12 September 20
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Right now we are not getting “reasonable” support. That’s what all the fundraising is about.
So far for today 10 people have contributed a total of $240. 18,000 will visit. So we have a problem.
Like it or not, we have to address that.
No choice.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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12 September 20
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Reader Supported News
Judge Orders Testimony From Saudi Officials in Suit Over Involvement in 9/11 Attacks
Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News
Isikoff writes: "On the eve of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a federal judge directed the Saudi Arabian government to make as many as 24 current and former officials available for depositions about their possible knowledge of events leading up to the airplane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 Americans."
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Joe Biden. (photo: Frank Franklin II/AP)
Russia Looks Like It's Targeting the Biden Campaign - and Trump Seems Fine With It
Cameron Joseph, VICE
Joseph writes: "Russian agents appear to have attempted to hack into the firm that employs some of Joe Biden's top advisors. And President Trump's administration is signaling they're just fine with that."
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L.A. County sheriff's deputies in riot gear watch as activists hold a news conference on Friday in South L.A. (photo: Carolyn Cole/LA Times)
LA Deputies Kill 29-Year-Old Dijon Kizzee After Stopping Him For A “Code Violation” On His Bicycle
LA Sheriff's Deputies in Riot Gear Surround Peaceful News Conference Related to Kizzee Shooting
Leila Miller and Alene Tchekmedyian, Los Angeles Times
Excerpt: "Julianna Lacoste had just shown television cameras a spot on the back of her neck where she said a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy had placed his knee during a protest in South Los Angeles this week."
Speaking at a news conference Friday in a public parking lot nearby, her voice trembled as she recalled feeling as if she was going to die from the pressure.
Suddenly, the attention of media and speakers turned elsewhere.
A group of deputies in riot gear who had been watching closely behind a line of yellow tape quickly advanced closer.
Moments before, prominent local activist Najee Ali had briefly crossed the tape, loudly asking the officers why two of their colleagues had stopped 29-year-old Dijon Kizzee on Aug. 31 for an alleged vehicle violation while he was riding his bicycle in a South L.A. neighborhood before pursuing and ultimately killing him.
Dozens of the news conference’s attendees swarmed to meet the deputies who had approached. They kept to their side of the tape and filmed the officials.
“It seemed to be a clear intimidation tactic,” said Matthew Sanders, a 30-year-old North Hollywood resident who was arrested and injured during a protest this week. “They were making a move to get in our heads.”
The actions of the Sheriff’s Department also sparked alarm from county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and a member of the sheriff’s oversight agency.
The incident comes amid a series of confrontations between law enforcement and protesters outside the Sheriff’s South L.A. station on Imperial Highway over the last week that led to use of force by deputies and dozens of arrests.
Lt. John Satterfield, a spokesman for the department, said the sheriff’s response team secured the parking lot of a business at the request of a manager. He did not say which business made the request.
He said a minor altercation occurred while moving a wire barrier, and an investigation is underway. Video of the event shows a sheriff’s official grabbing a legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild who had been filming him. Satterfield said he was “unable to comment” further, including on who ordered the display of force.
The actions of the deputies, he said, were “absolutely not” meant to intimidate or silence criticism of the department.
Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes South L.A., said he expected a briefing as soon as Tuesday from the county’s Office of Inspector General about what transpired Friday, and said he had no information about why riot gear was employed.
“We can’t have the constitutional rights of those who raise their voices being denied and certainly will not stand idly by if they’re being trampled,” Ridley-Thomas said in an interview.
Priscilla Ocen, a member of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, said that based on photos and video shared by a reporter, the Sheriff’s Department’s response to the event was “completely inappropriate.”
“People were simply trying to express themselves and to hold the sheriff accountable,” she said. “They shouldn’t be harassed or intimidated by law enforcement as they’re trying to do that, especially by the very law enforcement agency they’re trying to hold accountable.”
The news conference had been organized by the National Lawyers Guild in a lot by the South Los Angeles sheriff’s station to condemn the department’s use of force against protesters who have gathered nightly to demonstrate against Kizzee’s shooting. Dozens have been arrested as protesters and deputies clashed over Labor Day weekend and into this week.
The Sheriff’s Department has said protesters initiated confrontations by throwing rocks and bottles at deputies. But activists have said in interviews that the displays of force were unprovoked.
On Friday, yellow tape blocked off multiple sides of the news conference, which was held in a parking lot behind an El Pollo Loco. Several dozen people attended, including some who described being hit by projectiles or arrested by deputies without provocation. Meanwhile, on the other side of the tape, deputies looked on.
“I think it’s a problem when we’re holding a press conference and media is present that police feel a need to be in full body armor and surround us on three sides,” said Cynthia Anderson-Barker, a member of the executive board of the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles. “We were almost kettled in, we were almost surrounded the way these demonstrators typically are at these demonstrations.”
As speakers shared experiences of being injured by deputies at the protests, deputies slowly worked on arranging a wire barrier around the group.
When the event ended, they began pushing the barrier forward more assertively and corralled members of the media, representatives of the National Lawyers Guild and others toward an exit.
Multiple people said they did not hear an order to disperse, and several deputies moving the wire would not answer when asked why people were being moved from a public place.
“Following orders,” one of them said.
Anderson-Barker said that the actions violated the right to free speech.
By about 1 p.m., the deputies had nearly sealed off the section of the parking lot where the news conference had taken place with the wire barrier. Alicia Brower, a 33-year-old photographer from Hollywood who had attended a protest this week, looked on as they advanced.
“They continue to do this, to paint their picture that we are animals and we are to be criminals and we are to be surrounded,” she said.
'The allegations paint a picture of a loyalist-led government subverting the U.S. national security process to meet Trump's political needs.' (photo: ABC)
What to Make of the DHS Whistleblower's Shocking Complaint
Alex Ward, Vox
Ward writes: "Top Trump administration officials at the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly ordered subordinates to suppress or change US intelligence reports on critical national security issues - including election interference by Russia - so they wouldn't contradict the president or make him look bad."
That’s according to an explosive new whistleblower complaint released by the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday afternoon. The complaint was filed by Brian Murphy, who until recently headed intelligence and analysis at DHS.
In the 24-page report and a seven-page supplement, Murphy alleges four main incidents of wrongdoing by his superiors at the agency:
- That then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen repeatedly, and perhaps knowingly, exaggerated the number of suspected terrorists crossing the southern border into the US in official documents and sessions with lawmakers — despite having been briefed numerous times by Murphy that the numbers she was citing were not accurate.
- That DHS acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told Murphy to alter an intelligence report detailing the high levels of corruption, violence, and economic problems in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to make those countries look like safe destinations for migrants, a judgment that would aid Trump’s restrictive asylum policy.
- That DHS acting Secretary Chad Wolf, at the request of White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, ordered Murphy to “cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.”
- That Cuccinelli and Wolf at different times instructed Murphy to modify domestic terrorism threat assessments to downplay the threat from white supremacists and add information on the prominence of violent left-wing groups like antifa “to ensure [the assessments] matched up with the public comments by President Trump.”
This is corrosive stuff. The allegations paint a picture of a loyalist-led government subverting the US national security process to meet Trump’s political needs. This may not be as big a scandal as when Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden’s family ahead of his reelection bid, but it’s still damning.
A word of caution: Multiple people familiar with Murphy’s time at DHS told me he’d often engaged in the same kind of behavior he now accuses his superiors of doing, namely altering assessments to fit the administration’s policies. In addition, news reports in late July revealed that Murphy’s office had been compiling “intelligence reports” on journalists and protesters in Portland, Oregon.
Murphy fiercely denies those allegations, but shortly after the reports were published, he was demoted from his position and reassigned to an administrative support role. Some people I spoke to said Murphy’s whistleblower report is “definitely” meant as retaliation against his superiors for his demotion.
His credibility, then, is somewhat suspect.
However, the complaint notes Murphy had reported these incidents to his immediate supervisor, others in his chain of command, and DHS’s inspector general between March 2018 and August 2020 — well before his demotion.
And two sources I spoke to confirmed one of the claims in Murphy’s complaint: that National Security Adviser O’Brien directed DHS to minimize intelligence reports on Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election and instead focus on interference by China and Iran.
“That’s even been the instructions within the NSC,” a senior White House official told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “POTUS does not want to hear anything negative about Russia,” the official added, using an acronym for the president of the United States. A second source familiar with O’Brien’s directive also confirmed this. The White House denies this.
It’s worth it, then, to go through exactly what Murphy claims happened at DHS, why it’s so troubling, and what it tells us about intelligence and national security in the Trump era.
Overall, it’s a disturbing picture.
Claim 1: Former DHS Secretary Nielsen repeatedly misled Congress about the threat of terrorists entering the US through the southern border
Murphy says that from October 2018 to March 2019, he, Nielsen, and other top DHS officials discussed how best to present their argument to Congress for building a wall on the southern border with Mexico. Such an expansive wall, of course, was Trump’s most high-profile campaign promise, in which he insisted only a structure that massive could curb illegal immigration and stop violent criminals and terrorists from entering the United States.
Their discussions centered on “known or suspected terrorists” (KSTs) — individuals believed to be terrorists or to have ties to known terrorists — and Murphy was charged with providing to Nielsen analysis on their threat. That’s different from “special interest aliens,” a term used by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to identify people who come from countries with a big terrorist presence but who aren’t specifically linked to terrorism themselves. (We’ll get back to that in a moment.)
Around October 29, a top official told Murphy “to ensure the intelligence assessments he produced for Secretary Nielsen’s review supported the policy argument that large numbers of KSTs were entering the United States through the southwest border.”
Here’s where it gets a little complicated. In the original complaint, Murphy made the eye-popping charge that Nielsen had perjured herself in front of Congress. He said the then- secretary testified to a House committee that, in 2017, DHS had prevented 3,755 KSTs from traveling to or entering the US, even though the real number was no more than three.
“He has a good faith belief that the testimony Secretary Nielsen subsequently provided on December 20, 2018, regarding KSTs constituted a knowing and deliberate submission of false material information,” the complaint reads. He makes the same charge about a March 6, 2019, hearing — that she repeated the figure and misled lawmakers once more.
For Murphy, Nielsen’s untruths in front of Congress amounted to potential perjury — a criminal charge.
But Murphy was mistaken: Nielsen didn’t actually say that during her testimony. What she did say in December 2018, for example, were comments like these citing the correct figure: “What I can tell you is we stopped 3,000 special interest aliens at the border last year.” In March, she made a similar remark, only this time specifying that all 3,000 SIAs were stopped at the southern border. She didn’t, however, conflate SIAs with KSTs as Murphy originally reported.
The error prompted Nielsen’s attorneys to contact Murphy’s legal team to correct the record, which they did. On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee made public a seven-page supplement drafted by the whistleblower’s counsel to clarify what Murphy alleged — and it’s still troubling.
Simply put, the supplement says DHS misled Congress and the American public about terrorists entering the US through the southwest border, in tweets and White House-backed PowerPoint presentations, and that Nielsen was partly responsible.
Here’s what happened, per the supplement: On December 12, 2018, the DHS spokesperson’s Twitter account stated “DHS prevented 3,755 known or suspected terrorists from traveling to or entering the U.S. in FY 17,” which in addition to others included “3,028 special interest aliens.”
Murphy claims that was a knowingly misleading statement: “That tweet did not specifically clarify that the figure of 3,755 KSTs was meant to encompass all methods of entry into the entire United States, as opposed to attempts to enter exclusively by way of the southwest border, which again was the topic being publicly discussed and debated” (italics in the original).
The administration continued to boost the misleading statistic. The White House provided members of Congress a border briefing presentation on Thursday, January 2, 2019 — even though the supplement mistakenly says the session took place on the 3rd. The fourth slide notes there were “3,755 Known or suspected terrorists prevented from traveling to or entering the U.S. by DHS.” The supplement notes the slides were given to the White House “at the direction of Secretary Neilson [sic].”
Murphy believes the allegation in his original complaint, that Nielsen misled lawmakers, therefore still stands: “Whether the information had been stated in her public testimony in December 2018 or not is irrelevant. Secretary Nielsen provided this figure directly to Congress,” the supplement reads.
He continued: “It should be noted that these slides were created by or with substantial assistance from DHS, and the figure of 3,755 KSTs was prominently featured. In Mr. Murphy’s view, this was a deliberate effort by DHS/White House to distort the facts and mislead the public with inaccurate insinuations for political purposes.”
There’s another aspect to all this that’s worth mentioning.
In the supplement, Murphy repeats a scene from his original complaint: that before the March 2019 congressional hearing, he advised Nielsen in a prep session to tell lawmakers “the actual number of KSTs apprehended at the southwest border was no more than three people.” Wolf and Miles Taylor, then the DHS chief of staff, responded to Murphy, saying, “Secretary Nielsen should claim the information was classified and decline to provide clarification. Notably, Secretary Nielsen was present during this conversation.”
At the House Homeland Security hearing, Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) asked Nielsen about the 3,755 KST figure. He stated that most of those people were stopped by US officials at airports, and Nielsen agreed, adding that some are stopped even before they travel.
Then Correa, citing open source CBP figures, said only six people arrested at the southern border in fiscal year 2018 had their names on a federal KST list. Nielsen responded that such figures were classified and couldn’t provide more information — just like Wolf and Taylor had advised her to do.
The bottom line: It’s clear that, in various press conferences and public statements, Nielsen and others in the administration frequently played fast and loose with the statistics on suspected terrorists crossing the US-Mexico border in order to justify the president’s plan to build a border wall. That’s certainly not great, but it’s also not illegal.
When it comes to the accusation that Nielsen lied during sworn congressional testimony, though — which is potentially illegal — the evidence seems to be thin.
Claim 2: DHS leaders wanted intelligence on Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras changed to fit Trump’s asylum policy
To understand this allegation, you need to understand Trump’s controversial third-country asylum policy.
In 2019, the US signed immigration agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The agreements require that migrants who travel from other countries through Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to reach the US-Mexico border must first apply for asylum in one of those three countries, before applying for asylum in the US. If migrants failed to do so, US immigration authorities would deport them to one of those three countries.
This is essentially what’s known as a “safe third country” agreement. Under US law, migrants seeking asylum in the US can be rejected and instead deported to another country, as long as the migrant’s “life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” in that country, and as long as the country has a “full and fair” procedure for determining asylum.
The Trump administration’s argument is that Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador meet these criteria, and thus it’s okay to send asylum seekers in the US to those countries to request asylum instead.
Except, well, those countries are not safe — corruption, crime, violence, and lack of economic opportunity have driven hundreds of thousands to flee the countries in recent years. That’s obviously a problem for the administration’s policy.
Murphy alleges that in December 2019, when he presented intelligence reports documenting the dangerous conditions in those three Central American countries to his superiors at DHS — namely Cuccinelli — he was told to alter the reports to make it look like the countries were safer than they really are.
“Mr. Cuccinelli stated he wanted changes to the information outlining high levels of corruption, violence, and poor economic conditions in the three respective countries,” the complaint reads. Such a change wouldn’t just alter intelligence but would counter previous US government reports on the true state of those countries, like this State Department one on Guatemala outlining unlawful killings by the government.
Cuccinelli allegedly felt the reports were written solely to push back on the president’s asylum policy. He “expressed frustration with the intelligence reports, and he accused unknown ‘deep state intelligence analysts’ of compiling the intelligence information to undermine President Donald J. Trump’s ... policy objectives with respect to asylum,” the complaint reads.
Murphy said that the information in the reports featured standard and long-standing analysis, but Cuccinelli ordered Murphy and his boss “to identify the names of the ‘deep state’ individuals who compiled the intelligence reports and to either fire or reassign them immediately.” Murphy claims he told his boss that order was “illegal” and “an abuse of authority and improper administration of an intelligence program.”
No one followed through on Cuccinelli’s instruction, Murphy says.
Claim 3: DHS leadership pushed to minimize Russia’s 2020 election interference and emphasize China’s influence operations — at the White House’s direction
Russia interfered in the 2016 election to support Trump’s election bid, and is doing so again in 2020. But the president doesn’t like to acknowledge any of that and gets angry when intelligence officials point it out.
Because of this, Murphy alleges, his superiors at DHS told him in mid-May 2020 “to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.”
Further, Murphy alleges: “Mr. Wolf stated that these instructions specifically originated from White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien.”
That’s a massive claim. The national security adviser’s job is to take in information from all parts of government, synthesize it, prepare options for the president on how to deal with all that information, and then present it in an unbiased way. What Murphy alleges in this case, though, is O’Brien is purposely telling officials at DHS to minimize a major threat, just so the president wouldn’t get mad.
A senior White House official and another person familiar with the situation told me Murphy’s claims are spot-on.
“That’s true about DHS intelligence,” the White House official said. “They only want to hear about China. Russians are angels.” As for O’Brien, the official told me he’s demanded senior directors on the National Security Council to minimize the Russia interference stuff, and other agencies got the message.
That’s been going on since O’Brien assumed his job in September 2019, the official added. Trump “does not want to hear anything negative about Russia.”
That fits with previous O’Brien actions, like when he said in February, “I haven’t seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected” and when he ordered NSC staff to stop briefing the Hill on election interference this month.
Sarah Matthews, a White House spokesperson, refutes Murphy’s allegations, though, saying O’Brien “has never sought to dictate the Intelligence Community’s focus on the threats to the integrity of our elections or on any other topic: any contrary suggestion by a disgruntled former employee, who he has never met or heard of, is false and defamatory.”
“Ambassador O’Brien has consistently and publicly advocated for a holistic focus on all threats to our elections — whether from Russia, Iran, China, or any other malign actor,” she continued.
But there’s more: Murphy claims that Wolf on July 8 told him not to send out an intelligence notification — which would typically be shared with other US intelligence agencies such as the FBI — about Russian disinformation efforts because it “made the President look bad.”
Murphy resisted, telling Wolf that “it was improper to hold a vetted intelligence product for reasons for political embarrassment.” Wolf apparently looked to bar Murphy from future meetings on the subject, and the notification was completed without Murphy’s input.
The final, completed draft, according to Murphy, was severely flawed, as it aimed “to place the actions of Russia on par with those of Iran and China in a manner that is misleading and inconsistent with the actual intelligence data.”
Still, the pressure stemming from O’Brien also seemed to affect other parts of the government. In August, a statement by National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina equated Russia’s interference efforts with those of China’s and Iran’s, and even put the China section first.
But most experts say Russia’s interference efforts are by far the more serious and direct threat to the 2020 election, whereas China’s and Iran’s activities are focused more on longer-term intelligence collection.
What all this shows is that, at the direction of a top White House official, agencies like DHS are purposely trying to keep Russia’s interference out of the public spotlight — and Trump’s hearing range — while elevating the threat China and Iran pose.
It’s a dangerous circumstance because it would mean the machinery of the US government is prioritizing the president’s feelings over the nation’s security and the 2020 election’s integrity.
Claim 4: DHS leaders wanted to tone down the dangers of white supremacy and Russian interference while inflating the threat from left-wing groups
Murphy says that in March 2020, his team at DHS produced a Homeland Threat Assessment (HTA). This is a report that analyzes the terrorism threat to the US homeland, how dangerous each of the various threats really is, and what — if anything — can be done to mitigate them.
That assessment, requested by the agency’s previous secretary, didn’t sit well with the new leadership.
After Murphy sent the HTA around to top officials like Wolf and Cuccinelli, he was told shortly afterward that “further distribution of the HTA was prohibited” because of concerns those two men had. Specifically, they worried about “how the HTA would reflect upon President Trump” because of two sections in the assessment: one on white supremacy and another on Russian interference.
Two months later, Murphy took over the intelligence office after his boss retired and proceeded to have multiple meetings with Cuccinelli on the HTA. In those chats, per the complaint, “Mr. Cuccinelli stated that Mr. Murphy needed to specifically modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups.”
Murphy, once again, responded that doing so “would constitute censorship of analysis and the improper administration of an intelligence program.”
The pressure would mount. On July 8 — the same date Murphy was told that intelligence on Russian election interference would make Trump “look bad” — Wolf echoed what Cuccinelli had said months prior.
But Wolf had another request: He wanted to see a copy of the HTA so that, among other things, information about the protests in Portland, Oregon, could be added. Murphy replied that he wouldn’t allow any edits to the assessment that altered the intelligence.
The HTA, it turns out, was afterward completed without Murphy’s involvement. A new draft was finished in August, per the complaint, and Wolf received a copy on September 3. Murphy worried “the final version of the HTA will more closely resemble a policy document with references to ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups than an intelligence document.”
That’s a major concern. Trump has made antifa — a loosely aligned militant movement of left-wing radicals who believe in using street-level force to prevent the rise of what they see as fascist movements — a centerpiece of his reelection effort. He’s turned the group into a boogeyman of sorts, and it serves as a perfect foil for a president and a conservative movement looking to cast the overwhelmingly peaceful participants in protests over police brutality as a group of violent thugs.
While there is undoubtedly an antifa presence at some of the recent protests, there is little evidence that antifa is responsible for their (occasional) turns toward violence. Internal FBI assessments and protest-related court documents tell a consistent story: Antifa members are not responsible for the unrest.
But that’s not the story DHS wants to tell. They want to say antifa — and not white supremacist violence, which the FBI in February said is as big a priority as foreign terrorism — is the real problem.
Wolf and other government officials continue to denounce white supremacists and the hate-fueled attacks they perpetrate, but the whistleblower makes clear DHS would prefer to bolster the president’s anti-antifa message than accurately report on the racist threat.
Throughout meetings between the end of May 2020 and July 31, 2020, Wolf and Cuccinelli wanted Murphy to change intelligence assessments to align with Trump’s antifa comments. Murphy “declined to modify any of the intelligence assessments based upon political rhetoric,” and told his bosses the intelligence would reflect reality, not what the president believes.
On July 31, Wolf told Murphy he was considering reassigning him to a new, lesser post in the management division, and followed through with the move on August 1.
'The decision is the latest setback to Trump's efforts to try to use the 2020 census to target undocumented immigrant communities.' (photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
Judges Blocked the Trump Administration From Excluding Undocumented Immigrants From the Census Count
Zoe Tillman, BuzzFeed
Tillman writes: "President Donald Trump violated federal law when he ordered officials to exclude undocumented immigrants from census data used to calculate how many seats in Congress each state should get, a panel of federal judges ruled on Thursday."
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Luis Arce, presidential candidate for Evo Morales's MAS party. (photo: Juan Ignacio Roncoroni/EPA/Shutterstock)
Bolivia's Socialist Presidential Candidate: Last November's Coup Was About Plundering Bolivia's Resources
Luis Arce, Denis Rogatyuk and Bruno Sommer Catalan, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Massive protests last month forced Bolivia's postcoup government to pledge that elections will take place on October 18."
But Luis Arce, presidential candidate for Evo Morales’s MAS party, told Jacobin that democracy is still in danger, with powerful private interests standing to gain from the continuation of the current regime.
t’s been delayed three times already, but it seems like Bolivia’s repeat presidential election may finally go ahead next month. After the latest postponement sparked mass protests by trade unions and social movements, Jeanine Añez’s post-coup government was forced to sign a law guaranteeing that the contest will go ahead on October 18. But the mass rallies and blockades that paralyzed nearly all of Bolivia’s nine regions in August were also a symptom of a much larger problem — the collapse of what was until recently Latin America’s fastest-growing economy.
Under Añez’s “interim government,” Bolivia has effectively retreated into the neoliberal wilderness that preceded Evo Morales’s presidency. Unemployment skyrocketed to 11.8 percent in July (from 3.9 percent in 2019), poverty is expected to increase by at least 7 percent this year, while extreme poverty is projected to rise by 4.5 percent, as economic growth plummets by 5.9 percent. While this partly owes to the effects of COVID-19, the government’s response to the crisis in fact epitomizes its agenda. It has failed to initiate social programs to financially assist the population, even as it presses on with privatizing key sectors taken back into public hands by Morales’s government, including the communications company ENTEL and the hydrocarbon producer YPFB.
Most shocking has been the “Ventilators Case” (Caso Respiradores), concerning the Añez government’s purchase of hundreds of ventilators from Spain, China, and other countries at prices far above their manufacturing cost. This did, however, bring in millions of dollars of kickbacks for the members of the government itself. The case is but one example of a mass web of corruption and nepotism that has sprawled since the November 2019 coup against Morales.
In this context of gross economic mismanagement, the figure of Luis “Lucho” Arce Catacora stands in stark contrast to the coup government and its allies. The soft-spoken economist is best known in Bolivia and beyond as the architect of the “Bolivian miracle” — the fourteen years of steady economic growth, massive reduction in poverty and inequality levels, combined with programs industrializing the country’s natural gas, oil, and lithium industries. Today, he is the presidential candidate for Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism (MAS-IPSP) party.
Finance minister in Morales’s government from 2006 until the November 2019 coup, he oversaw the nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry, the establishment of a number of social programs, the recognition of the “social-popular” sector of the economy, and a significant rise in the minimum wage. Lucho’s running mate, David Choquehuanca, arguably represents the other side of MAS. He is close to the country’s formidable social movements, as well as the political tradition of Suma Qamaña — the Aymara variant of the “Good Living” indigenous political philosophy that also forms the foundation of Rafael Correa’s Citizens’ Revolution movement in Ecuador.
Lucho sat down with Denis Rogatyuk and Bruno Sommer Catalan to discuss the challenges MAS faces ahead of October’s planned election — and the prospect of a victorious return to power.
DR
Under Evo’s presidency, Bolivia advanced enormously in economic and social terms. But all that changed during the last ten months of the de facto government, with the application of neoliberal reforms and the return of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). What economic damage has this government caused since the coup last November?
LA
Like many countries in the region, Bolivia had twenty years of neoliberalism. And the results [of its return] have been catastrophic — as could be expected.
Even before the pandemic, in the period from November to March, we already saw GDP growth fall by 1.1 percent for the final quarter. We were growing well, above 3.5 percent, but collapsed to 1.1 percent growth in the fourth quarter, which made it possible to achieve just 2.2 percent growth for the whole of 2019. This is a fundamental example that already shows us the effect of neoliberalism. In the first four months of the administration [of Jeanine Añez], the economy shrunk by 5.6 percent.
This has to do with the fact that they displaced the social, community, productive economic model that we had developed and implanted in Bolivia since 2006, with economic and social successes that are widely recognized even by international organizations.
In addition to the practical elimination of public investment — and the paralysis of our public companies — there is the fact that the state’s income has been destroyed. This was achieved through the coup government’s very generous policy of returning favors to certain businesses, letting them off paying taxes and granting them much more favorable conditions. The state does not collect the same revenue as before. So, we face serious economic problems for municipalities, for governorates, and for public universities, which all enjoy some share of this tax income.
This is very much contrary to what [MAS] did. We generated economic surpluses from public companies and natural resources in order to redistribute them among the Bolivian population.
Instead, what we are now seeing is a truly regressive policy — typical of neoliberal governments — of concentrating income in a few hands. This has produced a fall even in people’s bank deposits. Poverty has increased, unemployment is increasing, and the gap between rich and poor — which cost us so much to reduce — is increasing once again.
So, the Bolivian people are feeling in their pockets, in their stomachs, the measures that have been undertaken since November last year. And added to this is the government’s inability to handle the pandemic. It has abandoned Bolivians to their fate: Bolivians have had to look out for ourselves and try to take care of ourselves with traditional medicines because [the de facto government] did not even guarantee the supply of medical products to combat the pandemic in pharmacies. But it did guarantee private clinics everything necessary to be able to face the pandemic.
Another element that has caught our attention is the government’s inability to handle the educational issue. We are the only country in the world that has decided to end the school year in the middle of the year simply because of the inability to teach in another way. After failing to implement an online education policy, they have already decided to end the school year. This shows their utter inability to administer a subject as simple as the schools.
DR
I’d like to discuss your proposed new wealth tax, which seeks to raise an additional $400 million for the industrialization project. What exact levels of wealth are we talking about here?
LA
First, you have to understand some different approaches, because we have taken several in the campaign to boost the Bolivian state’s revenue.
Because of this government, we are running out of income. There was a poor negotiation of gas volumes and prices with Brazil, and Petrobras [the Brazilian state gas and petroleum company] is involved in the administration of our state company.
It has been revealed that one of the active participants in the coup was the current Brazilian government. This was exposed not by MAS but by the Conade [National Committee for the Defense of Democracy] through its representative Waldo Albarracín, who was the rector of the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés. He revealed that the Brazilian ambassador was present at the meeting where Áñez was elected as president, bringing together all those who overthrew the MAS government. We can understand why — basically what they wanted was to get a price cut of $70 million annually for the gas they transport to Brazil.
The truth is that, even apart from the issues I mentioned, Bolivia has no income. So, we must find a way to find resources to reactivate and rebuild the Bolivian economy. To that end, we propose various measures, of which two are especially important.
One is a two-year non-payment of capital and interest on foreign debt to our creditors in the international organizations — meaning, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), all the international organizations where we are shareholders. We want them to give us a debt grace period of two years so that we can all bear the crisis in a more or less equitable way.
Additionally, we have proposed a tax on big fortunes. This will, in fact, impact one of the individuals in the current government — Mr Samuel Doria Medina, [a multimillionaire] who is vice-presidential candidate for Añez’s Juntos coalition. But it will not affect Bolivians who have accumulated the kind of wealth which translates into a little house, a car, a small business. We are not interested in that.
Our policy is to continue the income distribution policy that we have proposed since 2006, to continue developing a more equitable tax system, and, through that, to impose a tax on those who have a lot of assets. In percentage terms, this is going to affect 0.01 percent of the Bolivian population. That means people with a wealth of $10 million, $20 million and above — 99.99 percent of the Bolivian population is not in that band of big fortunes.
But there are also people who have a lot of money which they accumulated thanks to the state and the country’s natural resources. So, we believe it is fair that those people who have become rich in our country pay a higher tax to help those who do not have it. What the state is going to do is collect all those resources to carry out social policies that benefit the poor. It’s a policy of fairer taxation that we have also seen implemented in several other countries.
DR
Do you think Bolivia would go through a debt renegotiation process similar to what happened in the case of Argentina recently?
LA
Bolivia has been paying its debt on time, we have no problem with payment. But what we want is that the international organizations of which Bolivia and other countries, also suffering from the pandemic, are shareholders — the CAF, the IDB, the World Bank, the IMF itself, in short, many international organizations that have been supplied by resources from ourselves — also provide their owners, their shareholders, with part of the profits.
That means relief for the countries that have borrowed from these international organizations. Our proposal is two years’ grace on paying the capital and interest on loans. For Bolivia, that would mean a saving of $1,600 million that could be used to reactivate the economy, to generate better conditions and, therefore, little by little to exit the crisis.
DR
And what role will lithium play in the industrialization process, given that this was also one of the reasons behind last year’s coup?
LA
The lithium issue is very clear. We are the only political party that guarantees that natural resources, including lithium, will not be privatized and handed over to transnationals. Evidently, the economic objective [of the coup] was the control of lithium. Mr Samuel Doria Medina himself has said that it would be very good for Tesla to come to industrialize Bolivian lithium — thus revealing that they were behind the coup last November.
We are not going to be negotiating with transnationals in this way: we have very clear principles. We already made plans with a German manufacturer to come to Bolivia, and they agreed that the lithium battery should be made here, while they would be in charge of the commercialization and Bolivia would, of course, have the absolute majority of the profits of that business. This government put an end to that. But I believe that the population is alert to the issue and is not going to allow a transnational company of any nature return to Bolivia to exploit our natural resources.
MAS is a guarantee that lithium and all natural resources, including gas, minerals, will remain in the hands of the state. We are the only political party that guarantees the Bolivian people that not a molecule of our natural resources is going to be transferred so happily to transnational companies. Our policy proceeds through agreements where the state has an absolute majority in both the control over these businesses and the profits from them.
DR
We have seen unprecedented repression against workers in Senkata and Sacaba and persecution against former MAS ministers, activists, and people who criticize Áñez’s government. Do you think a “truth, justice, and reconciliation” commission is necessary, to rid the country of corruption, to punish the perpetrators of human rights abuses, and to compensate the victims?
LA
Unfortunately, in Bolivia there is a violation of human rights, especially the right of free expression. There are journalists who have denounced acts of corruption and then been threatened, persecuted, and intimidated by the ministries of the de facto regime.
They are closely monitoring social media, with so-called cyber patrolling. In short, we are under a modern dictatorship in Bolivia, with a government that is persecuting not only MAS supporters, but also journalists.
They are persecuting social organizations and social leaders who organized protests over various economic problems. And they are criminalizing the right to protest violations of the constitution.
That is why we want overseers to come to our country, so that they can see the improper use of state structures, the mass nepotism, the abuse against the humble by armed subversive groups. These groups are financed by the government, as in the 1980s, where there were paramilitary groups across Latin America that intimidated the population.
Unfortunately, that is what we are seeing with the motorcycle gangs of the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista [UJC, a far-right group in Santa Cruz]. And here in La Paz, they also want to do the same. In short, this is a very complicated situation to be doing politics. We do not have all the guarantees to do politics and carry out a transparent campaign that guarantees the rights of all of us involved in the campaign, or rights for the social organizations, who cannot protest for fear of imprisonment.
Regrettably, this makes us remember the times of Hugo Banzer’s dictatorship in Bolivia, the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, or Jorge Videla in Argentina. In short, all that has returned, but in a very disguised way. The military may not be in the streets, but these are extremely repressive governments, with a use of power that goes beyond simply managing the state.
BSC
Have you felt that your life is at risk because you decided to stand for the presidency?
LA
Of course. The day I arrived in Bolivia [from Mexico], precisely to participate in the elections, I was already notified that I had to defend myself in a trial in the prosecutor’s office the next day. I already have three or four trials that are being ordered against me, my family has also been intimidated. They really don’t pull any punches in intimidating and persecuting us, to make us regret even trying to challenge for political power. But I think that the Bolivian people have understood that we are determined to carry this process forward.
In October last year, many people mobilized, and for more than twenty-one days they blocked the country. Their slogan was to recover democracy — they said that Morales was a dictator. And now we have had nine months without democracy, a dictatorship. We clearly see that the slogan of democracy was a pretext to seize control over the state, to plunder the wealth that we had generated during this time, distribute it amongst themselves, hand over control of our natural resources once more, and pack the state with their own family members.
DR
We are concerned that there will be fraud in the elections on October 18. How can the international community and political and human rights organizations take measures to ensure that the process is transparent and democratic?
LA
The best way to do it is for [international observers] to come to my country as soon as possible and witness what is going on. There needs to be a proper audit of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in all the tasks that it is undertaking.
But they demonstrated, by postponing the vote from May 3 to August 2 to September 6 and now to October 18, that they do not have the intention of holding elections in our country.
Therefore, we ask the international community to come, precisely to verify everything that is happening regarding the elections. They can become guarantors that the electoral process is conducted properly and that the political rights of each Bolivian to be able to turn out to vote — and the rights of the candidates themselves — are respected.
That has to happen now. For already today, we are seeing a series of abuses in this campaign. It’s essential that all these organizations, and the international press, don’t wait until October 18 to be in Bolivia. They have to come as soon as possible to witness what we Bolivians have been living through, so that the international community can have truthful information.
A baby turtle is released into the ocean in Bali, Indonesia, Tuesday, June 9, 2020, part of a campaign to save the endangered Lekang sea turtles. (photo: Firdia Lisnawati/AP)
The World Lost Two-Thirds of Its Wildlife in 50 Years. We Are to Blame.
Nathan Rott, NPR
Rott writes: "Human activities have caused the world's wildlife populations to plummet by more than two-thirds in the last 50 years, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund."
The decline is happening at an unprecedented rate, the report warns, and it threatens human life as well.
"The findings are clear," the report states. "Our relationship with nature is broken."
The Living Planet Report 2020 report drew on wildlife monitoring of more than 4,300 different vertebrate species - mammals, fish, birds and amphibians - from around the world. It found that population sizes for those monitored species declined by an average of 68 percent from 1970 to 2016.
In the American tropics, including the Caribbean and Latin America, population sizes decreased by a staggering 94 percent.
Forest clearing for agricultural space was the predominant cause of the decline, the report says, noting that one-third of the planet's land is currently being used for food production. Human-caused climate change is another growing driver.
"We can't ignore the evidence – these serious declines in wildlife species populations are an indicator that nature is unraveling and that our planet is flashing red warning signs of systems failure," wrote Marco Lambertini, Director General of World Wildlife Fund International.
The 83-page document, a collaboration with the Zoological Society of London, joins a growing and ominous list of academic research and international reports warning that human activities are causing a steep decline in global biodiversity.
The United Nations published a sweeping report last year cautioning that 1 million of the estimated 8 million plant and animal species on the planet are at risk of extinction, many within decades, because of human activities. It made a similar plea for people to care, punctuated with a warning:
"Protecting biodiversity amounts to protecting humanity," UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, said at the time of the report's release.
A subsequent United Nations report, published in July of this year, warned that biodiversity loss, and humans' destruction of nature, would lead to an increase in animal-to-human diseases, like COVID-19. The pandemic has also reportedly contributed to an increase in deforestation in some parts of the world, amplifying the risk.
Scientists have long-warned that the world is entering a sixth mass extinction, driven by humanity's consumption of wildlife and wild spaces, and the burning of fossil fuels. Global warming will also cause ecosystems to shift faster than some species can adapt.
Actions can be taken to slow the decline. An article published Thursday in the journal Nature outlined steps that the global community could take to "bend the curve" on biodiversity loss. People could rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions, avoiding the worst climate change scenarios; vast tracts of land and sea could be conserved; damaged areas could be restored; and food production practices could evolve to lighten its impact on existing ecosystems.
The World Wildlife Fund's report says the planet's ecosystems only have a limited ability to regenerate, a process that it says is essential to all life on Earth.
The report's authors compared ecosystems' ability to regenerate with the ever-growing human population and found an ecological imbalance.
"The human enterprise currently demands 1.56 times more than the amount that Earth can regenerate," the report says.
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