The new law “will put an end to some of the most harmful practices of Big Tech and narrow the power imbalance between people and online platforms.”
Digital and consumer rights advocates on Friday hailed a landmark European Union law aimed at curbing Big Tech’s monopolistic behavior.
“This is a big moment for consumers and businesses who have suffered from Big Tech’s harmful practices.”
Negotiators from the European Parliament and European Council agreed late Thursday on the language of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to prevent major tech companies from anti-competitive practices by threatening large fines or possible breakup.
Ursula Pachl, deputy director-general at the European Consumer Organization (BEUC), an umbrella advocacy group, said in a statement that “this is a big moment for consumers and businesses who have suffered from Big Tech’s harmful practices.”
“This legislation will rebalance digital markets, increase consumer choice, and put an end to many of the worst practices that Big Tech has engaged in over the years,” she added. “It is a landmark law for the E.U.’s digital transformation.”
The European Union just struck an important deal on the Digital Markets Act, recognizing that only a just and interoperable market can ensure fair competition and more choice for users. #DMAhttps://t.co/lGcTDstagj
Cédric O, the French minister of state with responsibility for digital, said in a statement that “the European Union has had to impose record fines over the past 10 years for certain harmful business practices by very large digital players. The DMA will directly ban these practices and create a fairer and more competitive economic space for new players and European businesses.”
“These rules are key to stimulating and unlocking digital markets, enhancing consumer choice, enabling better value sharing in the digital economy, and boosting innovation,” he added.
Andreas Schwab, a member of the European Parliament from Germany, said that “the Digital Markets Act puts an end to the ever-increasing dominance of Big Tech companies. From now on, Big Tech companies must show that they also allow for fair competition on the internet. The new rules will help enforce that basic principle.”
BEUC’s Pachl offered examples of the new law’s benefits:
Google must stop promoting its own local, travel, or job services over those of competitors in Google Search results, while Apple will be unable to force users to use its payment service for app purchases. Consumers will also be able to collectively enforce their rights if a company breaks the rules in the Digital Markets Act.
Companies are also barred from pre-installing certain software and reusing certain private data collected “during a service for the purposes of another service.”
Today’s historical agreement on the #DMA taught us two things, first, that the EU is up to the challenge to reign big tech and, secondly, that Europe’s civil society can make a difference in making the regulatory framework more user-focused.
The DMA applies to companies deemed both “platforms” and “gatekeepers”—those with market capitalization greater than €75 billion ($82.4 billion), 45 million or more monthly end-users, and at least 10,000 E.U. business users. Companies that violate the law can be fined up to 10% of their total annual worldwide turnover, with repeat offenders subject to a doubling of the penalty.
“The DMA is a major step towards limiting the tremendous market power that today’s gatekeeper tech firms have.”
Diego Naranjo, head of policy at the advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi), said in a statement that “the DMA will put an end to some of the most harmful practices of Big Tech and narrow the power imbalance between people and online platforms. If correctly implemented, the new agreement will empower individuals to choose more freely the type of online experience and society we want to build in the digital era.”
To ensure effective implementation, BEUC’s Pachl called on E.U. member states to “now also provide the [European] Commission with the necessary enforcement resources to step in the moment there is foul play.”
EDRi senior policy adviser Jan Penfrat said that while “the DMA is a major step towards limiting the tremendous market power that today’s gatekeeper tech firms have,” policymakers “must now make sure that the new obligations not to reuse personal data and the prohibition of using sensitive data for surveillance advertising are respected and properly enforced by the European Commission.”
“Only then will the change be felt by people who depend on digital services every day,” he added.
Originally published on Common Dreams by BRETT WILKINS and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
As reported by Politico, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter ruled on Monday that former President Trump more likely than not made attempts to obstruct Congress during the 2020 elections on January 6, 2021.
This historic ruling may be the first, where a federal judge determined that a President appeared to have committed a crime while in office. Carter’s decision will not have a direct correlation to the issue of wether Trump will be faced with criminal charges or not, however it could place more pressure on the Justice Department to do so.
“Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021”
According to Mark F. Pomerantz, a former federal prosecutor that came out of retirement to work on the Trump investigation and then resigned last month, Trump is ‘guilty of numerous felony violations’. A copy of his resignation letter obtained by the New York Times read “The team that has investigated Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did” which is a direct criticism of the lack of further prosecution to date.
Anger over lack of prosecution now confirmed
Pomerantz submitted his resignation after Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg stopped pursuing an indictment of Donald Trump. He believed the former president was “guilty of numerous felony violations” as well as it being “a grave failure of justice” not to pursue charges.
“Instead of hitting the brakes on the decarbonization of the global economy” amid Russia’s war on Ukraine, “now is the time to put the pedal to the metal towards a renewable energy future,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
“The 1.5-degree goal is on life support. It is in intensive care.”
So said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday, as he stressed that a swift and just transition to clean energy is necessary to meet the Paris agreement’s objective of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—and warned against using Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine as an excuse to ramp up fossil fuel production worldwide.
“We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe.”
“The science is clear. So is the math,” the U.N. leader said during a speech delivered at a Sustainability Summit hosted by The Economist. “Keeping 1.5 alive requires a 45% reduction in global emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by mid-century.” And yet, “according to present national commitments, global emissions are set to increase by almost 14% in the 2020s.”
“We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe,” Guterres continued. “Our planet has already warmed by as much as 1.2 degrees—and we see the devastating consequences everywhere. In 2020, climate disasters forced 30 million people to flee their homes—three times more than those displaced by war and violence.”
Just this past weekend, scientists conveyed shock and alarm in response to reports that temperatures at both of Earth’s poles reached more than 50°F above average last week. Peer-reviewed research published on Friday foundthat increasingly frequent and intense wildfires around the globe are exacerbating Arctic warming, which is worsening the conditions that make future blazes more likely.
“Two weeks ago,” said Guterres, citing part two of the U.N.’s landmark climate assessment, “the IPCC confirmed that half of humanity is already living in the danger zone. Small island nations, least developed countries, and poor and vulnerable people everywhere are one climate shock away from doomsday. In our globally connected world, no country and no corporation can insulate itself from these levels of chaos.”
“If we continue with more of the same, we can kiss 1.5 goodbye,” he added. “Even 2 degrees may be out of reach. And that would be catastrophe.”
Making matters worse, said Guterres, “the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine risks upending global food and energy markets—with major implications for the global climate agenda.”
“As major economies pursue an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence.”
The United States, United Kingdom, and European Union have moved to restrict imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to Moscow’s military offensive. Although progressives have emphasized that the ongoing invasion should lead to an intensification of efforts to move awayfrom dirty energy, profit-hungry proponents of oil, gas, and coal have seized on surging prices to push for boosting extraction and exports.
Guterres warned that “as major economies pursue an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence and close the window to 1.5 degrees.”
“Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil fuel use,” he said. “This is madness. Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction.”
“As current events make all too clear, our continued reliance on fossil fuels puts the global economy and energy security at the mercy of geopolitical shocks and crises,” added Guterres. “We need to fix the broken global energy mix.”
Noting that “the timeline to cut emissions by 45% is extremely tight,” the U.N. leader stressed that “instead of hitting the brakes on the decarbonization of the global economy, now is the time to put the pedal to the metal towards a renewable energy future.”
His remarks came just hours before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) kicked off a two-week meeting to validate part three of its report, which focuses on the need to drastically slash carbon pollution to avoid the most disastrous outcomes.
Guterres argued that cooperation between the developed and emerging economies of the G20—responsible for 80% of global emissions—is essential to addressing the planetary emergency.
“Accelerating the phase-out of coal and all fossil fuels and implementing a rapid, just, and sustainable energy transition,” he said, is “the only true pathway to energy security.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
A new analysis finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans—roughly 165 million people.
During the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the collective wealth of billionaires in the United States grew by a staggering $1.7 trillion as Covid-19 killed millions of people across the globe and threw entire nations into turmoil, worsening extreme poverty, hunger, and other preexisting crises.
“We can’t accept an economy and tax code that allows billionaires to hoard trillions while working families struggle.”
Released Friday to coincide with the second anniversary of the World Health Organization’s official pandemic declaration for Covid-19, the latest billionaire fortune analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more combined wealth than the 165 million people in the bottom half of the country’s wealth distribution.
“For billionaires, it’s been two years of raking in the riches, while for most families it’s been two years of fear, frustration, and financial worry,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said in a statement.
The new analysis stresses that billionaires’ pandemic windfall “may never be taxed” because it consists of unrealized capital gains, which are not subject to taxation under current U.S. law. As one possible solution, ATF voices support for Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) proposed Billionaires Income Tax, legislation that would impose an annual levy on ultra-wealthy Americans’ unrealized gains from tradable assets such as stocks.
“The rising asset values billionaires have enjoyed over the past two years are not taxable unless the assets are sold,” ATF explains. “But billionaires don’t need to sell assets to benefit from their increased value: they can live off money borrowed at cheap rates secured against their rising fortunes. And when all those wealth gains are passed along to the next generation, they entirely disappear for tax purposes.”
This is why we need Congress to pass a Billionaires Income Tax.
It will tax billionaire wealth gains every year, just like workers’ wages are taxed. And it would raise $557 billion—more than enough to cover the historic clean energy investments @POTUS has proposed, for example.
— Americans For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) March 11, 2022
While Democrats in Congress considered a tax on billionaires as part of their Build Back Better package, that legislation was tanked by a handful of corporate Democrats—including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—and a unified Republican caucus.
“Why should our economic system allow billionaires to hoard wealth unchecked, letting almost all of it go tax-free?”
Earlier this month, Manchin floated a further watered-down version of the Build Back Better proposal that calls for tax reforms targeting the wealthy and corporations, but it’s unclear whether the West Virginia Democrat would accept a tax on billionaires.
“Working families pay what they owe in taxes each paycheck. Billionaires generally pay little or nothing in taxes on these extraordinary gains in wealth,” Clemente said Friday. “Congress should enact a Billionaires Income Tax to directly tax these wealth gains as income each year, so that billionaires begin to pay their fair share of taxes. Such a reform is not yet part of President Biden’s investment and tax legislation now being revised by Congress, but it should be.”
According to ATF’s new analysis, the biggest billionaire winners during the coronavirus pandemic’s first two years were:
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who saw his net worth skyrocket by $209 billion;
Google co-founder Larry Page, whose fortune grew by $63 billion; and
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose wealth increased by $60 billion.
“Not one of the 15 richest U.S. billionaires gained less than $10 billion,” ATF noted on Twitter, pointing out that during the same two-year period 80 million Americans were infected by Covid-19 and nearly a million were killed by the virus.
“We can’t accept an economy and tax code that allows billionaires to hoard trillions while working families struggle to afford healthcare, childcare, education, and housing,” the group added. “It’s wrong, and we can do better.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
“This is a bill to reduce gas prices and hold Big Oil accountable,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, who led the measure in the U.S. House.
Congressional Democrats on Thursday introduced the bicameral Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax to target price gouging by profit-gorging fossil fuel companies amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump—that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge.”
“This is a bill to reduce gas prices and hold Big Oil accountable,” declared Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who’s leading the measure in the U.S. House.
“As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends gas prices soaring,” said Khanna, “fossil fuel companies are raking in record profits. These companies have made billions and used the profits to enrich their own shareholders while average Americans are hurting at the pump.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced the legislation in the upper chamber along with co-sponsors including Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
The proposal followed President Joe Biden’s announcement earlier this week of a ban on U.S. imports of Russian fuels and amid swelling accusations that Big Oil has been taking advantage of the crisis in Ukraine to “pad their bottom line with war-fueled profits.”
The Democrats’ proposal aims to get some relief for Americans, who are facing average gas prices of $4.31 a gallon.
Big oil companies, specifically those that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day, are targeted under the measure. They would face a per-barrel tax—whether the oil is domestically produced or imported—equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019.
The measure exempts smaller companies, which, according to a statement from the lawmakers, account for roughly 70% of the domestic production. This approach is meant to deter the larger multinational producers from simply raising prices.
The tax imposed on the energy firms would be quarterly. Consumers would receive quarterly rebates, with the relief phasing out for single filers earning more than $75,000 annually and joint filers earning more than $150,000 annually. The lawmakers project the tax to raise $45 billion per year at $120 per barrel of oil, delivering to single filers $240 annually and joint filers $360 annually.
Last year, oil & gas companies made $174 billion in profits. This year they're on track to make more. We cannot allow big oil to use Ukraine & "inflation" as an excuse to rip-off Americans. I'm proud to join @SenWhitehouse to introduce a windfall profits tax. Let's get it done.
“While Putin’s war is causing gas prices to go up, Big Oil companies are raking in record profits,” Warren said in a statement. “We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump—that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge, and using the revenue to help American families,” she said.
A number of social justice and climate groups heaped praise on the legislative proposal.
According to Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, “The oil and gas industry got the world into this mess by lobbying and lying to keep us hooked on fossil fuels. Now they’re using the war in Ukraine to distract us from the fact that they are ripping off hard working Americans with high gas prices as they reap record earnings.”
“It’s time we stop allowing Big Oil to use its record profits, earned on the backs of hard-working American families, to reward wealthy shareholders and CEOs, and instead make them pay a fair share to lower the cost for consumers,” he added.
Collin Rees, U.S. program director at Oil Change International, welcomed the proposal as precisely the opposite of what the fossil fuel lobby has called for to counter Putin’s power, namely expanded domestic fossil fuel production.
“The so-called ‘solutions’ to the energy crisis being put forward by Big Oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute would do nothing but further line their own pockets and lock in a climate-wrecking, fossil-fueled future,” he said. “What’s needed now is immediate relief for American consumers, which is what this commonsense windfall profits tax bill would provide.”
The bill also drew plaudits from Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth, which released an analysis Thursday along with BailoutWatch finding that Big Oil CEOs have “absolutely” used the spiked in fuel prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to “price-gouge and profiteer.”
In a statement responding to the new legislation, Ross said: “All-American oil oligarchs are profiteering off the war in Ukraine while sacrificing our communities and climate. The windfall profits tax will require Big Oil to pay their fair share while putting billions of dollars back into the pockets of taxpayers.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “For this, it must be held accountable.”
A U.S. House committee on Wednesday asked the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon and some of its executives for possible criminal obstruction of Congress, accusing the e-commerce giant of lying under oath and refusing to provide certain information requested by lawmakers during an antitrust probe.
That’s according toThe Wall Street Journal, which first obtained a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland by Democratic and Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. Signatories said they are alerting the DOJ to “potentially criminal conduct” by Amazon and some of its executives, though the letter doesn’t name specific individuals.
As the Journal reported:
The letter accuses the Seattle-based tech giant of refusing to provide information that lawmakers sought as part of an investigation by the body’s Antitrust Subcommittee into Amazon’s competitive practices. The letter alleges that the refusal was an attempt to cover up what it calls a lie that the company told lawmakers about its treatment of outside sellers on its platform.
The alleged lie came, according to the Washington Post, during “sworn testimony to the committee in 2019 about whether it uses data that it collects from third-party sellers to compete with them.”
The newspaper, which is owned by Amazon founder and ex-CEO Jeff Bezos, continued:
“[C]redible investigative reporting” and the committee’s investigation showed the company was engaging in the practice despite its denial, the letter said.
Subsequently, as the investigation continued, Amazon tried to “cover up its lie by offering ever-shifting explanations” of its policies, the letter said.
Furthermore, “after Amazon was caught in a lie and repeated misrepresentations, it stonewalled the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth,” according to the letter.
Throughout the investigation, “Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” states the panel’s letter. “For this, it must be held accountable.”
The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), conducted a 16-month antitrust investigation into Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. The probe resulted in an October 2020 report that criticized all four tech giants and stimulated legislative proposals designed to limit their power.
However, the Journal noted that “lawmakers’ interaction with Amazon has been particularly contentious, according to people involved, and the new letter makes it the only one of the four companies that Judiciary Committee members have accused of illegal obstruction.”
Reutersreported that Wednesday’s “referral to the DOJ follows a previous warning from members of the U.S. committee in October in which they accused Amazon’s top executives, including founder Jeff Bezos, of either misleading Congress or possibly lying to it about Amazon’s business practices.”
According to the Journal, committee members at the time “sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy urging the company to provide ‘exculpatory evidence’ surrounding its private-label business practices. Lawyers representing Amazon met with legal counsel for the committee following the letter but didn’t produce the requested evidence, saying the investigation Amazon had conducted was privileged information between attorney and client, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Wednesday’s letter, the newspaper reported, says that Amazon “has refused to turn over business documents or communications that would either corroborate its claims or correct the record.”
“It appears to have done so to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers’ data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results—subjects of the committee’s investigation,” the letter continues.
“As a result, we have no choice but to refer this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law,” adds the letter.
It was signed by Nadler; Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the panel’s subcommittee on antitrust, commercial, and administrative law; and subcommittee members Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Pramilia Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
The U.S. House of Representatives select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued a subpoena on Thursday to Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for former President Donald Trump and the fiancee of his son, Donald Trump Jr.
The subpoena cites a text message Guilfoyle sent to former Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson, in which Guilfoyle claims to have raised millions of dollars for the rally that preceded the Capitol riot. The text exchange was first reported in November by ProPublica.
In the text, Guilfoyle wrote that she “raised so much money for this. Literally one of my donors Julie at 3 million.” She was referring to Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a Publix supermarket heir and the biggest known funder for the Jan. 6 rally. Fancelli previously did not respond to ProPublica requests for comment on the matter.
The subpoena, which seeks to force Guilfoyle to hand over documents and appear for a deposition, also stated that she “communicated with others” about the speaking lineup for the Jan. 6 rally and met with Trump and members of his family in the Oval Office that morning.
Guilfoyle is the first member of the Trump family circle to be subpoenaed by the select committee. Guilfoyle and Trump Jr. announced their engagement in January. She was appointed national chair of the Trump Victory finance committee in January 2020 and was put at the helm of the former president’s super PAC last fall.
The subpoena is another indication that the committee is becoming increasingly aggressive in its investigation into the Capitol attack. In documents filed in a civil case in a California district court on Wednesday, the committee said for the first time that it had evidence that could potentially lead to criminal charges against the former president for his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The committee would refer any potential criminal charge to the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
The step comes almost a week after Guilfoyle walked out of a meeting with the committee after initially agreeing to answer questions about the events of Jan. 6. According to a statement from her lawyer last week, Guilfoyle left the meeting because she was concerned members of the committee would leak information from the interview to the press.
In September, citing ProPublica reporting, the committee sent subpoenas to Pierson and Caroline Wren, a Republican fundraiser who served as Guilfoyle’s deputy during the 2020 campaign. The committee subsequently issued subpoenas to threecloseadvisers to Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle.
In a statement, Joe Tacopina, Guilfoyle’s attorney, said the subpoena was a politically motivated abuse of power and that Guilfoyle will answer questions truthfully. “She has done nothing wrong,” he said. In November, Tacopina said the texts to Pierson were not about the Jan. 6 rally and threatened to “aggressively pursue all legal remedies available” against ProPublica. At the time, Pierson declined to comment and Trump Jr. did not respond to emailed questions.
ProPublica previously reported that Wren told another rally organizer that she raised $3 million for the Jan. 6 rally and “parked” the funds in several dark money organizations.
Wren previously sent a statement to ProPublica from her attorney that did not address how much money was raised for the rally or how it was spent, but stated that to her “knowledge, Kimberly Guilfoyle had no involvement in raising funds for any events on January 6th.”
Guilfoyle developed a professional relationship with Fancelli during the 2020 campaign, according to documents obtained by ProPublica, and Fancelli donated $250,000 to Trump Victory shortly after receiving a call from Guilfoyle.
The “precinct strategy” widely promoted by Steve Bannon has already inspired thousands of Trump supporters to fill local GOP positions, intent on preventing a “stolen election.”
Former President Donald Trump has officially endorsed a plan, created by a man who has self-identified with the Oath Keeper militia, that aims to have Trump supporters consolidate control of the Republican Party.
The plan, known as the “precinct strategy,” has been repeatedly promoted on Steve Bannon’s popular podcast. As ProPublica detailed last year, it has already inspired thousands of people to fill positions at the lowest rung of the party ladder. Though these positions are low-profile and often vacant, they hold critical powers: They help elect higher-ranking party officers, influence which candidates appear on the ballot, turn out voters on Election Day and even staff the polling precincts where people vote and the election boards that certify the results.
“Just heard about an incredible effort underway that will strengthen the Republican Party,” Trump said Sunday in a statement emailed to his supporters. “If members of our Great movement start getting involved (that means YOU becoming a precinct committeeman for your voting precinct), we can take back our great Country from the ground up.”
Trump’s email named Dan Schultz, an Arizona lawyer and local party official who first developed the precinct strategy more than a decade ago. Schultz spent years trying to promote his plan and recruit precinct officers. In 2014, he posted a callout to an internal forum for the Oath Keepers militia group, according to hacked records obtained by ProPublica.
“Why don’t you all join me and the other Oath Keepers who are ‘inside’ the Party already,” Schultz wrote under a screen name. “If we conservatives were to do that, we’d OWN the Party.”
Federal prosecutors in January charged the leader of the Oath Keepers and 10 of its other members with seditious conspiracy in last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol. One of them pleaded guilty, as have several members of the group in related cases who are cooperating with the investigation. The group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, pleaded not guilty.
There is no indication that Schultz had any involvement in the Capitol riot.
Schultz told ProPublica he never became a formal member of the Oath Keepers organization. “I have taken oaths to support and defend the Constitution as a West Point cadet, as a commissioned U.S. Army officer and as a practicing attorney,” Schultz said in a text message. “Those oaths do not have expiration dates, by my way of thinking, and I have kept my oaths. In that sense, I am an ‘oath keeper.’”
According to experts on extremist groups, the Oath Keepers recruit military and law enforcement veterans using the idea that their oath to defend the Constitution never expired. The group then urges people to resist what they say are impending orders to take away Americans’ guns or create concentration camps.
“I don’t ever want to be pulling the trigger on an AR-15 in my neighborhood,” Schultz said in a 2015 conference call with fellow organizers, referring to the semi-automatic rifle. “Oath Keepers, I love them for instilling the oath. But what they need to do also, I think, is spread the message that hey, we can do stuff politically so we never get to the cartridge box.”
In more recent interviews on right-wing podcasts and internet talk shows, Schultz has repeatedly described his precinct strategy as a last alternative to violence.
“It’s not going to be peaceful the next go-round, perhaps,” Schultz said in a June interview with the pro-Trump personality David Clements. “But it ought to be, and the way to ensure that it will be is we’ve got to get enough of these good decent Americans to take over one of the two major political parties.”
It was not clear whether Trump or his aides were aware that Schultz has self-identified with the Oath Keepers. Trump’s spokesperson, Liz Harrington, did not respond to requests for comment.
Schultz has spent months trying to get his idea in front of Trump. Steve Stern, a fellow movement organizer, told ProPublica that he met a former Trump administration official for lunch at Mar-a-Lago, the ex-president’s private club in Palm Beach, in December. While there, Stern said, he got a chance to briefly mention the project to Trump.
Then, last month, Schultz and Stern landed an interview on a talk show hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who promotes conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Lindell said he would discuss the plan with Trump personally. Schultz and Stern followed up with a conference call with Harrington and Bannon, according to Stern. Harrington previously worked at Bannon’s “War Room” website.
“I know the president’s very jacked up about it,” Bannon said on his podcast, speaking with Schultz after Trump released the endorsement. “Help MAGA, help the America First movement, right? Help the deplorables, help President Trump, help yourself, your country, community, your kids, grandkids, all of it. Put your shoulder to the wheel.”
Bannon, who led Trump’s 2016 campaign, originally lifted the precinct strategy to prominence in a podcast interview with Schultz last year. After the episode aired, thousands of people answered Bannon’s call to become precinct officers in pivotal swing states, according to data compiled by ProPublica from county records and interviews with local party officials.
As of last August, GOP leaders in 41 counties reported an unusual increase in sign-ups since Bannon’s first interview with Schultz, adding a total of more than 8,500 new precinct officers. The trend appears to have continued since then. New precinct officers started using their powers to remove or censure Republican leaders who contradicted Trump’s election lies and to recruit people who believe the election was stolen into positions as poll watchers and poll workers.
Bannon received a last-minute pardon from Trump after the former adviser was charged with financial fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Bannon’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
In addition to Bannon and Lindell, the precinct strategy has won support from pro-Trump figures such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to impose martial law, and lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who led some of the lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results. Right-wing groups such as Turning Point Action, which organized buses to transport rallygoers on Jan. 6, also joined the effort to recruit precinct officers.
While Stern said he’s thrilled about Trump’s written statement endorsing the precinct strategy, he said he hopes to hear it from Trump’s own lips at an upcoming rally. Stern said he plans to be there with tables to sign more people up.
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The committee alleges that Trump and his allies engaged in a “corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of Electoral College ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.”
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol said in a federal court filingWednesday that former President Donald Trump and his campaign allies committed crimes as they attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
While it is not conducting a criminal investigation and does not have the power to bring charges on its own, the House panel told the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California that lawmakers have “a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.”
The Justice Department is currently investigating the January 6 attack and has charged more than 225 people for taking part, but it “has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump,” the Associated Pressnotes.
The House committee’s filing was submitted in response to a lawsuit by former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who is fighting the panel’s request for thousands of emails related to efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally scrap electoral votes from states President Joe Biden won.
Eastman has cited attorney-client privilege to justify withholding the emails from the select committee, but the panel’s filing argues that the documents Eastman is shielding are not privileged.
“Communications in which a ‘client consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud or crime’ are not privileged from disclosure,” the filing states. “The evidence supports an inference that President Trump, [Eastman], and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort.”
The filing points specifically to an email it obtained showing that Eastman urged Pence’s lawyer to violate the law in an attempt to block congressional certification of Trump’s electoral loss.
“I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the Electoral Count Act] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here,” Eastman wrote to Pence attorney Greg Jacob on the night of January 6, 2021.
This is amazing. Trump’s lawyer John Eastman admits that their scheme to overturn the election was breaking the law and said in an email “I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation.” pic.twitter.com/YdgsMvhrR6
In a statement late Wednesday, select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said the panel’s filing “refutes on numerous grounds the privilege claims Dr. Eastman has made to try to keep hidden records critical to our investigation.”
“Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation,” the lawmakers wrote. “We believe evidence in our possession justifies review of these documents under this exception in camera. The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of Electoral College ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.”
Trump and his former aides have sought to impede the select committee’s investigation at every turn, obstructing the panel’s efforts to obtain White House documents—which the former president was notorious for destroying—and testimony from key witnesses.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court formally ended Trump’s attempt to prevent the committee from examining more than 700 pages of White House records related to the January 6 attack.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Though Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is just days old, Russia has been working for years to influence and undermine the independence of its smaller neighbor. As it happens, some Americans have played a role in that effort.
One was former President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Another was Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
It’s all detailed in a wide array of public documents, particularly a bipartisan 2020 Senate report on Trump and Russia. I was one of the journalists who dug into all the connections, as part of the Trump, Inc. podcast with ProPublica and WNYC. (I was in Kyiv, retracing Manafort’s steps, when Trump’s infamous call with Ukraine’s president was revealed in September 2019.)
Given recent events, I thought it’d be helpful to put all the tidbits together, showing what happened step by step.
Americans Making Money Abroad. What’s the Problem?
Paul Manafort was a longtime Republican consultant and lobbyist who’d developed a speciality working with unsavory, undemocratic clients. In 2004, he was hired by oligarchs supporting a pro-Russian party in Ukraine. It was a tough assignment: The Party of Regions needed an image makeover. A recent election had been marred by allegations that fraud had been committed in favor of the party’s candidate, prompting a popular revolt that became known as the Orange Revolution.
In a memo for Ukraine’s reportedly richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, Manafort summed up the polling: Many respondents said they associated the Party of Regions with corruption and considered it the “party of oligarchs.”
Manafort set to work rebranding the party with poll-tested messaging and improved stagecraft. Before long, the Party of Regions was in power in Kyiv. One of his key aides in Ukraine was, allegedly, a Russian spy. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on Trump and Russia said Konstantin Kilimnik was both “a Russian intelligence officer” and “an integral part of Manafort’s operations in Ukraine and Russia.”
Kilimnik has denied he is a Russian spy. He was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice for allegedly trying to get witnesses to lie in testimony to prosecutors in the Manafort case. Kilimnik, who reportedly lives in Moscow, has not been arrested. In an email to The Washington Post, Kilimnik distanced himself from Manafort’s legal woes and wrote, “I am still confused as to why I was pulled into this mess.”
Manafort did quite well during his time in Ukraine. He was paid tens of millions of dollars by pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and other clients, stashing much of the money in undeclared bank accounts in Cyprus and the Caribbean. He used the hidden income to enjoy some of the finer things in life, such as a $15,000 ostrich jacket. Manafort was convicted in 2018 of wide-ranging financial crimes.
“We Are Going to Have So Much Fun, and Change the World in the Process”
In 2014, Manafort’s plum assignment in Ukraine came to an abrupt end. In February of that year, Yanukovych was deposed in Ukraine’s second uprising in a decade, known as the Maidan Revolution, in which more than a hundred protesters were killed in Kyiv. He fled to Russia, leaving behind a vast, opulent estate (now a museum) with gold-plated bathroom fixtures, a galleon on a lake and a 100-car garage.
With big bills and no more big checks coming in, Manafort soon found himself deep in debt, including to a Russian oligarch. He eventually pitched himself for a new gig in American politics as a convention manager, wrangling delegates for an iconoclastic reality-TV star and real estate developer.
“I am not looking for a paid job,” he wrote to the Trump campaign in early 2016. Manafort was hired that spring, working for free.
According to the Senate report, in mid-May 2016 he emailed top Trump fundraiser Tom Barrack, “We are going to have so much fun, and change the world in the process.” (Barrack was charged last year with failing to register as a foreign agent, involving his work for the United Arab Emirates. He has pleaded not guilty. The case has not yet gone to trial.)
A few months later, the Trump campaign put the kibosh on proposed language in the Republican Party platform that expressed support for arming Ukraine with defensive weapons.
One Trump campaign aide told Mueller that Trump’s view was that “the Europeans should take primary responsibility for any assistance to Ukraine, that there should be improved U.S.-Russia relations, and that he did not want to start World War III over that region.”
According to the Senate report, Manafort met Kilimnik twice in person while working on the Trump campaign, messaged with him electronically and shared “sensitive campaign polling data” with him.
Senate investigators wrote in their report that they suspected Kilimnik served as “a channel for coordination” on the Russian military intelligence operation to hack into Democratic emails and leak them.
The Senate intel report notes that in about a dozen interviews with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Manafort “lied consistently” about “one issue in particular: his interactions with Kilimnik.”
Manafort’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Manafort didn’t make it to Election Day on the Trump campaign. In August 2016, The New York Times revealed that handwritten ledgers recovered from Yanukovych’s estate showed nearly $13 million in previously undisclosed payments to Manafort from Yanukovych and his pro-Russian party. Manafort was pushed out of his job as Trump’s campaign chairman less than a week later.
After Trump won the election, the Senate report says, Manafort and Kilimnik worked together on a proposed “plan” for Ukraine that would create an Autonomous Republic of Donbas in separatist-run southeast Ukraine, on the Russian border. Manafort went so far as to work with a pollster on a survey on public attitudes to Yanukovych, the deposed president. The plan only would need a “wink” from the new U.S. president, Kilimnik wrote to Manafort in an email.
Manafort continued to work on the “plan” even after he had been indicted on charges of bank fraud and conspiracy, according to the Senate report. It’s not clear what became of the effort, if anything.
“Do Us a Favor”
With Manafort’s conviction in 2018, Rudy Giuliani came to the fore as the most Ukraine-connected person close to President Trump. Giuliani had long jetted around Eastern Europe. He’d hung out in Kyiv, supporting former professional boxer Vitali Klitschko’s run for mayor. One of Giuliani’s clients for his law firm happened to be Russia’s state oil producer, Rosneft.
By 2018, Giuliani had joined Trump’s legal team, leading the public effort to discredit Robert Mueller’s investigation. Giuliani saw that Ukraine could be a key to that effort.
Giuliani ended up working with a pair of émigré business partners, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to make contacts in Ukraine with corrupt and questionable prosecutors, in an effort to turn up “dirt” on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Giuliani also worked to sow doubt about the ledger that had revealed the secret payments to Manafort, meeting with his buddies in a literally smoke-filled room.
Parnas and Fruman told the president at a donor dinner in 2018 that the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv was a liability to his administration.
Trump recalled Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had been a vocal opponent of corruption in Ukraine, from Kyiv in May 2019.
Two months later, Trump had his infamous call with Ukraine’s new President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy asked Trump for anti-tank Javelin missiles. You know what happened next. Trump said he needed Zelenskyy to first “do us a favor” and initiate investigations that would be damaging to Joe Biden. He also pressed Zelenskyy to meet with Giuliani, according to the official readout of the call:
These events became publicly known in September 2019, when a whistleblower complaint was leaked.
“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the whistleblower wrote.
In December 2019, as an impeachment inquiry was at full tilt, Giuliani flew to Ukraine and met with a member of Ukraine’s parliament, Andrii Derkach, in an apparent effort to discredit the investigation of Trump’s actions. Derkach, a former member of the Party of Regions, went on to release a trove of dubious audio “recordings” that seemed to be aimed at showing Biden’s actions in Ukraine, when he was vice president, in a negative light.
Within months, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach, describing him as “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who tried to undermine U.S. elections. Derkach has called that idea “nonsense.”
In a statement, Giuliani said, “there is nothing I saw that said he was a Russian agent. There is nothing he gave me that seemed to come from Russia at all.” Giuliani has consistently maintained that his actions in Ukraine were proper and lawful. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Where They Are Now…
Many of Trump’s allies have been charged or investigated for their work in and around Ukraine:
Paul Manafort:convicted of financial fraud — then pardoned by Trump
Rick Gates: a Manafort aide who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI
Sam Patten: another Manafort associate convicted for acting as a straw donor to the Trump inaugural committee on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch
Rudy Giuliani:reportedly under criminal investigation over his dealings in Ukraine; his lawyer called an FBI search of his home and seizure of electronic devices “legal thuggery”
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman:convicted for funneling foreign money into U.S. elections; Parnas’ attorney said he would appeal
Sergiy Kyslytsya also denounced the Russian president’s decision to put nuclear forces on special alert as “madness.”
Amid rapidly escalating fears of global nuclear war, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin should follow in the footsteps of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Echoing the condemnation of anti-war activists worldwide, the Ukrainian ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called Putin’s Sunday decision to put Russian nuclear forces on special alert “madness.”
“If he wants to kill himself, he doesn’t need to use [a] nuclear arsenal. He has to do what… the guy in Berlin did, in a bunker,” the ambassador said.
During his U.N. speech, Kyslytsya did not name the notorious German leader, who consumed cyanide and shot himself in the head on April 30, 1945, just days before Germany surrendered to Allied forces.
‘This war was not provoked. It was chosen by someone right now that is sitting in the bunker. We know what happened to the person who sat in the bunker in Berlin, in May, 1945,’ said Ukraine’s U.N. envoy Sirgiy Kyslytsya https://t.co/gyYHI0BslXpic.twitter.com/C5ZQTysdcV
Kyslytsya also gained global attention last week for his remarks during a U.N. Security Council meeting chaired by his Russian counterpart, Vasily Nebenzya.
“There is no purgatory for war criminals; they go straight to hell, ambassador,” the Ukrainian told Nebenzya.
In response, the Russian ambassador claimed that “we are not carrying out aggression against the Ukrainian people—this is against that junta, that seized power in Kyiv.”
Following several war crime allegations against Russia over the past week, Karim A.A. Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced Monday that he has “decided to proceed with opening an investigation into the situation in Ukraine, as rapidly as possible.”
Above: Photo Collage – Rolling Stone / Lynxotic / Various
The U.S. senator from Vermont called for “serious sanctions on Putin and his oligarchs” in response to the Kremlin’s latest moves.
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called for the U.S. and its allies to impose heavy sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and other oligarchs in the country as he condemned Moscow’s escalating military aggression toward Ukraine.
“Vladimir Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine The U.S. senator from Vermont called for “serious sanctions on Putin and his oligarchs” in response to the Kremlin’s latest moves.is an indefensible violation of international law, regardless of whatever false pretext he offers,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. “There has always been a diplomatic solution to this situation. Tragically, Putin appears intent on rejecting it.”
In addition to backing sanctions, Sanders said preparations must be made to accommodate refugees displaced by the conflict and called for investments in a global clean energy transition to fight the climate crisis and disempower “authoritarian petrostates” worldwide.
Sanders’ remarks came after U.S. President Joe Biden—in concert with officials in the United Kingdom and the European Union—moved to impose new economic sanctions on Russia following the Kremlin’s deployment of troops into two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine, which Putin on Monday formally recognized as independent.
To prevent Putin’s effort to expand his country’s presence in the Donbas region from descending into a broader military conflict, peace advocates in the U.S. and abroad continue to urge the Biden administration to double-down on diplomatic efforts, as Common Dreamsreported earlier Tuesday.
“The United States,” said Sanders, “must now work with our allies and the international community to impose serious sanctions on Putin and his oligarchs, including denying them access to the billions of dollars that they have stashed in European and American banks.”
“The U.S. and our partners must also prepare for a worse scenario by helping Ukraine’s neighbors care for refugees fleeing this conflict,” Sanders continued, alluding to the possibility that Russian lawmakers’ approval of the use of military force outside the country could lead to a full-fledged war.
In the wake of recent developments in Ukraine, oil prices surged to nearly $100 per barrel on Tuesday, the highest in more than seven years, and European gas futures spiked by as much as 13.8%.
While the U.S. fossil fuel industry is expected to benefit from Germany halting approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline due to Russia’s recent actions, people in Europe—already struggling with skyrocketing energy bills—are bracing for even higher costs in the case that Moscow restricts gas exports.
“In the longer term,” said Sanders, “we must invest in a global green energy transition away from fossil fuels, not only to combat climate change, but to deny authoritarian petrostates the revenues they require to survive.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“This money belongs to the people of Afghanistan, not to the United States,” said an Afghan protest organizer in Kabul over the weekend.
With the people of Afghanistan facing one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world, U.S.-based peace activists—who largely blame the policies of their own government for inflicting pain on millions of innocent Afghans—are using Valentine’s Day on Monday to demand the Biden administration return billions of dollars of seized assets to the war-torn country before more lasting harm and “cruelty” is done.
Under the banner of “Love to Afghanistan,” nationwide actions were scheduled for the weekend and localized vigils organized set for Monday (Feb. 14) by Peace Action, World Beyond War, and other humanitarian groups who argue that $7 billion frozen by the U.S. government and subsequently seized by an executive order issued Friday by President Joe Biden rightfully belongs to the Afghan people, who without it face an economy on the brink of collapse and a healthcare system and federal infrastructure without adequate support amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a worsening food crisis.
The Biden plan to confiscate $7 Billion of the Afghan people’s assets is unjust. Afghans need food & a functioning economy. Urge #Congress to reverse this policy.#LoveToAfghanistan#UnFreezeAfghanistan Call Congress from Congress Square Park . Noon. Portland, ME. Valentine's Day! pic.twitter.com/9tXwxrmKOe
After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, Peace Action welcomed the withdrawal of troops from the country and an end to the war.
Yet when the United States military pulled out of Afghanistan, the Biden administration also responded by choking off assets to Afghan banks and the economy by freezing the reserves of the Afghan Central Bank held in the U.S. They also imposed sanctions on those doing business with Afghanistan and cut aid. Jobs and income disappeared, people cannot afford to buy food and mass starvation is now occurring.
The Afghan people are suffering now more than ever. Hunger could kill more now than in two decades of war. This humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is in the words of the International Red Cross a “human-made catastrophe.” “Human-made” largely by coercive U.S. economic policies.
In Decemebr, 46 members of Congress wrote a letter demanding the U.S. unfreeze assets that had been locked following the U.S. military withdrawal earlier in 2021. But instead of heeding that call, Biden on Friday took the step of more permanently seizing the funds that otherwise would be under control of Afghanistan’s central bank, the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), which now operates under the authority of the Taliban government.
Biden’s executive order includes setting aside half of the funds, $3.5 billion, for possible settlement claims by families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks of 2001, but critics have said the Afghan people—who had nothing to do with the crimes of that day twenty years ago—should not be punished for the acts of Al Qaeda jihadists, most them Saudis and Egyptians.
Millions of Afghans are starving, due to US crimes, and now instead of getting back what is their’s, their money is being used as reparations for a crime they never committed & have been punished for for 20 years.
Promoting the “Love to Afghanistan” events in an op-ed for Common Dreamslast week, peace activist Jean Athey, coordinator of the Montgomery County Peace Action group in Maryland, said the economic war against the Afghan has the potential to be just as deadly as the 20 years of war and occupation they have just endured. Explaining the current situation and the “liquidity crisis” gripping the country, she wrote:
The government has almost no money and cannot pay workers, who cannot buy food for their families. Most have received no payment for months. In addition, Afghans have limited access to their own funds in banks. International commerce has halted.
Given U.S. sanctions and the liquidity crisis, even international humanitarian relief organizations have great difficulty operating in Afghanistan, despite U.S. government assurances. Relief efforts designed to stave off starvation—although critically important right now—cannot endure for long since no one is willing to provide assistance indefinitely to a country of almost 40 million people. The country needs a functioning government and economy, and needs access to the international financial system.
“Political backbone” is now required of the Biden administration, argued Athey, who said the president should not be scared of predictable GOP attacks or media hit pieces about somehow appeasing the Taliban by giving the everyday people back money the money that rightfully belongs to them. “The lives of one million children are more important than a negative headline in a tabloid. The U.S. should unfreeze Afghan government assets and lift sanctions hindering the recovery of the Afghan economy and humanitarian relief efforts. We must end the U.S. economic war on Afghanistan.”
On Saturday, the DAB demanded the funds ostensibly stolen by the U.S. government be returned and called the move by Biden an “injustice against the people of Afghanistan.”
Also in Saturday, protests in Kabul decried the theft of the money.
“This money belongs to the people of Afghanistan, not to the United States. This is the right of Afghans,” Abdul Rahman, a civil society activist and the demonstration’s organizer, told the Dawn newsaper.
A spokesperson for the Taliban government, Mohammad Naeem, also decriedthe move in a post on social media Saturday.
“The theft and seizure of money held by the United States of the Afghan people represent the lowest level of human and moral decay of a country and a nation,” Naeem tweeted, added that while victory and defeat are evident throughout history, “the greatest and most shameful defeat is when moral defeat combines with military defeat.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JON QUEALLY and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
“A large across-the-board increase in interest rates is a cure worse than the disease,” says economist Joseph Stiglitz. “That might dampen inflation if it is taken far enough, but it will also ruin people’s lives.”
As the U.S. Federal Reserve mulls hiking interest rates in the coming weeks in an effort to curb inflation, progressive economists are warning against such a move—arguing that it will hurt workers and fail to address the real source of rising prices: unmitigated corporate power.
“The last thing average working people need is for the Fed to raise interest rates and slow the economy further.”
“A large across-the-board increase in interest rates is a cure worse than the disease,” Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and Columbia University professor, wrote Monday in Project Syndicate. “We should not attack a supply-side problem by lowering demand and increasing unemployment. That might dampen inflation if it is taken far enough, but it will also ruin people’s lives.”
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, echoed Stiglitz’s message, writing Monday: “The inflation spike of 2021 has been bad for typical families and is a real policy challenge. But it remains the case that an overreaction to it could end up causing the most damage of all.”
Stiglitz and Bivens’ essays came three days after Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, made a similar warning.
Fed policymakers are poised to raise interest rates at their March meeting and then continue raising them, in order to slow the economy. They fear that a labor shortage is pushing up wages, which in turn are pushing up prices—and that this wage-price spiral could get out of control.
It’s a huge mistake. Higher interest rates will harm millions of workers who will be involuntarily drafted into the inflation fight by losing jobs or long-overdue pay raises. There’s no “labor shortage” pushing up wages. There’s a shortage of good jobs paying adequate wages to support working families. Raising interest rates will worsen this shortage.
Although Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell “has expressed concern about wage hikes pushing up prices,” Reich wrote, “there’s no ‘wage-price spiral.'”
“To the contrary, workers’ real wages have dropped because of inflation,” he added. “Even though overall wages have climbed, they’ve failed to keep up with price increases—making most workers worse off in terms of the purchasing power of their dollars.”
Reich conceded that “wage-price spirals used to be a problem” but argued that’s no longer the case “because the typical worker today has little or no bargaining power.”
Declining union membership and corporations’ increased mobility—both key pillars in the ruling class’ highly effective assault on workers that has been carried out on a bipartisan basis for more than four decades—”have shifted power from labor to capital,” wrote Reich. “Increasing the share of the economic pie going to profits and shrinking the share going to wages… ended wage-price spirals.”
It is “totally wrong” to contend that inflation is being fueled by rising wages stemming from a so-called “tight” labor market, Reich argued. He continued:
The January jobs report shows that the U.S. economy is still 2.9 million jobs below what it had in February 2020. Given the growth of the U.S. population, it’s 4.5 million short of what it would have by now had there been no pandemic.
Consumers are almost tapped out. Not only are real (inflation-adjusted) incomes down, but pandemic assistance has ended. Extra jobless benefits are gone. Child tax credits have expired. Rent moratoriums are over. Small wonder consumer spending fell 0.6% in December, the first decrease since last February.
“Given all this, the last thing average working people need is for the Fed to raise interest rates and slow the economy further,” Reich added. “The problem most people face isn’t inflation. It’s a lack of good jobs.”
When it comes to what is causing inflation, Reich blamed “continuing worldwide bottlenecks in the supply of goods, and the ease with which big corporations (with record profits) are passing these costs to customers in higher prices.”
Corporate greed has played a large role in why people are paying higher prices for food and gas, as Common Dreams has reported and a majority of the public appears to understand, based on recent polling. Amid a public health crisis that has claimed the lives of more than 900,000 people in the U.S. and 5.7 million people globally, price-gouging corporations are enjoying mega-profits not seen since 1950.
While pandemic profiteering is evident, the question remains as to what made global supply chains so fragile to disruption in the first place—leading to prolonged shortages of key inputs and increased shipping costs that have been accompanied by price hikes.
According to Rakken Mabud, chief economist and managing director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, the answer lies in offshoring, financialization, deregulation, just-in-time logistics, and other profit-maximizing policies associated with neoliberalization and globalization.
Mabud made that case last week when testifying at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. She and David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, expanded on that argument in a recent essay introducing a new series on the supply chain crisis.
As a number of economists have warned recently, policymakers on the verge of making life-altering decisions with respect to interest rates may be doing so based on faulty data or misconceptions.
“Among the biggest job gains in January were workers who are normally temporary and paid low wages (leisure and hospitality, retail, transport and warehousing),” Reich cautioned. “This January employers cut fewer of these low-wage temp workers than in most years, because of rising customer demand and the difficulties of hiring during Omicron. Due to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ ‘seasonal adjustment,’ cutting fewer workers than usual for this time of year appears as ‘adding lots of jobs.'”
Stiglitz, meanwhile, noted that “the inflation rate has been volatile. Last month, the media made a big deal out of the 7% annual inflation rate in the United States, while failing to note that the December rate was little more than half that of the October rate.”
“Moreover, given that a large proportion of today’s inflation stems from global issues—like chip shortages and the behavior of oil cartels—it is a gross exaggeration to blame inflation on excessive fiscal support in the U.S.,” Stiglitz continued.
While “the U.S. has slightly higher inflation than Europe,” he added, “it also has enjoyed stronger growth. U.S. policies prevented a massive increase in poverty that might have occurred otherwise. Recognizing that the cost of doing too little would be huge, U.S. policymakers did the right thing.”
Stiglitz wrote that his “biggest concern is that central banks will overreact, raising interest rates excessively and hampering the nascent recovery. As always, those at the bottom of the income scale would suffer the most in this scenario.”
“What we need instead,” he argued, “are targeted structural and fiscal policies aimed at unblocking supply bottlenecks and helping people confront today’s realities.”
For instance, wrote Stiglitz, “food stamps for the needy should be indexed to the price of food, and energy (fuel) subsidies to the price of energy.”
“Beyond that, a one-time ‘inflation adjustment’ tax cut for lower- and middle-income households would help them through the post-pandemic transition,” he added. “It could be financed by taxing the monopoly rents of the oil, technology, pharmaceutical, and other corporate giants that made a killing from the crisis.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Bloomberg’s Lorcan Roche Kelly called Bitcoin “the first true religion of the 21st century.” Bitcoin promoter Hass McCook has taken to calling himself “The Friar” and wrote a series of Medium pieces comparing Bitcoin to a religion. There is a Church of Bitcoin, founded in 2017, that explicitly calls legendary Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto its “prophet.”
The dirty secret of religious studies is that there is no universal definition of what religion is. Traditions such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism certainly exist and have similarities, but the idea that these are all examples of religion is relatively new.
The word “religion” as it’s used today – a vague category that includes certain cultural ideas and practices related to God, the afterlife or morality – arose in Europe around the 16th century. Before this, many Europeans understood that there were only three types of people in the world: Christians, Jews and heathens.
Above: Photo / Collage / Lynxotic
This model shifted after the Protestant Reformation when a long series of wars began between Catholics and Protestants. These became known as “wars of religion,” and religion became a way of talking about differences between Christians. At the same time, Europeans were encountering other cultures through exploration and colonialism. Some of the traditions they encountered shared certain similarities to Christianity and were also deemed religions.
Non-European languages have historically not had a direct equivalent to the word “religion.” What has counted as religion has changed over the centuries, and there are always political interests at stake in determining whether or not something is a religion.
As religion scholar Russell McCutcheon argues, “The interesting thing to study, then, is not what religion is or is not, but ‘the making of it’ process itself – whether that manufacturing activity takes place in a courtroom or is a claim made by a group about their own behaviors and institutions.”
Critics highlight irrationality
With this in mind, why would anyone claim that Bitcoin is a religion?
Some commentators seem to be making this claim to steer investors away from Bitcoin. Emerging market fund manager Mark Mobius, in an attempt to tamp down enthusiasm about cryptocurrency, said that “crypto is a religion, not an investment.”
His statement, however, is an example of a false dichotomy fallacy, or the assumption that if something is one thing, it cannot be another. There is no reason that a religion cannot also be an investment, a political system or nearly anything else.
Mobius’ point, though, is that “religion,” like cryptocurrency, is irrational. This criticism of religion has been around since the Enlightenment, when Voltaire wrote, “Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.”
In this case, labeling Bitcoin a “religion” suggests that bitcoin investors are fanatics and not making rational choices.
Bitcoin as good and wholesome
On the other hand, some Bitcoin proponents have leaned into the religion label. McCook’s articles use the language of religion to highlight certain aspects of Bitcoin culture and to normalize them.
For example, “stacking sats” – the practice of regularly buying small fractions of bitcoins – sounds weird. But McCook refers to this practice as a religious ritual, and more specifically as “tithing.” Many churches practice tithing, in which members make regular donations to support their church. So this comparison makes sat stacking seem more familiar.
While for some people religion may be associated with the irrational, it is also associated with what religion scholar Doug Cowan calls “the good, moral and decent fallacy.” That is, some people often assume if something is really a religion, it must represent something good. People who “stack sats” might sound weird. But people who “tithe” could sound principled and wholesome.
Using religion as a framework
For religion scholars, categorizing something as a religion can pave the way for new insights.
As religion scholar J.Z. Smith writes, “‘Religion’ is not a native term; it is created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore is theirs to define.” For Smith, categorizing certain traditions or cultural institutions as religions creates a comparative framework that will hopefully result in some new understanding. With this in mind, comparing Bitcoin to a tradition like Christianity may cause people to notice things that they didn’t before.
For example, many religions were founded by charismatic leaders. Charismatic authority does not come from any government office or tradition but solely from the relationship between a leader and their followers. Charismatic leaders are seen by their followers as superhuman or at least extraordinary. Because this relationship is precarious, leaders often remain aloof to keep followers from seeing them as ordinary human beings.
Several commentators have noted that Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto resembles a sort of prophet. Nakamoto’s true identity – or whether Nakamoto is actually a team of people – remains a mystery. But the intrigue surrounding this figure is a source of charisma with consequences for bitcoin’s economic value. Many who invest in bitcoin do so in part because they regard Nakamoto as a genius and an economic rebel. In Budapest, artists even erected a bronze statue as a tribute to Nakamoto.
There’s also a connection between Bitcoin and millennialism, or the belief in a coming collective salvation for a select group of people.
In Christianity, millennial expectations involve the return of Jesus and the final judgment of the living and the dead. Some Bitcoiners believe in an inevitable coming “hyperbitcoinization” in which bitcoin will be the only valid currency. When this happens, the “Bitcoin believers” who invested will be justified, while the “no coiners” who shunned cryptocurrency will lose everything.
A path to salvation
Finally, some Bitcoiners view bitcoin as not just a way to make money, but as the answer to all of humanity’s problems.
“Because the root cause of all of our problems is basically money printing and capital misallocation as a result of that,” McCook argues, “the only way the whales are going to be saved, or the trees are going to be saved, or the kids are going to be saved, is if we just stop the degeneracy.”
This attitude may be the most significant point of comparison with religious traditions. In his book “God Is Not One,” religion professor Stephen Prothero highlights the distinctiveness of world religions using a four-point model, in which each tradition identifies a unique problem with the human condition, posits a solution, offers specific practices to achieve the solution and puts forth exemplars to model that path.
This model can be applied to Bitcoin: The problem is fiat currency, the solution is Bitcoin, and the practices include encouraging others to invest, “stacking sats” and “hodling” – refusing to sell bitcoin to keep its value up. The exemplars include Satoshi and other figures involved in the creation of blockchain technology.
So does this comparison prove that Bitcoin is a religion?
Not necessarily, because theologians, sociologists and legal theorists have many different definitions of religion, all of which are more or less useful depending on what the definition is being used for.
However, this comparison may help people understand why Bitcoin has become so attractive to so many people, in ways that would not be possible if Bitcoin were approached as a purely economic phenomenon.
The wealth-hoarding by ultrarich families would be equivalent to over four Build Back Better plans
Over the next few decades, the richest American families could avoid paying about $8.4 trillion in taxes, or more than four times the cost of the stalled Build Back Better package, according to a report released Wednesday.
“We can fix our broken estate and gift tax system… or we can trust our democracy to a handful of trillionaire trust fund babies.”
The new analysis details how loopholes have made the payment of estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes—collectively called wealth-transfer taxes—effectively optional for the “ultrawealthy” and thereby accelerate the “accumulation of dynastic wealth.”
“Ultrarich families use dynasty trusts—the term for a variety of wealth-accumulating structures that remain in place for multiple generations—to ensure their fortunes cascade down to children, grandchildren, and beyond undiminished by wealth-transfer taxes,” the report explains.
Some U.S. states, such as South Dakota, have even changed their laws on dynasty trusts to attract wealthy residents, as Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy highlighted last year.
The new report notes that U.S. lawmakers aren’t planning to address the issue, even if the Senate passes a version of a House-approved package:
The Build Back Better (BBB) legislation now before Congress—otherwise a vehicle for significant progressive tax reform—does nothing to directly reverse this toxic accumulation of dynastic wealth. Moreover, some dynasty trust reforms that were included in the bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee in September 2021 were stripped out before the House voted on the measure in November.
The BBB bill needs full support from Senate Democrats to pass. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—one of the primary reasons the legislation hasn’t reached President Joe Biden’s desk—said Tuesday that it is “dead.”
However, Americans for Tax Fairness still uses the whittled-down BBB package to illustrate just how much money wealthy Americans can hoard for their families in the years ahead thanks to the U.S. tax system.
“The tax savings for the richest families could be about $8.4 trillion over the next 24 years or so if the current 40% estate tax rate remains in place,” the report states. “That’s the equivalent of more than four Build Back Better plans costing $1.75 trillion each over 10 years.”
The report adds that “about half of the $8.4 trillion is equivalent to the cost of the expanded child tax credit, which was included in the House-passed BBB bill and is estimated to reduce childhood poverty by 40%, for 24 years at $160 billion a year.”
There's no denying our economy and democracy are rigged in favor of the ultra-wealthy.
When the richest 100 Americans have 60,000 times more political power than the bottom 90% of people— it's time to get dynastic wealth under control. https://t.co/U1s6HmY1XC
“This hoarding of wealth is inexcusable,” declared the report’s principal author, Bob Lord, who practiced estate law for 30 years before joining Americans for Tax Fairness as tax counsel.
“The BBB legislation now before the U.S. Senate should be amended to close loopholes in the three components of America’s wealth transfer tax system: the estate, gift, and generation-skipping tax,” he asserted. “Effective reforms have already been developed—all that’s needed is for Congress to recognize the urgency to act now.”
The group’s new analysis and call for action come after Americans for Tax Fairness estimated last month that the 10 wealthiest billionaires in the United States have become approximately $1 billion richer collectively every day of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Wednesday’s report contains a warning about that group of ultra-billionaires, mentioning by name Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk of Telsa and SpaceX.
“As much as familiar fortunes have blossomed in the low-regulation, low-tax, wealth-worshiping environment of the previous 40 years,” the report says, “the next 40 and beyond could see the rise of economic dynasties that will make the old money look small.”
Along with closing dynasty-trust tax loopholes, Americans for Tax Fairness urges reforms that would “curb the year-to-year accumulation of wealth in existing trusts.” Specifically, it calls for a new income-tax bracket “on undistributed trust income in excess of $250,000 that is five percentage points higher than the maximum income-tax bracket for individuals.”
Noting a proposal from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the group also encourages U.S. lawmakers to “impose an annual 2% wealth tax on the portion of a dynasty trust’s holdings that exceed $50 million, and an additional 1% on dynasty trust accumulations in excess of $1 billion.”
“The choice is clear,” according to the report. “We can fix our broken estate and gift tax system and stop the concentration of an ever-larger share of America’s wealth inside enormous dynasty trusts, or we can trust our democracy to a handful of trillionaire trust fund babies.”
“Fortunately, we know what needs to be done,” the report concludes. “The sole remaining challenge is to summon the courage to stand up to the holders of dynastic wealth and their enablers.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
A new legal filing by New York’s attorney general this week accused former President Donald Trump’s company of misleading lenders about the financial health of its landmark downtown Manhattan skyscraper, 40 Wall Street, while seeking to renew the building’s mortgage.
Though the Trump Organization called 40 Wall Street “one of the great success stories post 2008,” lender Capital One found the company’s estimates of the building’s worth so unbelievable that the bank declined to refinance the tower’s loan in 2015, the filing alleges.
“Capital One harbored great skepticism regarding the Trump Organization’s valuations,” says the filing, which was submitted by Attorney General Letitia James in response to Trump’s efforts to block her from questioning him and his children as part of an ongoing investigation by her office.
The new accusations offer startling details about possible financial fraud involving 40 Wall Street — one of the subjects of a 2019 ProPublica story that highlighted conflicting financial documents the Trump Organization had filed for the building.
ProPublica’s story documented how income, expense and occupancy numbers cited in the eventual refinance for 40 Wall Street and another Manhattan building sometimes didn’t match those the company had filed with city tax authorities. A lower valuation for the city would produce a lower tax bill, while a higher valuation for lenders would make it easier to get a new mortgage.
One expert said it appeared like the Trump Organization was keeping “two sets of books.”
“It feels like a set of books for the tax guy and a set for the lender,” said Kevin Riordan, a financing expert and real estate professor at Montclair State University, at the time.
In her filing, James asserts that Trump Organization employees, including Trump’s children, took part in a pattern of deception in which they misled lenders, insurers and the Internal Revenue Service by vastly overstating values for 40 Wall Street and a host of other Trump properties, including golf courses in Scotland, Los Angeles and Westchester and his buildings on Fifth and Park avenues.
The Trump Organization on Thursday lashed out at James, a Democrat, via a statement emailed by a spokesperson, saying, “The only one misleading the public is Letitia James.
“She defrauded New Yorkers by basing her entire candidacy on a promise to get Trump at all costs without having seen a shred of evidence and in violation of every conceivable ethical rule,” the organization’s statement said. It asserted that James “has no case” and that the “allegations are baseless and will be vigorously defended.”
Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump’s children Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump, also criticized James, accusing her of making “repeated threats to target the Trump family” and ignoring legal protections for “the very people she is investigating.”
James is seeking to compel testimony and obtain documents from Trump, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, who she said have not cooperated with her investigation.
The filing says that property valuations formed the heart of statements of financial condition that the Trump Organization used to demonstrate its net worth. The statements, which James said contained inaccuracies, were compiled by an outside accounting agency from a data spreadsheet and backup material provided by the Trump Organization.
Trump’s personal guarantees to some banks and insurers required him to certify that his financial statements were correct, according to James’ filing. The documents say her office has evidence Trump was “personally involved in reviewing and approving” the statements.
If the company or its employees are found to have deliberately provided misleading valuations, they could face civil or criminal penalties. The company is under investigation by both James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
With its classic Gothic Revival style and signature green spire, 40 Wall Street gave Trump a presence in the most famous financial district in the world. His company doesn’t own it, but rather purchased in 1995 the right to act as the landlord for its office and retail space. Finding tenants for that space, however, particularly in the building’s narrow tower, proved a challenge, especially after 9/11, when occupancy sagged and the entire financial district struggled, the ProPublica investigation found.
James’ filing says that as early as 2009, Capital One, which held the mortgage on the property, “raised substantial concerns about cash flow” at 40 Wall Street, prompting in-person meetings with Trump, longtime Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and others. Donald Trump Jr. was also involved in the discussions, the filing says.
The conversations led to a loan modification in 2010, with bank personnel harboring doubts about the Trump Organization’s representations of the building’s financial standing. During those discussions, the Trump Organization provided the bank with profit numbers for 2010 of $12.3 million, which bank personnel described as “very optimistic.”
More startling were the differences between valuations that appeared on Trump’s statements of financial condition and those prepared by appraisers for Capital One. The Trump Organization set the value of the building at $601.8 million in 2010, while the appraisals for Capital One done by Cushman & Wakefield set it at just less than one-third of that, $200 million.
Weisselberg shared one of the company’s higher valuations for the building with the bank in early 2015, boasting of “considerable capital investment” and “a much improved cash flow.” He wanted Capital One to restructure its loan and waive a principal payment of $5 million due in November.
But Capital One declined to refinance the mortgage, referencing its own internal estimate that the building was only worth $257 million a few months before.
That year, 40 Wall Street’s $160 million mortgage was a thorn in Trump’s side, representing his then-largest single debt as he launched his campaign for the presidency.
After Capital One’s rejection, the Trump Organization turned to Ladder Capital Finance, where Weisselberg’s son Jack was a director. Ladder commissioned its own appraisal. Though Ladder used the same Cushman & Wakefield team that had estimated the building was worth $220 million in 2012, the team this time more than doubled the value to $540 million, legal filings said. Ladder approved the refinance.
James’ filing said that evidence her office obtained suggests the 2015 Cushman valuation “appears to have used demonstrably incorrect facts and aggressive assumptions” to arrive at the higher estimate, which the document said “did not reflect a good faith assessment of value.”
On Thursday, Cushman & Wakefield defended its practices, saying it took “great issue with mischaracterizations concerning the work performed and believe they are not supported by the evidence.
“The referenced Cushman & Wakefield appraisals were undertaken and completed in good faith based upon the material information made available,” the company said in a statement emailed by a spokesperson. “We stand behind the appraisers and the referenced appraisals which reflect fair valuations based upon the underlying facts and market dynamics.”
In 2015, the Trump Organization’s statement of financial condition listed the value of the building as $735.4 million.
Ladder Capital and Capital One did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday. Allen Weisselberg and Jack Weisselberg could not immediately be reached.
ProPublica’s 2019 story found several instances of the Trump Organization reporting much lower expenses to its lender, Ladder Capital, than to city tax authorities — including 40 Wall Street’s insurance costs and ground lease. Jack Weisselberg declined to comment at the time on Ladder’s loans or his relationship with the Trump Organization. Executives with Ladder also declined to be quoted for the story then.
In 2019, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified before Congress that the Trump Organization inflated valuations at times to appear more profitable and deflated them to achieve a lower real estate tax bill.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Jan. 19, 2022, that he thinks Russia will invade Ukraine, and cautioned Russian president Vladimir Putin that he “will regret having done it,” following months of building tension.
Russia has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine over the past several months.
In mid-January, Russia began moving troops into Belarus, a country bordering both Russia and Ukraine, in preparation for joint military exercises in February.
Putin has issued various security demands to the U.S. before he draws his military forces back. Putin’s list includes a ban on Ukraine from entering NATO, and agreement that NATO will remove troops and weapons across much of Eastern Europe.
Ukraine’s layered history offers a window into the complex nation it is today — and why it is continuously under threat. As an Eastern Europe expert, I highlight five key points to keep in mind.
What should we know about Ukrainians’ relationship with Russia?
Ukraine gained independence 30 years ago, after the fall of the Soviet Union. It has since struggled to combat corruption and bridge deep internal divisions.
Ukraine’s western region generally supported integration with Western Europe. The country’s eastern side, meanwhile, favored closer ties with Russia.
Tensions between Russia and Ukraine peaked in February 2014, when violent protesters ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in what is now known as the Revolution of Dignity.
Around the same time, Russia forcibly annexed Crimea. Ukraine was in a vulnerable position for self-defense, with a temporary government and unprepared military.
Putin immediately moved to strike in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The armed conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed over 14,000 people.
Unlike its response to Crimea, Russia continues to officially deny its involvement in the Donbas conflict.
What do Ukrainians want?
Russia’s military aggression in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea have galvanized public support for Ukraine’s Western leanings.
Ukraine’s government has said it will apply for European Union membership in 2024, and also has ambitions to join NATO.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who came to power in 2019, campaigned on a platform of anti-corruption, economic renewal and peace in the Donbas region.
In September 2021, 81% of Ukrainians said they have a negative attitude about Putin, according to the Ukrainian news site RBC-Ukraine. Just 15% of surveyed Ukrainians reported a positive attitude towards the Russian leader.
Why is Putin threatening to invade Ukraine?
Putin’s decision to engage in a military buildup along Ukraine is connected to a sense of impunity. Putin also has experience dealing with Western politicians who champion Russian interests and become engaged with Russian companies once they leave office.
Western countries have imposed mostly symbolic sanctions against Russia over interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections and a huge cyberattack against about 18,000 people who work for companies and the U.S. government, among other transgressions.
Without repercussions, Putin has backed Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on mass protests in the capital city, Minsk.
In several instances, Putin has seen that some leading Western politicians align with Russia. These alliances can prevent Western countries from forging a unified front to Putin.
Other senior European politicians promoting a soft position toward Russia while in office include former French Prime Minister François Fillon and former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl. Both joined the boards of Russian state-owned companies after leaving office.
What is Putin’s end game?
Putin views Ukraine as part of Russia’s “sphere of influence” – a territory, rather than an independent state. This sense of ownership has driven the Kremlin to try to block Ukraine from joining the EU and NATO.
In January 2021, Russia experienced one of its largest anti-government demonstrations in years. Tens of thousands of Russians protested in support of political opposition leader Alexei Navalny, following his detention in Russia. Navalny had recently returned from Germany, where he was treated for being poisoned by the Russian government.
Putin is also using Ukraine as leverage for Western powers lifting their sanctions. Currently, the U.S. has various political and financial sanctions in place against Russia, as well as potential allies and business partners to Russia.
A Russian attack on Ukraine could prompt more diplomatic conversations that could lead to concessions on these sanctions.
The costs to Russia of attacking Ukraine would significantly outweigh the benefits.
While a full scale invasion of Ukraine is unlikely, Putin might renew fighting between the Ukrainian army and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Why would the US want to get involved in this conflict?
With its annexation of Crimea and support for the Donbas conflict, Russia has violated the Budapest Memorandum Security Assurances for Ukraine, a 1994 agreement between the U.S., United Kingdom and Russia that aims to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for its commitment to give up its nuclear arsenal.
Putin’s threats against Ukraine occur as he is moving Russian forces into Belarus, which also raises questions about the Kremlin’s plans for invading other neighboring countries.
Military support for Ukraine and political and economic sanctions are ways the U.S. can make clear to Moscow that there will be consequences for its encroachment on an independent country. The risk, otherwise, is that the Kremlin might undertake other military and political actions that would further threaten European security and stability.
“The U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure,” the 18-year-old Swedish climate activist said in a new interview.
In an interview published in TheWashington PostMagazine on Monday, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said it is “strange” that some consider U.S. President Joe Biden a climate leader even as his administration fails to take the ambitious steps necessary to tackle the intensifying planetary crisis.
When asked whether she is “inspired” by Biden or other world leaders, Thunberg pointed out that “the U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure” under the current administration.
“I’ve met so many people who give me very much hope and just the possibility that we can actually change things.”
“Why is the U.S. doing that?” she asked. “It should not fall on us activists and teenagers who just want to go to school to raise this awareness and to inform people that we are actually facing an emergency.”
“People ask us, ‘What do you want?’ ‘What do you want politicians to do?'” added Thunberg, who helped spark a global, youth-led climate protest movement with a solo strike outside of the Swedish Parliament building in 2018. “And we say, first of all, we have to actually understand what is the emergency.”
“We are trying to find a solution of a crisis that we don’t understand,” she continued. “For example, in Sweden, we ignore—we don’t even count or include more than two-thirds of our actual emissions. How can we solve a crisis if we ignore more than two-thirds of it? So it’s all about the narrative.”
While Biden has touted his decision to bring the U.S. back into the Paris agreement, his pledge to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and other initiatives as a show of leadership in the face of an existential threat to humanity, his administration has also approved oil and gas drilling permits at a faster rate than former President Donald Trump’s did.
During Biden’s presidency, according to a report released earlier this month by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has approved an average of 333 oil and gas drilling permits per month this year alone—40% more than it did over the first three years of Trump’s White House tenure.
“When it comes to climate change policy, President Biden is saying the right things. But we need more than just promises,” Alan Zibel, the lead author of the report, said in a statement. “The reality is that in the battle between the oil industry and Biden, the industry is winning. Despite Biden’s campaign commitments to stop drilling on public lands and waters, the industry still has the upper hand. Without aggressive government action, the fossil fuel industry will continue creating enormous amounts of climate-destroying pollution exploiting lands owned by the public.”
Thunberg’s interview with the Post came at the end of a year that saw planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions quickly rebound to pre-pandemic levels as the U.S. and other major nations continued to burn fossil fuels at an alarming and unsustainable rate.
As Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate Research noted Tuesday, “2021 saw the second-biggest absolute increase in fossil CO2 emissions ever recorded.”
Despite the failure of world leaders to act with sufficient urgency as the climate crisis fuels devastating extreme weather events across the globe, Thunberg said she is “more hopeful now” than she was when she kicked off her lonely school strike in 2018.
“In one sense, we’re in a much worse place than we were then because the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher and the global emissions are still rising at almost record speed. And we have wasted several years of blah, blah, blah,” said Thunberg. “But then, on another note, we have seen what people can do when we actually come together.”
“I’ve met so many people who give me very much hope and just the possibility that we can actually change things,” she added. “That we can treat a crisis like a crisis.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons license(CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Above: Collage by Lynxotic, Original Photo by Unsplash
“Wall Street’s toxic fossil fuel investments threaten the future of our planet and the stability of our financial system and put all of us, especially our most vulnerable communities, at risk.”
Fueling fresh calls for swift, sweeping action by President Joe Biden and financial regulators, a report published Tuesday reveals that if the planet-heating pollution of the 18 largest U.S. asset managers and banks is compared to that of high-emissions countries, Wall Street is a top-five emitter.
“Financial regulators have the authority to rein in this risky behavior, and this report makes it clear that there is no time to waste.”
The new report—entitled Wall Street’s Carbon Bubble: The global emissions of the U.S. financial sector—was released by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Sierra Club. The analysis was done by South Pole, which replicated an approach it used earlier this year for a U.K.-focused effort commissioned by Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Though likely a “gross underestimate,” as Sierra Club put it, because the analysis relies on public disclosures that exclude key data, the researchers found that “just the portions of the portfolios of the eight banks and 10 asset managers studied in this report financed an estimated total of 1.968 billion tons CO2e based on year-end disclosures from 2020.”
Putting that CO2e—or carbon dioxide equivalent, which is used to compare emissions from various greenhouse gases—figure into context, the report notes:
If the financial institutions (FIs) in this study were a country, they would have the fifth largest emissions in the world, falling just short of Russia;
Financed emissions from the 18 institutions covered in this report are equivalent to 432 million passenger vehicles driven for one year;
Financed emissions from the eight banks studied in this report are equivalent to 80 million homes’ energy use for one year; and
Financed emissions from the 10 asset managers studied in this report are equivalent to three billion barrels of oil consumed.
The banks analyzed are Bank of America, Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street, and Wells Fargo.
The asset managers included are BNY Mellon Investment Management, BlackRock, Capital Group, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, JPMorgan Asset Management, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, PIMCO, State Street Global Advisors, and the Vanguard Group.
When Wall Street is factored into the list of the world’s top 10 countries responsible for the most annual greenhouse gas emissions, it falls after China, the United States, India, and Russia but ranks ahead of Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, Iran, and Germany, according to Climate Watch data.
As the new publication warns:
The findings of this report make clear that the U.S. financial sector is a major contributor to climate change. Given that the indirect emissions of the U.S. financial sector are just below the total emissions of Russia, it should be considered a high-carbon sector and treated as such. Therefore, if President Biden and his administration do not put in place measures to mitigate U.S.-financed emissions, the United States will almost certainly fall far short of its targets to achieve a 50% to 52% reduction from 2005 levels in 2030 and net-zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050.
The implications of falling short would be dire. Continued unfettered emissions supported by the financial industry would mean that the deadly wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, hurricanes, floods, and other extreme weather events that Americans and communities around the world are already experiencing will only become worse, and efforts to mitigate emissions will only become more challenging and costly.
Representatives from the groups behind the report echoed its call to action in a statement Tuesday.
“Climate change poses a large systemic risk to the world economy. If left unaddressed, climate change could lead to a financial crisis larger than any in living memory,” said Andres Vinelli, vice president of economic policy at CAP. “The U.S. banking sector is endangering itself and the planet by continuing to finance the fossil fuel sector.”
Vinelli added that “because the industry has proven itself to be unwilling to govern itself,” regulators including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency “must urgently develop a framework to reduce banks’ contributions to climate change.”
Ben Cushing, Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign manager, agreed that “regulators can no longer ignore Wall Street’s staggering contribution to the climate crisis.”
“The U.S. banking sector is endangering itself and the planet by continuing to finance the fossil fuel sector.”
“Wall Street’s toxic fossil fuel investments threaten the future of our planet and the stability of our financial system and put all of us, especially our most vulnerable communities, at risk,” he said. “Financial regulators have the authority to rein in this risky behavior, and this report makes it clear that there is no time to waste.”
The report comes as financial institutions worldwide face mounting criticism for their contributions to the climate emergency—including at the COP26 climate summit in Scotland last month—and as the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is pushing model legislation that opposes fossil fuel divestment.
More than three dozen climate advocacy groups argued Monday that “what ALEC claims to be discriminatory action”—referring to divestment from major polluters—”is instead prudent action to ensure the stability of our financial system and economy.”
“We know from the Great Recession that the financial sector won’t take responsibility,” the organizations noted. “It’s up to regulators to protect people from the impact on climate and financial risk of fossil fuel investment.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Above: Collage by Lynxotic, Original Photos by various
What are the institutions—public and civic—that could roll back this fast-approaching U.S.-style fascism with the snarling visage of serial criminal and constitutional violator, Donald J. Trump?
“Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun…” is the title of an article in the Atlantic, just out, by Barton Gellman, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of many groundbreaking exposés. He describes the various maneuvers that Trump-driven Republican operatives and state legislators are developing to overturn elections whose voters elected Democrats from states with Republican governors and state legislatures. Georgia fit that profile in 2020—electing two Democratic senators in a state with a Republican legislature and governor.
Tragically, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices—three selected by Trump—has no problem with his usurpation of the American Republic.
Getting ready for 2024, the Georgia GOP legislature has stripped the election-certifying Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, of his authority to oversee future election certifications. The legislature has also given itself the unbridled authority to fire county election officials. With Trump howling his lies and backing his minion candidates, they created a climate that is intimidating scores of terrified election-precinct volunteers to quit.
Added to this are GOP-passed voter suppression laws and selectively drawn election districts that discriminate against minorities—both before the vote (purges, arbitrary disqualifications), during the vote (diminishing absentee voting, and narrowing dates for their delivery), and after the election in miscounting and falsely declaring fraud.
The ultimate lethal blow to democratic elections, should the GOP lose, is simply to have the partisan GOP majority legislators benefiting from demonically-drawn gerrymandered electoral districts, declare by fiat the elections a fraud, and replace the Democratic Party’s voter chosen electors with GOP chosen electors in the legislature.
Now take this as a pattern demolishing majority voters’ choice to 14 other GOP-controlled states, greased by Trumpian lies and routing money to his chosen candidate’s intent on overturning majority rule, add Fox News bullhorns and talk radio Trumpsters and you have the apparatus for fascistic takeovers. Tragically, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices—three selected by Trump—has no problem with his usurpation of the American Republic. All this and more micro-repression is broadcast by zillions of ugly, vicious, and anonymous rants over the Internet enabled by the profiteering social media corporations like Facebook.
Anonymous, vicious, violent email and Twitter traffic is the most underreported cause of anxiety, fear, and dread undermining honest Americans working, mostly as volunteers, the machinery of local, state, and national elections, with dedicated public servants. These people are not allowed to know the names behind the anonymous cowardly, vitriol slamming against them, their families, and children.
What are the institutions—public and civic—that could roll back this fast-approaching U.S.-style fascism with the snarling visage of serial criminal and constitutional violator, Donald J. Trump?
1. First is the Congress. Democrats impeached Trump over the Ukraine extortion but left on the table eleven other impeachable counts, including those with kitchen-table impacts (See Congressional Record, December 18, 2019).
All that is going on to deal with Trump’s abuses in any focused way on Capitol Hill, controlled by Democrats, is the House’s January 6th investigation. So far as is known, this Select Committee is NOT going to subpoena the star witnesses—Donald Trump and Mike Pence. So far, the Congress is feeble, not a Rock of Gibraltar thwarting the Trumpian dictators.
2. The federal courts? Apart from their terminal delays, it’s Trump’s Supreme Court and his nominees fill many chairs in the federal circuit courts of appeals. The federal judiciary—historically the last resort for constitutional justice—is now lost to such causes.
3. The Democratic Party? We’re still waiting for a grand strategy, with sufficient staff, to counter, at every intersection, the GOP. The Dems do moan and groan well. But where is their big-time ground game for getting out the non-voters in the swing states? Are they provoking recall campaigns of despotic GOP state legislators in GOP states having such citizen-voter power? Why aren’t they adopting the litigation arguments of Harvard Law School’s constitutional expert, Professor Larry Tribe? Where are their messages to appeal to the majority of eligible American voters who believe that the majority rules in elections? Why aren’t they urgently reminding voters of the crimes and other criminogenic behavior by the well-funded Trump and his political terrorists?
Bear in mind, the Democrats are well-funded too.
4. The Legal Profession and their Bar Associations. Aren’t they supposed to represent the rule of law, protect the integrity of elections, and insist on peaceful transitions of power? They are after all, not just private citizens; they are “officers of the court.” Forget it. There are few exceptions, but don’t expect the American Bar Association and its state bar counterparts to be the sentinels and watchdogs against sinister coup d’états under cover of delusional strongarming ideologies.
5. Well, how about the Universities, the faculties, and the students? Weren’t they the hotbeds of action against past illegal wars and violations of civil rights in the Sixties and Seventies? Sure. But that was before the Draft was eliminated, before the non-stop gazing at screens, and before the focus on identity politics absorbed the energy that fueled mobilizations about fundamental pursuits of peace, justice, and equality.
6. How about some enlightened corporate executives of influential companies? Having been given large tax reductions, sleepy law enforcement regulators, and a corporatist-minded federal judiciary, while the war contracts and taxpayer bailouts proliferate, why should they make waves to save the Republic? The union of plutocratic big business with the autocratic government is one classical definition of fascism.
7. The Mass Media. Taken together, they’ve done a much better job exposing Trumpism than has the Congress or litigation and the judiciary. However, their digging up the dirt does not come with the obvious follow-ups from their reporting and editorializing.
Covering the Ukraine impeachment, but not covering at least eleven other documented impeachable offenses, handed to them by credible voices, left them with digging hard but never hitting pay dirt. Trump has escaped all their muckraking as he has escaped all attempts by law enforcers who have their own unexplained hesitancies. If reporters do not dig intensely into just how Trump and his chief cohorts have escaped jail time and other penalties, their usual revelations of wrongdoings appear banal, eliciting “what else is new?” yawns by their public.
What’s left to trust and rely upon? Unorganized people organizing. What else! That’s what the farmers did peacefully in western Massachusetts in 1774 (See: The Revolution Came Early—1774—to the Berkshires) against the tyrant King George III and his Boston-based Redcoats? By foot or by horse, they showed up together in huge numbers at key places. These farmers collectively stopped the takeover of local governments and courts by King George’s wealthier Tories. Their actions can teach us the awesome lessons of moral, democratic, and tactical grit—all the while having to deal with nature and their endangered crops.
What are our excuses?
Originally published on Common Dreams by RALPH NADER and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
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