us, but there isn’t one standard,” Ruske said. “We’re not a financial auditing entity.” Every three years operators are required to hire a public accountant and submit a financial report to the state, but a majority haven’t filed a report since 2017.

Until July, facilities also charged rent to residents, about $510 per month — $17 a day — for a room shared with three to 24 people. During fiscal 2020, facilities collected approximately $15 million in rent.

Although state taxpayers provide most of their funding, the state delegates much of the oversight to local community corrections boards that vary in their makeup, protocols and oversight practices. Board members are typically appointed by county commissioners and include mayors, parole officers, law enforcement, prosecutors and judges.

This local control gives facilities broad authority to establish rules and program requirements for individual halfway houses, creating a patchwork of policies across the state.

A special government audit in 2021 spurred by citizen complaints found that a Colorado Springs facility run by ComCor Inc. had an “excessive” number of rules that residents had to abide by, some “disrespectful in nature.”

Mark Wester, executive director of ComCor, said the facility has “moved to a more supportive therapeutic approach to client care” in response to the audit. He said it also established a committee to review rules, as well as the sanctions it imposes.

Residents at halfway houses owned by the nonprofit Intervention Community Corrections Services are prohibited from possessing candles, gift cards, debit cards or cash, according to a client manual. And in interviews, former residents said they’re barred from wearing tank tops, having cellphones or driving. Failing to “follow a direct order by staff” and returning to the facility a few minutes late are also violations, according to the manual.

The current and former residents of some Colorado halfway houses who spoke to ProPublica acknowledged they need to account for their whereabouts but said such requirements are sometimes impossible to comply with, especially when relying on public transportation.

“If you’re a minute late, they’ll try to write you up. But sometimes due to weather or the bus or something like that, you might not be able to make it if those are unforeseen circumstances,” Montano said. “Their response is, ‘Well, you better start running.’”

Punishment for violating the rules also varies, from added chores to a return to prison.

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A person can be expelled from a program for “any reason or for no reason at all,” a 2012 law says. If a diversion client pleads not guilty to a violation, a hearing is held to determine their punishment. But, as noted by numerous state audits, documentation of such hearings — and the outcomes — are inconsistent and lack detail.

ProPublica obtained through a public records request incident reports from all Colorado halfway houses in operation during a three-year period. They showed residents facing serious discipline for expressing suicidal thoughts, not reporting a traffic ticket and driving without permission. If they’re kicked out of a program, most end up incarcerated. One resident was terminated and sent to jail because he was suspected of stashing a gun in the woods even though police didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him.

John Sherman went 34 years in prison without a write-up. But that changed within days of being released to a for-profit halfway house in Denver.

On his second day at CoreCivic Dahlia, the 66-year-old was given permission to travel to Walmart to buy clothing. When he entered the store, more than a dozen family members were waiting to surprise him. Loved ones pulled him in for hugs, stuffing money and gifts into his hands. His sister interrupted the reunion, frantically reminding Sherman that he needed to report his arrival at the store. But the customer service desk wouldn’t let him use its landline, and he missed his deadline by a few minutes.

Strict protocols track residents’ movements. Their route must be approved with a deadline to reach their destination. In some halfway houses, residents aren’t allowed to have a cellphone, forcing them to find a landline to report back to the facility.

In the weeks that followed, Sherman, whose sentence was shortened by former Gov. John Hickenlooper, received seven more write-ups for failing to call the facility. He said he lived with “intense dread that I’m going back to prison.”

Research shows someone with Sherman’s track record is positioned for success after prison: He had family support, didn’t struggle with substance abuse and had a place to live. He would ultimately succeed, but he said it was only because he stayed away from the facility and its rules as much as he was allowed.

“The halfway house doesn’t care if you leave or succeed,” said Sherman, who completed his program in January 2021. “Somebody’s gonna fill that bed no matter what.”

Roger Jarjoura, a researcher and senior adviser with the American Institutes for Research’s National Reentry Resources Center, said structure and supervision are key aspects of any reentry program, but arbitrary rules coupled with excessive supervision increase the likelihood a person will fail. The NRRC, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, provides technical assistance to reentry organizations and local and state governments to improve recidivism rates.

“That’s the insanity of this system: People who have already shown that they are not great with structure or rules have to follow way more rules than a typical person would,” Jarjoura said. ​​“Supervision can be effective when it’s connected to the right kinds of treatment and the right kinds of support.”

Kathryn Otten, who until 2016 directly oversaw two halfway houses as division director of Justice Services in Jefferson County, said the facilities’ punitive policies set residents up for failure.

The Jefferson County facilities — one of which recently closed — are run by Intervention Community Corrections Services, under the umbrella organization Intervention Inc., which currently operates four other halfway houses in Colorado.

Otten recalled that after a bathroom was defaced at one facility, “instead of getting to the bottom of it to figure out who did it,” staff put all residents on lockdown. “They made everyone stay in, miss work, miss everything,” she said. The facility, which like all Colorado halfway houses controls residents’ finances, then took money from everyone for repairs.

“We stepped in at that point and said, ‘No, you can’t do that,’ and ensured that residents got their money back,” said Otten, who in 2016 became the county’s director of housing, homelessness and integration.

ICCS’ executive director, Brian Hulse, declined to be interviewed or respond to questions sent by email. In a written statement, he said: “We use evidence-based and evidence informed practices to maximize desired outcomes and positively impact the lives of our clients. We are proud to serve our community in this capacity.”

Wendy Sawyer, research director for the Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy organization, said it’s not just the number of rules or how arbitrary they can be, “but the way that the person who’s supervising them chooses to apply those rules.” She added, “There’s a ton of discretion.”

Broderrick Rimes, a former ComCor security manager who left the company in July 2021, said the enforcement of rules was often dictated by what was financially beneficial to the facility. When clients broke a rule, staff contacted the billing department to see if they had paid their rent.

“If they’re up to date on their rent, they’ll never get sent back to jail or prison,” he said. But if they owed money they would be kicked out and replaced by someone who could pay. “That is the mentality of community corrections.”

A 2017 audit of ComCor by the Office of Community Corrections found “a clear pattern of inappropriate application of serious sanctions to minor behavioral violations, especially those related to financial matters.”

Wester, who noted the audit occurred before he joined ComCor in 2019, denied that staff check whether clients have paid their rent before disciplining them.

One in five residents of Colorado’s halfway houses is completing a sentence related to substance abuse, according to the state’s three most recent annual reports.

Nearly a dozen current and former residents and staff members from various facilities told ProPublica that the treatment they received was rudimentary, redundant and sometimes overseen by inexperienced staffers. Residents receive treatment of varying length and intensity, from drug and alcohol classes sometimes taught by halfway house staff to 90-day intensive residential treatment.

Shawn Brndiar, a licensed clinical social worker and addiction counselor in Centennial, Colorado, said the three-month addiction programs are not long enough. Effective programs are typically longer than a year, he said.

“Addiction doesn’t start in a vacuum. It’s not like just one day, somebody woke up and said, ‘I’m going to start shooting heroin,’” said Brndiar, who has been an addiction counselor for nine years. “There’s a whole history of things that happened to this person.”

An analysis by the MacArthur Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts found that the intensive residential treatment programs in Colorado’s community corrections system were an inefficient use of taxpayer money and “not very effective at reducing recidivism.” They received the lowest score among 21 criminal justice programs that were evaluated, including those offered in jail or prison.

Over the past five years, 66% of residents enrolled in intensive residential treatment programs graduated.

Michael Anthony Martinez, 29, said he benefited from skills he was taught to manage anger and codependent relationships while in intensive residential treatment in 2020 and 2021. But he said drugs were easily accessible at the Sterling facility owned by Advantage Treatment Centers and he failed out.

ATC did not respond to requests for comment.

The most recent audit of the facility, in 2019, found it was out of compliance for controlling contraband entering the facility.

After failing multiple drug tests, Martinez, who was a diversion client, was sent to prison.

He spent 10 months in prison before being released on parole. After a few months at a sober living home and another 90-day intensive drug treatment program — his third — at a different halfway house, he graduated in July 2022 but was transferred back to the Sterling facility, according to state documents.

“I’m ready to be (a) successful man and show everybody that I can do something right,” he said. “Because this is just sickening. In and out, in and out.”

Requiring people to repeat ineffective programs is a way for companies to boost their profits, Brndiar said.

“It’s a business,” said Brndiar, who is a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “There’s an incentive to keep people in this cycle over and over and over and over again because either way they’re going to get money.”

While some programs provide financial assistance to help with program fees, many residents are required to reimburse the facility once they obtain employment. In fiscal year 2021, 2,521 residents graduated owing on average $1,076, according to the state’s annual report.

At some ICCS facilities, residents receive treatment for mental health and addiction provided by a related company, Behavioral Treatment Services, and are sometimes required to pay out of pocket for those services, according to Otten. The CEO of ICCS’ parent company, Intervention Inc., Kelly Sengenberger, is on the BTS board of directors and was listed as BTS’ owner in state documents from 2017 to 2019. The companies listed the same business address with the state.

Ruske, of the state’s oversight agency, told ProPublica that the financial relationship was not disclosed to the state. ICCS’ contract with the state requires disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. Neither Sengenberger nor BTS responded to emailed questions.

Alycia Samuelson completed a three-year residential halfway house program in 2014 at ICCS. She said part of her treatment was overseen by interns doing outpatient rounds who were ill-equipped to help people who, in her case, had experienced decades of substance abuse and trauma.

“All I’d ever known was addiction,” she told ProPublica. “My mom had given me my first line of cocaine when I was 13. So I didn’t know a lot of the skills for how to be a successful person.”

Samuelson ultimately graduated from the residential program and, after being homeless for more than a decade, moved into her own apartment. And for the first time in her adult life, she wasn’t using meth. But less than a year later, she relapsed and failed a drug test. The facility brought her back into the program then sent her to prison.

“Addiction is a relapsing disease,” Brndiar said. “People relapse, and to make your first move the most severe punishment? It only re-traumatizes the person going through this process.”

Recovery from drug addiction is a long-term process and frequently requires rounds of treatment, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. As with other chronic illnesses, relapses can occur and signal a need for additional treatment, research shows.

When Samuelson was released from prison, she was homeless, fell back into drug use and ended up in another halfway house in 2018. Six months into her program she said she was suicidal. In a matter of weeks, her husband left her, her son was diagnosed with colon cancer and a friend overdosed in the facility and died. Samuelson said staff ignored her struggles so she ran away.

“I said I felt like I’m gonna take my life and I thought they were going to call the ambulance and they didn’t,” said Samuelson, 47, who now lives in Denver. “I literally ran from the halfway house to save myself.”

A 2020 law reduced the charge for escaping from a halfway house to a misdemeanor, instead of a felony, for those serving time for nonviolent crimes, meaning Samuelson wasn’t returned to prison. In 2021, 910 halfway house stays, or 24%, ended when the person ran away from a facility, a sharp increase from 2012 when the rate was 12%, according to state data.

Those with a diagnosis of mental health issues are significantly more likely to fail out of community corrections, according to a 2018 analysis by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice’s Office of Research and Statistics. Only 48% graduated between 2014 and 2016, compared with 61% of those without such a diagnosis. But a diagnosis had little to no effect on whether the person committed a new crime in the future, the report found.

“If all they have are other people who are part of the criminal justice system and underpaid, underqualified people providing treatment, they’re not going to (get what) they need,” Brndiar said.

Employment is key in determining whether someone stays out of prison, according to academic studies and reports by Colorado’s Division of Criminal Justice. Yet state audits show employment services are some of the least-available resources in state halfway houses.

People entering the facilities face challenges getting a job. Some haven’t worked in decades. Others were juveniles when they entered the corrections system and may never have held a job. A criminal record, lack of transportation, addiction and mental health issues can further complicate finding employment.

“If they don’t have a means to support themselves, they’re going to figure out how to do that,” said Jarjoura, the recidivism expert. “People don’t choose crime. That’s how they learn to survive.”

Limited scope audits by the Office of Community Corrections show that of the facilities where employment services were assessed from 2015 to 2018, only two were in full compliance with state standards. The agency stopped evaluating the quality of employment services in 2018, after a new manager took over OCC.

“The future strategic goals of the office include developing processes for reviewing compliance with the additional Colorado Community Corrections Standards not currently reviewed,” OCC said in a written statement.

There’s pressure to start working immediately, residents said. They must pay for rent, hygiene products, clothes and transportation. On top of that, they pay restitution, court fees, child support, state and federal taxes and set aside savings in order to graduate from the program.

The urgency makes the job search more about the facilities getting their money than residents’ long-term success, former staff and residents said.

“You threaten the client, you say: ‘You better get a job, you better work, you’ve got another week. If you’re not working in another week, you’re going to go back,’” said Rimes, the former ComCor security manager.

Otten said residents at the two Jefferson County facilities were pressured to accept the first job they found in order to start paying rent. The jobs were often low paying, ultimately slowing their reentry process.

She said among the biggest barriers to employment is offenders’ inability to spend money without prior approval from the facility, which can sometimes take weeks. Facilities have power of attorney over resident’s finances, and getting caught with a debit card or cash can lead to discipline, “even if that money is to buy steel-toed boots in order to get a job,” she said.

When residents found jobs, they were sometimes denied by the facility, Otten said.

One resident wasn’t allowed to work a high-paying construction job because it was out of cellphone range, Otten said. Another was prohibited from working at a law firm because it was located in a house, not an office building. “They sent her to work at the diner, waitressing,” she said.

Before becoming director of justice services, Otten ran workforce training programs for formerly incarcerated people at the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

“Community corrections folks were always more difficult to work with because of the rules and regulations that didn’t allow (residents) to work in higher-wage jobs in demand industries,” she said.

In response to recommendations from the Office of Community Corrections, lawmakers this year approved increased funding for Colorado’s halfway houses.

This fiscal year, operators will receive $67 per day for each occupied bed, up from $47.96. The increase requires facilities to stop charging rent, per their state contracts, but state law doesn’t prohibit it.

Lawmakers also approved funding that for the first time will be tied to performance, including graduation and recidivism rates. Meanwhile, the state’s oversight agency has made it easier to qualify for the extra dollars by changing its definition of recidivism.

Historically, recidivism was defined as a criminal filing within two years of graduating from a halfway house.

The new definition: a felony conviction within two years of entering a facility.

For example, ComCor’s recidivism rate under the old definition was 41%, according to the state’s data dashboard; under the new definition, it’s 3%.

Only three facilities that were eligible did not qualify for the additional funding.

“They moved the bar even lower than it was before,” said Hurst, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition policy expert. It’s unlikely someone charged with a felony will get through the court process within the two-year timeframe, she said.

Ruske, of the Office of Community Corrections, told ProPublica that if facilities are not trying to improve, the state has the authority to cut their funding to “encourage participation.” OCC last exercised that authority in 2016.

Although ComCor qualified for the new incentive funding tied to recidivism, Wester, the executive director, doesn’t think a facility should be held accountable for its former clients’ success or failure after they leave a community corrections program.

“We do everything we can to work with clients, but once (they) get out, I mean, they control much of their lives and they start making decisions,” he said.

Hurst said she’s heard facility operators make that argument many times but believes it ignores the purpose of halfway houses to provide treatment and support so people stay out of the criminal justice system.

“That’s the whole premise of community corrections,” Hurst said. “So if the outcome is that people are ultimately ending up in prison, in jail, anyway, that’s concerning.”

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This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Moe Clark, photography by Eli Imadali.

We look at what’s happened to Afghan refugees who have struggled to flee the country since the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan one year ago today. While the U.S. and allied nations helped evacuate some 122,000 people out of Afghanistan, the U.S. has failed to process requests for “humanitarian parole” — a program granting U.S. entry that costs each Afghan applicant $575 and is what Reveal reporter Najib Aminy says is “one of the last possibilities [for Afghans] to leave the country.” According to documents obtained by Reveal, out of the 66,000 applications filed for humanitarian parole, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has processed less than 8,000 of them and approved just 123. Meanwhile, the agency has already approved more than 68,000 applications from Ukrainians since launching a separate program called Uniting for Ukraine in April after the Russian invasion and has charged these applicants no fee.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Pledging to continue fighting for provisions that were left out of the U.S. Senate-passed Inflation Reduction Act, Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday said that while the package is far from perfect, progressives in the House "should feel very proud of our part in getting to this point" and called for lawmakers to send the bill to President Joe Biden's desk.

"While we're heartbroken to see the care economy, housing, and immigration left on the cutting room floor, we should be very clear that the Inflation Reduction Act [IRA] takes real steps forward on key progressive priorities," wrote Jayapal, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).

Parts of the Build Back Better Act, which progressives fought for last year, "are now in the Inflation Reduction Act—about to become law," she added at the progressive think tank Data for Progress. "It's an achievement we can all feel excited about—especially when we dig into the details."

Jayapal reiterated climate action advocates' disapproval of the bill's expansion of fossil fuel leasing, which one campaigner said was among its "egregious fossil fuels concessions" earlier this week.

"If we can expand our majority in the Senate this November, we will be ready to immediately pass that next piece of the president's life-changing agenda." 

Such allowances, however, will be "far outweighed by the bill's carbon emissions cuts," said Jayapal, pointing to the IRA's acceleration of the use of electric vehicles, solar panels, and heat pumps.

In addition to saving households an average of $1,025 annually in energy costs and creating nine million jobs, she added, those provisions "will put the United States on track to cut carbon pollution by 40% by 2030."

The CPC chair also noted that passing the IRA into law will cap senior citizens' yearly prescription drug costs and limit insulin costs to $35 per month for people who use Medicare—and that an expansion of those price caps for people with private insurance was taken out of the bill because of Republican opposition.

"Sen. Schumer has promised to bring back that legislation for another vote—and we need to ensure those benefits extend to those who are uninsured," said Jayapal.

Passing the IRA will allow Congress to deliver much-needed reforms for the American public, and with 73% of Americans—including 95% of Democrats—supporting the legislation, passage could make it possible for the Democratic Party to quickly pass even more ambitious reforms including universal childcare and paid family leave after the midterms.

"If we can expand our majority in the Senate this November," she added, "we will be ready to immediately pass that next piece of the president's life-changing agenda, delivering long-overdue investments that will allow Americans not just to survive, but thrive." 

With far more work to do to achieve economic, immigration, gender, and climate justice, said Jayapal, the IRA has "opened the door to real progress."

"Progressives in Congress intend to vote to pass it this week," she added, "and then charge through that open door to continue the fight for working people."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Pledging to continue fighting for provisions that were left out of the U.S. Senate-passed Inflation Reduction Act, Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday said that while the package is far from perfect, progressives in the House "should feel very proud of our part in getting to this point" and called for lawmakers to send the bill to President Joe Biden's desk.

"While we're heartbroken to see the care economy, housing, and immigration left on the cutting room floor, we should be very clear that the Inflation Reduction Act [IRA] takes real steps forward on key progressive priorities," wrote Jayapal, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).

Parts of the Build Back Better Act, which progressives fought for last year, "are now in the Inflation Reduction Act—about to become law," she added at the progressive think tank Data for Progress. "It's an achievement we can all feel excited about—especially when we dig into the details."

Jayapal reiterated climate action advocates' disapproval of the bill's expansion of fossil fuel leasing, which one campaigner said was among its "egregious fossil fuels concessions" earlier this week.

"If we can expand our majority in the Senate this November, we will be ready to immediately pass that next piece of the president's life-changing agenda." 

Such allowances, however, will be "far outweighed by the bill's carbon emissions cuts," said Jayapal, pointing to the IRA's acceleration of the use of electric vehicles, solar panels, and heat pumps.

In addition to saving households an average of $1,025 annually in energy costs and creating nine million jobs, she added, those provisions "will put the United States on track to cut carbon pollution by 40% by 2030."

The CPC chair also noted that passing the IRA into law will cap senior citizens' yearly prescription drug costs and limit insulin costs to $35 per month for people who use Medicare—and that an expansion of those price caps for people with private insurance was taken out of the bill because of Republican opposition.

"Sen. Schumer has promised to bring back that legislation for another vote—and we need to ensure those benefits extend to those who are uninsured," said Jayapal.

Passing the IRA will allow Congress to deliver much-needed reforms for the American public, and with 73% of Americans—including 95% of Democrats—supporting the legislation, passage could make it possible for the Democratic Party to quickly pass even more ambitious reforms including universal childcare and paid family leave after the midterms.

"If we can expand our majority in the Senate this November," she added, "we will be ready to immediately pass that next piece of the president's life-changing agenda, delivering long-overdue investments that will allow Americans not just to survive, but thrive." 

With far more work to do to achieve economic, immigration, gender, and climate justice, said Jayapal, the IRA has "opened the door to real progress."

"Progressives in Congress intend to vote to pass it this week," she added, "and then charge through that open door to continue the fight for working people."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

This is a breaking news story... please check back later for possible updates.

Mega-billionaire Elon Musk, the world's richest person, on Friday officially moved to pull out of his bid to buy Twitter, claiming he was bailing on the $44 billion deal because the social media giant made "false and misleading claims" during negotiations and was in "material breach of multiple provisions" of the agreement.

"For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to 'make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,'" Musk's team explained in a filing. "Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information."

Response to the breaking news included rebuke from progressives like Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) who tweeted, "Hey Elon Musk, don't let the door hit you on your way out."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The post Native Leadership is the Key to Open Climate Justice Door appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Talli Nauman.

The post The Teenager Who Knocked on the KGB’s Door appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Monika Zgustova.

The post Former President Trump Called off Capitol Rioters, But the Assault on Democracy Continues Via Washington’s “Revolving Door” appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.