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      Pence declines to support Trump if he’s 2024 nominee: ‘I’m confident we’ll have better choices’

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      Pence declines to support Trump if he’s 2024 nominee: ‘I’m confident we’ll have better choices’Former vice-president, expected to run for Republican nominee for president, says ‘different times call for different leadership’Twice given a chance to say he would support Donald Trump if he was the Republican nominee for president in 2024, Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, declined to do so.Ron DeSantis called a ‘tyrant’ as Trump supporters barred from book signingRead more“I’m very confident we’ll have better choices come 2024,” Pence told CBS on Wednesday. “And I’m confident our standard-bearer will win the day in November of that year.”Pence also said “different times call for different leadership”.Trump, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and author, are the only declared candidates for the Republican nomination. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is widely expected to run and is Trump’s only challenger in polling.Pence joins Haley in scoring single digits in most surveys. He told CBS he would make a decision on whether to run “this spring”.Pence’s reluctance to commit to supporting Trump points to a possible outcome feared by Republicans: that Trump will split the party either by winning the nomination without majority support or losing it and refusing to support the winner.Trump has refused to commit to supporting another nominee.Haley has refused to attack Trump personally but she has called for mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75. Trump is 76.Pence said: “I come from southern Indiana, where people think most politicians should have a competency test. No, I think the American people can sort that out. I really do.”He added: “I really believe that the conservative movement has always been animated by ideas.“We’ve had big personalities, from [Ronald] Reagan all the way to Donald Trump. But I think it’s the ideas – of commitment to a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, limited government and traditional values – that really I think created this movement and still sustain it.”Pence claimed “the record of the Trump-Pence administration” – four chaotic years which ended with Trump refusing to call off supporters who chanted for Pence to be hanged as they stormed Congress – bore out such Republican values.He also said voters were telling him “they want to see us get back to the kind of civility in politics that the American people show each other every day”.According to testimony before the House January 6 committee, Trump told aides Pence deserved to be hanged, for refusing to block certification of Joe Biden’s win.The Department of Justice is still investigating Trump’s election subversion and incitement of the Capitol attack.Pence has been celebrated for defying Trump but he is now challenging a subpoena from the special counsel, Jack Smith.Pence told CBS: “The notion of compelling a former vice-president to appear in court to testify against the president with whom they served is unprecedented, but I also believe it’s unconstitutional.”TopicsUS elections 2024Mike PenceDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Obama praises woman who popularized ‘fired up’ chant during 2008 campaign

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      Obama praises woman who popularized ‘fired up’ chant during 2008 campaignFormer president releases video tribute for Edith Childs, South Carolina county councillor who is retiring after 24 yearsMarking the retirement of the woman credited with popularizing the chant “Fired up, ready to go!” that epitomized his campaigns, Barack Obama said her energy played a key role in lifting his spirits and his candidacy for president first time round.“It was early in my campaign, and I wasn’t doing that good,” Obama recalled in a video provided by the Obama Foundation, harking back to a 2007 campaign stop in Greenwood, South Carolina, on a dreary, rainy day.But the small crowd, Obama said, was transformed as Edith Childs led them in the rousing back-and-forth chant: “Fired up, ready to go!”“Leadership and power and inspiration can come from anywhere,” Obama said in the video to mark Childs’ retirement after 24 years on the Greenwood county council.“It just has to do with spirit, and nobody embodied that better than Edith.”“Fired up, ready to go!” swiftly became part of the Obama campaign’s ethos, manifested in T-shirts, signs and bumper stickers.This week, Childs told the AP she came to know the “fired up” chant from its use decades ago, the words energizing participants during National Association for the Advancement of Colored People voter registration drives.“Once we sang that song, it reminded us that, no matter what, we have to remain fired up and ready to go, and be prepared for whatever confronts you,” she said.Childs attended several events with the Obama family at the White House during his presidency, led delegates in the chant during the 2012 Democratic convention and sat with Michelle Obama at her husband’s final State of the Union address in 2016.The chant has become ingrained in South Carolina Democratic politics. Politicians, including state senator Marlon Kimpson, use it to amp up crowds across the state.In 2020, it was adopted by billionaire businessman Tom Steyer, who ran a TV ad in South Carolina and other early-voting states featuring Childs’ endorsement of his presidential campaign.Looking ahead to the 2024 campaign – and South Carolina’s new first-in-the-nation Democratic primary – Childs said she was open to connect with candidates who might seek her support, although she she wanted Democrats to be clearer about showcasing the party’s accomplishments.“When you’re fired up about something, you put more into it,” she said. “We’re going in the right direction, but we need to be more vigilant about what we’re doing.”TopicsBarack ObamaDemocratsUS politicsSouth CarolinanewsReuse this content More

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      Turkey’s Timely Elections: Erdoğanism Without Erdoğan Now?

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      They’re lobbying for Ukraine pro bono – and making millions from arms firms

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      They’re lobbying for Ukraine pro bono – and making millions from arms firmsSome of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists are providing their services to Ukraine for free, but they also have financial incentives for aiding the countryThis article was co-published with Responsible Statecraft.Some of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists are providing their services to Ukraine for free – but at the same time, they are taking in millions in fees from Pentagon contractors who stand to benefit from the country’s war with Russia.Following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s internationally condemned decision to invade Ukraine there was an outpouring of support to the besieged nation from seemingly every industry in America. But, arguably, one of the most crucial industries coming to Ukraine’s aid has been Washington’s powerful lobbying industry.The invasion has led some of the lobbying industry’s biggest players to do the unthinkable – lobby for free. While the influence industry may have altruistic reasons for representing Ukraine pro bono, some lobbying firms also have financial incentives for aiding Ukraine: they’ve made millions lobbying for arms manufacturers that could profit from the war.The surge in pro-bono Ukraine lobbyingUS law requires agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities to make periodic public disclosures of their relationship under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara). Twenty-five registrants have agreed to represent Ukrainian interests pro bono since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, just 11 Fara registrants were working on behalf of Ukrainian interests.“I don’t recall a comparable surge in pro-bono work for any foreign principal,” said David Laufman, a partner at the law firm Wiggin and Dana, who previously oversaw Fara enforcement at the justice department.Many of these new pro-bono Ukrainian lobbyists are pushing for greater US military support for the Ukrainian military. As one registrant explained in a Fara filing, they intend “to lobby members of the US government to increase US Department of Defense spending on contracts related to equipment and other efforts which will aid the ability of the Ukrainian military to succeed in its fight against the Russian military”.While many of these pro-bono lobbyists may be doing this work purely out of solidarity with Ukraine, some of the firms working free of charge for Ukraine have an added incentive.Hogan LovellsBefore winning the speakership in the new Republican Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy warned that Republicans wouldn’t approve a “blank check” for Ukraine aid once they took power. But, just last week the GOP’s biggest fundraiser agreed to provide pro-bono assistance in loosening Congress’s purse strings when it comes to Ukraine.On 16 February, former senator Norm Coleman, senior counsel with the law firm Hogan Lovells, filed Fara paperwork revealing that he is pro-bono lobbyist for a foundation controlled by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Coleman oversaw the raising and spending of over $260m in funds supporting Republican congressional candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.Coleman, who has extensive experience as a lobbyist for foreign interests via his longstanding role as an agent for Saudi Arabia, was already busy at work for Ukraine. Emails from 4 February disclosed as part of Coleman’s Fara disclosures, revealed him requesting assistance from senators Lindsey Graham and Thom Tillis’s chiefs of staff in hosting an event at the Capitol “to give members of Congress a better understanding of the horrific loss of life and the tragic agony that the people of Ukraine have experienced over the course of the last year as a direct result of Russian war crimes” and “do as much as possible to ensure continued, strong, bipartisan support for the truly heroic efforts that this administration and Congress have made to provide the essential military and economic assistance to Ukraine”.While Hogan Lovells conducts this work pro bono, two of the firm’s paying clients, Looking Glass Cyber Solutions and HawkEye 360, have extensive defense department contracts and an interest in the conflict in Ukraine.Looking Glass, which paid Hogan Lovells $200,000 in 2022, holds a five-year contract with the Department of Defense to “to provide tailored cyber threat intelligence data and enhance the mission effectiveness of US military cyber threat analysts and operators” and writes on its website about the role of such threats in Russia’s military strategy.HawkEye 360, which also paid $200,000 to Hogan Lovells in 2022, similarly is a defense department contractor, specializing in detection and geolocation of radio signals. Their detection network conducted analysis in Ukraine and their website boasts of identifying GPS interference in Ukraine, appearing to be part of Moscow’s “integration of electronic warfare tactics into Russian military operation to further degrade Ukraine’s ability for self-defense”.Hogan Lovells did not respond to multiple requests for comment.BGRBGR Government Affairs (BGR), a lobbying and communications firm, began working pro bono for two Ukrainian interests last May. The contracts are with Vadym Ivchenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, and Elena Lipkivska Ergul, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.In 2022 BGR made more than half a million dollars lobbying for Pentagon contractors, some of whom are already profiting from the Ukraine war. Raytheon, for example, which paid BGR $240,000 to lobby on its behalf in 2022, according to OpenSecrets, has already been awarded more than $2bn in government contracts related to the Ukraine war.Indeed, two days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a BGR adviser was publicly calling for increased military aid to Ukraine in the face of Putin’s recognition of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics as independent states.“Militarily, the United States and Nato allies need to get far more serious about helping Ukraine defend itself,” wrote Kurt Volker, BGR senior adviser and former US Nato ambassador, in an article published by the Center for European Policy Analysis (Cepa).His article, “Buckle Up: This is Just the First Step”, was promoted on the BGR website. Cepa did not disclose Volker’s BGR affiliation in the article.“BGR has no conflict of interest and is proud of its work on behalf of Ukraine and all of its clients,” said BGR’s president, Jeffrey H Birnbaum, in a statement responding to questions about whether their work posed any such conflict.MercuryMercury Public Affairs (Mercury), a lobbying, public affairs and political strategy consultancy, began working pro bono for GloBee International Agency for Regional Development (“GloBee”), a Ukrainian NGO, in mid-March 2022. The firm made headlines for agreeing to work for a Ukrainian client pro bono. The firm’s Fara filing later in the year shows that Mercury’s work consisted of sending just four emails on Globee’s behalf in the first three and a half months of this arrangement.Mercury, like BGR, was also working on behalf of Pentagon contractors in 2022, while working for a Ukrainian client pro bono. All told, Mercury reported being paid more than $180,000 for lobbying on behalf of Pentagon contractors in 2022.Mercury’s work for a Ukrainian client is also notable because before the Ukraine war the firm had, for years, been working on behalf of Russian interests. This work included lobbying on behalf of Russia’s Sovcombank, as well as a Russian energy company founded by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska was recently implicated in a scheme to bribe an FBI agent that was investigating him. Mercury dropped both of these Russian clients when the Ukraine war began, but not before earning nearly $3m from these Russian interests in the five years before the firm agreed to work for a Ukrainian client pro bono, according to Fara filings.Mercury did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Navigators GlobalOn 29 April 2022 Navigators Global, which describes itself as an “issues management, government relations and strategic communications” firm, registered under Fara to represent the committee on national security, defence and intelligence of the Ukrainian parliament. According to the firm’s Fara filing, they reached out to dozens of key members of Congress on behalf of the Ukrainian parliament – including eight phone calls, texts and emails with McCarthy – and contacted the House and Senate armed services committees two dozen times.As Navigators Global was doing this pro-bono lobbying of the policymakers in Congress with, arguably, the greatest sway over US military assistance to Ukraine, the firm was also raking in revenue from Pentagon contractors. Specifically, in 2022 Navigators Global made $830,000 working on behalf of defense contractors, according to lobbying data compiled by OpenSecrets. The firms’ lobbying filings also show that their work for these contractors was directed, among other issues, at the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act, the defense policy bill that increased spending on the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative by half a billion dollars.Navigators Global did not respond to multiple requests for comment.OgilvyOn 26 August 2022 Ogilvy Group, a giant advertising and public relations agency, registered under Fara to work with the ministry of culture and information policy of Ukraine on the ministry’s Advantage Ukraine Initiative. The initiative’s website describes it as the “Investment initiative of the Government of Ukraine”. The top listed investment option is Ukraine’s defense industry. Ogilvy is joined in this endeavor by fellow Fara registrants Group M and Hill & Knowlton Strategies, as well as the marketing company Hogarth Worldwide, which has not registered under Fara.While the Ogilvy Group spread “the message that Ukraine is still open for business”, as its statement of work with the ministry explains, Ogilvy Government Relations was lobbying for Pentagon contractors who paid the firm nearly half a million dollars in 2022. These two Ogilvy organizations are technically separate entities. They are owned by the same parent company, WPP.At least one of the contractors that Ogilvy Government Relations lobbies for, Fluor, would appear to directly benefit from increased US military support for Ukraine and heightened US military presence in Europe more generally. In 2020, the US army’s seventh army training command awarded Fluor with a five-year Logistics Support Services contract, which a Fluor spokesman explained, “positions Fluor for future work with the US European Command and the US Africa Command headquarters located in Germany”. Fluor paid Ogilvy Government Relations $200,000 for lobbying in 2022, according to OpenSecrets.Ogilvy did not respond to a request to comment on the record.As the war in Ukraine heads into its second year, US defense spending continues to balloon. Weapons and defense contractors received nearly half – $400bn – of the $858bn in the 2023 defense budget.“There’s high demand for weapons to transfer to Ukraine and to replenish shrinking US stockpiles … contractors are seeing billions of dollars in Ukraine-related contracts.” said Julia Gledhill, who investigates defense spending at the government watchdog the Project On Government Oversight.TopicsUkraineLobbyingUS politicsArms tradefeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘Time is not on our side’: Congress panel says tackling China defines next century

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      ‘Time is not on our side’: Congress panel says tackling China defines next century‘We do not want a war within the PRC, a clash of civilizations,’ says ranking Democrat as new committee holds first hearingThe US Congress must act urgently to counter the economic and national security threats posed by the Chinese government, a bipartisan chorus of lawmakers on a newly created special House committee has warned during an inaugural, primetime hearing.The two superpowers were locked in an “existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century”, the committee’s Republican chairman, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, said as the rivalry between the US and China deepens.With democracy advocates and protesters in attendance, the panel – formally the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party – began its work at a precarious moment for US-China relations. It comes weeks after a suspected Chinese spy balloon traversed the continental US and amid intelligence that Beijing is considering providing lethal weapons to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine.Some politicians seem comfortable with the prospect of a new cold war. They shouldn’t be | Christopher S ChivvisRead moreMeanwhile, China’s militarization and aggression toward Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own, as well as its response to the coronavirus pandemic, have further escalated tensions.Underscoring the broad range of challenges the panel hopes to address, lawmakers peppered the witnesses with questions on human rights abuses, trade policies, the influence of TikTok, aggression in Taiwan, the origins of Covid-19 and international espionage.Gallagher hopes the committee will help shape China policy and legislation that can win support from both parties. But with the 2024 presidential campaign looming, and Republicans eager to paint Joe Biden as “weak on China”, the possibility of bipartisan action is likely to become increasingly narrow.“Time is not on our side,” he said, imploring a bitterly divided Congress to come together to confront China. “Our policy over the next 10 years will set the stage for the next hundred.”Illinois congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat on the panel, echoed Gallagher’s sense of urgency. He said Democrats and Republicans had for years “underestimated” the Chinese government, believing that economic integration would “inevitably lead to democracy”. But it did not and now the US needed to move quickly to pursue economic and trade policies that would “up our game” as Americans to compete with China.“We do not want a war within the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China, “not a cold war, not a hot war. We don’t want a clash of civilizations.”The hours-long proceeding ​offered a rare display of cross-party unity in a​n​ otherwise bitterly divided Congress​. It featured two former advisers to Donald Trump: former national security adviser HR McMaster and former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, a China expert who resigned after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Offering a sweeping overview of China’s rise, Pottinger said the success of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) at presenting itself as “responsible” and “normal” was “one of the great magic tricks of the modern era”.“You could say the CCP is the Harry Houdini of Marxist-Leninist regimes; the David Copperfield of Communism; the Criss Angel of autocracy,” he said “But the magic is fading.”McMaster said the US and western leaders were guilty of decades of “wishful thinking and self-delusion” in its efforts to integrate China into the international system. But he expressed optimism that the panel’s work could help lay the groundwork in Washington to “rebuild America’s and the free world’s competitive advantage”.Pentagon releases selfie of US pilot flying above Chinese spy balloonRead moreThe panel met in the same chandeliered room where the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol held its hearings. In the audience were Hong Kong pro-democracy activists as well as anti-war protesters who interrupted the proceedings, with one yelling “this committee is about saber-rattling, it’s not about peace” as he was removed from the hearing room.Several members remarked on the interference, noting that the right to protest was a hallmark of American democracy and a freedom not afforded to those in China.Highlighting human rights concerns will be a major focus of the panel. On Tuesday, the panel heard compelling testimony from Tong Yi, a human rights activist who was the former secretary to one of China’s leading dissidents, Wei Jingsheng. Yi told how she was arrested and detained by the CCP in the 1990s. After spending nine months in a detention center she was charged with “disturbing social order” and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in a labor camp.“In the US, we need to face the fact that we have helped feed the baby dragon of the CCP until it has grown into what it now is,” she said.The committee also heard from Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, who argued that the US dependency on China has had a crushing impact on American workers and wages. “While conflict with China isn’t inevitable, fierce economic competition is,” he said.On Capitol Hill, a bipartisan consensus has emerged around measures banning TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app, bills barring Chinese citizens and companies from purchasing land near sensitive military sites, and efforts to limit US exports and technology trade to China. But there are also sharp divisions.Republicans continue to assail Biden over his response to the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, which was downed by the US military after it sailed across North America.​Asked during the hearing what message China hoped to send with the balloon, McMaster said he believed it was likely a “metaphor for the massive effort at espionage” Beijing is carrying out around the world. China has denied the airship was used for spying, ​​claiming that it was a civilian aircraft blown off course​.Meanwhile, revelations that the US energy department concluded with “low confidence” that the Covid-19 pandemic was the result of a lab leak in China has inflamed anew a partisan debate over the virus’s origins. Officials in Washington have said that US agencies are not in agreement over the virus’s origins.Critics of the panel have raised concerns that heated rhetoric casting China as the US’s enemy would amplify anti-Asian sentiment amid a surge in hate incidents. Addressing those fears directly, Krishnamoorthi would avoid “anti-Chinese or Asian stereotyping at all costs”.“We must recognize that the CCP wants us to be fractious, partisan and prejudiced – in fact, the CCP hopes for it,” he said.Earlier on Tuesday, the House foreign affairs committee held a hearing focused on countering the rising national security threats posed by China. Testifying before the panel, Daniel Kritenbrink, US assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs, said China represented “our most consequential geopolitical challenge”.Joan E Greve contributed to this reportTopicsUS foreign policyChinaUS politicsAsia PacificCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s just gotten crazy’: how the origins of Covid became a toxic US political debate

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      ‘It’s just gotten crazy’: how the origins of Covid became a toxic US political debateNew report supporting theory the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab has sparked the latest eruption in a long fight over how the virus started, clouding efforts to pursue a neutral, fact-based inquiryWhite House official John Kirby, standing at the podium where Donald Trump once railed against the “China virus” and praised the healing powers of bleach, faced questions on Monday about the origins of Covid-19. He had no choice but humility. “There is not a consensus right now in the US government about exactly how Covid started,” Kirby admitted. “There is just not an intelligence community consensus.”The renewed interest in a genuine scientific mystery followed a report in the Wall Street Journal that the US Department of Energy had determined the coronavirus most likely leaked by accident from a Chinese laboratory.This startling assessment appeared to have a solid foundation: according to the Washington Post, it was based on an analysis by experts from the national laboratory complex, including the “Z-Division”, known for carrying out some of the American government’s most secretive and technically challenging investigations of security threats from adversaries such as China and Russia.But the claim was not officially confirmed by the energy department or Kirby, and it came with a caveat: the department had “low confidence” in its assessment, which was provided to the White House and certain members of Congress, the Journal said.Even so, gleeful Republicans seized on the findings to claim vindication in their pursuit of the lab leak theory, triggering a fresh round of toxic debate in Washington and on social media.Opponents say there is still no hard evidence for a lab leak, as many scientists still believe the virus most probably came from animals, mutated and jumped into people. They note that the loudest champions of the lab leak hypothesis are often also trafficking in rightwing conspiracy theories, for example about the top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci.But the two do not necessarily go hand in hand. Some scientists and other observers argue that the lab leak theory cannot be ruled out and should be kept separate from the racist propaganda that often accompanies it. It demands careful investigation, not peremptory dismissal or acceptance, they contend.It is the latest chapter in a long fight over the origin of a virus that has caused close to 7m deaths worldwide, clouding efforts to pursue a neutral, fact-based inquiry. In its loud opinions, blue v red certainties and lack of nuance, the melee echoes clashes over pandemic lockdowns, masks and vaccines, as well as the investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia.Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, said: “Isn’t this just like everything else in American politics, where a partisan position on one side invites a partisan response by the other? There’s a lot of what might be called reactive thinking going on because of the high degree of polarisation and the high stakes. Charges without foundation invite responses without foundation.”Calling for public hearings into the matter, Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, warned: “If this isn’t lifted out of the crucible of political debate right now, it’ll just get worse and worse.”Studies by experts around the world have indicated that Covid-19 most likely emerged from a live animal market in Wuhan, China. The hypothesis that it originated from an accidental lab leak was initially dismissed by most public health experts and government officials.In February 2020, the Lancet medical journal published a statement that rejected the lab leak theory, signed by 27 scientists and expressing “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China”. It asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.” (The journal later disclosed that the organiser of the letter had links to the Wuhan lab at the center of the controversy.)That the lab leak theory was being pushed by Trump, who long played down the virus and used xenophobic language such as “China virus”, and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, may have contributed to the instinctive eagerness of some to dismiss the hypothesis – and to ostracise scientists who dared question the mainstream orthodoxy.“From the start, the lab leak theory was never properly framed and parsed,” David Relman, a microbiology and immunology professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, wrote in an email. “The hypothesis of a lab-associated origin became synonymous with deliberate efforts to engineer viruses and malevolent intent, and this has not been helpful. The emotions, assumptions about motives, obstructionism by the Chinese government, and poor scrutiny of the evidence have only made things worse.”Jackson Lears, a history professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, echoed this view: “People who consider themselves Democratic party sympathisers and liberals uncritically arrayed themselves against this. It was a kind of a lockstep reaction against Trump, as in so many matters.”The lab leak hypothesis did begin to receive scrutiny after Joe Biden ordered an intelligence investigation in May 2021. The 90-day review was intended to push US intelligence agencies to collect more information and review what they already had.But the review proved inconclusive. A report summary said four members of the US intelligence community believed with low confidence that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab. Two agencies – including the CIA – remain undecided.Without the equivalent of a special counsel delivering a final report, the White House is left in a fog of uncertainty that satisfies no one. Lears commented: “There should have been a more carefully orchestrated investigation, more centralised, more high profile, with more legitimacy. Splitting it up and into many agencies is a way of defanging the whole situation.”Others agree that the multiple investigations give Biden a political headache, especially at a moment of rising tensions with China over trade, Taiwan, Ukraine and a recent spy balloon shot down after transiting US airspace.Laurie Garrett, a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine who spent time in China during the Sars outbreak, witnessing how animal markets operated, said: “The president said, ‘I want the relevant agencies in the government to take a close look at this.’ Well, every agency has its own prism, its own skill set.“In Britain if you asked the Home Office, MI5, the Metropolitan Police, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the British Medical Association to take a look, you would get seven different answers and that’s the situation that the Biden administration has created for itself. By trying to appease all the screaming and cut the rightwing Republicans off at the knees on this, they’ve essentially opened up a Pandora’s box because every single agency is going to have a different way of looking at the problem.”Many scientists, including Fauci, who until December served as Biden’s chief medical adviser, say they still believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to humans, an established phenomenon known as a spillover event. But the reports of dissent in the intelligence community will give enough oxygen to those with doubts, good faith or otherwise.Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and formerly USAid’s lead official for Covid-19, likens it to a Rorschach test. He said: “The priors that you come in with are going to shape a lot of how you interpret the evidence, because ultimately, the evidence may suggest one way or another, but it’s not definitive one way or another.“If you want to craft a narrative that justifies the lab leak theory, you can do so. If you want to craft a narrative that justifies a natural origin, natural spillover, market amplification theory, you can do so. There’s not enough on either side to definitively rule in or out either.”But that does not make them equally plausible, Konyndyk added. “The preponderance of evidence strongly points to a natural spillover, occurring at and certainly amplified at the market.” Konyndyk noted how online debate about the issue has become toxic, with proponents of the lab leak making death threats to scientists. “There’s been some really irresponsible behaviour and they’re not trying to turn the temperature down.“That has prompted in turn very strong views from some of the more vocal folks who believe in the natural origin theory because they’re getting attacked on Twitter with a larger and larger army of trolls. It’s just gotten crazy.”Earlier this month, Republicans in the House of Representatives issued letters to current and former Biden administration officials for documents and testimony, exploring the hypothesis of a lab leak. Congressman Brad Wenstrup, chair of the House oversight panel’s virus subcommittee, has accused US intelligence of withholding key facts about its investigation.Garrett, author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, added: “My concern about where we are right now with this whole Wuhan origins question is that several very serious, real issues are getting conflated and they’re being manipulated for political purposes by people who don’t understand the issues at all and don’t care.“We’re not hearing in these congressional hearings this is what we should do to strengthen the chemical, biological warfare agreements and make lab research safe in the world. Nobody’s saying that. They couldn’t care less. That’s not their agenda. Their agenda is to tear down a man who was seen on camera in a live press conference putting his hand over his face and shaking his head as President Trump said, ‘Maybe bleach can cure Covid.’”TopicsCoronavirusUS politicsInfectious diseasesMicrobiologyMedical researchBiologyfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Democracy is Now Dangerously Fracturing in Lebanon

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and Putin | Rebecca Solnit

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      Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and PutinRebecca SolnitLike all abusive men, dictators seek to control who can speak and which narratives are believed. The only difference is scaleAs the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, I was reminded over and over again of the behaviour of abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends. At first he thinks that he can simply bully her into returning. When it turns out she has no desire to return, he shifts to vengeance.Putin insisted that Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia and didn’t have a separate existence. He expected his army to grab and subjugate with ease, even be welcomed. Now his regime seems bent on punitive destruction – of energy infrastructure, dwellings, historic sites, whole cities – and rape, torture and mass murder. This too is typical of abusers: domestic-violence homicides are often punishment for daring to leave.Everything I needed to know about authoritarianism I learned from feminism, or rather from feminism’s sharp eye when it comes to coercive control and male abusers. Sociologist and gender violence expert Evan Stark, in his book Coercive Control, defined the title term as one that subsumes domestic violence in a larger pattern of isolation, intimidation and control. (The book has been so influential that in the UK, coercive control is now recognised as a crime.) The violence matters, Stark writes, “but the primary harm abusive men inflict is political, not physical, and reflects the deprivation of rights and resources that are critical to personhood and citizenship”. This connects it directly to what dictators and totalitarian regimes do to the people under their rule – it’s only a matter of scale. And the agenda at all scales is to control not just practical matters, but fact, truth, history; who can speak and what can be said.The antithesis of this is, of course, democracy, which is likewise a principle that works at all scales. A marriage can be called democratic if both parties exercise power equally and are unconstrained and unintimidated by the other. Equally, a marriage can be a little tyranny in which one gains and the other surrenders rights and powers through the union, which was until recently how marriage was defined legally and socially. Likewise we call democratic those nations in which national decisions are (however imperfectly) made by representatives elected by, and accountable to, the public.At the very root of tyranny, no matter whether it’s personal or public life, lies the belief that the agency and agenda of others is illegitimate, that only the would-be tyrant should control the household or the nation. You can see this in authoritarian politicians’ rejection of the outcome of elections – Donald Trump, or in the Maga candidate Kari Lake’s unsuccessful run for Arizona governor, or the 8 January riot in Brasília to reject Lula’s victory.One term formerly used to describe relationships between an abusive man and a manipulated woman, gaslighting, became an indispensable word in public life when Trump became president. The gaslighting, the bullying, the fury to crush dissent, the assumption that he should be in charge of everything including facts, the rage, the insistence that every other power and voice is illegitimate: these are all hallmarks of dictators in the domestic and the political sphere. He began his presidency in the shade of a recording in which he infamously advocated grabbing women “by the pussy”; he ended it in the shadow of an insurrection that was a refusal to accept the verdict rendered by more than 80 million voters and the rules laid down by the US constitution.What’s striking about gaslighting is that it’s an attempt to push a lie or a distortion by using advantages of power, including credibility and social status, to overwhelm the gaslit person or people – or populace. It’s another kind of violence, not against bodies, but facts and truth. In stories of abusive households, the Trump administration and histories of authoritarianism, the men in charge regarded fact, truth, history and science as rival systems of power to be crushed or overwhelmed. And they are rival systems: a democracy of information means what prevails is what’s demonstrably true and substantiated, whether or not it’s convenient to whoever’s in power.That gaslighting was a staple of the Soviet Union is well known through the work of George Orwell and later historians (when I wrote about Orwell, I found a striking example cited by Adam Hochschild: that when Stalin’s demographers showed that the Soviet population was declining, he had them killed, causing the next round of demographers to offer more pleasing numbers). It’s also true in brutal households, where the first rule is that one must not say that it’s brutal, lest more violence transpire.Another way that studies of domestic abuse inform our political understanding is “Darvo”, an acronym that the domestic violence expert Jennifer Freyd coined in 1997 for how abusers respond in court or when otherwise challenged. It stands for deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. You insist that anyone mentioning what you’ve done is insulting you, is a liar, then insist that your accuser is the abuser and you are the victim, and keep shouting it until you believe it and maybe convince others. Freyd herself, with another psychologist, recently noted “a growing trend in the world of civil litigation: alleged perpetrators of interpersonal violence are filing defamation lawsuits against the individuals who have named them as abusers … For abusers, these lawsuits are an opportunity to enforce Darvo through civil litigation.”Trump is trying to make a comeback. It’s not working | Lloyd GreenRead moreDarvo happens all the time in political life. In the US, the Republicans have a pattern of claiming to defend what they’re attacking and to be the victims of what they’re perpetrating. Or as the New York Times columnist Charles M Blow put it in January, describing the agenda of the new Republican majority in the lower house of Congress: “Understanding that they can’t throw federal investigators off the trail of multiple conservatives – including, and perhaps principally, Donald Trump – they have decided to complicate those investigations by kicking up so much dust that the public has a hard time discerning fact from fiction.” The very mention of those crimes is treated as an insult and an outrage, with those complicit the offended parties, and so they shout down the evidence. Prolonged loud noise is an effective tactic.Blow mentions that the Republicans in the house are creating the select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, which will label the pursuit of Republican crimes, notably Trump’s around January 6, as baseless political vendettas. It’s, of course, a cover-up masquerading as a crusade. He continues: “The Republicans are using a fundamentally Trumpian tactic, accusing others of that which one is guilty of. It was Donald Trump, not the Democrats, who attempted to weaponize the federal government against his enemies.” That’s Darvo at its purest.Individuals can be bullied into silence and obedience. So can whole populations. And so can facts and truth. Democracy matters at all scales.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionRepublicansVladimir PutinFeminismDomestic violenceUS politicscommentReuse this content More