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      in US Politics

      America braced for final month of madness as Trump show nears its end

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      The president’s recent conduct has raised alarms of an increasingly desperate power bid in his last 30 days. So what can we expect?As the Trump show nears its final episode, America is bracing for potentially the most dramatic, disturbing and outlandish twists yet.Donald Trump’s recent conduct has led critics to suggest that he has lost touch with reality and raise alarms over an increasingly desperate, deranged power grab in the climactic month of his presidency. Continue reading… More

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      Trump pardons ex-campaign aide, Blackwater contractors and disgraced lawmakers

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      President grants pardons to 15 people, including contractors convicted in massacre in Iraq, and commutes others’ sentencesDonald Trump approved a wave of pre-Christmas pardons, granting clemency to a former campaign aide caught up in the Russia investigation, disgraced Republican lawmakers and several contractors convicted in a massacre in Iraq. Continue reading… More

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      in US Politics

      Walmart sued by US over alleged role in fuelling America's opioid crisis

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      The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Walmart on Tuesday, alleging that the retail giant filled “thousands of invalid prescriptions” for powerful painkillers, helping fuel America’s opioid crisis.Walmart runs more than 5,000 pharmacies across the country. Until 2018, the chain was a wholesale distributor of controlled substances for its own pharmacies, giving it extensive reach into many communities.The civil complaint points to the role Walmart’s pharmacies may have played in the crisis by filling opioid prescriptions and by unlawfully distributing controlled substances to the pharmacies during the height of the opioid crisis.“As a nationwide dispenser and distributor of opioids, and given the sheer number of pharmacies it operates, Walmart was uniquely well positioned to prevent the illegal diversion of opioids,” the 160-page civil suit, filed in Delaware federal court, said.“Yet, for years, as the prescription drug abuse epidemic ravaged the country, Walmart abdicated those responsibilities,” the suit added.In response, Walmart said the suit was “riddled with factual inaccuracies”.The DoJ document said the company “knowingly violated well established rules requiring it to scrutinize controlled-substance prescriptions to ensure that they were valid – that is, issued by prescribers in a legitimate manner for legitimate purposes, not for purposes of abuse or other diversion,” the suit continued. While Walmart was legally required to check potential red flags, it “made little effort to ensure that it complied with them”.Instead, Walmart made it hard for pharmacists to abide by these regulations. Managers pressured pharmacists to fill high volumes of prescriptions as quickly as possible “while at the same time denying them the authority to categorically refuse to fill prescriptions issued by prescribers the pharmacists knew were continually issuing invalid prescriptions”, the complaint charged.Even though Walmart’s compliance arm had amassed extensive information showing that people were repeatedly trying to get invalid narcotic prescriptions filled, the unit kept that data from pharmacists, authorities also said.Walmart filled prescriptions from prescribers who its own pharmacists had “repeatedly reported were acting as egregious ‘pill mills’ – even when Walmart was alerted that other pharmacies were not filling prescriptions for those prescribers. In fact, some of those pill-mill prescribers specifically told their patients to fill their prescriptions at Walmart.”So intense were the pressures on pharmacists that managers told them to “[h]ustle to the customer, hustle from station to station” because completing prescriptions “is a battle of seconds”, federal authorities alleged.As early as 2013, Walmart adopted a plan that used the number of prescriptions processed by an employee’s store as a factor in determining if the pharmacy staffer “was entitled to monetary incentive awards”.The DoJ contends that Walmart has committed “hundreds of thousands of violations” of the Controlled Substances Act. If Walmart is found liable for violating this act, each unlawfully filled prescription could result in a $67,627 penalty. Each suspicious order that was not reported to authorities could result in a penalty of up to $15,691. Civil penalties could reach “billions”, the DoJ said.More than 232,000 people died in the US from opioid-involved overdoses between 1999 and 2018, according to the DoJ.In a statement, Walmart said that the DoJ’s investigation was “tainted by historical ethics violations, and this lawsuit invents a legal theory that unlawfully forces pharmacists to come between patients and their doctors, and is riddled with factual inaccuracies and cherry-picked documents taken out of context”.“Blaming pharmacists for not second-guessing the very doctors the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) approved to prescribe opioids is a transparent attempt to shift blame from DEA’s well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids in the first place,” the company said.Walmart recently sued the DoJ and DEA, alleging that authorities wrongly ascribed blame to the company. The retailer’s suit wants a federal judge to determine that the government doesn’t have grounds to pursue civil damages, according to the Associated Press. More

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      in US Politics

      New museums and Smokey Bear: what's in the $900bn US stimulus package?

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      Late on Monday night, Congress approved a $900bn stimulus package which will deliver financial aid to millions of families and businesses facing economic distress from coronavirus pandemic. Though far smaller than a bill lawmakers passed at the outset of the pandemic, earlier this year, the measure is one the largest pieces of legislation in US history.The product of frenzied negotiations, the package was paired with a $1.4tn spending bill to fund the federal government through the end of the fiscal year, 30 September 2021. In response to a deepening economic and public health crisis, the rescue bill authorizes direct payments of $600 to those who earn less than $75,000 and extends supplemental unemployment benefits to $300 for 11 weeks.Tucked into the hulking 5,593-page bill, however, are a range of initiatives and obscure provisions that appear to have little to do with fortifying a fragile economy or keeping the government open.New Smithsonian museumsThe legislation authorizes the establishment of two new museums in Washington: the American Women’s History Museum and the National Museum of the American Latino. Such approval, however, is only the first step in a years-long process to build the museums on the National Mall.Despite broad support for the museums, earlier this month Mike Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, blocked legislation that would have approved their establishment, arguing that the US doesn’t need “segregated, separate-but-equal museums for hyphenated identity groups”.According to the bill, the Latino museum will see visitors “learn about Latino contributions to life, art, history and culture in the United States” while serving “as a gateway for visitors to view other Latino exhibitions, collections, and programming” at institutions across the country. The women’s museum will “recognize diverse perspectives on women’s history and contributions”.Support for the Dalai LamaIn a shot across the bow at China, the bill reaffirms the right of the Tibetan people to reincarnate the Dalai Lama. China regards the exiled spiritual leader, who continues to advocate for a degree of Tibetan self-rule, as a threat to its sovereignty.The text of the legislation warns: “Interference by the Government of the People’s Republic of China or any other government in the process of recognizing a successor or reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama and any future Dalai Lamas would represent a clear abuse of the right to religious freedom of Tibetan Buddhists and the Tibetan people.” The legislation also directs the secretary of state to establish a US consulate in Tibet’s main city, Lhasa.According to Reuters, the political head of Tibetans in exile welcomed the news as a “victory for the Tibetan freedom struggle”. China accused the US of meddling.An end to ‘surprise medical billing’Lawmakers also included an end to this costly practice, which sees patients unexpectedly receive care from providers not covered by their insurers, thereby facing bills far higher than they would typically pay. As many as one in six emergency room visits or in-hospital stays resulted in at least one out-of-network bill in 2017, according to analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.Consumers will be relieved to see the practice effectively banned under legislation which limits what patients can be billed for out-of-network services. Now, doctors and hospitals will have to work with insurers to settle on costs.Although members of both parties have long denounced the practice, efforts to ban it had been thwarted by lobbying from insurers and healthcare providers.The right to reproduce Smokey BearThe bill repeals a provision of federal law criminalizing unauthorized use of Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl, famous mascots of a US Forest Service public safety campaign concerning wildfires and pollution. Previously, illegally reproducing images of Smokey Bear was punishable by up to six months in prison.Heath benefits for Marshall IslandersThe bill corrects a 25-year-old drafting error that denied thousands of islanders access to federal health benefits they were promised after resettling in the US.Lawmakers agreed to allow Marshall Islanders and other islanders covered by the Compact of Free Association to sign up for Medicaid, after a 1996 welfare reform changed the categories qualifying for federal aid and effectively barred them.Democrats led by members from Hawaii have fought for nearly two decades to restore Medicaid eligibility for islanders, without Republican support. They argued that the US broke its commitment to provide medical coverage to islanders who moved to the US after the military used their homeland to test nuclear bombs.“This is a ‘shining moment’ at a time of darkness for our country,” Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono said after the bill passed. “Let’s savor it.”Any other business?There were plenty of other surprises, including $2bn for the new US space force and a tax break for corporate meal expenses, panned as the “three-martini lunch” but a priority for Donald Trump. Senator Bernie Sanders, who pushed for bigger direct payments, called the inclusion of the provisions “pathetic”.Racehorse owners also received a tax break, while $35m was allotted for groups which “implement education in sexual risk avoidance”, which the legislation defines as “voluntarily refraining from non-marital sexual activity”.“This is why Congress needs time to actually read this package before voting on it,” New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter, responding to a report that the bill makes illegal streaming a felony.“Members of Congress have not read this bill. It’s over 5,000 pages, arrived at 2pm today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in two hours. This isn’t governance. It’s hostage-taking.” More

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      in US Politics

      Covid could shorten US life expectancy by up to three years, experts say

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      The US could see a decline of two to three years in life expectancy in 2020 due to the coronavirus, the steepest drop since the second world war and with Covid-19 poised to become the third-leading cause of death in America, the Wall Street Journal reported.
      In 2019, life expectancy hit 78.8 years, up 0.1 from 2018, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. The increase stemmed from decreased death rates in heart disease and cancer, the leading and second-leading causes of death in the US. Drug overdose deaths increased after dropping in 2018 but suicides declined for the first time in 14 years.
      According to data from Johns Hopkins University, 190,519 new cases in the US on Monday saw the Covid-19 caseload pass 18m. By Tuesday morning, there had been 319,466 deaths, 1,696 of them on the day before.
      For comparison, in 2019 around 659,000 people died of heart disease in America, and around 600,000 from cancer. The third-leading cause of death, accidents, killed around 173,000.
      Vaccines are coming on stream, with public figures having shots to encourage widespread take-up, President-elect Joe Biden among them on Monday. Dr Anthony Fauci, the top public health expert, was among those vaccinated on Tuesday.
      Amid concern over the new virus variation detected in the UK, US officials sought to assuage fears, saying it should be monitored but its discovery should not be cause for despair.
      Health secretary Alex Azar, who was also vaccinated, told Fox News both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines should be effective at preventing illness from the recently discovered variant.
      BioNTech chief executive Ugur Sahin told reporters: “Scientifically it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine can also deal with this virus variant.”
      Fauci told ABC surveillance was necessary to monitor spread of the British variant, but that officials should not overreact.
      “Travel bans are really rather draconian things to do,” he said.
      In other news on Tuesday, Dr Deborah Birx, a senior Trump adviser who has seen her reputation battered by the White House task force’s failure to combat the pandemic, said she would retire.
      The former US army medic told the Newsy website she wanted to help the incoming Biden administration “in any role that people think I can be helpful in, and then I will retire”.
      Elsewhere, Mike Pence addressed a rightwing conference in Florida at which social distancing and mask-wearing were not in evidence while in Washington, Trump chose to boast about vaccine distribution, which he said was “going very smoothly”.
      Despite reported glitches for which the general in charge of the operation apologised, more than 600,000 Americans, mostly healthcare workers, had received their first vaccine doses by Monday, according to the CDC. Some states began vaccinating long-term care facility residents on Monday.
      Nonetheless, some models predict a death toll of more than 500,000 by the spring, and more than 5,000 deaths a day.
      Robert Anderson, who leads the CDC National Center for Health Statistics mortality-statistics section, told the Journal he used data through August to determine that life expectancy had dropped by approximately 1.5 years.
      “We’ve had a lot of deaths added since August, so I think a drop of two to three years for 2020 isn’t out of the question,” he said.
      Anderson explained that this would be the greatest decrease since 1943, when fatalities in the second world war led to a 2.9 year decline in life expectancy.
      Twenty-five years before that, the Spanish flu resulted in an 11.8-year decline in life expectancy, Anderson said. That sweeping figure stemmed from the fact that virus was especially deadly for children, whose deaths led to a disproportionate decline in life expectancy.
      One demographer, Kenneth M Johnson of the University of New Hampshire, reportedly said the pandemic will cause deaths to outpace births in more than 50% of US counties this year – the first time in US history. Such a reversal would come after the US saw its lowest recorded general fertility rate in 2019.
      “We’ve got people dying and hospital rooms jammed,” Johnson said. “Who’s going to want to have a baby?” More

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      in World Politics

      Is Russia Immune to Anti-Semitism?

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      A new report on anti-Semitism in Russia for June-September 2020 was published in Moscow in October by the independent Center for Information and Analysis, SOVA. A month earlier, another study by a Russian think tank specializing in public opinion polls, the Levada Center, analyzed Russian attitudes to national minorities as well as to labor migrants. The quarterly report on anti-Semitism, as well as monthly monitoring by SOVA, indicate that Russia will register a similar number of anti-Semitic displays as in 2019 and 2018. In general, offenses related to anti-Semitism have been declining in the country for almost 10 years in a row.

      Indeed, judging by this latest data, from January to September, there have been no attacks on Jews in the country, with only a minimal number of anti-Semitic statements made on social media and in the mainstream press. The attempted murder of Rabbi Yuri Tkach, the head of the Jewish community in Krasnodar, would probably be the hate crime of the year. The plot was hatched by activists of a cartoonish and unregistered organization, Citizens of the USSR, who do not recognize official Russian documents, carry old Soviet Union passports and refuse to obey Russian laws. The core of its activists are retired women. All of this has contributed to the fact that the police and the wider society did not take the group seriously.

      Anti-Semitism Is Resurfacing Again in Germany

      READ MORE

      Nevertheless, according to the investigation, two Citizens found a potential assassin in September, providing Tkach’s personal data as well as an assembly knife and promising a high position in their organization in case of a “successful liquidation of the rabbi.” Although the assassination attempt was interrupted at this stage — the “killer” turned out to be an operative working undercover — the order itself can be considered real, given that the Soviet Citizens in Krasnodar had previously been distinguished by aggressive anti-Semitism and marginality.

      Desirable Minority

      In late July vandals damaged over 30 tombstones in the Jewish section of the January 9th Memorial Cemetery in Petersburg. In September, a drunken hooligan shouting anti-Semitic slogans failed to enter the premises of the Shamir community in the east of Moscow, threw a Hanukiah from the porch, tore down the sign with the name of the organization, broke the mailbox and knocked the license plate off the rabbi’s service car. To put these attacks in context, over the same time period, dozens of vandals attacked World War II memorials, monuments to Vladimir Lenin (that still decorate many squares in Russian cities) and even the statue of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in Orsk.

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      Overall, the number of anti-Semitic incidents is lower than over the same period last year. All indications are that in 2020, there will also be fewer convictions for crimes previously committed on the grounds of anti-Semitism. On average, this picture is consistent with the previous two years. 

      The September report by the Levada Center shows that Jews are becoming a more desirable minority compared to other groups like the Chinese, Ukrainians, Chechens, immigrants from Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as Roma and migrant workers. The social distance between Jews and the ethnic majority is steadily shrinking. Its coefficient, in which higher values indicate social distrust, is 4.23 points. For comparison, Ukrainians, traditionally close to Russians, score 4.67, with Chechens at 5.21 and 5.83 for the Roma. The positive dynamics of the different components of this coefficient are also impressive. For example, the number of people willing to see Jews as their family members increased by more than six times and as close friends by three.

      Of course, there is still a domestic anti-Semitism in Russia, which sometimes slips out even in the utterances of state officials. But today, the harsh insults have been replaced by other, more subtle ones that could even be taken as a sign of respect. Russian journalist Anna Narinskaya gives an example of a Jew promoted in a commercial company “because your nation knows how to [handle] money.” This is an improvement on past attitudes when Jews were not hired or admitted to university because Russians didn’t want to study or work with the “people with such surnames.”

      This is all the more surprising because the level of nationalism in Russia decreased by only 2% in 11 years. While in 2009 the number of those who would like to implement the idea “Russia for Russians” was 18% and the number of those who were ready to support it “within reasonable limits” was 36%, in 2020 these figures were 19% and 32%, respectively. In this context of a relatively high prevalence of ethnic-majority nationalism, the number of anti-Semitic crimes in Russia has been steadily declining despite the decrease in the number of convictions. Unlike the trends in the West, levels of xenophobia against the Jewish minority are also decreasing.

      How can this phenomenon be explained, and why are attitudes toward Jews undergoing such a change? Have people in Russia really become kinder and more tolerant of Jews? And if so, why?

      Tolerance and Democracy

      The first reason behind this trend is stricter punishment for extremism crimes that has emerged over the past decade. This is an extremely important factor that has replaced impunity of hate-motivated attacks, which prevailed in the Russian public consciousness until the end of the 2000s. This led to a decrease in the number of hate crimes in the country as a whole as well as a lower level of xenophobia.

      Second, Russia doesn’t harbor an anti-Israel sentiment, characteristic of Western societies — what can be called the new anti-Semitism. As Narinskaya writes, a decent person in the West cannot say “Jews are inherently bad people,” but they can easily say that “Israel is the creator of the new Holocaust, and Jews all over the world are loyal to it, so I don’t like them.” In Russia, a doctor can legally refuse to admit a woman wearing a hijab, but the story of an Austrian doctor refusing to admit a patient wearing a Star of David “until you equip hospitals in Gaza” would be impossible, according to Narinskaya.

      Finally, the third and most important reason is the position of the president. Vladimir Putin, unlike all the previous leaders of the country, has a respectful attitude toward the Jewish community. He publicly congratulates Jews on their religious holidays, has authorized the annual erection of Hanukkah menorahs in Russian cities, including Moscow, and meets regularly with Jewish leaders.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The latest study on Jewish life in Russia also points to this factor. Its author is the sociologist Alexei Levinson, the head of the sociocultural research department at the Levada Center. Levison writes that the attitude to the Jews in Russia “has become so liberal that they [Jews] have reached the highest echelons of Russian society.” However, “Jews today are not at all euphoric. The community’s fears are based on Russian history, when they were subject to the whims of whoever was running the country.”

      “Anti-Semitism goes hand in hand with the history of Jews for ages and ages, and they think these days are just a short interruption of this tradition,” Levinson told The Media Line. He attributes the current decline in anti-Semitic actions by the state to Putin’s personal position, suggesting that Jews in Russia “think that if he changes his mind, or if another less tolerant person takes his place, the whole state apparatus and the public will revert to the usual anti-Semitism.”

      Such an eventuality will also remove the restrictive framework in situations involving domestic anti-Semitism, the potential for which is still great and even growing insignificantly. This is indirectly confirmed by Rabbi Alexander Boroda, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia. In June, he stated that he was concerned about the level of latent anti-Semitism in the country. Boroda says that the US State Department report on religious freedom indicates a relatively high level of latent anti-Semitism in Russia, stressing that in 2017-19, the number of Russians who declare themselves as anti-Semites was already at 15%-17%. However, at the moment, these people, for the reasons mentioned above, prefer not to advertise their views in public.

      Nathan Sharansky, the former chairman of the Jewish Agency and a political prisoner in Soviet times, believes that “Putin is not suited to Russian democracy, so Jews and other citizens of Russia may be disappointed by the restrictions on freedom.” It is difficult to disagree with him that, in the event of a change in leadership, “anti-Semitism returns to the level it was at for 1,000 years … today’s positive societal views of Jews won’t be enough to stop it. The democratic composition of the country has to be strong enough to fight these pressures.”

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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      Trump loyalists aim to block Biden's goal to rejoin Iran and Paris agreements

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      Two prominent Trump loyalists in the US Senate, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, are reportedly pressing the president to submit the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement to the chamber for ratification, in a last-minute attempt to scupper Democratic plans to take America back into the accords.In a letter obtained by RealClearPolitics, Cruz, from Texas, urges both Trump and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, to plant the seeds of an eventual showdown over the two critical international agreements in the early days of the Biden administration.As Cruz describes it, by submitting the pacts to the Senate, Trump could pave the way for a vote that would fail to achieve the two-thirds needed to ratify them – thus blocking Joe Biden’s efforts to bring the US back in line with international allies.Cruz sets out the cynical ploy in his letter. He begins by praising Trump’s decision to pull America out of both the 2015 Iran deal, which restricted its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, and the 2016 Paris accords on reducing global emissions of pollution responsible for the climate crisis.“I urge you now to remedy the harm done to the balance of powers by submitting the Iran deal and the Paris agreement to the Senate as treaties,” Cruz writes. “Only by so doing with the Senate be able to satisfy its constitutional role to provide advice and consent in the event any future administration attempts to revive these dangerous deals.”Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris agreement “on day one of my presidency”. He has similarly indicated he would revive the Iran nuclear deal as a top foreign policy objective – in both cases using his executive powers rather than relying on Congress.Cruz hopes that his tactic would cut across Biden’s intentions by declaring the accords foreign treaties which require two-thirds ratification in the Senate. Failure to achieve that margin – an impossible target in a narrowly divided chamber – would undercut any unilateral Biden move.Graham has been ploughing a similar furrow. In a stream of tweets last week the senator from South Carolina said he had been working hard “to secure a vote in the US Senate regarding any potential decision to reenter the Iran nuclear deal”.He added: “The Senate should go on the record about whether it would support or oppose this decision. Also believe Senate should be on record in support or opposition to any decision to reenter Paris climate accord.” More

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      Infinity culture war: what now for Trump's Hollywood supporters?

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      From actor Jon Voight to Kirstie Alley, Trump’s celebrity fans have declared war on the left – and there is little sign hostilities will end soonOn 11 November, Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home star Jon Voight posted a video on Twitter. “This is our greatest battle since the civil war,” he said, referring to the election results. “The battle of righteousness versus Satan, yes, Satan. Because these leftists are evil, corrupt and they want to tear down this nation.” Voight’s support of President Trump has been full-throated. His video messages promote conspiracy theories about the election and use violent language. Voight is typical of celebrity Maga: from Kirstie Alley to James Woods, Trump’s Hollywood supporters regularly echo the president’s own unvarnished rhetoric. But now Trump’s term is over, how long can this cultural Infinity War last?According to Dallas Sonnier, producer of such films as Dragged Across Concrete and the upcoming Run Hide Fight, “There are more pro-Trump celebrities in Hollywood than the dogmatic gatekeepers and thought police could ever possibly imagine.” In 2016, Kelsey Grammer, star of Frasier, told Desert Island Discs that being conservative in Hollywood felt like having a “target on your back”. Indeed, the same twitchiness had caused Forrest Gump actor Gary Sinise to form The Friends of Abe group in 2004 to provide conservatives with a “safe space” in Hollywood. Continue reading… More