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Capitol attack investigators target Trump circle over fake elector ploy
Capitol attack investigators target Trump circle over fake elector ployCommittee to examine coordination behind brazen effort to submit false electoral certificates in states won by Joe Biden The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack issued subpoenas on Tuesday to top Trump campaign and Republican officials involved in the scheme to send false electors for Donald Trump in states won by Joe Biden, as it examines the coordination behind the effort.The panel sent subpoenas to six individuals who were involved in a brazen attempt to meet and submit fake electoral college certificates that formed the backbone of a Trump-connected scheme to have Congress return the former president to office.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, suggested in a statement that the subpoenas aimed to compel cooperation from the key actors about whether the Trump White House oversaw the effort to have so-called alternate electors participate in the scheme.“We’re seeking records and testimony from former campaign officials and other individuals in various states who we believe have relevant information about the planning and implementation of those plans,” Thompson said.The second set of subpoenas to people involved in the scheme comes weeks after the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, confirmed that the justice department had opened its own investigation into the matter, raising the stakes for the fake electors and the Trump White House.The select committee subpoenaed two senior Trump campaign officials: Michael Roman and Gary Michael Brown, who served, respectively, as the director and deputy director for election day operations for the Trump 2020 re-election campaign.Both Trump campaign officials – Roman and Brown – participated in efforts to promote allegations of fraud in the November 2020 election and encourage state legislators to appoint false “alternate” slates of electors, Thompson said.In separate subpoena letters, Thompson said the panel had communications showing the pair coordinated a pressure campaign urging Republican members of state legislatures to send Trump slates, and oversaw Trump campaign staffers involved in the effort.The select committee also targeted four state Republican allies of Trump: the chair of the Arizona Republican party Kelli Ward, former Michigan Republican party chair Laura Cox, Pennsylvania state senator Douglas Mastriano, and Arizona house member Mark Finchem.Ward signed a fake election certificate, Cox was a witness to the Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani pressuring states to disregard Biden’s win in Michigan, Mastriano had knowledge of the fake electors scheme, and Finchem communicated with organizers of the Save America rally on 6 January, Thompson said.Trump’s plan to return himself to office rested on two elements: the existence, or possible existence, of alternate slates, that then-vice president Mike Pence could use to declare that “dueling slates” meant he was unable to certify those states in favor of Biden.The effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election at the joint session of Congress on 6 January fell apart after Pence refused to abuse his ceremonial role to certify the results, and it was clear the “alternate slates” were not legitimate certificates.The panel is seeking to examine whether the effort was coordinated by the Trump White House and whether it amounted to a crime, according to a source close to the investigation. The subpoenas compel the production of documents and testimony through March.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More
Time for a Sober Look at the Ukraine Crisis
Recent wars and crises show us how dangerous it can be when dishonest political elites unite with a powerful media to direct an uninformed public. It might be difficult to comprehend the combination. But unfortunately, even tragically, that’s exactly the combination that enabled wars to be launched in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and is now being used in the case of Ukraine.
The West’s Middle Eastern Playbook
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Remember the Gulf of Tonkin lie? It cost more than 3 million Vietnamese their lives, murdered in cold blood, using the most lethal weapons American war industry could produce and sell. An identical modus operandi was used as recently as 2003 to start the Iraq War. The lies about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs cost the lives of a million Iraqis, and counting. Last year, the US finally drew the curtain on its 20-year war in Afghanistan, at a cost of over $2.3 trillion and nearly 50,000 civilian lives. How is that possible? Because the public is ignorant and, therefore, easily fooled by decision-makers and powerful media.
Same Playbook
It’s the same playbook, again and again. The media refocus public attention from a country to a specific individual, presenting them as a bogeyman from whom the people are to be liberated. Now the war is not against a nation in which millions will die but against an individual. It’s easy to turn your ignorant people against one person. In Vietnam, it was Ho Chi Minh, in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar and his Taliban, and Hussein in Iraq.
Take a look at the Ukrainian crisis: The conflict is not with Russia — it’s with Vladimir Putin. The narrative is, will Putin invade? Why is Putin amassing his — not Russia’s — army? The Russian president is the new bogeyman. And what do the nice people at NATO want? Just freedom for Ukraine to join NATO, which incidentally includes Kyiv’s right to allow NATO armies to amass on its territory, on Russia’s doorstep. How could there possibly be something wrong with that? Right? Wrong!
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Here are some real thoughts for our domesticated friends on the other side of sobriety. It might even help free them from the confinements of their media and actually take a global, rather than a parochial, view of their problems.
Suppose Ukraine, after joining NATO, becomes emboldened and decides to challenge Russia (or is it Putin?) in Donbas or Crimea? Both have a sizeable Russian population and, like all of Ukraine and Russia, were part of the former Soviet Union. What will NATO do? Trigger Article 5 and embark on a direct military confrontation against Russia on Ukraine’s side? Or will it unprecedentedly abandon a NATO member in war and risk breaking up the alliance, giving French President Emmanuel Macron’s description of NATO more credence?
If war breaks out over Ukraine, as some never-seen-action, gung-ho rocking-chair warriors want, what will happen in Asia? What if China decides that the moment is right to take over Taiwan and the whole of the South China Sea? Will our Western warriors start a war with China while fighting Russia?
In the Middle East, where Washington’s client states are on the run, will they be able to rely on American protection, which they desperately seem to need despite hundreds of billions spent on military hardware? What will happen if their regional adversaries decide to go full scale on them, creating a wider conflict across the Arab world because all hell has broken loose in Europe and the South China Sea?
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And who is doing the actual saber-rattling? The leadership of major European countries — the front-line states — is scared, not by Russia invading Ukraine but of their own Anglo-Saxon war-mongering allies in London and Washington. The Europeans realize that these are the same people who pushed the world to disastrous wars repeatedly, killing countless millions but losing each one of these conflicts — unless, of course, the purpose of war is exclusively to kill and destroy.
Trusting these same people with decisions of war and peace is like using the same failed mindset and same failed plan but hoping for different results. This has never worked. It will never work.
Sitting on a Powder Keg
These are realistic scenarios in a world sitting on a powder keg with everyone wanting to redraw geopolitical maps. Are these global ramifications even considered in the West? Does the public in the West even know or understand these global realities? The media there are busy entertaining the public with war scenarios and military hardware. No one is telling them that if the war starts; we will know where and when it started, but we won’t know where or when it will stop. Of course, we will be able to estimate how destructive it will be, assuming that it still matters.
The path to war is littered with bravado, brinkmanship and ego. We then lose control of events, and all that is required is a spark, or a single bullet, like the one that murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand and created an uncontrollable chain reaction leading to a war that killed 40 million people.
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Following the fall of the Soviet Union, we drifted from a bipolar world that maintained decades of no major wars to a destructive unipolar system of unstoppable wars and invasions. With the reemergence of Russia and the rise of China, we now see a tripolar world in the making, with a number of regional superpowers such as India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey coming into their own. There is no going back on this.
Attempts to prevent others from rising will only result in destructive wars. The sooner our friends across the big pond recognize and learn to coexist with that new world order, the better it is for everyone. This is not to say their time is up, rather that time has come to share power, and they must accept that new reality. The alternative is disastrous. Germany tried to control the world and become its dictator. We know how that ended. Lessons learned — time for sobriety.
And here is a thought: Taking one’s nation to the edge of the cliff requires brinkmanship. Taking a step back requires leadership.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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The Guardian view on a Kabul heist: snatching money from the starving | Editorial
The Guardian view on a Kabul heist: snatching money from the starvingEditorialAfghans are not to blame for 9/11, though they have paid for it many times over. Cruelly, they are being punished again The average Afghan was not even alive when planes were flown into the twin towers on 11 September 2001. This is only one of the reasons why handing money from the Afghan central bank to the families of 9/11 victims would be unconscionable. Parents are already selling their organs to feed their children, 98% of the population is short of food, and unless cash starts flowing again things are about to get much, much worse.The executive order signed by the Biden administration on Friday would allow Afghanistan’s $7bn US-held assets, frozen when the Taliban swept to power, to be halved. One half would be held pending the outcome of lawsuits brought against the Taliban by the families of 9/11 victims who have persuaded a judge to attach their case to the Afghan assets. The other half, if courts agree, would be used for humanitarian aid. The administration’s argument is that this may help get assistance to Afghanistan more swiftly, without having to await the outcome of the cases. The government can step into lawsuits to say what it believes is in the national interest, but decided that it would not object to any decision to award half the money to the families.Though central bank funds are supposed to enjoy diplomatic immunities, it appears that the administration can act if a “recognised representative of the Afghan government” approves – raising obvious questions about who might now qualify. Whatever the legal technicalities, the moral case is clear. Afghans are not to blame for 9/11, though they have paid for it many times over. Some of the bereaved have already condemned the idea of taking Afghan money as a betrayal. Thousands of American families were devastated that day, and $7bn compensation was disbursed to bereaved relatives and the injured (many of whom faced huge medical bills); another $10bn is still being paid out. This is in stark contrast with Afghanistan, where, on the very rare occasions that the US made compensation or “condolence” payments for civilian deaths, relatives usually received a small four-figure sum. The administration cannot claim the moral high ground because it proposes using some of the money for aid. Though most of it originally came from international donors, including the US, it is no longer theirs to spend, and some represents the personal savings of Afghans.In any case, humanitarian relief is no substitute for a functioning, if floundering, economy. It is not merely that it raises the prospect of starving Afghans paying the salaries of western aid workers, and of a flood of food aid causing more long-term damage by crippling agriculture. The UN had already warned that the financial system could collapse within months; seizing the central bank’s assets could be the last straw. It’s true that those funds alone can’t solve Afghanistan’s underlying problems – but they are desperately needed to stave off some of the worst consequences.Afghan experts and others have worked on imaginative solutions to restore liquidity without simply ceding control of assets to the Taliban. The problem is not a lack of means, but of will: relief is an easier political sell in the US, which is also believed to have blocked other countries from unfreezing funds. No one wants to aid the Taliban, whose primary victims are Afghans. But no one should claim the administration’s plan is in the best interests of the Afghan people.TopicsAfghanistanOpinionTalibanJoe BidenDemocratsUS politicsSeptember 11 2001United NationseditorialsReuse this content More
The Dirty Relationship Between Russia and China
The leaders of Russia and China are joining forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing for the Winter Olympics to show solidarity with his largest trade partner at an event that the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia are boycotting diplomatically.
The statement that Putin signed with Chinese leader Xi Jinping confirms their overlapping interests, their joint insistence on the right to do whatever they like within their own borders, and their disgust over the destabilizing nature of various US military actions.
In Ukraine, More Than European Peace Is at Stake
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There’s much high-flown language in the statement about democracy, economic development and commitment to the Paris climate goals of 2015. But the timing of the statement suggests that it’s really about hard power. Putin didn’t travel all the way to Beijing and Xi didn’t meet with his first foreign leader in two years just to hammer out a general statement of principles. Putin wants China to have his back on Ukraine and is supporting Chinese claims over Taiwan and Hong Kong in return.
This isn’t an easy quid pro quo, given that the two countries have long had a wary relationship. In the past, Russia eyed China’s global economic ambitions with concern, and a certain type of Russian conspiracy theorist worried about large numbers of Chinese moving into the underpopulated Russian Far East. Before Putin took over, China was uncomfortable with the political volatility of its northern neighbor. After Putin, Beijing was not happy with the Kremlin’s military escapades in its near abroad.
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But that is changing. “For the first time in any of Russia’s recent aggressions, Putin has won the open support of China’s leader,” Robin Wright writes in The New Yorker. “China did not back Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, or its invasion of Ukraine in 2014, nor has it recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea.”
The geopolitics of the new relationship between China and Russia is certainly important. But let’s take a look at what’s really fueling this new alliance. Quite literally.
Fossil Fuel Friendship
Inside the Arctic Circle, just across from the bleak military outpost of Novaya Zemlya, Russia has built the northernmost natural gas facility in the world: Yamal LNG. More than 200 wells have been drilled to tap into the equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil. Nuclear-powered icebreakers clear the port of Sabetta for liquefied natural gas tankers to transport the fuel to points south. Russia also plans to build a train line to ship what it expects to be 60 million tons of natural gas per year by 2030.
Russia can thank climate change for making it easier to access the deposits of natural gas. It can also thank China. Beijing owns about 30% of Yamal LNG. The Arctic is quite far away from China’s usual Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. Yamal is also an increasingly perilous investment because melting permafrost puts all that infrastructure of extraction at risk. But China needs huge amounts of energy to keep its economy growing at the rate the central government deems necessary.
That’s why so many of the BRI projects involving Russia are centered around fossil fuel. At the top of the list is the first Power of Siberia pipeline, which opened in 2019 to pump natural gas from the Russian Far East into China. A second such pipeline is under consideration, which would connect China to… Yamal LNG.
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At the moment, the natural gas from the Russian Arctic supplies consumers in Europe. With a second Power of Siberia pipeline, Russia could more easily weather a boycott from European importers. Yamal, by the way, is already under US sanctions, which has made Chinese financial backing even more essential. China is investing a total of $123.87 billion in the three phases of the Power of Siberia project, which is more than any other BRI oil and gas investment and four times what China spends on energy from Saudi Arabia.
But these are not the only Belt and Road connections between the two countries. Five of the top 10 BRI mining projects are in Russia, including a $1.8 billion coal mining complex. China is also investing in an Arctic free trade zone and upgraded rail and road links between the two countries.
Let’s be clear: the bear and the dragon don’t see eye to eye on everything. As Gaye Christoffersen writes in The Asan Forum: “China focused on infrastructural projects useful for importing Russian natural resources, while Russia focused on developing industries in resource processing. The two sides failed to reach a consensus. Later, China insisted, as a Near-Arctic state, on equal partnership in developing the Northern Sea Route, while Russia demanded respect for its sovereignty and rejected China’s Arctic claims. They are still in disagreement despite joint efforts.”
But the basic relationship remains: Russia has energy to sell and China is an eager buyer. In a side deal that coincided with their recent Olympic statement, for instance, China agreed to purchase $117.5 billion worth of oil and gas. “Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, announced a new agreement to supply 100 million tons of crude through Kazakhstan to the Chinese state company China National Petroleum Corporation over the next ten years—while the Russian energy giant Gazprom pledged to ship 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year to China through a new pipeline,” writes Frederick Kempe at the Atlantic Council. Talk about greasing the wheels of cooperation.
A Future Eastern Alliance?
Putin hasn’t given up on Europe. He still has friends in Victor Orban’s Hungary and Aleksandar Vucic’s Serbia. Europe remains the biggest market for Russian oil and gas. And both NATO and the European Union continue to attract the interest of countries on Russian borders, which means that the Kremlin has to pay close attention to its western flank.
But the Ukraine crisis, even if it doesn’t devolve into war, could represent a turning point in contemporary geopolitics.
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Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping share a great deal in common. They are both nationalists who derive much of their public legitimacy not from an abstract political ideology, but from their appeals to homeland. They have a mutual disgust for the liberalism of human rights and checks on government power. Despite their involvement in various global institutions, they firmly believe in a sovereignist position that puts no constraints on what they do within the borders of their countries.
But perhaps the most operationally important aspect of their overlapping worldviews is their approach to energy and climate.
Both China and Russia are nominally committed to addressing climate change. They have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, though they both resort to some dodgy accounting to offset their actual emissions and meet their Paris commitments. China is more serious in terms of installing renewable energy infrastructure, with solar, wind and other sources responsible for 43% of power generation. Russia’s commitment to renewable energy at this point is negligible.
But both remain wedded to fossil fuels. It’s a matter of economic necessity for Russia as the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, the second-largest exporter of petroleum and the third-largest exporter of coal. Fossil fuels accounted for over 60% of the country’s exports in 2019; oil and gas alone provide well over a third of the federal budget. All of this is in jeopardy because a good number of Russia’s customers are trying to wean themselves of fossil fuel imports to cut their carbon emissions and to decrease their dependency on the Kremlin.
But not China. Despite its considerable investments into renewable energy, Beijing is still a huge consumer of fossil fuels. Chinese demand for natural gas has been rising for the last few years and won’t peak until 2035, which is bad news for the world but good news for the Russian gas industry. Oil consumption, which is more than twice that of natural gas and is rising more slowly, will peak in 2030.
Coal is still China’s largest source of energy. “Since 2011, China has consumed more coal than the rest of the world combined,” according to ChinaPower. “As of 2020, coal made up 56.8 percent of China’s energy use.” In 2020, as Alec MacGillis points out in a New Yorker piece, China built three times more power-generating infrastructure from coal than the rest of the world combined, and it continues to mine staggering amounts of the stuff. Despite all the domestic production, however, China still relies on imports. Because of trade tensions with Australia — the world’s second-largest exporter of coal after Indonesia — China has increasingly turned to Russia to meet demand.
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In other words, Russia and China are positioning themselves to use as much fossil fuel and emit as much carbon as they can in the next two decades to strengthen their economies and their hegemonic power in their adjacent spheres—and before international institutions acquire the resolve and the power to hold countries to their carbon reduction promises.
Yes, other countries are slow to abandon fossil fuels. The United States, for instance, relies increasingly on natural gas for electricity generation to compensate for a marked reduction in the use of coal. Japan remains heavily dependent on oil, natural gas and coal. So, Russia and China are not unique in their attachment to these energy sources.
But if the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels teams up with one of the world’s largest producers, it doesn’t just discomfit NATO generals and the trans-Atlantic establishment. It should worry anyone who believes that we still have a chance to prevent runaway climate change by 2050.
*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Ukraine crisis: miscalculation could trigger unintended wider conflict
Ukraine crisis: miscalculation could trigger unintended wider conflict‘Risk of something going down like a mid-air collision, or a trigger-happy Russian or American, can really escalate things quickly’ The unprecedented Russian military encirclement of Ukraine has not only brought closer the prospect of a devastating war in that country, it has also raised the risks of triggering an unintended wider conflict.The US and Nato have been adamant that their troops will not enter Ukraine no matter what happens, and the Pentagon has pulled out the 160 national guard soldiers who were acting as military advisers.Biden warns Putin: you’ll pay a heavy cost if you attack UkraineRead moreEven during the cold war, Washington and Russia made sure their forces did not clash, and Joe Biden has made clear he would seek to keep it that way.“That’s a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another,” Biden said.However, the massing of Russian troops in Belarus and the deployment of a substantial Russian naval force in the Black Sea, matched on a smaller scale by Nato land, sea and air reinforcements on the alliance’s eastern flank, means there is much far more military hardware in close proximity than is normal. And with proximity comes the increased danger of accidents and unintended consequences.“The risk of something going down like a mid-air collision, or a trigger-happy Russian or American, can really escalate things quickly,” said Danny Sjursen, a former army major and director of the Eisenhower Media Network.“You’re setting yourself up for accidents and miscalculation, and that’s when you can get out of control real quick, because there are domestic considerations both in Russia and in the United States. An American pilot dies – now what? I’m not saying that necessarily means we go to cataclysmic nuclear war but it escalates things.”The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told CBS News on Sunday that the US had sought to be transparent about its troop deployments in eastern Europe in order “to avoid mistake miscalculation or escalation and also to send a very clear message to Russia we will defend every inch of Nato territory”.There is a long history of close encounters over the Baltic and Black Seas. Earlier this month US jet fighters scrambled to intercept Russian warplanes operating close to Nato airspace while British and Norwegian planes took off to monitor Russian aircraft flying into the North Sea.While Russia has shut off large parts of the Black Sea to conduct its manoeuvres, Nato navies have stayed out of the immediate vicinity for now, while building up their presence in the Mediterranean. If they do decide to go through the Bosphorus in a show of strength, or to safeguard commercial shipping, the risk will rise again.Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the danger is further heightened by Russia’s suspected use of “GPS spoofing”, interference with the navigational equipment of other vessels.On several occasions recently, civilian ships traveling in the Black Sea have encountered mysterious GPS troubles that showed the vessels being in a different part of the Black Sea or even on land. It was widely though the incidents were caused by Russia testing its technology.“It raises the risk for naval vessels that are in the Black Sea, which we should remember is not that big, and it’s crowded,” Braw said. “There’s enormous shipping activity in the Black Sea, and so all those crews face the risk of having no GPS.”The transfer of combat troops from Russia’s far east to Belarus has not only significantly increased the imminent threat to Ukraine, but also made eastern European Nato members increasingly nervous.“The closest training ranges in Belarus are 150 to 200km from Vilnius or Warsaw,” said Kristjan Mäe, the head of the Nato and EU department at Estonia’s ministry of defence. “This is a Russian force posture that hasn’t been there previously.”A refugee crisis at the Polish-Belarus border year led to a close encounter between the troops facing each other, with Warsaw complaining that Belarus forces opened fire in the direction of their soldiers.“We have to remember that the people who are actually out on the frontline are very young men and women and they face enormous responsibility,” Braw said. “Yes there is a chain of command but if there is some sort of provocation or aggression, intentional or unintentional, that is directed against them, then they have to respond.”The close encounters so far have occurred in peacetime. In the event of war, nerves will be far more on edge, communications could be hampered or flooded with disinformation.“We cannot be entirely confident that in the lead up to or during a conflict that Nato and Russia will be able to communicate, especially as current civil and military communication systems between them are not as robust or technically resilient as they should be,” Sahil Shah, a policy fellow at the European Leadership Network, said.“The world’s two largest nuclear-armed states have returned to the brink of conflict exactly 60 years after the Cuban missile crisis. If diplomacy is not pursued to the fullest extent, the risks of miscalculation and miscommunication could potentially pull in wider Europe into a devastating war. Without dialogue on how to manage de-escalation, it will be as if our leaders are running into a monsoon with newspapers over their heads.”TopicsUkraineEuropeRussiaJoe BidenVladimir PutinVolodymyr ZelenskiyUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More
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Beware of this deadly mix: oligarchic economics and racist nationalist populism | Robert Reich
Beware of this deadly mix: oligarchic economics and racist, nationalist populismRobert ReichA treacherous alliance is growing that will undermine democratic institutions in the US and elsewhere The United States presents itself as the beacon of democracy in contrast to the autocracies of China and Russia. Yet American democracy is in danger of succumbing to the same sort of oligarchic economics and racist nationalism that thrive in both these powers.After all, it wasn’t long ago that Donald Trump – who openly admired Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – encouraged racist nationalism in America while delivering much of the US government into the hands of America’s super-rich.Now state-level Republicans are busily suppressing votes of people of color and paving the way for a possible anti-democratic coup, while the national Republican party excuses the attack on the Capitol – calling it “legitimate political discourse” – and censors Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two congressional Republicans serving on the panel investigating that attack.America’s oligarchic wealth, meanwhile, has reached levels rivaling or exceeding those of Russia and China. During the pandemic, America’s 745 billionaires increased their holdings by 70%, adding $2.1tn to their wealth in just over a year.A portion of this wealth is going into politics. As early as 2012, more than 40% of all money spent in federal elections came from the wealthiest of the wealthiest – not the top 1% or even the top tenth of the 1%, but from the top 1% of the 1%.Now, some of this wealth is supporting Trumpism. Peter Thiel, a staunch Trump supporter whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be $2.6bn, has become one of the Republican party’s largest donors.Last year, Thiel gave $10m each to the campaigns of two protégés – Blake Masters, who is running for the Senate from Arizona, and JD Vance, from Ohio. Thiel is also backing 12 House candidates, three of whom are running primary challenges to Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for the events of January 6.It’s not just Republicans. Last year, at least 13 billionaires who had previously donated to Trump lavished campaign donations on Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records.The combination of oligarchic wealth and racist nationalism is treacherous for democratic institutions in the US and elsewhere. Capitalism is consistent with democracy only if democracy reduces the inequalities, insecurities, joblessness, and poverty that accompany unbridled profit-seeking.For the first three decades after the second world war, democracy did this. The US and war-ravaged western Europe built the largest middle classes the world had ever seen, and the most buoyant democracies.The arrangement was far from perfect, but with the addition of civil rights and voting rights, subsidized healthcare (in the US, Medicare and Medicaid), and a vast expansion of public education, democracy was on the way to making capitalism work for the vast majority.Then came a giant U-turn, courtesy of Ronald Reagan in America and Margaret Thatcher in Europe. Deregulation, privatization, globalization, and the unleashing of finance created the Full Monty: abandoned factories and communities, stagnant wages, widening inequality, a shrinking middle class, political corruption and shredded social support.The result has been widespread anger and cynicism. Even before the pandemic, most people were working harder than ever but couldn’t get ahead, and their children’s prospects weren’t any better. More than one out of every six American children was impoverished and the typical American family was living from paycheck to paycheck. At the same time, a record high share of national wealth was already surging to the top.Starting last July, America did an experiment that might have limited these extremes and reduced the lure of racist nationalism. That’s when 36 million American families began receiving pandemic payments of up to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for each child under six).Presto. Child poverty dropped by at least a third, and the typical family gained some breathing space.But this hugely successful experiment ended abruptly in December when Senator Joe Manchin joined 50 Republican senators in rejecting President Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which would have continued it.They cited concerns over the experiment’s cost – an estimated $100bn per year, or $1.6tn over 10 years. But that’s less than big corporations and the rich will have saved on taxes from the Trump Republican tax cut of 2018. Repeal it, and there would be enough money. The cost is also less than the increase in the wealth of America’s 745 billionaires during the pandemic. Why not a wealth tax?The experiment died because, put simply, the oligarchy didn’t want to pay for it.Oligarchic economics coupled with racist nationalism marks the ultimate failure of progressive politics. Beware. When the people are no longer defended against the powerful, they look elsewhere.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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Sledgehammer review: David Friedman comes out swinging on Trump and Israel
Sledgehammer review: David Friedman comes out swinging on Trump and IsraelThe former US ambassador has written a predictably unsubtle memoir, aimed squarely at the 2024 Republican primary David Friedman was Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel. But that job title alone fails to adequately convey his proximity to the 45th president and his impact on US policy. Their time together marked a repudiation of Barack Obama’s vision for the Middle East. Sledgehammer, Friedman’s memoir, reminds the reader of all of this as insistently as its title suggests.Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador saysRead moreWith Friedman’s assistance, the US helped forge the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab countries. The US also moved its embassy to Jerusalem and left the Iran nuclear deal. As for the Palestinians, put it this way: they no longer occupy rent-free space in the Republican conscience.Unlike other Trump appointees, Friedman was often in the room when it happened. To all intents and purposes, he was not subordinate to Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state. And as an enthusiastic backer of Israeli settlements in occupied territories, he had little interest in preserving the status quo.More than a half-century had elapsed since 1967 and the six-day war. Israel’s hold on the West Bank had grown organic. The Oslo Accords gave way to the second intifada and Gaza continued to smolder, despite Israel’s withdrawal more than a decade before. Godot had failed to arrive. Friedman’s book with its unsubtle title has a subtitle too: “How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East”.Obviously, he overstates. The Palestinians are not, of course, content. War rages in Yemen. Drones and missiles hit the Emirates. Things between Israel and Iran can get worse and probably will.Friedman was Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer. When Trump announced his presidential campaign, Friedman was doubtful. Both men venerated their fathers but, as Friedman acknowledges, they had little else in common. The author is still married to his first wife. Religion is central to his life. He is an Orthodox Jew, the son of a rabbi. While ambassador, his daughter made aliyah. That is, she moved to Israel and became a citizen.Friedman quotes a senior but unidentified state department aide as telling him: “Don’t be so Jewish. You represent the United States of America … Just a free word of advice.” Suffice to say, Friedman was not amused. Although he held a presidential appointment, he was not part of the club.Sledgehammer is also about ethnic grievance and expectations of Jewish solidarity – perhaps misplaced. Before joining the Trump administration, Friedman branded Obama antisemitic and trashed J Street, a liberal Jewish group, as “worse than kapos” – Jewish prisoners who worked as guards in Nazi concentration camps. Such intemperate comments came with a political cost. The Senate confirmed him by the narrowest of margins, 52-46.On the page, Friedman says those were sincere expressions. He used the term “kapos”, he says, because he felt “J Street had betrayed the Jewish people”. Elsewhere, he admonishes American Jews against criticizing the Israeli government. He laments a growing schism among US Jews, even while describing his own testy relationship with the Reform movement.In 2020, American Jews went for Joe Biden by nearly 40 points but Trump was the clear favorite in Orthodox enclaves. In Israel, Trump is lionized. “Loved” is Friedman’s word.He likes wielding his sledgehammer at the left. The right, not so much.He castigates Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, progressive Democratic congresswomen, for hostility to Israel. As ambassador, he was fine with an attempt to stop them entering Israel as part of a congressional delegation.On the other hand, he has nothing to say about Charlottesville in August 2017, its tiki torches and cries of “Jews will not replace us” and Trump’s view that there were “very fine people” on the neo-Nazi side on that day of violence and shame.Friedman’s outrage appears selective.He is also silent on Trump delivering a tart “fuck him” to Benjamin Netanyahu – Israel’s former prime minister and a Friedman friend – in an interview memorialized in Barak Ravid’s book, Trump’s Peace.Instead, Friedman swings repeatedly at Mahmoud Abbas, challenging the Palestinian leader’s desire to reach an agreement with Israel.Once again, Trump might well disagree. Trump told Ravid he believed Netanyahu “did not want to make peace. Never did.” As for Abbas, “We spent a lot of time together, talking about many things. And it was almost like a father. I mean, he was so nice, couldn’t have been nicer.”Friedman was particularly close to Netanyahu, so much so that lines could blur. According to Ravid, Friedman sat in on Israeli government meetings until he was tossed out by cabinet members. Friedman’s memoir does nothing to dispel that report.He describes his efforts to help Netanyahu cobble together a government. He zings Avigdor Lieberman, former Netanyahu confidant and current Israeli finance minister, for refusing to come to the struggling prime minister’s rescue. The fact Netanyahu was then under a legal cloud and now stands on trial for corruption escapes real mention.‘Apartheid state’: Israel’s fears over image in US are coming to passRead moreElsewhere, Friedman criticizes Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister and Netanyahu’s jilted coalition partner. Although Gantz had been chief of staff of Israel’s military, says Friedman, he was not the politician Netanyahu was. Then again, Friedman also expresses his gratitude for his relationship with Gantz, who he describes as “6ft 4in and ruggedly handsome, an unusual look for an Israeli politician”. Trump too has praised Gantz, albeit at Netanyahu’s expense.What Friedman does next will be interesting. Like Trump, he has left New York for Florida. His book jacket posts a blurb from Nikki Haley, formerly governor of South Carolina and a potential candidate for the Republican nomination if Trump does not seek it. Friedman has also described Ron DeSantis, of Florida, as Israel’s greatest friend among all 50 current governors.Friedman is far from finished. Sledgehammer is not just a memoir. It is a well-written audition for 2024 and beyond.
Sledgehammer: How Breaking With the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, is published in the US by Broadside Books
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