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US politicsCaroline Kennedy, JFK’s daughter, set to be nominated as US envoy to AustraliaKennedy, US ambassador to Japan under Obama, was high-profile supporter of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign Joanna Walters and agencies@ More
Republican lawmakers have introduced the highest number of anti-trans bills to be filed in a single year in 2021. Joan E Greve speaks to Sam Levin about why some in the GOP are trying to ban transgender children from certain sports teams and limit their access to gender-affirming healthcare.
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Up to 2% of the youth population of the US are trans children, but lawmakers have introduced more than 110 bills in 2021 regulating their access to healthcare and sports teams. That is the highest number of anti-trans bills to ever be filed in a single year. The volume of laws proposed and the coordinated campaigns behind some of them suggest that this issue has become a central focus of the GOP culture war. But what is the full extent of the proposed legislation? And how many of these bills actually have a chance of becoming laws? Sam Levin and Joan E Greve discuss. Archive: CBS, ABC7, ABC11, PBS News Hour Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More
US Capitol attackPelosi rejects two Republicans from Capitol attack committeeHouse minority leader Kevin McCarthy calls move ‘abuse of power’ and threatens to withdraw Republicans from inquiry Hugo Lowell in WashingtonWed 21 Jul 2021 17.38 EDTLast modified on Wed 21 Jul 2021 17.42 EDTThe House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced on Wednesday that she would veto the two top Republican appointments to the new House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, saying the Trump-allied congressmen could threaten the integrity of the investigation.But the move sparked the immediate prospect of a boycott from the other Republicans picked by their party to serve on the committee and a threat that they would set up their own inquiry of the events of 6 January.Capitol attack committee chair vows to investigate Trump: ‘Nothing is off limits’Read moreThe top Democrat in the House said in a statement that she was rejecting Republicans Jim Banks and Jim Jordan from the panel because of their remarks disparaging the inquiry and their ties to Donald Trump, who will be the subject of the select committee’s investigation.Pelosi said her move was an unprecedented but necessary step given the gravity of the select committee’s inquiry into 6 January, when supporters of the former president stormed the Capitol in a violent insurrection that left five people dead and nearly 140 injured.“I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the select committee,” Pelosi said. “The unprecedented nature of January 6 demands this unprecedented decision.”The move also demonstrated Pelosi’s far-reaching and unilateral authority to steer the direction of the investigation. Pelosi made her decision after deliberating with her leadership team and her picks for the panel, according to a source familiar with the matter.The Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, had included Banks and Jordan – both outspoken Trump allies who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election victory – among his picks on Monday, foreshadowing a bitter partisan fight over the direction of the inquiry.The top Republican in the House slammed her move as an “egregious abuse of power” that would “irreparably damage this institution”, and threatened to withdraw Republicans from the investigation unless Pelosi reversed course and installed all five appointments.“This panel has lost all legitimacy and credibility and shows the speaker is more interested in playing politics than seeking the truth,” McCarthy said. “Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.”Still, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the one Republican member picked by Pelosi to serve on the select committee after she castigated Jordan on the House floor on 6 January, blaming him for the attack, told reporters that she supported Pelosi’s decision.“I agree with what the speaker has done,” she said.The decision by Pelosi to block the pair from serving on the select committee came after a series of calls between Pelosi, her leadership team and the Democratic caucus on Tuesday morning, the source said.House Democrats were outraged with Banks’s appointment in part because of a statement released on Monday night in which he inexplicably blamed the Biden administration for its response to the 6 January attack, which took place during the Trump administration, the source said.Banks also drew the ire of Pelosi and House Democrats after he arranged a trip for House Republicans to join Trump at a recent event at the southern border alongside an individual who participated in the Capitol attack itself.Pelosi also expressed deep concern about the selection of Jordan, the source said, especially given he may have spoken to Trump as rioters stormed the Capitol and disparaged attempts to investigate the deadliest attack on the Capitol since the war of 1812.The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, previously told the Guardian that any conversations that involved Trump on 6 January would be investigated by the panel, raising the prospect that Jordan would end up examining his own conduct.TopicsUS Capitol attackNancy PelosiHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More
The New York Times on Monday reported that the US has accused China “of breaching Microsoft email systems used by many of the world’s largest companies.” On the same day, The Washington Post announced the findings of an investigation into “spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals.” The Pegasus spyware supplied by the Israeli firm NSO targeted “journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” as well as three sitting presidents and three current prime ministers, a king and a host of high-profile officials around the world.
With American troops wending their way home from the 20-year-long hot war in Afghanistan, the new cold war that recently became a dominant theme in American electoral politics has taken a curious turn. The original Cold War had meaning because it appeared to be a largely equitable match between the United States and the Soviet Union. That changed with the implosion of the USSR in 1991. What didn’t change was the psychological dependence of American administrations on their ability to identify existential threats from abroad. What better way, after all, to distract from the growing disarray visible within its own society?
Are Americans Waiting for a Cyber Apocalypse?
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The decade that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated the scope of the problem. In his 2000 presidential campaign, grammatically challenged George W. Bush lamented the fact that the nation had lost the reassuring feeling of living in “a dangerous world” in which “you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was.” Bush was nevertheless convinced that there was an enemy on whom the nation could concentrate its fears.
Just eight months into his first term, after being elected by the Supreme Court, Bush got lucky. Islamic terrorism stepped in to play the role of archvillain, becoming the steed three presidents would ride for the next two decades, though its effect would wear with time. Despite the FBI’s persistent campaign to incite rudderless young Muslims to play the role of domestic terrorists — even funding plots that were subsequently “thwarted” by the FBI itself — homegrown Islamic terrorism has never lived up to its role as the existential threat the nation’s leaders wished for. That’s why Russia and China are back.
The response to Islamic terrorism has been so chaotic and mismanaged that, instead of unifying the nation as it once did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it has had the effect of fragmenting society beyond recognition. Americans now live to hate and cancel other Americans. The most identifiable enemies are people’s own neighbors or fellow citizens with contrasting mindsets.
After the debacle of Trump’s election in 2016, establishment Democrats seeking a scapegoat focused on Russia as the source of the nation’s deepest fears. Their marketing geniuses imagined what they termed “collusion” between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Republicans preferred to focus on China, though the business wing of the Republican party continues to see China as a burgeoning marketplace for its goods.
Now that Russia and China practice the virtues of capitalism, it has become more difficult to frame the rivalry in purely military terms, though the pressure to launch a new arms race is as real as ever. But that has more to do with the fact that the military-industrial complex has become the core of the industrial economy. The new focus is on the notion of cyberthreat. The Cold War is morphing into the Code War.
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In April, The Times reported that the Biden administration had “imposed extensive new sanctions on Russia” for the famous SolarWinds hack. It did so on the grounds that the Russian government may have been involved, though, as WhatIs.com reported, it is clearly a question of belief rather than established fact: “Federal investigators and cybersecurity agents believe a Russian espionage operation — most likely Russia‘s Foreign Intelligence Service — is behind the SolarWinds attack.” One of the curious features of the SolarWinds attack is that nobody seems to know if there were any consequences other than the gathering of economic information. “The purpose of the hack remains largely unknown,” WhatIs reports.
If the complaint about Russian and Chinese industrial spying is little more than rebranded old news in the Russiagate tradition, the most substantial piece of new news is The Washington Post’s scoop about NSO’s software. The fact that it was used to spy on the widest diversity of targets by various governments not averse to exaggerated forms of despotism makes it distinctive and seriously troubling. This isn’t industrial espionage — it’s people espionage.
What has been the reaction in Israel? While the Israeli government has remained silent, The Washington Post notes that the “NSO Group firmly denies false claims made in your report which many of them are uncorroborated theories that raise serious doubts about the reliability of your sources, as well as the basis of your story.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Uncorroborated theory:
1. A common way of describing a boatload of unconnected facts that all point toward a person’s or an institution’s accountability
2. Most of what appears in the news to justify the aggressive foreign policy Americans now believe is a feature of their nation’s identity
Contextual Note
The New York Times described the latest scandal in these terms: “A major Israeli cyber-surveillance company, NSO Group, came under heightened scrutiny Sunday after an international alliance of news outlets reported that governments used its software to target journalists, dissidents and opposition politicians.” A person suspected of a major crime is arrested and eventually charged. In today’s neoliberal world, a company, even in the presence of massive evidence, is merely subjected to “heightened scrutiny.”
The goal of those using the software is the theft of private information and includes setting up kidnaps and murders, allegedly including the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Reuters explains what the US Justice Department believes to be the goal of the Chinese hackers: “The campaign targeted trade secrets in industries including aviation, defense, education, government, health care, biopharmaceutical and maritime industries.” In other words, China’s crime is industrial spying rather than political espionage. It is about property rather than people, or what Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco condemned as an attempt “to steal what other countries make.”
Historical Note
It is an observable fact in the functioning of today’s legal systems that protecting private property is far more important than the security of the population. National interest has come to be synonymous with corporate interest. The nations whose corporations historically grew by stealing the resources of the rest of the world after subjecting their populations to colonial rule see no crime as heinous as the attempts of those exploited nations and regions to use modern technology, not to steal, but to learn how to exploit the same processes the advanced economies have built.
Stealing ideas and processes — or industrial plagiarism — has always been a feature of dynamic economies. Defenders of the letter of the law complain that violating patents kills innovation. On the contrary, the prevention of the transfer of immaterial knowledge encourages monopoly. That not only stifles innovation but creates the conditions for various forms of oppression, including the ability to steal with impunity from weaker rivals. In October 2020, Business Insider reported the allegation against Amazon. An antitrust report by the House Judiciary Committee determined that “Amazon uses third-party seller data to copy the site’s most popular products.”
The Times offers this historical reminder: “While there is nothing new about digital espionage from Russia and China — and efforts by Washington to block it — the Biden administration has been surprisingly aggressive in calling out both countries and organizing a coordinated response.” Biden seeks to be remembered not as the new FDR, but as the defender of the neoliberal order and the consolidation of the corporate oligarchy as the virtual government overseeing a form of democracy that has been reduced to a set of electoral rituals.
Capitalists will always seek to steal what others have done. That is called getting an edge on the competition. Sometimes they can do it legally, but often they will do it illegally after taking a maximum number of precautions to avoid being caught. In today’s world of asymmetric economic warfare, the stronger corporations will get away with it, and the stronger nations will find effective ways of punishing those that are trying to catch up.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Donald TrumpCapitol attack committee chair vows to investigate Trump: ‘Nothing is off limits’ Bennie Thompson tells Guardian he will pursue wide-ranging inquiry to uncover root causes of January 6 attackHugo Lowell in WashingtonWed 21 Jul 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 21 Jul 2021 02.52 EDTCongressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the new House select committee to scrutinize the Capitol attack, says he will investigate Donald Trump as part of his inquiry into the events of 6 January – a day he sees as the greatest test to the United States since the civil war.Trump supporter sentenced to eight months in prison for role in Capitol riotRead moreIn an interview with the Guardian, Thompson said that he is also prepared to depose members of Congress and senior Trump administration officials who might have participated in the insurrection that left five dead and nearly 140 injured.“Absolutely,” Thompson said of his intent to pursue a wide-ranging inquiry against the former president and some of his most prominent allies on Capitol Hill. “Nothing is off limits.”The aggressive move to place Trump in the crosshairs of the select committee underscores Thompson’s determination to uncover the root causes of 6 January, even after Senate Republicans, fearing political damage, blocked the creation of a 9/11-style commission.The move comes at the same time as many Republicans have been seeking to downplay the attack on the Capitol – in which five people died – or, in the case of Trump himself, cast its protagonists in a more positive light.But there is no doubt in Thompson’s mind of the seriousness of the event. Addressing some of the key questions at the heart of the select committee’s investigation into the attacl, Thompson characterized the inquiry as an undertaking to safeguard the peaceful transition of power and the future of American democracy.“The issues of January 6 are one of the most salient challenges we have as a nation, to make sure that this democracy does not fall prey to people who don’t really identify with democracy,” Thompson said.The central thrust of the investigation will focus on the facts and circumstances surrounding the Capitol attack, Thompson said, and the first hearing scheduled for 27 July will feature current and former US Capitol police and DC Metro police officers.But in pursuing a broad mandate to also examine the root causes of the insurrection, Thompson reiterated that he remains prepared to issue subpoenas to compel testimony from an array of Trump officials connected to the attack should they refuse to appear voluntarily.Trump and McCarthy among top witnessesThompson indicated that Trump and the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, are among the top witnesses for his investigation, in large part because McCarthy was on the phone with the former president as the riot unfolded.McCarthy called Trump in a panic as rioters breached the Capitol and begged him to call off his supporters, only for Trump to chastise the top Republican in the House for not doing more to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.“There will not be a reluctance on the part of the committee to pursue it,” Thompson said of McCarthy’s call. “The committee will want to know if there is a record of what was said.”The exchange between McCarthy and Trump is of singular importance, since it provides a rare window into what Trump, sequestered in the West Wing, was privately thinking and saying as the Capitol was invaded.But Thompson went further, and said that he expects anyone – whether a sitting member of Congress or former White House official – who may have spoken to Trump on 6 January to become the subject of the select committee’s investigation.That prospect took on added significance on Monday, after McCarthy named House judiciary committee chairman Jim Jordan as one of his picks for the panel. Jordan has previously suggested he may have also spoken to Trump as the assault took place.“If somebody spoke to the president on January 6, I think it would be important for our committee to know what was said. I can’t imagine you talk about anything else to the president on January 6,” Thompson said.He also warned Republicans against attempting to stymie the committee’s investigation, saying that it had no deadline to furnish a report and as a result, would be immune to delay tactics previously deployed during the first Trump impeachment inquiry.“Notwithstanding elections next year, we will not stop until our investigation is complete,” Thompson said.Subpoenas to be enforced in courtAgainst that backdrop, Thompson said he expects to demand testimony from senior Trump administration officials who were in the Oval Office as the riot unfolded, from the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to Trump’s daughter Ivanka.If Trump administration officials refuse to appear before the committee, citing executive privilege, Thompson said he would issue subpoenas and launch lawsuits to enforce his congressional oversight authority.“We will pursue it in court,” he said.Thompson added that he expects the select committee and senior House investigators to meet with the attorney general, Merrick Garland, and expressed optimism for conducting his investigation in close coordination with the justice department.He was adamant that his investigation would not overlap with existing criminal probes opened by the justice department and the US attorney for the District of Columbia. Still, he said he hoped the DoJ would cooperate with his inquiry.“We don’t want to get in the way of indictments,” Thompson said. “But I think there could be some sharing of information that could be germane to our investigation, just like other committees have negotiated in the past.”Thompson said that although no date has been set for a meeting with the attorney general, it will involve the 6 January select committee’s members and senior staff. The senior staff may be named as soon as this week, according to a source familiar with the matter.To emphasize his seriousness, Thompson said the select committee would draw on legal counsel and investigative staff from existing House panels as well as the US intelligence community – including the NSA, CIA and FBI.Thompson also said he expects the National Archives, the agency now in possession of records from the Trump White House, to make materials available for his investigation. “That should not be an issue,” he said, though he left open the possibility of subpoenas in the event of noncompliance.And he vowed to refer criminal charges should Trump White House records, covering the period from the November election through 6 January, be missing or destroyed – a persistent worry among Democrats as Trump grew increasingly unhinged in the final weeks of the administration.“That violates the law,” Thompson said. “I don’t see any hesitation on our part to pursue that. If the respect for the rule of law is not adhered to, that’s even more reason for this select committee to exist.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansUS CongressnewsReuse this content More
Top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci got into a heated discussion with Republican Senator Rand Paul during a Senate hearing on the coronavirus. Paul pressed Fauci on previous comments made to the committee about funding for a lab in Wuhan, China, ‘You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans, you’re saying that’s not ‘gain of function’?’ To which Fauci replied, ‘Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And, I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about’
‘If anybody is lying here, it is you’: Fauci turns tables on inquisitor Rand Paul More
