15 August 20
We Have to Be Able to Trust You on Donations
At a point we have to make a decision between focusing our efforts on raising money or reporting, informing and making a difference. When raising money begins to dominate the process we can’t spend the time we need to spend on doing what our readers want us to do, what we want to do.
That requires a degree of trust that our readers will take funding the organization seriously enough that we are not forced to divert an unreasonable amount of our energy away from our mission to fundraising.
Trust matters. You have a stake in this too.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611
14 August 20
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Garrison Keillor | My Future, in Case You Are Curious
Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "The pandemic is a beautiful thing for an old guy like me. Young people do all the complaining so I don't have to, I'm free to be cheerful."
READ MORE
In state after state that has tried to ban payday and similar loans, the industry has found ways to continue to peddle them. (photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP)
Trump's CFPB Deploys Predatory Lenders as First Responders to Pandemic
Terri Friedline, The Intercept
Excerpt: "The agency deregulated small-dollar lending by repealing key consumer protections on payday and auto title loans."
READ MORE
DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli. (photo: NBC News)
Acting DHS Chief Wolf and Senior Aide Cuccinelli Not Legally Qualified to Hold Their Jobs, Congressional Watchdog Says
Pete Williams, NBC News
Williams writes: "The top two officials at the Department of Homeland Security, acting Secretary Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, the senior official performing the duties of deputy secretary, are not legally qualified to hold those positions, a government watchdog concluded Friday."
READ MORE
iPhone with the Siri digital assistant. (photo: iStock)
We Need a Full Investigation Into Siri's Secret Surveillance Campaign
Ted Greenberg, Guardian UK
Greenberg writes: "The public deserves to know the extent to which Apple employees have been listening to our private conversations and intimate moments."
EXCERPT:
Now, in a 20 May letter to EU privacy regulators, the whistleblower, Thomas Le Bonniec, renounced his non-disclosure agreement with Apple and demanded that regulatory authorities investigate Apple. He told the EU that while working for Apple his work included listening to the private conversations of people all over Europe talking about their cancer, dead relatives, religion, sexuality, pornography, relationships and drug use, among other topics, in secret recordings made by Siri and sent to Apple without their knowledge. Le Bonniec said regulators needed to take action because big tech companies “are basically wiretapping entire populations”.
So far, all the EU has done is say it is talking with Apple. In May, an Irish regulatory authority told Politico it is “still engaged with Apple on a number of fronts, [and] still getting answers to questions”.
Meanwhile, there is no evidence the US has done anything to determine the extent of Apple’s secret Siri surveillance program. Laws protecting private communications include not only wiretapping at the federal level but state laws protecting against invasion of privacy. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could determine that it’s an unfair trade practice to tell a consumer you’ve protected their information and then to secretly listen in, even if it’s only snippets or anonymized. So it’s critical to investigate whether Apple’s EU-based privacy abuses also took place in the US.
What’s clearly needed now is a comprehensive investigation in the US, as well as in Europe, into what Apple did with its Siri monitoring program, and whether the other big tech companies have been responsible for similar abuses. The FTC is working on antitrust inquiries of Facebook and Amazon. The Department of Justice is allegedly investigating or considering investigating Google, Facebook and Apple. And in a potential breakthrough, the CEOs of the big four tech giants – Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon – have just testified before the House judiciary committee about their alleged anti-competitive conduct.
Joe Biden. (photo: Getty)
Andrew Bacevich | Biden Wins. Then What?
Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch
Bacevich writes: "If he seriously intends to be more than a relic of pre-Trump liberal centrism, how exactly should President Biden go about making his mark?"
Give the president, his administration, and his party credit. They’re doing their damnedest to undermine this election and elections to come: from voter suppression to selling doubt about the most basic aspects of American democracy (including voting by mail), from undermining the postal service that will deliver vast numbers of mail-in ballots during a pandemic moment to claiming ahead of time that the vote is rigged (and not by Republicans). And don’t forget the way they’re screwing up the census count (key to future elections). Admittedly it’s already quite a record, but I’ll tell you what worries me right now: a story that got only the most modest coverage when, in my opinion, it should have been front-page screaming headlines followed by much outrage.
Here’s its essence: Donald Trump recently appointed a retired brigadier general named Anthony Tata as deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, the number three position at the Pentagon. Tata had, of course, praised the president fulsomely (and attacked his enemies) on Fox News and, in recent years, had also managed to make various strikingly racist and wildly Islamophobic comments, including calling former president Barack Obama a “terrorist leader” and his wife Michelle “borderline treasonous.” The president got Tata a “temporary” appointment after even Senate Republicans refused to hold confirmation hearings for him. That means the retired brigadier general should still be in place at the Pentagon after the election.
Why should any of this matter if Joe Biden wins? Because if Donald Trump (predictably) declares that election a fraud (which he even did in the 2016 election when he won) and refuses to leave the White House, who’s going to get him out of there? Not, certainly, the U.S. military if the Pentagon is staffed by and stuffed with Trump favorites and flacks. With that grim thought in mind, it’s also worth imagining a future in which Joe Biden does find himself in the Oval Office on January 20th in a moment guaranteed to be one of pandemic (and other kinds of) chaos in the wake of the singularly worst administration in American history. That, as it happens, is the subject TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author most recently of The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, takes up today. Tom-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Biden Wins
Then What?
ssume Joe Biden wins the presidency. Assume as well that he genuinely intends to repair the damage our country has sustained since we declared ourselves history’s “Indispensable Nation,” compounded by the traumatic events of 2020 that demolished whatever remnants of that claim survived. Assume, that is, that this aging career politician and creature of the Washington establishment really intends to salvage something of value from all that has been lost.
If he seriously intends to be more than a relic of pre-Trump liberal centrism, how exactly should President Biden go about making his mark?
Here, free of charge, Joe, is an action plan that will get you from Election Night through your first two weeks in office. Follow this plan and by your 100th day in the White House observers will be comparing you to at least one President Roosevelt, if not both.
On Election Night (or whatever date you are declared the winner): Close down your Twitter account. Part of your job, Joe, is to restore some semblance of dignity to the office of the presidency. Twitter and similar social media platforms are a principal source of the coarseness and malice that today permeate American politics. Remove yourself from that ugliness. Your predecessor transformed a presidency that had acquired imperial pretensions into an office best described as a cesspool of grotesque demagoguery. One of your central tasks will be to model a genuine alternative: a presidency appropriate for a constitutional republic, where reason, candor, and a commitment to the common good really do prevail over partisan name-calling. That’s a lot to ask for, but returning to a more traditional conception of the Bully Pulpit would certainly be a place to start.
During the transition: Direct your press secretary to announce that on January 20th there will be no ritzy Inaugural balls. Take your cues from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inauguration for his fourth term in office, a distinctly low-key event. After all, in January 1945, the nation was still at war; victory had not yet arrived; celebration could wait. Our present-day multifaceted crisis bears at least some comparison to that World War II moment. So, as you plan your own inauguration, ditch the glitz. A secondary benefit: you won’t have to hit up wealthy donors for the dough to pay for the party. And with no party, you won’t have to worry about inaugural festivities triggering another spike in Covid-19 infections.
In addition to selecting a cabinet and ignoring your predecessor’s bleating, the main focus of your transition period has to be policy planning. When you take office, the coronavirus pandemic will still be with us: that’s a given. Even if optimistic predictions of an effective vaccine becoming available by early 2021 were to pan out, we won’t be out of the woods. Not faintly. So your number-one priority during the transition must be to do what Trump never came close to doing: devise a concrete national strategy for limiting the spread of the virus along with a blueprint for prompt and comprehensive vaccine distribution when one is ready.
That said, it would also be prudent to engage in quiet contingency planning to lay out possible courses of action should your predecessor refuse to acknowledge his defeat (“rigged election!”) or leave the White House.
On January 20th, the big day arrives.
Noon, Eastern Standard Time: With the chief justice of the Supreme Court presiding, take the oath of office in the East Room of the White House in the presence of Vice President Kamala Harris and your immediate family. No inaugural address, no parade, no festivities whatsoever. Make like you’re George Washington: he wasn’t into making a fuss. When the ceremony ends, have lunch and get down to work.
That afternoon: Issue an executive order directing the formation of a National Commission on Reconciliation and Reparations, or NCRR. Recruit Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates or another scholar of comparable stature to head the effort. While likely to be a lengthy and contentious endeavor, the NCRR will provide a point of departure for addressing the persistence of American racism by taking on this overarching question: What does justice require?
That evening: Speak to the nation from the Oval Office. Make it brief. Your address will set the tone for your administration. The nation has its hands full with concurrent crises. The moment calls for humility and hard work, not triumphalism. Don’t overpromise. Consider Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address as a model. Curb your inclination to blather. Abe only needed 701 words. See if you can better that.
Day 2: In a letter to House and Senate leaders, unveil the details of your coronavirus strategy, which must include: 1) a national plan to curb the existing Covid-19 outbreak and prevent future ones; 2) a nationwide approach to vaccine distribution; 3) a strategy for averting and, if needed, curbing the outbreak of comparable diseases; 4) adequate funding of key government pandemic relief and prevention facilities and activities. In the process, identify near-term and longer-term funding requirements that will require congressional action.
Day 3: Issue an executive order reversing the announced withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accords. Describe this as just an initial down payment on the $2 trillion Green New Deal you promised Americans during the election campaign. Joe, if you can make meaningful progress toward curbing climate change, future generations will put you on Mount Rushmore in place of one of those slaveholders.
Day 4: Send a personal message to the German chancellor, the British prime minister, and the presidents of China, France, and Russia, declaring your intention to recommit the United States to the Iran nuclear deal that Donald Trump ditched in 2018. Quietly initiate the process of opening a back channel to the Iranian leadership. (I’ve got colleagues who might be able to lend a hand in laying the groundwork. Let me know if the Quincy Institute can be of help.) That same day, on your first visit as president to the White House press room, casually mention that the United States will henceforth adhere to a policy of no-first-use regarding its nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, tell the Pentagon to stop work on “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear arsenal. That’s $2 trillion that can be better spent elsewhere. No first use will flush “fire and fury like the world has never seen” down the toilet. Generals, weapons contractors, and aging Cold Warriors will tell you that you’re taking a great risk. Ignore them and you will substantially reduce the possibility of nuclear war.
Day 5: Issue an executive order suspending any further work on your predecessor’s border “wall.” At the same time, announce your intention to form a non-partisan task force to recommend policies related to border security and immigration, whether legal or otherwise. Ask former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro to chair that task force, with a report due prior to the 100th day of your presidency.
Day 6: Accompanied by Secretary of State Elizabeth Warren, visit the State Department for an all-hands-on-deck meeting. Let it be known that your administration will reserve all senior diplomatic appointments for seasoned Foreign Service officers. No more selling of ambassadorships to campaign contributors or old friends hoping to acquire an honorific title. Make clear your intention to revitalize American diplomacy, recognizing that the principal threats to our wellbeing are transnational and not susceptible to military solutions. The Pentagon can’t do much to alleviate pandemics, environmental degradation, and climate change. Those true national security crises will require collaborative action. Also use this occasion to announce the formation of a non-partisan task force that will recommend ways to reform and re-professionalize the Foreign Service. Top-flight diplomacy requires top-drawer diplomats. Ask former Ambassadors Chas Freeman and Thomas Pickering, both savvy global thinkers and seasoned diplomats, to co-chair that effort, with instructions to report back by July 11th, the birthday of John Quincy Adams, our greatest secretary of state.
Day 7: Begin your morning by inviting General Mark Milley to the Oval Office for a one-on-one meeting. Ask him to tender his immediate resignation as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Milley’s participation in the infamous Lafayette Square stunt, even if unwitting, renders him unfit for further employment. Later that same day, visit the remaining chiefs in the Pentagon. Explain your intention to commence a wholesale reevaluation of the U.S. military’s global posture -- command structure, bases, budgets, priorities, and above all emerging threats. Ask for their forthright assistance in this endeavor, making it clear that anyone obstructing the process will be gone.
Day 8: Call on Ruth Bader Ginsberg in her chambers at the Supreme Court. Invite her to retire now that the Senate is in Democratic hands. Offer private assurances that her successor will be a) liberal; b) a woman; c) a person of color; and d) a distinguished jurist.
Day 9: Do what your predecessor vowed to do, but didn’t: end America’s endless wars. At your first full-fledged cabinet meeting, charge your new Defense Secretary James Webb with providing a detailed schedule for a deliberate, but comprehensive withdrawal (no ifs, ands, or buts) of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, with a completion date by the end of your first year in office.
Day 10: Visit Mexico City. Engage in a trilateral discussion with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At day’s end, sign the Declaration of Tenochtitlan affirming a common commitment to democracy, the rule of law, human rights, economic growth, and continental security. Your predecessors have taken Mexico and Canada for granted. You will correct that oversight. In fact, no two countries on the planet are of greater importance to the wellbeing of the American people.
Day 11: Invite China’s president Xi Jinping for an informal meeting at Camp David at a date of his choosing. As you know, Joe, the United States and China are hurtling toward a new Cold War. Reversing the momentum of events will prove difficult indeed. This will require considerable personal diplomacy on your part. Given the need for the planet’s two major economic powers to cooperate on lowering greenhouse gasses globally, nothing is more important than this. Start now.
Day 12: Announce plans to visit NATO headquarters in the near future. Begin quiet consultations with European members of the alliance to nudge them toward taking responsibility for their own security. Let them know that before the year is out you intend to make public a 10-year timetable for withdrawing all U.S. forces from Europe. That will concentrate minds in London, Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere in the alliance.
Day 13: Convene a meeting of the best minds in tech (which, by the way, does not necessarily mean the wealthiest tech tycoons). Pick their brains on the issue of privacy. This challenge will extend beyond your presidency. You can at least highlight the problem.
Day 14: You’re 78, the oldest man ever to walk into the Oval Office as president. Be smart. Take a day totally off to recharge your batteries. You have a long way to go.
Joe, you’re a bit long in the tooth for the duties you’re about to assume. Keep in mind the adage that applies to all us old folks: time is fleeting. We never know how much we have left, so seize the moment. No offense, but your days (like mine) are numbered.
Good luck. I’ll be pulling for you.
Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new book is The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
This picture, taken on August 4, 2020, shows a general view of the scene of an explosion at the port of Lebanon's capital Beirut. (photo: Getty)
US Sanctions Are Strangling a Lebanon in Crisis
Bilal El-Amine, In These Times
Excerpt: "As Lebanon faces multiple, overlapping catastrophes, U.S. policies are making them worse."
he Lebanese economy crashed into the equivalent of a brick wall sometime in the last few months of 2019. The Lebanese pound (or lira), which was pegged to the dollar and appeared to be stable for well over two decades, started to decline at a rate that threatened the complete collapse of the economy. In the meantime, the Trump administration had been busy building a “Great Wall” of sanctions around Lebanon, even as the country as a whole was drowning in a mountain of debt.
The first to be impacted was the powerful financial sector — the crown jewel of the Lebanese economy — which effectively shut down, fearing a run on the banks by panicked depositors seeking to withdraw their life savings, a large bulk of which was in U.S. dollars. Thousands of businesses closed down, laying off hundreds of thousands of workers. Shortages of essential items like fuel and wheat led to long lines at bakeries and gas stations, as the majority of households (around 60%, by some estimates) fell below the poverty line.
The dysfunctional and crisis-ridden Lebanese state was completely incapable of coping with the crisis. By that time, Lebanon was deeply indebted to international lenders and local banks to the tune of $80-plus billion (one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world), most of which was supposedly spent on reconstruction after a 15-year civil war that completely devastated the country’s infrastructure and economy. In fact, much of that money was either outright stolen by politicians or terribly mismanaged.
Lebanon’s electrical power sector is perhaps the most obvious example of the level of corruption and negligence that marked the post-war reconstruction period. A full 30 years after the civil war ended in 1990, Lebanon still suffers from daily blackouts of up to 16 hours in most areas. Even with this extreme rationing of electricity, it still costs the government nearly $2 billion every year to cover a shortfall in the power bill.
The most immediate causes of the current crisis began to appear around 2016, when perennial head of the Lebanese central bank, Riad Salameh, a powerful figure backed by Washington, began what he called “financial engineering” measures to increase the central bank’s hard currency reserves. Since his appointment in 1993, after having worked for Merrill Lynch, Salameh’s prime directive has been to maintain the lira peg to the dollar at all costs.
But by the late 2010s, Lebanon was already a country of runaway consumption, importing roughly $20 billion and exporting approximately $3 billion. To cover such a huge trade deficit and pay off the ballooning foreign debt, while also maintaining a stable lira, Salameh offered high interest rates to attract billions of dollars to Lebanon’s banks.
Already, Lebanon enjoyed several significant streams of hard currency that helped Salameh in his herculean task. The largest of these was remittances from Lebanese working abroad, mainly in the Gulf and West Africa, who sent home around $8 billion annually (not counting what is estimated to be an equivalent amount that came into the country by other means). Billions more came from exports, tourism, international aid and loans, and Arab — particularly Syrian — capital deposited in Lebanese banks.
In 2016, due to a variety of reasons, the flow of hard currency started to dry up at a frightening pace, prompting the central bank’s “financial engineering” measures. This only had the effect of kicking the problem down the road in the hope that the coming years will bring about some sort of reprieve. Instead, the country’s economy continued to deteriorate, and pressure on the lira intensified, until the inevitable reckoning arrived in the final months of 2019.
U.S. pressure, in the form of a wide array of sanctions and increased scrutiny of Lebanon’s financial system, was one decisive factor that made many Lebanese abroad — and any foreign investor, for that matter — think twice about sending money home or depositing it in Lebanese banks. Washington claimed that the Lebanese resistance party Hezbollah and the Syrian régime, both under U.S. sanctions, were using Lebanese banks to launder money or funnel dollars from abroad to fund their activities.
Given that Lebanon’s financial system is heavily dollarized (75% of bank deposits are in U.S. dollars), Washington’s influence over the sector is near total. In just one example, two well-established financial institutions sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department — the Lebanese Canadian Bank (accused of laundering drug money for Hezbollah in 2011) and Jammal Trust Bank (alleged to have facilitated the financing of Hezbollah in 2019) — were liquidated without hesitation by the central bank, and without the slightest protest from Lebanese officials.
Sanctions against Hezbollah and Syria have been around in one form or another for decades, but the Trump administration has taken them to new heights. Since launching its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran in 2018, the administration has unleashed a relentless barrage of wide-ranging and crippling sanctions against Tehran’s allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Iran and Syria, with their relatively closed and largely state-run economies, are better able to cope with sanctions than a laissez-faire country like Lebanon that is integrally tied to Western capital.
When Salameh’s sacred peg finally fell and the lira began its descent, popular protests against corruption and mismanagement broke out across the country on October 17 of last year. Washington and its local allies could smell blood in the water, and immediately set about to direct people’s anger against Hezbollah by portraying the group as being responsible for the dismal state of the economy.
Alongside this strategy, the Trump administration sought to tighten the economic noose further by making negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the only option for the government to receive any kind of relief, on the condition of course that “reforms” must first be implemented. No one questions the need for deep and structural change in the Lebanese economy, but the IMF’s usual fare of austerity and privatization has often resulted in countries falling deeper into a cycle of debt and dependency, while increasing the risk of further social discontent.
Ironically, it took the “nuclear” explosion in Beirut’s port on August 4 to open up some cracks in the siege that Washington has been busy weaving over the last few years. The blast exploded over 2,000 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut’s busy port for several years, killing and injuring thousands and laying waste to several nearby neighborhoods. The sanctions régime was already beginning to bite, not in bringing Hezbollah or the Syrian régime to their knees, nor in inciting revolts against them, but in driving ordinary Lebanese to economic destitution.
U.S. economic sanctions, no matter how “smart” Washington claims them to be, have rarely — if ever — brought down the targeted régime or group. In most recent cases, they have had the opposite effect of strengthening the hand of the state by impoverishing the population and making it more dependent on government support and assistance.
One only has to look at the 13-year international economic blockade against Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. All studies of its impact on the Iraqi population show a deterioration in just about every quality-of-life indicator, including increasing rates of malnutrition. In the end, it took a costly and devastating U.S. military invasion and occupation of Iraq to finally topple Saddam Hussein.
The U.S. stands at a crossroads on how it wants to deal with Lebanon. The coming days will reveal how far Washington wants to take the confrontation with Hezbollah, and at what cost to the rest of Lebanese society. To date, the sanctions have done little to weaken the Lebanese resistance — politically as well as militarily. The question is, especially after the near-apocalyptic scene around Beirut’s port: Can the rest of the country withstand America’s siege?
Several tonnes of dead fish were reported in the Aisne river at the weekend, close to a Nestlé factory. (photo: AFP)
Nestle Sued Over Factory Pollution That Lead to Death of Three Tons of Fish in France
BBC
Excerpt: "Several tonnes of dead fish were reported in the Aisne river at the weekend, close to a Nestlé factory."
The head of a French fishing federation has lodged a complaint against global food conglomerate Nestlé, after thousands of fish were found dead in a river in north-eastern France.
The deaths were due to a decrease in oxygen levels in the water, the local prefecture said on Tuesday.
Tests are being carried out to determine the origin of the pollution.
The dead fish were found near Challerange, 50km (31 miles) from Reims, the prefecture said in a statement.
"We have lodged a complaint against Nestlé France for pollution and violation of article 432.2 of the environmental code," said Michel Adam, president of the Ardennes Fishing Federation.
The damage amounts to "several thousand euros", he added. "Everything died in an area seven kilometres (4.3 miles) long and 30 metres wide."
"We have already recovered three tonnes of dead fish. But there are still some left. Some 14 species have been affected, including protected species such as eels and lamprey.
"I have been with the federation for 40 years, I have never seen pollution of this magnitude," he added.
'Involuntary overflow'
The Nestlé factory in Challerange, which manufactures powdered milk, confirmed in a statement that there had been an "occasional and involuntary overflow of biological sludge effluent, without the presence of chemicals" from its wastewater treatment plant on Sunday evening.
"As soon as we learned of the report on Sunday at 23:00 (21:00 GMT), we immediately stopped production and put an end to the spill," factory director Tony do Rio said in a statement quoted by the Franceinfo website on Wednesday.
"This spill was a one-off [and lasted] less than three hours on Sunday evening," he said, adding that activity at the factory had been stopped for a few days.
Since the discovery of the dead fish, volunteer fishermen and firefighters have been working to clean up the river. A dam had also been installed to contain the spread of pollution, the prefecture said.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.