You have not seen the Mueller report, nor have I, nor have the media that pretend that they have seen it. Congress has seen a summary by a partisan member of the Trump cabinet, and this has largely leaked out. Big difference.
A decision not to indict is not a declaration of innocence. It might be. On the other hand, a prosecutor may believe that the target of an investigation is as guilty as sin, but she or he will probably not be able to convince a jury of that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The press and general public, absent an egregious leak, is unlikely to get all of the facts and documents that went into Mr. Mueller’s investigation. Those sorts of situations give rise to all manner of conspiracy theories, but consider one likely road map to the investigation that would probably never be revealed in court, to Congress or in any press release, the National Security Agency (NSA) phone logs, records of emails and electronic money transfers, and recorded conversations. There have been leaks over the years about the capabilities and practices of this shadowy agency and its British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealander partners — Edward Snowden’s revelations were hardly the first. One would expect that several other countries have more or less similar capabilities and some would share information with the United States. This stuff would be kept as secret as possible, but with the allegation of a Russian attack on the US political system as the subject under investigation, it is hard to imagine that one of the first things that former FBI director — and thus US counter-intelligence chief — Robert Mueller didn’t ask the NSA what they had. It’s also hard to imagine that if the NSA told him at the start that there was nothing there Mueller would not have taken that advice seriously. More likely, Mueller got some tantalizing leads from the NSA and worked back, knowing that his leads could not be used or even admitted in court.
The celebrated Steele memo? Mostly confirmed. Did the guy have some issues with romanizing names in the Cyrillic alphabet, get a few tangential facts garbled, make some inferences that didn’t pan out? Of course he did. But mostly he got the story right. But that memo would be for a variety of reasons starting with hearsay rules, not admissible in court.
That the Kremlin interfered in the elections of the United States and several other countries is well established. The indictments of all those Russian individuals and institutions by the Special Counsel’s office are not hoaxes, not frame-ups. The people screaming the loudest that they are fraudulent are by and large people who were spreading all those Russian memes all over the social media in 2016.
The sources of information about Russia’s covert propaganda campaigns are not just “Deep State” spooks. They are also Google, Twitter and Facebook. Much to the embarrassment of those companies.
In a well documented public declaration Donald Trump called on Russia to release Hillary Clinton’s emails. Shortly thereafter her campaign chief’s emails were released. Then, with the fall campaign underway, Mueller alleges that Trump’s campaign manager, Mr. Manafort, gave a 75-page file of Trump campaign polling data to a man believed to be a Russian intelligence agent. Drawing lines of causality among such event to that satisfaction of a jury would not be a slam-dunk, no matter the first-glance inferences.
It is protested that the men around Trump who were convicted were not charged with being Russian spies or Kremlin assets, but rather for economic crimes or for lies told. But what were their lies about? They were about their contacts with Russian operatives.
Barr acknowledges that Mueller reported that he would not be ready to exonerate Donald Trump for obstruction of justice? Obstruction of what? Mueller’s inquiries about Russian interference in the 2016 election process.
And what about “The Deep State?” Yes, there are millions of Americans in government jobs who would not be were it thought that they did not share in a certain belief system about patriotism, propriety and prudence. One who is known to be indifferent to a foreign power gaining control over the US political system will generally not get a security clearance from the United States government, for example. In the coming months one or more “Deep State” functionaries with access to the Mueller Report may well leak it, notwithstanding superior orders, precisely because of the conformist belief system to which she or he or they adhere.
Mueller did not go on a fishing expedition, and thus there is an entire life of crime in which Donald Trump and his family have been immersed for decades that the Special Counsel did not touch. But what about Manafort’s financial crimes? one might ask. Well, yeah. You have a president’s campaign manager with questionable ties to foreign powers that run to the heart of the investigation, and that person and his possible motives will be minutely examined. Turns out that he’s a thuggish and greedy man, which in the end might be Trump’s best defense, that he was played by Manafort, who behind Trump’s back was in it for himself.
There are other investigations underway, which the Barr summary of the Mueller Report will be used to denigrate. The question is how many American voters will fall for that. Trump may have some control over the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, and the others who are following the leads spinning off of Maria Butina, the Russian operative in the National Rifle Association. Trump won’t have such control over New York’s Attorney General or committees of the US House of Representatives.
What American weaknesses did the Russian cyber-propagandists exploit? Some obvious ones like racial conflicts, economic inequalities and religious bigotry, to be sure. Perhaps the most glaring of all, and what is most painful to admit, is the dumbing down of America. It’s partly based on a degraded public education system that those of us Americans living abroad would recognize in the inability of so many Americans to find the countries in which we live on a map. But it’s also to be seen in formerly reputable corporate mainstream news organizations pumping speculation as fact, and taking sources known to lie without skepticism. The “Gulf of Tonkin incident,” Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction, the Birther conspiracy theory, the 9/11 Truther conspiracy theory, all those urban legends that gave rise to the like of Snopes and then the rise of conspiracy theories to discredit the fact checkers — those told the Russians that they had a gullible nation as a target.
Part of America’s gullibility is about the Russians. Quite frankly, a lot of media whose editorial lines are anti-Trump and a lot of Democrats have made asses of themselves about this. Sponsor an anti-Russian coup in Kiev? Threaten to put NATO missiles in Estonia, less than an hour’s car drive from Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg? Hatch a Syrian regime change plan that would deprive the Russian Navy of its use of the Mediterranean port of Tartus? We were supposed to expect that there wouldn’t be a strong response from the Russians, no matter who was in charge? And a Cold War II with Russia with China standing by laughing? What kind of geopolitical idiocy is THAT?
Among the most often heard complaints these days you find the apparent loss of control in the city. Violence seems to be what most worries the inhabitants of cities, big or small. Public spaces in communities have been lost. People tend to lock themselves intp their homes. In more recent decades, the problem of the environment has become a dilemma without solution. These problems affect the roads, the schools and, obviously, social relations.
Many times we forget that the city really isn’t the problem. Urban chaos is the result of a greater evil. The society that created the modern city stands on several unsustainable pillars. First, the alleged competition to accumulate more wealth that generates inequality and disorder. This clash polarizes a few rich against many poor. Second, there is the concentration of real estate in the hands of large urban landowners who monopolize access to spaces. Third, the rules imposed by accumulation create the conditions for corruption to flourish.
Polls, no matter where in the world, show that the main concerns of residents are violence, corruption and unemployment. The solutions to these problems are at hand. But capitalist society is like a body with two hands: One left and one right. The left wants to change the system or at least reform it. The right wants to “change everything so that nothing changes.” That is, it wants to keep everything as it is.
Latin America’s experiences are very common. Governments with plans to change arise and at once conservative detractors appear. This is the case of Venezuela and everything indicates that President López Obrador’s Mexico will be added to the list in the near future.
The 21st century city is a space where all the problems that have accumulated since its modern conception 500 years ago converge. From its mercantile beginnings through the Industrial Revolution, we arrive at the present day city.
We are not “citizens” in the ancient Greek sense. We live alienated from our environment. We are captive to the usurers, patrons and rentiers. The modern city is a rat race where those who dominate us make us run in competition against others.
The basic unit of the social class to which everybody belongs is the family. For social reasons, the family institution can’t be constituted in this system of inequality. That’s the reality in Panama and in the rest of the world. Panamanian statistics indicate that 70 percent of births occur outside of marriage. The social identity of the individual is diluted and bonds of solidarity are undone.
The urban population is turned into a mass of people who don’t identify with their social roots, who move about in what seems to be chaos on the transport system, who, through education, the media and communities, reproduce to conserve the status quo – chaos – for the benefit of a few.
The city, the community and the family can only – jointly and harmoniously – generate a sense of wellbeing when social groups (or social classes) are organized around their productive activities and give a collective meaning to coexistence. That is, culture.
The “citizens” still lack that material base and solidary identity to turn the city into a space that we can call our own, and bequeath to our children.
What city do we want? We know what city we do not want: Without the poor, without the unemployed, without disorder, without indecent homes. We want to build the city we want, without ignoring the past, with a look towards the future.
Martinelista goons attack a journalist outside an event where National Assembly president Yanibel Ábrego (CD-Capira) was distributing gifts in hope of re-election. Photo by ClaraMENTE.
Presidential hopefuls: photos and positions
mostly gleaned from their social media pages
Marco Ameglio would: * Eliminate the Agricultural Development Bank (BDA) * Appoint scientific and educational aides to our embassies to assist those citizens who would study abroad and to bring scientific and technological research and innovation to Panama * Oppose a constitutional convention to write a new constitution
José Isabel Blandón would: * Give businesses new tax breaks * Oppose same-sex marriages but otherwise protect the rights of LGBT people * Support a constitutional convention to write a new constitution
Nito Cortizo would: * Create a new state bank to make small business loans * Appoint a black person to the Panama Canal Authority board * Oppose a constitutional convention to write a new constitution
Ana Matilde Gómez would: * Create 20,000 new jobs on one-year contracts for recently graduated professionals * Add to the census format so as to count the different ethnic and racial populations * Support a constitutional convention to write a new constitution
Ricardo Lombana would: * Modernize government computer systems so that people can readily do public business and get public information online * Reduce the number of government employees * Support a constitutional convention to write a new constitution
Saúl Méndez would: * Eliminate politicians’ immunities from criminal investigation and prosecution * Spend 6% of the Gross Domestic Product on public education * Support a constitutional convention to write a new constitution
Rómulo Roux would: * Bring back the policies and practices of the Martinelli administration * When public pharmacies are out of prescribed medicines, reimburse people for the purchase of these at private pharmacies * Oppose a constitutional convention to write a new constitution
This past week, two survivors of the massacre of 17 people in Parkland killed themselves.
Of all the awful mass shootings, what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School there dominated the news because it was at a mostly middle class high school in Florida’s Broward County. That is, those students who were killed and the surviving witnesses were not inarticulate second graders like at Newtown, nor were they “throwaways” to be ignored by corporate mass media as inner city black kids are, nor did this take place in a “flyover” boondocks area far from a flock of news organizations “that count.”
In the aftermaths of these instances school administrators, teachers and cops, rightly or wrongly, live in terror of being fired from the jobs and seeing their middle class lives collapse, so silence on their parts is the norm. But here you had a few high school students who had learned their civics well and decided to take a stand, and TV crews available to spread their words and deeds around the world in an instant.
So a few articulate survivors stepped forward, and the world owes them a debt of gratitude.
In the words of the very worst reporters left unaltered by negligent editors, the kids who spoke out were, because unpierced by bullets, “unharmed.”
Those of us who have have survived firearms violence without being shot know better.
A perusal of history, not in the banal list of battles, wars and treaties that kids are typically taught but a deeper inquiry, will tell us of the waves of suicides, crimes and wandering lost souls that come in the wake of every major war.
After Vietnam, American doctors came up with a term for one of the common sets of symptoms, “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.” But there was denial from many sides — government bean counters who feared the costs of acknowledging all of these psychologically wounded veterans, people whose outlooks are warped by Hollywood fiction and its stereotypical outcomes, fear of the social stigmata when people realize that the real war hero is likely to be a person haunted by terrible and persistent demons.
Therapists, researchers in several disciplines and those who respond to social crises understood the ex-soldiers’ predicament as part of a larger phenomenon. PTSD is not just a war disorder. It’s seen in the wake of domestic violence, armed robberies and yes, the spate of mass bloodlettings by assholes with assault rifles.
David Hogg, under many a threat by the brainwashed minions of the gun sellers’ lobby, is on his way to Harvard. Emma González, also a magnet for hatred, heads in her own way to the next challenges in her life. But a couple more of their peers have fallen by the wayside, by their own hands if you want to cut and compress the timeline.
It’s so predictable, if not on a precise micro scale. As a matter of social statistics, it’s to be expected. There are often indications of high suicide risk, which people ought to get to know.
So many tasks are urgently pressing as many afflicted nations address their particular problems with violence. But we all need to understand, look out for and lend a hand to the walking wounded.
Bear in mind…
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
Abraham Lincoln
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
Florence Nightingale
My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration and ignoble deaths; that there is security in personal strength; that you can fight City Hall and win; that any action is better than no action, even if it’s the wrong action; that you never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you’re willing to risk everything, dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; and that once one becomes strong or rich or potent or powerful it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak become strong.
The Atlantic Side locks, Agua Clara in the foreground, the old Gatun Locks behind. Wikimedia photo.
Full Neopanamax and Capesize dry bulk ships can’t pass through the canal now
by Eric Jackson
The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) imposed a draft restriction of 47 feet (14.333 meters) in mid-March and plans to impose another more severe limit on April 11. Draft restrictions are about how low in the water a ship’s hull might go, to keep vessels from running aground in the lake or touching the bottom of the locks when water levels in the canal system are low.
For the shipping industry, it means that certain vessels cannot carry full loads through the Panama Canal. Most immediately affected are dry bulk carriers, in particular the larger ones like those carrying Brazilian soybeans to Asian ports. A Neopanamax-sized (with the largest dimensions that fit through the new locks) grain ship will take a draft of 15 meters when fully loaded. A full Capesize dry bulk ship takes a 20-meter draft. In the matrix of business calculations it must be decided whether to send partially loaded ships through the Panama Canal, keep soybeans and grain in silos until the rains come and replenish the PanCanal watershed and the merchandise may be more efficiently shipped, or to send grain to other destinations or by other routes.
According to the ACP, in 69 years of total watershed monitoring we had the second-driest December on record in 2018.
Correction, while Gatun Lake’s level is low and getting lower, and how low it is can be cast in relative terms given the day of the year and the raising of the lake’s usual level for the canal expansion, a statement attributed to the ACP about Gatun Lake levels being the lowest in 100 years is inaccurate. At the end of the last El Niño phenomenon in 2015-2016 they were lower.
The Region of the Americas can reach the goal of ending tuberculosis (TB) in the next decade if countries are able to accelerate progress achieved so far, reducing even more the number of deaths and new cases per year, warns the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), regional office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Within the framework of World TB Day, which is celebrated on 24 March, PAHO is urging countries to take the necessary steps to close the gaps in the care of people with tuberculosis, ensure early diagnosis with available new technologies, and work with the most vulnerable populations. The Organization is also calling on sustainable financing for national tuberculosis programs so that countries can reach the goal of ending tuberculosis by 2030.
“While the Region of the Americas has managed to reduce new cases and deaths from tuberculosis in the last 15 years, ending this disease is only possible if progress is accelerated,” said Dr. Marcos Espinal, Director of the Department of Communicable Diseases and Environmental Determinants of Health at PAHO. “Countries should expand access to diagnosis with rapid molecular tests and timely quality treatment for those who need it. They must also work with people, communities and other sectors on the social determinants that facilitate transmission of this disease.”
In 2017, WHO estimated 282,000 new cases of tuberculosis in the Americas, 11% of which were in people living with HIV. In all, 87% of cases were concentrated in 10 countries, with Brazil, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico and Peru reporting two thirds of the total cases and deaths. According to a PAHO report published in September 2018, an estimated 24,000 people died in 2017 from tuberculosis in the Region, and 6,000 of them were coinfected with HIV.
“It’s time!” campaign
The slogan for this year’s World TB Day campaign is “It’s time for Action. End TB”. This serves as a reminder that fulfilling the commitments made by heads of state in September last year at the first High Level Meeting of the United Nations’ General Assembly on tuberculosis, must be accelerated. At the meeting, world leaders agreed to implement bold goals and urgent measures to end the disease.
Ending the global tuberculosis epidemic is one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). WHO’s End TB Strategy, adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2014, aims to reduce deaths from TB by 90% and the incidence of the disease (number of new cases each year) by 80% by 2030, compared to 2015 levels. Three intermediate goals have also been established for 2020: reduce TB deaths by 35%, reduce the TB incidence rate by 20%, and ensure that families affected by TB do not face catastrophic costs for treating the disease.
Challenges to ending TB in the Americas
The persistence of tuberculosis is due, to a great extent, to the social and economic inequalities that remain in the Region. Since 2015, deaths fell by 2.5% on average per year and new cases dropped by 1.6%, but according to PAHO’s September 2018 report, they need to fall at a rate of 12% and 8% per year, respectively, to achieve the intermediate targets for 2020 and continue to decline until 2030.
In the Americas, more than 50,000 people – almost half of them under the age of 15, do not know they have the disease and have not been treated. The use of rapid molecular diagnostic tests, a new tool that could help closed the gap, was used in just 13% of diagnosed cases, up slightly from 9% in 2016.
TB treatment has saved thousands of lives. However, in the last five years 75% of patients has a successful treatment, which is below the 90% target set for 2030. It is therefore recommended that countries improve patient monitoring to ensure treatment adherence (8.6% abandon treatment), among other issues.
Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis also represents a serious threat, with an estimated 11,000 people in the Region currently affected by this form of the disease. The treatment success rate in these cases falls to 56%.
To accelerate progress towards TB elimination, particularly in countries with the greatest disease burden, PAHO recommends: accelerating the implementation of rapid molecular diagnostic tests; promoting tracing contacts of people with TB, particularly those under the age of 15; accelerating the implementation of new medicines; securing national funding rather than depending on external funds; working with vulnerable populations that require a special approach; and having the active participation of civil society.
Progressives made clear they have no intention of backing down to the party establishment after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Friday threatened to cut off funds to firms and strategists that support primary challengers against incumbents.
“The DCCC can do anything it wants to try to prevent the next generation of Democrats from taking power. They will not succeed,” Sean McElwee — co-founder of Data for Progress, which is recruiting progressives to oust conservative Democrats –said in a statement.
The new policy was included in the DCCC’s list of vendor hiring standards, which state that the organization “will not conduct business with, nor recommend to any of its targeted campaigns, any consultant that works with an opponent of a sitting member of the House Democratic Caucus.”
According to National Journal, which first reported the policy change, “Democrats involved in crafting the standards intend for them to bolster members across the ideological spectrum, from the fiscally conservative Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas to the progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota—both of whom could be subject to contested primaries.”
But progressives argued that the ostensibly neutral rule will disproportionately harm grassroots organizations looking to replace right-wing Democrats with bold figures like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who both ousted incumbent Democrats in primaries last year.
“Make no mistake—they are sending a signal that they are more afraid of Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez winning primary challenges than Henry Cuellar who votes with Trump nearly 70 percent of the time,” Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, told The Intercept.
As Common Dreams reported in January, the progressive advocacy group Justice Democrats is recruiting a 2020 primary challenger to take on Cuellar, who has backed anti-abortion legislation and raised money for the GOP.
As National Journal reported, the DCCC’s hiring standards “could cripple would-be primary opponents’ ability to entice top talent to join their staff” and deprive them of millions of dollars in funds.
But progressive organizations and strategists were quick to say they will not be deterred by the DCCC’s threat to cut them off.
“We see exactly what you’re doing DCCC,” declared Democracy for America, an advocacy group that also bolsters progressive candidates. “Don’t think for one second that it’ll stop us — or the grassroots army we stand with — from backing bold, inclusive populists who will better represent their districts in Congress over neoliberal corporate Dems.”
Rebecca Katz, a longtime Democratic consultant, told The Intercept that “people who can’t understand the party is stronger because we have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley in Congress should not be in the business of choosing who can run for Congress.”
Katz expanded on that idea on Twitter: “The party shouldn’t be in the business of protecting Dems in safe blue districts who have lost touch with their constituents. I would work with those challengers, and help lift up those voices, even if it means being blacklisted by the DCCC.”
As New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz noted, “it’s far from clear that the DCCC’s policy will even succeed on its intended [objectives].”
