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RSN: Stephen Eric Bronner | Kyrie’s Circus
Stephen Eric Bronner, Reader Supported News
Bronnor writes: "Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets is a pleasure to watch on the basketball court: he has a sleek and elegant style, he is lightning quick, a magician with his dribble, a terrific finisher, and he comes through in the clutch."
Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets is a pleasure to watch on the basketball court: he has a sleek and elegant style, he is lightning quick, a magician with his dribble, a terrific finisher, and he comes through in the clutch. No basketball enthusiast can possibly forget the sensational buzzer-beating shot that handed his Cleveland Cavaliers the championship over the Golden State Warriors in the decisive seventh game of the 2016 playoffs. However, none of this has anything to do with Irving’s endorsement of the seemingly endless, three-hour, hate-filled, pseudo-documentary, “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!” directed by Ronald Dalton, Jr. Initially unapologetic, then artificially contrite, then mumbling that he was sorry, Irving’s press conferences turned into a circus accompanied by the kind of platitudes and posturing that only heighten public cynicism.
His endorsement of “From Hebrews to Negroes” touched a nerve. Its vicious anti-Semitic sentiments and tropes make the film something more than a mere mirco-aggression just as, given the legacy of slavery, the “N-word” deserves to be treated as more than a simple slur. Involving himself with the film’s message was, at best, short-sighted. Virulent anti-Semites can thereby claim Irving as one of their own. They can insist that only pressure exerted by the Jewish conspiracy made him suppress his true beliefs and, whatever his original intentions, his words can serve as a seal of approval for their own bigoted agenda. To their mind, and even those on the fence, Irving’s forced contrition only confirms the existence of a powerful Jewish cabal.
Kyrie Irving has more than seven million social media followers, and he is the star of his own , circus. More has been written about him and his subjective opinions than about how, objectively, his conduct has reinforced the usual anti-Semitic claims that Jews control the media, the banks, and other institutions of public life for their own benefit. The situation is perhaps even more grotesque with respect to rumors about a Holocaust hoax that began circulating almost immediately after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. It’s hard to believe that Kyrie Irving was unaware of all this, that he never actually saw the film that he endorsed, or that he simply made a “mistake.”
Is Irving really an anti-Semite? I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t care. No one can look into the heart of another person. What matters is that anti-Semitic groups like the “Black Hebrews, who consider Jews the children of “Satan,” are using his circus to exploit subterranean strains of anti-Semitism among a minority of the African-American community. More generally, Kyrie Irving has provided positive publicity for bigots at a time when tolerance and democratic values are in short supply. Either this otherwise poised and articulate young man expressed a woeful ignorance of history in making a naïve and woeful mistake or, more ominously, he is a hypocrite intent on stroking his ego with controversial publicity on the backs of a Jewish minority legitimately worried about increasing anti-Semitic attacks.
Nothing is more self-serving than Irving’s claim that he cannot be anti-Semitic given the humble circumstances “where (he) came from.” It’s not clear who made him the definitive representative of the African-American community on this issue though, if he is, he should know that there are enough Jewish racists born into poor circumstances, enough poor African-Americans who hate Latinos, enough poor Latinos who hate gays and transsexuals, and enough among all these groups who hate Jews. Such utterly disingenuous talk by Irving insults those everyday people experiencing economic exploitation while resisting bigotry and maintaining a sense of common decency.
Commentators and former players like Charles Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Reggie Miller, Shaquille O’Neal, and a host of others forcefully used their platforms to criticize Irving’s circus. The Anti-Defamation League rightly turned down Irving’s cynical attempt to buy forgiveness with a $500,000 donation. President of the NBA, Adam Silver was understandably appalled and everyone expected that the Nets’ owner, Joseph Tsai, would suspend Irving for his failure to “unequivocally apologize” and disavow anti-Semitism. It is a separate issue whether imposing a five-game suspension and calling upon Irving to donate more than $1 million to anti-hate programs is an excessive punishment; it’s also worth considering, however, that Irving has often indulged his conspiracy fetishism and accumulated more than $17 million in fines over his ten-year NBA career with three different teams.
In any event, this much is certain: anti-Semites will keep attending Kyrie’s circus employing him as a symbol of persecution by an avaricious Jewish cabal. It is both embarrassing and absurd that Silver, and then Tsai (with his family) “sat down” with Irving and use their psychological-social expertise to evaluate whether he is really an anti-Semite, and then decide definitively that he isn’t, Please! But there is more: Tsai has insisted that Irving, like some naughty schoolboy, should finish his homework comprised of six tasks. These include issuing a full apology, ascertaining that he holds no anti-Semitic beliefs, talking with communities about tolerance, donating $500,000 to anti-hate groups, and completing anti-Semitic, anti-hate, and sensitivity training as designed by the Nets.
This agenda is breath-taking in its vacuity. The focus remains solely on Kyrie and his circus. There is no hint of furthering a public discussion about the ethical responsibilities of being a public figure, the intersectional character of anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, the history and legacy of anti-Semitism, and – most important –the kind of new programs in diverse communities that might prove most effective in shattering the lethal myths and rumors associated with evil Jewish conspiracies and Holocaust denial.
Words are cheap and for Kyrie Irving, who has a 4-year $134 million contract, so is money. It would mean a great deal were Kyrie Irving to show contrition not by coerced words, opening the wallet, and giving a few talks, but by deeds that contribute to furthering an agenda for dealing with tolerance and fighting extremism. Perhaps there is still time. Kyrie still has a chance– but only if he closes down the circus and takes the shot.
*Stephen Eric Bronner is Co-Director of the International Council for Diplomacy and Dialogue and Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University.
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John Fetterman speaks on stage at a midterm elections watch party in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 8, 2022. (photo: Angela Weiss/Getty)
Why Politicians Like John Fetterman Won
Krystal Ball, Jacobin
Ball writes: "It turns out when you promise to do even the bare minimum for people, they tend to vote for you. The more Democrats act like John Fetterman and the less they act like Larry Summers, the more they'll win in the Rust Belt."
ALSO SEE: Did John Fetterman Just Give Democrats a
Blueprint to Solve Their White-Working-Class Problem?
It turns out when you promise to do even the bare minimum for people, they tend to vote for you. The more Democrats act like John Fetterman and the less they act like Larry Summers, the more they'll win in the Rust Belt.
Michigan representative Elissa Slotkin was supposed to be one of the House’s most embattled incumbents. A Democrat representing a district that Joe Biden narrowly won, Republicans flooded her district with millions, making it the most expensive house race in the country, thinking Slotkin would be low-hanging fruit in their expected red wave. Instead, when election day came, Slotkin won, and she won fairly easily — besting her opponent by a comfortable five points.
It wasn’t just Slotkin, though: across the industrial Midwest, Democrats turned in some of their most impressive performances, swamping Republicans, flipping legislatures, and knocking out supposedly safe Republican incumbents. John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro romped in Pennsylvania, while Democrat Marcy Kaptur held on and Republican Steve Chabot was bounced in Ohio. Michigan Democrats won a governing trifecta, and Pennsylvania Democrats believe they won the state House for the first time in more than a decade. Democratic governors in Minnesota and Wisconsin sailed to reelection.
Some of their success is no doubt attributable to backlash against the GOP for overturning Roe v. Wade and the slate of election-denying wackos Republicans put up across the country. But no theory of the midterms can really hold up without accounting for why Dems were so unusually strong in the Midwest — in states with large blue-collar populations that seemed at risk of drifting away in the Donald Trump era.
The answer to this puzzle actually seems kind of obvious: after decades of corporatists in both major parties kicking these voters in the face, the Biden administration actually did a few decent things for the region. And it turns out, when you do decent things for people, they tend to vote for you.
President Joe Biden’s economic policy has been a genuine break from the market fundamentalism of the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama White Houses. Instead of pushing terrible new trade deals that ship jobs overseas, the Biden administration has challenged China with an export ban on semiconductors and signed executive orders to encourage American manufacturing. In fact, companies are on track to re-shore 350,000 jobs this year alone. This is a huge reversal of what happened under the Trump administration when offshoring actually increased to the tune of hundreds of thousands of jobs.
What’s more, instead of tax cuts for the rich à la Bill Clinton or bailouts for Wall Street like Obama, Biden hiked taxes on corporations with a 15 percent minimum tax rate passed through the Inflation Reduction Act. This is, of course, a giant break from the tax-cuts-for-the-rich giveaway, which was the main accomplishment of Trump.
Biden’s union policy also deserves credit. Rather than abandon unions or actively union-bust like plenty of Clinton-era Democrats and every Republican, Biden appointed a genuinely pro-worker National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and a fantastic general counsel who has set about trying to reinterpret the horrible labor law that has let so many workers down over decades. The recent organizing wave at Starbucks, REI, Amazon, Apple, and more could have been stopped dead in its tracks without this pro-worker NLRB.
Biden’s infrastructure package and his Inflation Reduction Act both contain significant investments in the region and are especially vital for automakers trying to compete in the new electric car era. Like the entire nation, the industrial Midwest will also benefit from the new antitrust direction of the Biden administration led by Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan.
I don’t want to oversell Biden’s populist wins. He’s still no Franklin Roosevelt and his policies fall far short of what’s actually required to revitalize the industrial Midwest and deliver for the working class. The CHIPS Act, which was heralded as the beginning of a new era of industrial policy, may just end up being a corporate giveaway, because it contained no labor standards or job-creation requirements. Having a strong NLRB is great, but workers are still severely hampered by labor laws rigged to benefit corporations. The Inflation Reduction Act was better than nothing, but came nowhere close to the transformational change of Democrats’ original Build Back Better proposal. In fact, what’s astonishing is the size of the political response to the Biden administration accomplishing the bare minimum.
The two Democratic Senate candidates who arguably embraced populist economic messaging the most were Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Tim Ryan in Ohio. Fetterman was the furthest left of any of the competitive Senate candidates, and not only did he win a tough state by a large margin after suffering a stroke, but he also shifted nearly every rural county in the state back toward the Democrats.
Ryan came up short in his race against J. D. Vance in a state that Democrats have effectively abandoned as unwinnable. But he, too, outperformed Biden’s 2020 performance in nearly every rural county in the state. What’s more, he did so against a fake populist in Vance who tried to translate culture war grievances into a working-class coalition but lost ground to Democrats basically everywhere.
In fact, that’s the other factor that may have helped Democrats reclaim ground in the industrial Midwest. While the Biden administration has embraced some decent policies, Republicans who postured as pro-working class under Trump have been exposed as total plutocrat-humping frauds.
At a time when union support has never been higher, and workers screwed over during the COVID-19 pandemic were reclaiming their rights to strike, bargain, and organize, the Republican Party sat silent at best and smeared those courageous workers at worst. They sat out or tried to undermine a wave of worker militancy that any real friend of the working class would cheer.
Right-wing populist Sohrab Ahmari recently wrote a scathing indictment of this fakery for the New York Times, excoriating these fraudsters for trying to co-opt populist language while pushing the same old program of cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
He wrote: “Fake G.O.P. populism challenged ‘woke capital’ — companies that it believed had become overly politically correct — but didn’t dare touch the power of corporate America to coerce workers and consumers, or the power of private equity and hedge funds to hollow out the real economy, which employs workers for useful products and services — or used to, anyway. The Republican Party remained as hostile as ever to collective bargaining as a new wave of labor militancy swept the private economy.”
The Republicans went full mask off on their plutocratic contempt for workers, and in comparison, the Biden administration’s small positive steps looked phenomenal. I think this is one of the things I really got wrong coming into Election Day. I underestimated just how low the bar had been set for people after years and years of disastrous anti-worker politics.
As American workers in the Midwest were stranded in the desert dying of thirst, the Biden administration offered them a thimble of water. It was enough for some real electoral gains. And just think, if this is the electoral result that you get from the thimble of water, imagine what would happen with a truly transformational policy that really challenged corporate power and met the needs of the American people.
Instead of treating it like a miracle that Democrats (probably) held the Senate while treating the (probable) loss of the House as a foregone conclusion, Democrats could secure durable governing majorities of the type that Roosevelt enjoyed during the New Deal era. It’s all within reach.
The only price is actually serving the needs of the 99 percent over the 1 percent. Because while a sip of water may have been enough to hang on this time, the future of the nation, the planet, and our democracy depends on the American working class being fully revived and cut in on the prosperity of the country.
Democrats will rebuild their blue wall in the Midwest, and far more, if they tell Larry Summers and the deficit hawks to piss off, and go all in on populist economics.
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J.R. Majewski was one of the most vocal deniers of the 2020 election who ran in 2022 — and he lost his race for Ohio’s 9th District. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
Election Deniers Got Thrashed in the Midterm Elections
Cameron Joseph, Vice
Jospeh writes: "Republicans nominated a cadre of far-right conspiracy theorists to try to take over the offices that run elections in a number of swing states, posing a huge risk to democracy and the 2024 election if they won."
It looks like every election-denying secretary of state candidate backed by former President Donald Trump will lose their swing-state elections.
Republicans nominated a cadre of far-right conspiracy theorists to try to take over the offices that run elections in a number of swing states, posing a huge risk to democracy and the 2024 election if they won.
But as of Friday morning, it appears that every single one of these candidates will lose.
The latest vote counts in Arizona and Nevada make it highly likely that the QAnon-affiliated candidates running for secretary of state in the two states will go down to defeat. If those results hold, that means that every secretary of state candidate in a swing state that backs former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election has lost their race.
In Nevada, late-breaking Democratic-friendly votes have pushed Democratic Secretary of State nominee Cisco Aguilar into a 5,000-vote lead over election denier Jim Marchant, the GOP nominee and the head of the QAnon-linked America First Coalition, which Marchant launched a year ago with the explicit goal to “control the election system” in key swing states. The remaining ballots in Nevada are likely to skew heavily Democratic, meaning this race is all but over.
In Arizona, QAnon-touting, Oath Keepers militia-affiliated ‘Stop the Steal’ leader and GOP Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem, perhaps the most extreme candidate in Marchant’s coalition, now trails Democratic nominee Adrian Fontes by more than 109,000 votes and 53 percent to 47 percent. There still may be almost a half-million votes left to be counted in the state and those votes are likely to skew Republican, but the current margin looks very difficult for Finchem to overcome.
Other America First Coalition-backed candidates already went down in flames in other swing states.
Michigan Democrats crushed a full slate of election-denying conspiracy theorists, winning the governorship and secretary of state races by double-digit margins and the attorney general race by eight percentage points.
That’s led to furious finger-pointing from Republicans: Michigan Republican Party Chief of Staff Paul Cordes put out a memo blaming the party’s slate of far-right conspiracists who focused on election lies and fringe culture-war issues for costing them the state. “At the end of the day, high quality, substantive candidates and well-funded campaigns are still critical to winning elections. We struggled in both regards,” the memo concludes.
Tudor Dixon, who just got trounced in her gubernatorial run in Michigan, fired back that the memo was “a perfect example of what was wrong” with the state party, accusing them of “incompetent leadership.
In Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the secretary of state, Democrat Josh Shapiro thumped extremist Republican Doug Mastriano by a 14-point margin.
And Democrats prevailed over election conspiracy theorists backed by Marchant’s coalition in Minnesota and New Mexico as well.
In Georgia, incumbent Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who stood up to Trump in 2020, defeated Trump-backed Rep. Jody Hice in the primary. And fringe Republican election-denier Tina Peters lost her primary back in August.
Even in deep-red states, most of the coalition’s candidates lost in their primaries, including in Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, South Carolina and Wisconsin. The only candidate backed by the coalition who won election was Indiana Secretary of State-elect Diego Morales, who’s less extreme than many of the others on the list.
Election-deniers may not be completely routed in swing states: It still appears more likely than not that Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake will win her close race. If she wins that could have profound impacts going forward as Arizona Republicans may pass laws dramatically changing voting rules in the state with her in power.
But overall, it appears that the dire threat of these candidates winning powerful statewide offices has been quashed.
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Attendees cheer during a rally for Democrats at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland, on November 7, 2022. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty)
Turnout Among Young Voters Was The Second Highest For A Midterm In Past 30 Years
Ashley Lopez, NPR
Lopez writes: "About 27% of voters between the ages of 18-29 cast a ballot in the midterm election this year, according to an early estimate from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, also known as CIRCLE."
About 27% of voters between the ages of 18-29 cast a ballot in the midterm election this year, according to an early estimate from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, also known as CIRCLE.
Researchers say the 2022 election had the second highest voter turnout among voters under 30 in at least the past three decades. So far, the highest turnout during a midterm for this voting bloc is 2018 when about 31% of young people who are eligible to vote cast a ballot.
During a briefing Thursday, Abby Kiesa — deputy director at CIRCLE — said 2018 remains "a high-water mark" for youth voter turnout during midterms in the U.S. since at least since the 1970s. Historically, youth voter turnout has hovered around 20% during midterm elections.
This year, Kiesa said turnout was significantly higher in some of the battleground states — including Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In aggregate, CIRCLE researchers found, turnout was roughly 31% in those states.
"Outreach, contact, investment in these states was higher," Kiesa said. "So it's not surprising that voter turnout is higher in these states."
Young voters also had a significant influence on election outcomes in some of the key races in those battleground states.
According to CIRCLE, young people preferred Democratic candidates by a 28-point margin, which helped Democrats in statewide races that include the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race and the Wisconsin gubernatorial race.
"Young people stood along in supporting, decisively, a Democratic statewide race candidate," said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the group's director. "The result is that [young people] kept the races really close and in some cases we think they will decide the outcome of the race."
Ruby Belle Booth, CIRCLE's elections coordinator, said this year's election represents "a continuation of high civic engagement" among young people in recent years. She said investments in organizations that mobilize young people year-round are key to improving voter turnout in this voting bloc. Booth said possibly a decrease in those kinds of investments this year could be why turnout this year was slightly lower than 2018.
"We saw in registration numbers that 18- to 19-year-olds were not being engaged as much as they were in 2018," she said. "And that's a red flag that there isn't as much work happening to register new voters."
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A class-action lawsuit claims that Apple products, like the iPad mini, are sold almost exclusively by Amazon itself on its own marketplace, harming customers' ability to pay less in a competitive market. (Photo: Getty)
Apple And Amazon Colluded To Raise Iphone And Ipad Prices, Class Action Claims
Kevin Purdy, Are Technica
Purdy writes: "In early 2018, there were more than 600 companies you could buy Apple products from on Amazon's marketplace, including independent refurbishers, usually at lower prices than Apple's own."
Lawsuit claims Amazon and Apple benefited from fewer vendors, higher prices.
In early 2018, there were more than 600 companies you could buy Apple products from on Amazon's marketplace, including independent refurbishers, usually at lower prices than Apple's own. By July 2019, there were only seven, and a class-action lawsuit says that was the result of an unlawful agreement between the tech giants.
The lawsuit (PDF) was filed Wednesday in federal court in Seattle by law firm Hagens Berman on behalf of Steven Floyd. Floyd is a Pennsylvania man who bought an iPad on Amazon for $320 in early 2021 and was denied "a lower price which would have been the case in a normal competitive market," the suit alleges.
Hagens Berman should be a familiar name to Apple's counsel and close watchers of the company's legal history. The firm sued Apple over scratched iPod nano cases in 2005 and ebook price-fixing in 2011 and brokered a settlement for smaller iOS developers in the App Store in 2021. Hagens Berman was also involved in a complicated lawsuit involving iOS touchscreen patents that involved Apple accusing the firm of secretly leaning on an "extra attorney."
The suit largely concerns Apple and Amazon's agreement in November 2018, one widely reported, that allowed Amazon to directly sell Apple products through its marketplace, while also requiring any other firm to get Apple's permission to sell its products on the site after January 2019. This had the effect of killing a major outlet for refurbished Apple goods, which tend to hold their value much better in used and refurbished form than most other electronics.
It was also, the suit claims, "an unlawful horizontal agreement between Apple and Amazon to eliminate or at least severely reduce the competitive threat posed by third-party merchants." That agreement is "naked restraint" and unlawful under the Sherman Act, the suit claims.
The benefits to this collusion, according to the suit, were that Amazon received "consistent supplies at a discount of up to 10%" if it kept unauthorized resellers off its store and instantly became the leading vendor of Apple products on its site. Apple, meanwhile, eliminated the "active price competition" that was undercutting its own retail prices, the suit alleges. Prior to the agreement, discounted prices for iPhones and iPads from third-party vendors on Amazon could be 20 percent or more, an attorney for Hagens Berman stated in a blog post.
This same agreement has previously drawn fines from Italy's competition authority for restricting the firms that can sell Beats headphones in Amazon's Italian store.
Neither Apple nor Amazon has addressed the lawsuit's claims as of this writing. Hagens Berman is seeking people who bought an iPhone or iPad from Amazon through the standard "Buy Box" to enroll in its class. Damages were not specified in the suit, though it seeks a jury trial and numerous forms of injunctive relief under antitrust statutes.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with the UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (C) and his brother and Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan (R) in Rabat, Morocco. (Photo: AP)
US Intelligence Report Documents UAE Meddling and Influence Operations Interfering with American Politics
John Hudson, Washington Post
Hudson writes: "U.S. intelligence officials have compiled a classified report detailing extensive efforts to manipulate the American political system by the United Arab Emirates, an influential, oil-rich nation in the Persian Gulf long considered a close and trusted partner."
The United Arab Emirates steered U.S. foreign policy in its favor through a series of legal and illegal exploits, according to an unprecedented U.S. intelligence document
U.S. intelligence officials have compiled a classified report detailing extensive efforts to manipulate the American political system by the United Arab Emirates, an influential, oil-rich nation in the Persian Gulf long considered a close and trusted partner.
The activities covered in the report, described to The Washington Post by three people who have read it, include illegal and legal attempts to steer U.S. foreign policy in ways favorable to the Arab autocracy. It reveals the UAE’s bid, spanning multiple U.S. administrations, to exploit the vulnerabilities in American governance, including its reliance on campaign contributions, susceptibility to powerful lobbying firms and lax enforcement of disclosure laws intended to guard against interference by foreign governments, these people said. Each spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information.
The document was compiled by the National Intelligence Council and briefed to top U.S. policymakers in recent weeks to guide their decision-making related to the Middle East and the UAE, which enjoys outsize influence in Washington. The report is remarkable in that it focuses on the influence operations of a friendly nation rather than an adversarial power such as Russia, China or Iran. It is also uncommon for a U.S. intelligence product to closely examine interactions involving U.S. officials given its mandate to focus on foreign threats.
“The U.S. intelligence community generally stays clear of anything that could be interpreted as studying American domestic politics,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served on the National Intelligence Council in the 1990s.
“Doing something like this on a friendly power is also unique. It’s a sign that the U.S. intelligence community is willing to take on new challenges,” he said.
Lauren Frost, a spokeswoman at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, declined to comment when asked about the report.
The UAE’s ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba, said he is “proud of the UAE’s influence and good standing in the U.S.”
“It has been hard earned and well deserved. It is the product of decades of close UAE-US cooperation and effective diplomacy. It reflects common interests and shared values,” he said in a statement.
The relationship is unique. Over the years, the United States has agreed to sell the UAE some of its most sophisticated and lethal military equipment, including MQ-9 aerial drones and advanced F-35 fighter jets, a privilege not bestowed on any other Arab country over concern about diminishing Israel’s qualitative military edge.
Some of the influence operations described in the report are known to national security professionals, but such activities have flourished due to Washington’s unwillingness to reform foreign-influence laws or provide additional resources to the Department of Justice. Other activities more closely resemble espionage, people familiar with the report said.
The UAE has spent more than $154 million on lobbyists since 2016, according to Justice Department records. It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars more on donations to American universities and think tanks, many that produce policy papers with findings favorable to UAE interests.
There is no prohibition in the United States on lobbyists donating money to political campaigns. One U.S. lawmaker who read the intelligence report told The Post that it illustrates how American democracy is being distorted by foreign money, saying it should serve as a wake-up call.
“A very clear red line needs to be established against the UAE playing in American politics,” said the lawmaker. “I’m not convinced we’ve ever raised this with the Emiratis at a high level.”
Both the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department declined to comment on whether they have addressed the issue with senior UAE counterparts.
The U.S. government’s muted public response follows President Biden’s impassioned pitch to midterm elections voters last week that American democracy is under threat from powerful interests and needs concerted safeguarding. “With democracy on the ballot, we have to remember these first principles: Democracy means the rule of the people — not the rule of monarchs or the moneyed, but the rule of the people,” Biden said during a speech in Washington.
The National Intelligence Council, or NIC, is the intelligence community’s premier analytic hub. Its products draw on information from the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies to speak with one voice on pressing national security issues.
People who shared information about the report declined to provide a copy of it. They said the activities attributed to the UAE in the report go well beyond mere influence peddling.
One of the more brazen exploits involved the hiring of three former U.S. intelligence and military officials to help the UAE surveil dissidents, politicians, journalists and U.S. companies. In public legal filings, U.S. prosecutors said the men helped the UAE break into computers in the United States and other countries. Last year, all three admitted in court to providing sophisticated hacking technology to the UAE, agreeing to surrender their security clearances and pay about $1.7 million to resolve criminal charges. The Justice Department touted the settlement as a “first-of-its-kind resolution.”
It did not involve prison time, however, and critics viewed the financial penalty as paltry given the substantial payments received by the former U.S. officials for their work, raising concerns it did little to dissuade similar future behavior.
Those seeking reform also note the federal trial of Thomas Barrack, a longtime adviser to former president Donald Trump, who was acquitted this month of charges alleging he worked as an agent of the UAE and lied to federal investigators about it.
U.S. prosecutors accused Barrack of exploiting his access to Trump to benefit the UAE and working a secret back channel for communications that involved passing sensitive information to Emirati officials. The evidence introduced in court included thousands of messages, social media posts and flight records, as well as communications showing that Emirati officials provided him with talking points for media appearances in which he praised the UAE. After one such interview, Barrack emailed a contact saying, “I nailed it … for the home team,” referring to the UAE.
Barrack, who never registered with the U.S. government to lobby for the gulf state, vehemently denied the charges, and prosecutors failed to convince a jury that his influence-peddling gave rise to crimes. An assistant of his, Matthew Grimes, was also acquitted. Barrack, though a spokesman, declined to comment.
The UAE is far from alone in using aggressive tactics to try to bend the U.S. political system to its liking. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, Taiwan and scores of other governments run influence campaigns in the United States in an effort to impact U.S. policy.
But the intelligence community’s scrutiny of the UAE indicates a heightened level of concern and a dramatic departure from the laudatory way the country is discussed in public by U.S. secretaries of state and defense and presidents, who routinely emphasize the “importance of further deepening the U.S.-UAE strategic relationship.”
The UAE is a federation of sheikhdoms with more than 9 million people including the city-states of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Since 2012, it has been the third-biggest purchaser of U.S. weapons and built what many consider the most powerful military in the Arab world by cultivating close ties to the U.S. political, defense and military establishment.
The UAE’s armed forces have fought alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The country also hosts 5,000 U.S. military personnel at al-Dhafra Air Base and U.S. warships at the Jebel Ali deep-water port.
Boosters of the gulf state in U.S. think tanks and military circles often hail it as “Little Sparta” for its military prowess while sidestepping its human rights record and ironclad kinship with Saudi Arabia.
There are no elections or political parties in the UAE, and no independent judiciary. Criticism of the government is banned, and trade unions and homosexuality are outlawed. Freedom House ranks the gulf state among the least free countries in the world.
The stifling political environment stands in stark contrast to the country’s opulent cosmopolitan offerings, including the world’s tallest building, ski slopes inside a shopping mall and Ferrari World, a theme park inspired by the Italian sports car manufacturer. Its largest city, Dubai, is a tax-free business hub with glitzy five-star hotels, nightclubs and DJ concerts that feel incongruous to the nearby religious zeal of Saudi Arabia. In recent years, U.S. officials and independent watchdogs have warned that smuggling and money-laundering in the UAE have allowed criminals and militants to hide their wealth there.
Focus on the UAE’s role in Washington grew following the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. The CIA concluded his killing was done at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, a revelation that caused Washington lobbying firms and think tanks to sever their financial ties to Riyadh. Though the UAE had no involvement, the crown prince’s status as a protege of Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates known as MBZ, invited greater scrutiny.
“MBZ was a big part of the crowd who said the Saudi crown prince would be a reformer, make Saudi Arabia a more normal country, give women the right to vote — all of which crashed when Khashoggi was killed,” Riedel said.
Concerns about the UAE among human rights groups grew with its military involvement in the brutal war in Yemen, from which it has since withdrawn. The gulf state also angered U.S. officials after the Defense Department’s watchdog said the UAE may have been financing the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary army close to the Kremlin that has been accused of atrocities in Libya, Ukraine and Africa. The UAE denies the charge.
Though the UAE has maintained strong bipartisan support in the United States, it cultivated a particularly close connection to the Trump administration, which approved the $23 billion sale of F-35s, MQ-9s and other munitions to the gulf state. The transfer, which has faced resistance by congressional Democrats, has not moved forward yet but is supported by the Biden administration.
Last month, The Post revealed the UAE’s extensive courtship of retired high-ranking U.S. military personnel. The investigation showed that over the past seven years, 280 retired U.S. service members have worked as military contractors and consultants for the UAE, more than for any other country, and that the advisory jobs pay handsomely.
Instrumental to the UAE’s success in Washington has been Otaiba, an ambassador who has forged strong connections with powerful politicians and business leaders across the political spectrum.
The intelligence report is careful not to identify specific individuals, according to people who have read it, but it mentions several meetings and conversations involving U.S. and Emirati officials. One passage refers to a meeting of a senior U.S. and senior UAE official who commended each other for “single-handedly” salvaging the U.S.-UAE relationship. One person who read the report said it was an unmistakable reference to Otaiba.
When asked about the intelligence community’s findings, Otaiba said he has been “honored to be among a group of serious people with good intentions in both countries that have built a full and lasting partnership that has made the UAE, the U.S. and the region more secure, more prosperous, and more open-minded.”
Some U.S. lawmakers in both parties have proposed legislation to curb foreign influence in U.S. politics. A bill introduced last year by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) would prohibit political campaign committees from accepting money from lobbyists registered with a foreign country. Other reform proposals include increasing disclosure requirements, providing more resources to the Justice Department’s foreign influence unit and standardizing filing data, said Anna Massoglia, a foreign-influence expert at OpenSecrets, an organization that tracks political spending,
“While the U.S. does have some disclosure rules in place, there are still a number of loopholes that allow individuals to work on behalf of foreign interests in this country without disclosing their work,” Massoglia said.
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Smoke rises from an oil refinery after an attack outside the city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine in May. (photo: Getty)
Ukraine Uses COP27 To Highlight Environmental Cost Of Russia’s War
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
Milman writes: "Ukraine has used the Cop27 climate talks to make the case that Russia’s invasion is causing an environmental as well as humanitarian catastrophe, with fossil fuels a key catalyst of the country’s destruction."
Delegation at climate summit tell of destruction of protected areas and carbon toll of invasion and rebuilding
Ukraine has used the Cop27 climate talks to make the case that Russia’s invasion is causing an environmental as well as humanitarian catastrophe, with fossil fuels a key catalyst of the country’s destruction.
Ukraine has dispatched two dozen officials to the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to spell out the links between the war launched by Russia in February, the soaring cost of energy due to Russia’s status as a key gas supplier, and the planet-heating emissions expelled by the offensive.
Heavy shelling and the movement of troops and tanks has polluted the air, water and land, said Svitlana Grynchuk, Ukraine’s assistant environment minister, as well as killing thousands of people and decimating the country’s economy. A fifth of Ukraine’s protected areas have been ruined by the war, she added, with the contamination of previously fertile soils alone costing €11.4bn (£10bn) in damages.
“This is not simply a war, this is state terrorism and it is ecocide,” Grynchuk said. “The invasion has killed wildlife, generated pollution and caused social instability. The terrorist state continues to send missiles to our power plants. Our environment is under threat because of this terrorist attack.”
War causes emissions, as does its aftermath. Ukraine estimates that rebuilding its shattered towns, cities and industry will cause nearly 50m tonnes of carbon dioxide to be emitted. “Military emissions in peacetime and times of war are relevant, they are material,” said Axel Michaelowa, a climate economist who has studied wartime pollution. “The emissions are comparable to that of entire countries.”
The Ukrainian government’s priority remains rallying international support to help expel Russia from its territory. In a video address to Cop27 delegates and world leaders on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that “there can be no effective climate policy without the peace”.
But Ukraine is also touting its enthusiasm to transition swiftly to renewable energy, which it said would cast off the yoke of Russian fossil fuel dominance through which Vladimir Putin has used gas as a pressure point against European allies of Ukraine. This stance has been backed at Cop27 by John Kerry, the US climate envoy, who said American and European leaders were “absolutely certain this accelerates the transition” to clean energy.
A sombre pavilion set up by Ukraine at Sharm el-Sheikh looks more like a slate-grey war memorial than the colourful displays put on by other countries for the 30,000 delegates at the conference.
Samples of different soils that were thrown into the air as Russian bombs thudded into the ground are framed on a wall. A lump of oak, riddled with bullets, is on display, taken from the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, where the Russian offensive resulted in the breaching of a dam that caused the flooding of homes, forests and meadows, according to the exhibit.
Svitlana Krakovska, Ukraine’s leading climate scientist, said there was now a growing understanding that fossil fuels have not only helped fund Putin’s war machine but that reliance on oil and gas has left countries at the mercy of soaring energy and food costs.
“I’m happy, at least, that the connection is now clear for many people,” said Krakovska, who was working on a key United Nations climate report when war broke out and now has to endure electricity blackouts for about 12 hours a day in Kyiv due to a relentless barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks that have targeted civilian infrastructure including power and water supplies.
In October, a missile landed near her home and shattered the windows of nearby buildings. Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, has called the Russian bombardment “genocide” and warned the city may have to be evacuated if the power failures persist.
“My children have to go to school in a basement, it’s not fun to spend time there. There’s no heating or light, sometimes we have no water which is much worse,” Krakovska said.
“It’s difficult to be in Kyiv under this situation. It’s a lot of pressure and stress. My husband had a bad situation two weeks ago when he was in hospital from migraines due to the accumulated stress. I was afraid for his life.”
Krakovska said it was difficult to leave Kyiv to go to Egypt – she is there with her daughter, who is now afraid of any plane that travels overhead – but she was determined to stress the message that Ukraine is the victim of a fossil fuel war.
“It’s difficult to talk about a green transition now when people don’t have anything to heat themselves and winter is coming,” she said. “We will just try to do our best to survive. But we all need to all realise our dependency on fossil fuels, we need to think about energy independence, not just from Russia but from fossil fuels. The most reliable energy source is the sun and we need to use it.”
Krakovska said the forests she had studied for climate impacts have been torn apart by bombs, while farmland is now laced with landmines. This damage is similar, she argues, to the destruction inflicted upon developing countries by hurricanes, floods and other climate impacts caused by global heating.
“Of course the type of destruction is different but fossil fuels caused climate change and it caused this war,” she said. “Russia destroyed our lives and destroyed our environment. First, of course we need to stop this war, because we are under attack.
“But then, I’m very much sure we will find a way for fossil fuels to be in our past. Fossil fuels will then be real fossils. Left in the ground, where they belong.”
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