Trump's Eviction Moratorium Opens the Door for Medicare for All by Executive Order

Donald Trump declares a coronavirus national emergency on March 13, 2020 (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

On September 1, the Trump administration announced a nationwide moratorium on evictions to last until December 31, a full four months. The reason for the moratorium, according to a White House spokesman, was to make sure that people "struggling to pay rent due to the coronavirus will not have to worry about being evicted and risk the further spreading of, or exposure to, the disease."

The moratorium applies only to people "who would otherwise be eligible for federal stimulus funds in the previous CARES Act, which went only to people with certain tax income levels and citizenship status." The ban also requires that renters "self-certify" to become eligible. As Politico put it:

"The new ban covers tenants who certify that they have lost “substantial” income; that they expect to make no more than $99,000 in 2020 or received a stimulus check; and that they are making their “best efforts” to pay as much of their rent as they can. Tenants must also certify that an eviction would likely make them homeless or push them to double up with others in close quarters."

It should be noted that the ban does not cancel rental obligations; it just delays payment. Also, as the order itself states, "Nothing in this Order precludes the charging or collecting of fees, penalties, or interest as a result of the failure to pay rent or other housing payment on a timely basis, under the terms of any applicable contract."

As a solution, it's better than nothing, but it only defers the pain.

About Half of All Landlords Will Suffer Too

The order provides no funds for relief to landlords. For the many landlords who are, in fact, millionaires, billionaires, and large, well-funded corporations and venture capital firms, this may look to many like just desserts. For the other half of the landlord population, however, especially the minority who own just one or two rental properties, this could spell financial disaster as great as the disaster their tenants are facing.

It's hard to get figures for the breakdown of the wealth among landlords, but the industry-friendly article in Politico quoted above implies that the wealthy landlord group, while "a fraction of the market," is in fact almost half — which technically qualify as "a fraction," but a sizable one. The article states that "a little over half the rental housing in the country" consists of small properties with between one and four units per building — which means that a little under half of the market consists of large buildings.

The Politico article, clearly industry-sourced, then focuses on the suffering of a percentage of the percentage of small owners, ignoring completely the mega-owners, just as it ignores the suffering of the renters themselves, except to emphasize how many of them pose an economic danger to landlords. Still, small owners are left in the cold by the administration's ban, and their distress will be real.

What Makes This Declaration Legal?

The authority for this action comes from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Surgeon General, who reports to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — not from the Housing or the Treasury departments — and it's based on the stated need to prevent the spread of disease in a crisis.

The applicable language states (emphasis added):

[Title 42 U.S.C.] §264. Regulations to control communicable diseases
(a) Promulgation and enforcement by Surgeon General

The Surgeon General, with the approval of the Secretary, is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession. For purposes of carrying out and enforcing such regulations, the Surgeon General may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary.

This declaration and the unusual legal authority on which it is based has many important ramifications. For one, it opens the door for Medicare for All by executive order.

Ramifications of Trump's Moratorium

We can discuss Trump's action in several ways, each of which could become an essay on its own.

1. Clearly the primary reason for Trump's action is political. He wants people to feel like they are getting relief from him that they're not getting from Congress. In that, he's right. They are getting relief from him that they're not getting from Congress.

But in doing so, he's just kicked the can down the road until after the election, solving none of the underlying problems in doing so. Renters will still owe rent that they can't pay from income they don't have, and those small landlords with mortgages are still on the hook to their own creditors regardless of having been forced to keep non-paying tenants.

2. A much more reasonable action would be the obvious, socialist one — let government write checks to landlords on behalf of renters, then work out repayment (or debt forgiveness) schemes later.

Or better, let government cover the payrolls of businesses that are suffering or going under, then forgive what's owed later. After all, the root cause of the economic downturn is lost payrolls. As for repayment, this is an emergency after all, and FEMA doesn't send bills to those whose hardship it relieves. The money spent is just the cost of the crisis.

But that's a socialist, Sanders-like solution, and neither party wants any part of it. Thus the hesitation to act, the labyrinthine schemes, and the means-tested requirements and restrictions.

3. This action places Trump to the left of national Democrats on Covid relief. If he's smart (he's not), he'll stay to their left and offer all sorts of "socialist" (Sanders-like) solutions to the economic crisis — see below for a major one. After all, Trump ran the 2016 election on a Sanders-like platform — against NAFTA, against free trade, for infrastructure-as-stimulus, against the forever war, and so on.

If he's smart, he'll restart that campaign. But he's not smart.

4. The biggest thing Trump could do — and it would be a game-changer — is to use the authority he's has under "Title 42 U.S. Code § 1395rr–1 - Medicare coverage for individuals exposed to environmental health hazards" to provide Medicare coverage for everyone in the United States "exposed to environmental health hazards." Which in these Covid times ... is everyone.

He could do this tomorrow using executive authority, the same executive authority that underlies his eviction moratorium.

The applicable section of Title 42 allows for a "Pilot program for care of certain individuals residing in emergency declaration areas." That care can be defined as "access to all of Medicare":

(b) Pilot program for care of certain individuals residing in emergency declaration areas
(1) Program; purpose
(A) Primary pilot program

The Secretary shall establish a pilot program in accordance with this subsection to provide innovative approaches to furnishing comprehensive, coordinated, and cost-effective care under this subchapter to individuals described in paragraph (2)(A).

The Secretary of HHS could even use this law to create "optional pilot programs" to supplement regular (and in many ways, inefficient) Medicare:

(B) Optional pilot programs

The Secretary may establish a separate pilot program, in accordance with this subsection, with respect to each geographic area subject to an emergency declaration (other than the declaration of June 17, 2009), in order to furnish such comprehensive, coordinated and cost-effective care to individuals described in subparagraph (2)(B) who reside in each such area.

For this to work, an emergency declaration must have been declared, which it has.

Eligible individuals must meet the following criteria:

(A) In general An individual described in this paragraph is any individual who—
(i) is diagnosed with 1 or more conditions described in subparagraph (B);
(ii) as demonstrated in such manner as the Secretary determines appropriate, has been present for an aggregate total of 6 months in the geographic area subject to an emergency declaration specified in subsection (b)(2)(A)..."

While subsection (3)(B) applies to individuals with named diseases — asbestosis, mesothelioma, and the like — subsection (3)(C) allows this law to apply to an individual who "is diagnosed with a medical condition caused by the exposure of the individual to a public health hazard to which an emergency declaration applies, based on such medical conditions, diagnostic standards, and other criteria as the Secretary specifies."

In short:  

Trump could guarantee himself a second term if he applied this law in this way, to give the nation Medicare For All under executive order.

5. Finally, while I think it unlikely that Trump would take this avenue to gain an electoral victory, I nonetheless hope he does, for these three reasons.

First, it would give Medicare for All ... to all. That would be a huge progressive win in and of itself, a win we're not going to get under a Biden presidency without monster effort, and win we've been unable to achieve since the Truman administration.

Second, it would force Biden to match him or admit defeat on ideological grounds. That's a problem I would love for Biden to face.

An added benefit: Trump's support of Medicare for All takes all the burden of moving Biden left off of progressives and places it onto the Republicans, who would be playing an Ace if Biden doesn't play an Ace of his own. Let Republicans do the heavy threatening. This frees progressives to happily and genuinely support a compliant Biden (for a change).

Finally, for Biden to match Trump's offer of Medicare for All with his own would ensure a Biden victory, perhaps by a landslide. After all, Biden today is running, and possibly winning, on a single platform — not being Trump. Imagine his margin of victory if he ran on Medicare for All as well as not being Trump.

Trump wouldn't have a chance if Biden did that, and Biden would be hailed by history as the literal savior of this generation. That's a whole lot better than than the legacy he's now on track for — being the not-Trump slower-paced sinker of it.
  

Thoughts on the "End of Oil"

by Thomas Neuburger

The phrase "the end is near" has overtones so cartoonish as to render it meaningless. Joke after joke has been built on this announcement, many of them excellent. One of my favorites is above; another is below:

But however much we laugh at these pronouncements, things do end — just not when we expect them to. We ourselves will end, as will our earth, swallowed, in five billion years or so, by an expanding, burning, dying sun, all to be returned to space dust from which something else will be made.

But is that end, or any of those ends, near? In the case of ourselves, we hope not. In the case of the earth, not likely. In the case of our species ... well, we'll have to see.

At some point, oil as a commodity will end. The question is, will it end prior to the end of civilized life, which may or may not be near, or will it cause the end of civilized life, in which case that end will be nearer than anyone wishes?

Use of oil as a commodity will certainly peak; many think that has already occurred. According Sierra Club writer Antonia Juhasz, the consulting firm Kinsey and Co. "warned oil-producing nations in 2019 to begin 'sufficiently diversifying their economies for a post-[oil] peak demand world.'"

Something will kill oil, and all carbon-based fuels, as a product — but what will that be? The end of a market for it is one such cause, based either on a happy conversion to renewable energy sources (the end of demand via choice), or less happily, the end of man's ability to use it in enough quantity to matter (the end of demand via death and decimation). In both of these cases, though, the end of oil comes via demand.

Can its use also be strangled by supply, not just lack of supply, but an over-supply that drives the price below the cost of production and makes the industry itself unviable and subject to collapse?

That's less certain, but it's the thesis of Ms. Juhasz's latest piece for Sierra, "The End of Oil Is Near." Her subtitle says, "The pandemic may send the petroleum industry to the grave," and she may indeed be right. This pandemic, like all economic depressions, is shutting down demand, causing oil tankers to park outside of ports like "an enemy invasion" that turn the seas around them into "aquatic parking lots."

"Today, the global oil industry is in a tailspin," she writes. "Demand has cratered, prices have collapsed, and profits are shrinking. The oil majors (giant global corporations including BP, Chevron, and Shell) are taking billions of dollars in losses while cutting tens of thousands of jobs. Smaller companies are declaring bankruptcy, and investors are looking elsewhere for returns. Significant changes to when, where, and how much oil will be produced, and by whom, are already underway. It is clear that the oil industry will not recover from COVID-19 and return to its former self. What form it ultimately takes, or whether it will even survive, is now very much an open question."

Perhaps her headline would better be written, "The end is near, but only if you cause it."

This Covid economy presents indeed a priceless opportunity with respect to fossil fuel. If indeed investor confidence has weakened to all-time lows and only "government bailout programs and subsidies could provide the lifeline the industry needs to stay afloat," deliberately denying those bailouts and subsidies may be our only hope — other than a chaotic market collapse in which a bailout is political poison — for ending the life our species' chief biological threat, Big Oil.

Make no mistake: The fossil fuel industry will kill us, in full knowledge that it dies with us, simply to extend its own existence and profits into the last decade allotted to anyone. It will not die so we can live; it will live so we and it can die together.

This makes both Joe Biden and Donald Trump into killers of monumental magnitude. Trump will accelerate fossil fuel production out of his own blindness and hubris, and at the behest of the monsters controlling his party. Biden will slow demand enough to "make a good show of it," a good show of caring about the rest of us, while still taking the industry's money and, in return, not restraining its ability to dig every drop and sell every ounce it can dig.

It's not even certain that Trump's race-to-ruin will end us faster than Biden's more measured destruction. If Trump's hands-off policy is allowed to run through an extended Covid-induced crisis, a chaotic market collapse may come sooner under Trump than under Biden's carefully managed "keep the industry afloat while seeming to restrain them" approach.

And should it be the case that Biden staves off an oil market collapse, its barons will honor him as a savior. By then he may not know what that honer even means, but his backers will, as will Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, and all the other fossil fuel enablers we allow to rule us.

But we started with "the end is near." We should finish there as well. Though collapses happen quickly — just ask a certain czar of ill repute, or a Bourbon of headless note — I'll venture to say that like many other predators, these our destroyers, this blood-drinking vampire industry, will prove more resilient by far than any we've faced.

We've beaten malaria, smallpox, the plague; polio and tuberculosis; lions, tigers and bears, and all the beasts of the forest and savannas. But the barons of fossil fuel, I'm deeply afraid, ride us till we die ­— unless we, uncharacteristically­, stop them with organized intention and with force.

That means stopping the next elected president, whoever that poor fool is, with organized intention — and with force.
 

Is Donald Trump Likely to Resign?

Thanks to Trump's mismanagement of the Covid-19 outbreak, the U.S. is on the verge of becoming the Typhoid Mary of major industrial nations

by Thomas Neuburger

Donald Trump's resignation is a topic on many lips these days. Chris Hayes, in a dramatic moment at MSNBC, called for Trump to resign over his mishandling of the coronavirus epidemic (deservedly so), and at least one newspaper editorial board has called for Trump to step down, as has Washington Governor Jay Inslee.

Michael Gerson at the Washington Post called for Trump's resignation because of "diminished moral capacity" related to his alleged callous indifference to the alleged Russian bounties offered for American lives in the Afghan theater of war.

Note that there are a lot of "if"s in these bounty reports — Gerson himself leads his argument with "If, as reported by multiple news sources" — while skeptics think it's awfully convenient timing that leaks from ... who? "American intelligence officials," who proudly admit to lying ... have reached the Times just as the Trump administration is working on Afghanistan peace agreements that could get the U.S. out of a war it's been waging for almost 20 years. (Whether the U.S. has been waging the war successfully or not depends on what you think the U.S. considers success. If military occupation counts as success, we've succeeded. By any other measure, we've failed.)

Analysts are also speculating that Trump could leave office voluntarily or be forced out. Robert Kuttner wrote at The American Prospect that Trump may leave on his own, since nothing seems to be going his way lately and the minute he's unelected he'll be subject to quite a bit of prosecution. Kuttner's speculation hinges on the possibility that Trump could pre-emptively negotiate a deal for resigning that amounts to a giant "Get out of jail free" card.

"Trump may conclude," writes Kuttner, "that he has more leverage to cut the best possible deal with all players while the bargain includes a widely wished-for resignation, rather than after he loses an election and his term merely ends. At that point, Trump’s opponents have no incentive to make deals, and a pardon only goes so far."

Sounds plausible to me, but I've been wrong before.

Others feel that increased pressure from Republicans leaders, fearful of losing both the White House and the Senate in November, will cost him critical support within his party. Most of those discussions are private at the moment, but they are many. The question is the method — how to get him to go.

Which brings us back to the Russian bounties story. Will that carry such weight with the American people that his already "crummy" approval rating (39%) and poll numbers (nearly 10 points below Joe Biden) will drop even further? If so, could a combination of public shaming and deep unpopularity force him out of office?

Sounds unlikely to me, but I've been wrong before.

The Typhoid Mary of Major Industrial Nations

Something that might force his resignation, though, is low on people's radar, but it shouldn't be — the EU travel ban on Americans entering Europe. Consider the following from CNN (emphasis added):

What EU's new border rules mean for travelers
Updated 1st July 2020

(CNN) — The European Union has formally agreed a set of recommendations that will allow travelers from outside the bloc to visit EU countries, months after it shut its external borders in response to the outbreak of Covid-19.

As had been widely expected, the list of 14 countries does not include the United States, whose current Covid infection rate does not meet the criteria set by the EU for it to be considered a "safe country."

The criteria requires that confirmed Covid cases in countries on the list are similar or below that of the EU's per 100,000 citizens over the previous 14 days (starting from June 15).

Countries must also have a "stable or decreasing trend of new cases over this period in comparison to the previous 14 days," while the EU will consider what measures countries are taking, such as contact tracing, and how reliable each nation's data is.

The US has not only the highest number of reported coronavirus infections of any nation, currently 2,590,582, but also the highest number of deaths, at, 126,141, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

US infection rates will need to dramatically drop if Americans are to be allowed entry to European countries, just as the European tourism industry enters what are traditionally its peak months.

The recommendations are expected to come into force as early as July 1, however, it remains up to member states to decide exactly how the implement any changes in border policy.

According to CNN, exemptions may be offered to "EU citizens or family members of an EU citizen; long-term EU residents or family members; those with an 'essential function or need,' such as diplomats, healthcare workers or certain agricultural workers."

Does being wealthy, powerful or connected count as an essential function? How will business travelers be affected? Would Charles Koch be allowed in? Would a high-ranking official of, say, Apple, on her way to a meeting with a German corporate counterpart, be counted as having a need to enter Europe? What if Charles Koch or the Apple CEO wanted merely to look in on their eighth farm in France, bringing the grandkids for a visit? Would they be allowed in?

If yes, how far down the wealth or corporate ladder would one need to be before the ban would apply? Would mere millionaires qualify? How about junior VPs at smaller companies? The questions, once exemptions are granted, are endless.

The Feckless Administration

Which brings us to Donald Trump and his resignation. The following two things are true:

First, U.S. Covid infection rates are never going to drop under the current regimen and under this administration. They will never come down except naturally, if the virus recedes on its own, period. Trump and his administration are structurally incapable of making this better, and yahoo U.S. governors are incapable of not making this worse.

Second, this will be true from now until January 2021 when the next president is sworn in, and perhaps beyond.

The American people can be told to suffer and bear with it, but they don't travel to Europe. Our bipartisan betters do, however, and this includes our Republican betters. If the Europeans are as strict as, frankly, they ought to be, do you think that powerful and wealthy Republicans, many of whose lives are essentially international, will tolerate a travel ban for the next six months?

When and if Republican elites decide that European governments are serious, that France, Germany, Italy and the rest won't let most of them in, I'll bet any money in the world that Donald Trump will be offered a deal, and both parties will be party to crafting it — even if it means letting Vice-President Pence run as an incumbent on the November ballot.

And, if Robert Kuttner is right about Trump's legal needs post-election, I'll also bet he takes it.
  

The Post-Covid Economy

Pre-Covid GDP for the first quarter of 2020. Q2 loss will be five to seven times greater than the Q1 loss.

Post-Covid Fed funds rates. For all practical purposes, Fed interest rates are now zero.

Covid-19 confirmed infection rates per million for selected countries. Y-axis shows the new-case rate. X-axis shows cumulative cases over time. Note that all nations shown have dropped their new-case rate to a tenth or less of their peak — except the United States.

by Thomas Neuburger

"The Fed can print money, but it can’t print jobs. It can buy bonds, but it can’t cure a virus."
—Nomi Prins

"The stock market is a graph of rich people's feelings."
—Source unknown, last quoted here

The current Covid crisis is three crises in one.

First, it's a medical crisis, one in which tens of thousands of Americans are newly infected each day and 125,000 have already died. Both of those numbers continue to rise at a time when most civilized nations have brought infection rates down to a tenth or less of their peak. At some point, the rest of the world will have to quarantine the U.S. — seriously.

Second, it's a financial crisis, one in which unemployment, if measured by Great Depression standards, has reached Great Depression levels, and in which GDP will drop farther and faster than it did at anytime in the 1930s.

Nomi Prins puts the employment picture this way. The current official unemployment rate of 14.8% "excludes workers the Bureau of Labor Statistics considers “marginally attached” to the workforce, meaning those not looking for a job because the prospects are so dim, or those who were only laboring part-time. If you factor them in, the unemployment rate already stands at a Great Depression-level 22.8%. Some industries, of course, felt more pain than others. Employment in the leisure and hospitality sector, for instance, fell in April by 7.7 million, or 47%." [emphasis added]

At its peak, U.S. unemployment during the Great Depression reached just shy of 25%.

GDP fell 4.8% in the first quarter of 2020 (see chart above), almost all of it pre-Covid-19. In late April, Trump economic advisors put second-quarter GDP at an additional –20% to –30%. As of June 26, a consensus of estimates puts Q2 GDP much higher, between –38.1% and –26.7%.

According to Prins, GDP dropped 27.8% between 1930 and 1932. The most optimistic recent Q2 estimate would put the drop for the first half of 2020 well beyond the Great Depression collapse. If reported Q2 GDP is just the average of these estimates, first half GDP for 2020 will be a stunning –40%.

This is going to hurt the real economy, meaning people's lives, in both imaginable and unimaginable ways, regardless of when the virus is brought under control. And if the virus is not brought under control soon, that damage will be even greater. As Prins puts it, "The Fed can electronically print money, but it can’t print jobs. It can buy bonds, but it can’t cure a virus. It can continue to try to stimulate the market, but it can’t banish fear."

Regardless of where the stock market is headed, the real economy is going down. And if indeed the "stock market is a graph of rich people's feelings" as some anonymous wag put it, even today's buoyant market could crash for good if the wealthy finally figure out that their earnings are tied to everyone else's after all.

The economic damage will touch everything. Consider all the vulnerabilities the jobless face: mortgages, rent, student debt, consumer debt, medical debt, medical expenses ... food. Most people are barely managing their debt payments and monthly expenses on a month-to-month basis now. Government unemployment checks will end soon, and if there is a renewal of support, it will be a small one (because, the deficit).

The same with debt deferments. The first rule of modern capitalism is, lenders (our job-creators) must be paid no matter what, and borrowers (potential deadbeats) must always be forced do the honorable thing. It's almost immoral — so we think — to allow them to do otherwise.

We never bailed out the mortgage borrowers in 2008; only the banks. Does anyone think that, ultimately, we'll do the same again. Again, when the real economy goes down, the people will suffer greatly, as will a great many industries. 

Finally, it's a political crisis, perhaps the one we've been expecting since George W. Bush left office, Bush the butcher of Iraq, servant of the nation's rich and powerful. America, sick of rule by its wealthiest elites and their endless, Ratheon-enriching wars, elected in 2008 what it thought was a peace-loving FDR president. It gave him FDR's Congress and an FDR mandate to change the nation, finally, to something most people could live in.

"Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change" was the song of a triumphant Barack Obama in 2008, sung atop the rubble of a crushing financial crisis by a people hoping to rise.

They sang it in vain. "Yes we can" became "No I won't" in the blink of an eye. Promises to enhance Social Security by scrapping the cap on Social Security taxes became endless "grand bargains" to cut benefits designed to appease Republicans (and Obama's Wall Street donors) at the expense of all but the professional and investment classes. Obamacare "healed" the medical care crisis by backstopping medical insurers first, and offered relief to just a fraction, though a large one, of people who desperately needed it. In an unintended irony, Barack Obama presided over the greatest loss of African-American wealth in modern history. His economic policies were a "disaster for middle class wealth," and he made almost all of George Bush's tax cuts permanent.

"At every turn," wrote Matt Bruenig and Ryan Cooper, the Obama administration "was obsessed with protecting the financial system" and left homeowners "to drown."

Many of those who hoped for change in 2008 despaired of it in 2016, and enough Obama voters turned to Trump to give him an Electoral College win over Hillary Clinton, famous for her Wall Street speeches and hatred of progressive policies like single-payer health care.

Will this be the year, if Covid turns the economy to crap, when broken Americans grow angry enough to break things? The nation is angry now, a simmering low boil, and has been since 2016 when it was denied, on the left, a champion of the people, whoever you imagine that champion to have been — and on the right it was offered such a flawed vehicle for "change" that even our grandparents, good Republicans all, may be literally sickened enough to abandon him now.

Someone will win the next presidential election, but frankly, neither candidate deserves to, and neither candidate can give the nation the medicine it actually needs — a world in which the voices "of millions of people calling for change" will actually be heard. Of each of these looming crises — medical, economic, political — the economic could be a world-historical disaster, but the political may be greatest threat of all.
  

Is Biden Really Choosing Between Two Ex-Cops as VP?

by Thomas Neuburger

According to Charles Gasparino, a Fox News reporter whom you may or may not consider reliable (not because he's Fox; because he's Gasparino), Joe Biden has narrowed his VP search list to two names — Rep. Val Demings of Florida and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris of California.

Both are women, both are people of color ... and both are ex-cops of one stripe or another.

Kamala Harris is certainly a familiar name — ex-Attorney General of California and a former "top cop" who for years ran a "tough on crime" agenda. As the Guardian put it during Harris's candidacy phase, "In her career as a prosecutor, [Harris] supported increased criminalization of sex work, took no action in key police abuse cases and defended a troubled prison system. ... Among the many policies now drawing renewed scrutiny, Harris’s approach to sex work, police reform, prisoners’ rights and truancy reveal the tensions between her record in law enforcement and her current progressive rhetoric."

Tulsi Gabbard famously eviscerated Harris over her record as prosecutor during the August 2019 primary debate in Detroit:

"Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.

"She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California."

Gabbard merely scratched the surface of all that's wrong with Harris, but this much is enough in these post-George Floyd times.

Val Demings is less well known, but aside from having been elected to the House in 2016, she's the former police chief of Orlando. A simple search, in Wikipedia no less, produces this damning information:

"According to a 2015 article in The Atlantic, the Orlando Police Department "has a long record of excessive-force allegations, and a lack of transparency on the subject, dating back at least as far as Demings's time as chief."^[10] A 2008 Orlando Weekly exposé described the Orlando Police Department as "a place where rogue cops operate with impunity, and there's nothing anybody who finds himself at the wrong end of their short fuse can do about it."^[11] Demings responded with an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel, arguing that "Looking for a negative story in a police department is like looking for a prayer at church" and added that "It won't take long to find one." In the same op-ed, she cast doubt on video evidence that conflicts with officers' statements in excessive force cases, writing, "a few seconds (even of video) rarely capture the entire set of circumstances."^[10]

"In 2010, an Orlando police officer flipped 84-year-old Daniel Daley over his shoulder after the man became belligerent, throwing him to the ground and breaking a vertebra in his neck.^[12] Daley alleged excessive force and filed a lawsuit. The police department cleared the officer as "justified" in using a "hard take down" to arrest Daley, concluding he used the technique correctly even though he and the other officer made conflicting statements. Demings said "the officer performed the technique within department guidelines" but also said that her department had "begun the process of reviewing the use of force policy and will make appropriate modifications." A federal jury ruled in Daley's favor and awarded him $880,000 in damages."

Of course, this just touches on the problems with Demings tenure as police chief. The Atlantic article quoted above says bluntly, "The [Orlando police] department has a long record of excessive-force allegations, and a lack of transparency on the subject, dating back at least as far as Demings’s time as chief."

In a just world, this would damn her VP chances, just as Amy Klobuchar's record as Hennepin County Attorney, home of Minneapolis, damned her VP chances, at least for now.

But this is not a just world. The presidential race has devolved into a contest both candidates deserve to lose, and Democratic voters have a choice of not voting for president or voting for a candidate who, Baptist-like, will prepare the way for the Next Donald Trump as surely as Barack Obama prepared the way for this one.

The presidential race is now Joe Biden's to lose. If indeed he's choosing between two tough-on-crime, pro-police candidates as his VP and successor, he appears to be trying to lose it, or testing how low he can go in progressive voters' eyes and still win.
 
  

What's Next? A Look Into the Middle Distance

The Sack of Rome in 1527 by Johannes Lingelbach

by Thomas Neuburger

Diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, A Treatise on the Astrolabe

The following offers a brief look into the middle distance, a view past the immediate future — the next few weeks or months when the virus will run its predictable, consequential course — but not so long a view as to reach the logical next phase of human history, the reduction of the species by the ravages of the “Jackpot,” as William Gibson called it: the big one, the global climate crisis and all that will bring.

What's missing from a view of the inevitable immediate and the collapsing distant is what gets us from here to there, from the virus in our faces to the emerging climate to come. The future's unknown, but much can be deduced. In that vein I offer these reflections on the few years or so. From this we learn that despite all that is uncertain, despite the many branches of our path, all roads may yet lead to Rome.

• On the 2020 nomination: Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee or he will be replaced as unfit — not unfit for the job (he's already unfit for that) but for the job of appearing to be fit for the job. A middle path is to give the VP nomination to his heir apparent and hint that the Party will be in charge, but these are roughly equivalent alternatives. Corporate Democrats will offer a corporate candidate.

• On the 2020 election: Trump will beat the Democrat (not certain, but likely in my opinion) or the Democrat will win the White House (much less likely). If Biden is the nominee after all, the election will turn on the votes of Democratic Party loyalist voters — most will turn out — added to the independent anti-Trump vote, who may or may not turn out in sufficient numbers to stem the incumbent tide. In that case, the election may well turn on incumbency.

If someone other than Biden is the nominee, the election will turn on Sanders-supporting independent voters, who will likely look at the substitute nominee, a person who received no primary votes and won no delegates, and ask, “Who is this person? Where was he when the primary was actually happening? Oh, nowhere; that’s where I thought he was.”

In other words, a more-competent-than-Biden alternative will have an even bigger hill to climb than Biden would have had, and his or her odds of losing to Trump will be significantly increased. The impression of increased competency won't increase support among Party loyalists, whose votes are guaranteed in any case, but an out-of-the-blue corporate candidate will increase the resistance of non-Party-loyalist and Bernie-got-screwed independents. Many will stay home, more than would have stayed home for Biden; others will revenge-vote for Trump under the principle, "I don't like the knife in my chest, but I hate the one stuck in my back."

• In none of these cases will much of anything change after the election, at least not once Covid has run most of its course. The need for a radical restructured economy will be waved away — by the corporate Republicans as too much "government interference"; by corporate Democrats who control the post-Sanders Party, as “irresponsible” and “unaffordable” given the glut of spending on the virus crisis itself.

In other words, whether Biden is the nominee or not, his promise that nothing will fundamentally change will indeed be kept by whoever is elected. Trump, if president, will do what Trump will do, or something worse. The Democrat, if president, will do what the Party always does, serve its donors while trying to placate workers they've abandoned. In neither case will workers see relief.

• The rebellion against both parties’ corruption will continue as before — or as it would have continued had Coronavirus not worked its interrupted the course.

If Trump is the next president, his Republican critics (they do exist) will be moved to silence by the thought that at least “their guy” is in power. Angry independents though, and newly bankrupt Sanders-supporting Democrats, will not depart so quietly.

In fact, they will not depart at all. They will conclude, instead and correctly, there’s no electoral path that will change their lives.

If a corporate Democrat (the only kind still standing) is the next president, his Democratic critics will be guilted into silence by the shame-selling corporate press. Angry independents though, newly-bankrupt Sanders-supporting Democrats, and all struggling Trump-supporting Republicans will not depart so quietly.

In fact, they will not depart at all. They will conclude, instead and correctly, there’s no electoral path that will change their lives.

• Thus the non-electoral portion (to steal a line from My Favorite Year) of this decade-long rebellion will begin, with all that this implies for endless populist promises not kept, multinational billionaire bailouts purchased and passed, and the clash of the newly-desperate against the muscular force of federal, state, local and judicial machines, all charged with keeping the “peace” at the expense of the people. 

With Sanders out of the game — whether by choice, inability, or the sly Obama hand that puppeteered in plain sight, it matters not at all — with Sanders gone, there are no non-corporate candidates left, which leaves the ravaged with no good choice at all. If they choose to act, they will choose among bad choices, and the corporate state will do what it will do, what entrenched power always does when faced with rebellion.

So far in this drama, the people have not lain quiet; they have acted. I expect no less now. Thus we arrive at Rome by any path.

This is the middle-distance as I see it, the route for the next few years. All roads may lead to Rome, but maybe not to the empire of our minds. People forget that Rome was sometimes sacked. 
  

Political Retaliation: Cuomo Proposes Kicking Third Parties Off the NY Ballot

Zephyr Teachout ran against Andrew Cuomo in 2014. Working Families Party endorsed Cuomo then, but not in 2018.

by Thomas Neuburger

A Very Short Story in Three Short Acts

Act I. Monica Klein tweeted this on April 1, 2020:

"No other state in America has ballot requirements as strict as @NYGovCuomo is proposing.

While some Democrats push for fair & open elections, NY's Gov is kicking 3rd parties off the ballot."

Act II. Klein's tweet was in response to this, from Jimmy Vielkind, also on April 1, 2020:

"Minor parties including the @NYWFP [Working Families Party] have been screaming for days that lawmakers would revive the recommendations (which they loathed) of a commission that increased ballot access requirements.

It’s in one of the #nybudget bills, as, Bill Hammond notes"

Here's what Bill Hammond noted:

Found in the newly amended Transportation and Economic Development bill.

Nothing improves public confidence in the state's democratic process like jamming through major changes to the democratic process in the last-minute budget rush. https://t.co/VaYiyGBlpv pic.twitter.com/86aultx6ju

— Bill Hammond (@NYHammond) April 1, 2020

I guess making it harder to get on the ballot and squashing third parties is all part of improving public confidence in the democratic process. pic.twitter.com/nhbJIHFitj

— Bill Hammond (@NYHammond) April 1, 2020

Act III. Would it surprise you to learn that the WFP endorsed Andrew Cuomo in 2010 and 2014, but not in 2018?

New York politics got a lot more interesting over the weekend. The left-wing Working Families Party (WFP) endorsed Cynthia Nixon in the governor’s race rather than siding with Andrew Cuomo, the powerful incumbent. The WFP’s defection from Cuomo, who the organization supported in 2010 and 2014, means the contest is going to be more competitive than observers originally thought. How it develops over the next six and a half months will reveal fundamental truths about our state’s most powerful interests—and ourselves.

In an effort to minimize the WFP’s endorsement of Cynthia Nixon, two major unions—SEIU 32BJ and the Communications Workers of America—left the organization in protest. Other labor leaders aligned with Cuomo are likely to either follow suit in deed or in action.

Note the retaliation of labor unions "aligned with Cuomo" who started withholding support (and most likely funding as well) from the WFP.

One of Trump's worst qualities is his rapey-ness. It seems the Democrats are offering one of those as well, but the country may not be buying.

Another is retaliation. Is there any question that Andrew Cuomo, if he gets national executive power, will rule with an iron fist?

Will Cuomo be the next Daddy mainstream Democrats offer to voters to "save" them? If so, look out.
 

New York Times Clears National Security Stories with the Government Before Publication. Source: New York Times

New York Times response to Donald Trump's attack on the Times story revealing recent U.S. cyber-attacks against Russia

by Thomas Neuburger

The New York Times has just admitted that it clears national security stories with the government before it publishes them. We've already known this occurred some of the time — see "How the NY Times & U.S. Government Worked Together to Suppress James Risen’s Post-9/11 Reporting." It now looks like it occurs most of the time, if not all of the time.

The source for the revelation, at least in the current instance, is the New York Times.

This find is courtesy of Ben Norton, writing at Grayzone:

The New York Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories to the US government for approval from “national security officials” before publication.

This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have said: The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing reporting that top officials don’t want made public.

On June 15, the Times reported that the US government is escalating its cyber attacks on Russia’s power grid. According to the article, “the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively,” as part of a larger “digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.”

In response to the report, Donald Trump attacked the Times on Twitter, calling the article “a virtual act of Treason.”

The New York Times PR office replied to Trump from its official Twitter account, defending the story and noting that it had, in fact, been cleared with the US government before being printed.

“Accusing the press of treason is dangerous,” the Times communications team said. “We described the article to the government before publication.”

“As our story notes, President Trump’s own national security officials said there were no concerns,” the Times added.

The reason always given for the government suppressing a national security story is, of course, that lives will be put in danger, even when they won't. The following is Risen, as reported by Norton, talking about this arrangement between Times editors and the government, an arrangement he once went along with, but then grew to distrust:

Risen detailed how his editors had been “quite willing to cooperate with the government.” ... There is an “informal arrangement” between the state and the press, Risen explained, where US government officials “regularly engaged in quiet negotiations with the press to try to stop the publication of sensitive national security stories.”

“At the time, I usually went along with these negotiations,” the former New York Times reported [sic] said. He recalled an example of a story he was writing on Afghanistan just prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Then-CIA Director George Tenet called Risen personally and asked him to kill the story.

“He told me the disclosure would threaten the safety of the CIA officers in Afghanistan,” Risen said. “I agreed.”

Risen said he later questioned whether or not this was the right decision. “If I had reported the story before 9/11, the CIA would have been angry, but it might have led to a public debate about whether the United States was doing enough to capture or kill bin Laden,” he wrote. “That public debate might have forced the CIA to take the effort to get bin Laden more seriously.”

This dilemma led Risen to reconsider responding to US government requests to censor stories. “And that ultimately set me on a collision course with the editors at the New York Times,” he said.

This practice applied not only after 9/11 and the Iraq War, but long afterward as well:

In the lead-up to the Iraq War, Risen frequently “clashed” with Times editors because he raised questions about the US government’s lies. But his stories “stories raising questions about the intelligence, particularly the administration’s claims of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, were being cut, buried, or held out of the paper altogether.”

The Times’ executive editor Howell Raines “was believed by many at the paper to prefer stories that supported the case for war,” Risen said.

In another anecdote, the former Times journalist recalled a scoop he had uncovered on a botched CIA plot. The Bush administration got wind of it and called him to the White House, where then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice ordered the Times to bury the story.

Risen said Rice told him “to forget about the story, destroy my notes, and never make another phone call to discuss the matter with anyone.”

“The Bush administration was successfully convincing the press to hold or kill national security stories,” Risen wrote. And the Barack Obama administration subsequently accelerated the “war on the press.”

I've written before that the U.S. is one of the most heavily propagandized nations in the world, most recently here ("ICE is Paying Millions to Spy on People’s Communications"). This propaganda takes many forms, from the soft propaganda of military intervention into movie content (see this criticism of the film Pitch Perfect 3, "I Paid To See A Movie About Singing. I Got Ninety Minutes Of Pentagon Propaganda.") to the hard propaganda of former generals, admirals and security officials masquerading as "independent analysts" on news programs where they usually advocate for unpopular government policies, like war (see Lee Fang's "Who’s Paying the Pro-War Pundits?" and "Pentagon military analyst program" at SourceWatch).

We now know, if there was any doubt, that those heroes of the #Resistance at the New York Times, by their own admission, have been fully folded into the government's media "information" project. Good to know.

Ignoring the Elected President

Side note: It's understandable, in a way, that in the current panicky environment, administration employees are treating the president, their boss, as someone to withhold information from, as they did in the case of the U.S. military's cyber-intrusion into the Russian power grid. Again, according to the New York Times (emphasis added):

Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid.

Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials[.]

Is this a precedent, though, we want to cheer or set? The act of cementing in place an American Praetorian Guard with a publicly sanctioned veto over decisions of an elected head of state, once done, won't be undone easily.

Is this what we want our next constitution to become, a state in which it's OK for elected officials to be publicly frustrated by their unelected subordinates? One must consider the future before radically altering the present.

I've said this before, but consider: If a President Bernie Sanders wanted better relations with Russia and North Korea, and went about it in a smart, safe way; wanted to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. by smartly but radically renegotiating our billionaire- and corporate-friendly trade deals; wanted to radically reduce spending on the national security apparatus, on our endless wars, and spend instead on government-provided services like Medicare for All (which, by the way, would devastate several powerful, well-funded industries and bipartisan donor constituencies) ... and for good measure, started jailing bankers again...

...if a President Sanders attempted to do all that, what would be the response of the national security apparatus, guardians of the status quo? Whom would they serve, the billionaire owners of the established, corrupt-but-lucrative bipartisan state, or the Sanders-led revolutionary FDR-style government they're constitutionally sworn to defend?

How much would be kept from him by "his" administration? How many who work for him would openly block his agenda, using the security state's propaganda resources (such as the New York Times) to defend their actions?

How much of the future are we willing to sacrifice in order to fix the present? After all, if Establishment leaders really want to be rid of President Trump, there's a fully constitutional method for doing it — impeachment. Instead they seem to be choosing these anti-constitutional methods.

This is a plan that will backfire. Once a nation opens the door to rule by its security elite, as the U.S. has increasingly done, the guardians and beneficiaries of that door almost never let it be closed.

Word to the wise.
 

That Time the U.S. Military Played a War Game Against "Iran" — and Lost

The Russian navy test-fires a Moskit P-270 antiship cruise missile in February of 2015. The P-270 Moskit is a Russian supersonic ramjet powered cruise missile (source). To view full-size, click here.

by Thomas Neuburger

Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.
     –Michael Ledeen, holder of the Freedom Chair at AEI

Iran is not Iraq.
     –Lawrence Wilkerson

Call it the Kobayashi Maru in reverse.

In the fictional Star Trek universe, Captain Kirk, as a cadet, was able to win an unwinnable war game simulation. In command of a starship that received a distress call from a damaged and failing ship in the Neutral Zone, the choices facing the cadet are stark — attempt a dangerous rescue and risk galaxy-wide war with the Klingons, or do nothing and watch as the ship and all lives aboard are lost. Unbeknownst to the cadets who took the test, the simulator was programmed to make sure any rescue attempt ended in their destruction.

The training officers who ran the simulation later explained that its purpose was not for the cadets to win or lose, but to put them in an impossible situation and observe their character through their reaction. Kirk's reaction was to try to win. On the third try, he defeated the game by secretly reprogramming the simulator.

In the Kobayashi Maru story, the "system" stacks the cards against the "hero" — here, the cadet — and one of the cadets unstacks them.

But what if the story happens in reverse? What if the cadet defeats an unbiased simulation, causing the system — here, the training staff — to reprogram the simulator, adding bias that prevents a win on the next try?

In 2002, the U. S. military ran a war game (including live action and simulations) in which the enemy was very much like Iran. The goal of the "U.S. side" was to issue "Iran" an ultimatum, let the enemy respond, then defeat it.

The U.S. side failed — the officer commanding the "Iranian side" won the simulation, sinking an aircraft carrier and 10 cruisers in the process. So the game was suspended, the rules rewritten to forbid tactics that worked, and the simulation restarted. Needless to say, the U.S. side was successful the second time around, and the commander of the "Iranian" forces quit the game in disgust.

In Star Trek terms, he'd been "Kobayashi Maru"-ed — the game had been reprogrammed to force his defeat.

Can the U.S. Military Defeat Iran?

This is the U.S. military that John Bolton and Mike Pompeo want to take to war against the real Iran, a military that refused to learn from its own war game because the outcome produced the wrong answer, an American loss. (You can read how big a loss below.)

Can this U.S. military be successful against Iran in a real encounter? Or will the world watch as a bunch of very good Russian missiles sink an aircraft carrier in under an hour?

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, agrees with the second assessment: "I think aircraft carriers are anything but an instrument of national power except against countries like Panama or someone who really can’t shoot back very well because aircraft carriers are extraordinarily vulnerable and we’re going to find that out when one of them with 5,000 hands and $14 billion worth of taxpayer money is sunk in less than 30 minutes, whenever we get engaged in something real."

For an example of how vulnerable U.S. warships are to these new-generation missiles, watch the video at the top. These missiles can also be launched from land (modified trucks), underwater, and the air. 

Millennium Challenge 2002

Here's the full story of the Millennium Challenge 2002 war game courtesy of Wikipedia (emphasis added):

Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States Armed Forces in mid-2002. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military "transformation"—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more effective command and control of current and future weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, referred to as "Blue", and an unknown adversary in the Middle East, "Red", with many lines of evidence pointing at Iran being the Red side.

Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.

Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.

At this point, the exercise was suspended ... After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory....

So much for the best bloated military money can buy. Wilkerson may be right. In a real fight that may be all it proves to be — a swollen, badly run excuse to extract masses of government cash for its patrons and clients, and not much good at fighting a country large enough to resist being thrown against a wall, like Iran.

In the same interview quoted above, Wilkerson added, "The military just hooks up, like it’s hooking up to an intravenous I.V. system and the money just pours out— slush fund money, appropriated money, and everything else. This [war talk] is all about money and it’s all about keeping the complex alive..." The war talk Wilkerson was referring to was about China, but no matter; the point is the same.

If Pompeo and Bolton talk Trump into launching an attack against Iran, a nation four times the size of Iraq, do you like his odds? I don't.

Even so, the military loss would not be the worst of the outcomes. More than 20% of world oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz every day. A disruption there would be catastrophic — first, for everyone in the region, which would explode in violence; and later for much or most of the rest of the world, including, perhaps, the shopping malls of America.
  

The Standoff at the D.C Venezuelan Embassy and Why It's Bad for the U.S.

Standoff at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C. (Photo Ann Wright)

by Thomas Neuburger

This is US military policy, being carried out unlawfully on US soil. The DC police and Mayor Bowser's administration are siding with the right-wingers, who are acting unlawfully and with excessive force.
     —RJ Eskow via Twitter

UPDATE: The last Embassy Protectors have been arrested and removed. It has begun.

BREAKING NEWS: Police arrested the 4 people remaining in the Venezuela Embassy as part of the #EmbassyProtectionCollective. Total violation of Vienna Conventions. Shameful!!!

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) May 16, 2019

You may have heard news of something going on at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C, but since none of the usual media outlets are covering it, it may not have made much of an impression and the detail may be a bit of a mystery to most people.

In a nutshell, here's what's happened to date:

• The Trump administration attempted to spark a coup in Venezuela against the corrupt, but legitimately elected president Nicolás Maduro using opposition politician Juan Guaidó as its agent of change.

For more on the background of U.S.-Venezuelan relations and the current crisis, see "Venezuela and Binary Choice" and this timeline via Code Pink. Venezuela has oil, of course, a whole lot of it, and the U.S. has John Bolton in charge of foreign policy.

• The coup failed, however, leaving Maduro still in office and still in charge of the government.

• On April 10, prior to the failed coup, the Maduro government, fearing a takeover of their D.C. embassy by pro-Guaidó opponents and/or agents provocateurs backed by the U.S., invited members of the anti-war group Code Pink into the D.C. embassy as guests. They have been there ever since.

• The U.S. government, which still considers the Maduro government illegitimate, responded by cutting off electricity, food and water to the embassy, creating a standoff and an embassy under siege — in Georgetown.

This is where things stood until May 13, when the D.C. police taped "trespass notices," with no signature or letterhead, to the doors of the embassy and prepared to enter by force. (Consider for a moment what would, could, and will happen to U.S. embassies elsewhere in the world — starting with the embassy in Venezuela — if Bolton, Trump and the U.S. government are allowed to set invasion of foreign embassies as a precedent.)

Police did enter the embassy, but what happened next will surprise you. I'll turn the rest of the narrative over to Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright of Code Pink (emphasis mine). For the outcome, stay tuned.

---

Venezuela Embassy Protection Collective Defies Unlawful “No Trespass” Order

As this saga of the future of the Venezuela Embassy in Georgetown continues to unfold, history will record this as a key turning point in U.S.-Venezuela relations

by Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright

An extraordinary set of events has been unfolding at the Venezuela Embassy in Washington DC, ever since the Embassy Protection Collective began living at the embassy with the permission of the elected government of Venezuela on April 10 to protect it from an illegal takeover by Venezuela’s opposition. The actions of the police on the evening of May 13 added a new level of drama.

Since the cutting off of electricity, food and water inside the embassy has not been enough to force the collective to leave, late Tuesday afternoon, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police handed out a trespassing notice that was printed without letterhead or signature from any U.S. government official.

The notice said that the Trump administration recognizes Venezuela opposition leader Juan Guaido as the head of the government of Venezuela and that the Guaido-appointed ambassador to the United States, Carlos Vecchio, and his appointed ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Gustavo Tarre, were to determine who is allowed into the Embassy. Those not authorized by the ambassadors were to be considered trespassers. Those inside the building were “requested” to depart the building.

The notice appeared to have been written by the Guaido faction, but was posted and read by the DC police as if it were a document from the U.S. government.

The police taped the notice to the doors all around the Embassy and later called in the fire department to cut the lock and chain that had been on the front door of the Embassy since diplomatic relations were broken between Venezuela and the United States on January 23.

Adding to the drama, supporters of both sides began to gather. The pro-Guaido forces, who had erected tents around the perimeter of the embassy and had set up a long-term encampment to oppose the collective inside the building, were ordered to take down their encampment. It seemed as though this was part of moving them from outside the embassy to the inside.

Two hours later, some members of the collective inside the embassy voluntarily left to reduce the load on food and water, and four members refused to obey what they considered an illegal order to vacate the premises. The crowd waited in anticipation of the police going inside and physically removing, and arresting, the remaining collective members. The pro-Guaido forces were jubilant, crying “tic-toc, tic-toc” as they were counting down the minutes before their victory.

In a remarkable turn of events, however, instead of arresting the collective members who remained inside, a lengthy discussions ensued between them, their lawyer Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and the DC police. The discussion focused on the reason collective members were in the Embassy in the first place—trying to stop the Trump administration from violating the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic and Consular Facilities by turning over the diplomatic premises to a coup government.

Collective members reminded police officers that following illegal orders does not protect them from being charged with criminal actions.

BREAKING: authorities just taped this ‘trespassing notice’ onto the Venezuelan embassy. It orders all those inside to leave immediately and threatens arrest to those who refuse to comply with orders.

This is illegal under international law! pic.twitter.com/Xdlgk29Zot

— CODEPINK (@codepink) May 13, 2019

After two hours, instead of arresting the collective, police turned around, locked the door behind them, posted guards and said they would ask their superiors how to handle the situation. The crowd was stunned that the State Department and DC police, after having over a month to organize the eviction, had begun this operation without a full plan to include arrests warrants in case the Collective members did not vacate the building voluntarily.

Kevin Zeese, a Collective member, wrote a statement concerning the status of the Collective and the Embassy:

This is the 34th day of our living in the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC. We are prepared to stay another 34 days, or however long is needed to resolve the embassy dispute in a peaceful way consistent with international law...Before doing so, we reiterate that our collective is one of independent people and organizations not affiliated with any government. While we are all US citizens, we are not agents of the United States. While we are here with permission of the Venezuelan government, we are not their agents or representatives...  The exit from the embassy that best resolves issues to the benefit of the United States and Venezuela is a mutual Protecting Power Agreement. The United States wants a Protecting Power for its embassy in Caracas. Venezuela wants a Protecting Power for its embassy in DC.

The Embassy Protectors will not barricade ourselves, or hide in the embassy in the event of an unlawful entry by police. We will gather together and peacefully assert our rights to remain in the building and uphold international law. Any order to vacate based on a request by coup conspirators that lack governing authority will not be a lawful order. The coup has failed multiple times in Venezuela. The elected government is recognized by the Venezuelan courts under Venezuelan law and by the United Nations under international law. An order by the US-appointed coup plotters would not be legal... Such an entry would put embassies around the world and in the United States at risk. We are concerned about US embassies and personnel around the world if the Vienna Convention is violated at this embassy. It would set a dangerous precedent that would likely be used against US embassies... If an illegal eviction and unlawful arrests are made, we will hold all decision-makers in the chain of command and all officers who enforce unlawful orders accountable... There is no need for the United States and Venezuela to be enemies. Resolving this embassy dispute diplomatically should lead to negotiations over other issues between the nations.

We anticipate that the Trump administration will go to court today, May 14 to request an official U.S.-government order to remove the Collective members from the Venezuelan Embassy.

Members of the National Lawyers Guild wrote a statement challenging the Trump administration’s handing over of diplomatic facilities to unlawful persons:

The undersigned write to condemn the violations of law which are occurring at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C. and to demand immediate action be taken. Prior to April 25, 2019, a group of peace activists were invited to the Embassy by the government of Venezuela—recognized as such by the United Nations—and continue to be lawfully on the premises.

Nonetheless, the United States government, through various law enforcement agencies, have condoned and protected violent opponents in support of an attempted siege of the Embassy. In so doing, the U.S. government is creating a dangerous precedent for diplomatic relations with all nations. These actions are not only illegal, but they put embassies around the world at risk. [...]

The contempt shown by the Trump Administration for these principles and for international law puts at risk the entire system of diplomatic relations which could have a reverberating effect in nations throughout the world.

The undersigned demand that the United States immediately cease its ongoing state-sponsored assault and illegal intervention in Venezuela and against its government, which continues to be recognized by the United Nations and the majority of the world. We demand that local and federal law enforcement immediately refrain from exposing the peaceful invitees and their supporters inside and outside the Embassy to harm in violation of their fundamental human rights.

As this saga of the future of the Venezuela Embassy in Georgetown continues to unfold, history will record this as a key turning point in U.S.-Venezuela relations, U.S. violation of a key tenet of international law and most of all, as a heroic example of US citizens doing everything in their power--including going without food, water and electricity and facing daily assaults by the opposition—to try to stop a US-orchestrated coup.
 

Boys Go to Baghdad. Men Go to Tehran.

The red arrow shows the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important shipping lanes (and bottlenecks) in the world. It's also within Iran's UN-defined "territorial water" if it wishes to make that claim.

by Thomas Neuburger

"'Anyone can go to Baghdad; real men go to Tehran', an administration official was heard saying shortly after the fall of Baghdad" (source).

This quip was then widely transmuted to the much more macho (and euphonious) "Boys go to Baghdad. Men go to Tehran":

My first encounter with the phrase came late in 2003 when, newly enrolled in graduate school, I gathered in the department lounge with a group of first-year students for an ad hoc session on foreign policy. With the Bush administration still mobilizing consent for America’s second go-around with Iraq, a very conservative, very well connected classmate shared with us what he was hearing from his friends inside the government. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein was but the first step in a larger project, he said in a whisper, as if to make us accomplices in a tragic conspiracy. Iran would be next. “Boys go to Baghdad,” he intoned, “but men go to Tehran.”

The Trump administration is the latest to ride that train. It's now the stated policy of the United States to aggressively reduce all Iranian exports "to zero":

“President Donald J. Trump has decided not to reissue Significant Reduction Exceptions (SREs) when they expire in early May,” the White House said in a statement. “This decision is intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue.”

Strong words indeed.

Yet it's one thing to declare a sanctions regime that tries to prevent all Iranian oil from reaching the market; Iran has dealt with sanctions before and survived. It's another to classify all oil owned by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), an affiliate of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as the property of a terrorist organization, as the U.S. has in effect done — and then declare an international sanctions regime against that oil, with no waivers, sanctions that affect China, India, Turkey, Japan and South Korea.

Those sanctions started May 1. If no one backs down, this path leads to war.

From a good analysis by Scott Ritter of the latest U.S. assault on Iran (emphasis added):

What if Iran Retaliates and Shuts Down the Strait of Hormuz?

Some 18 million barrels of oil transit through every day. The economic impact would be catastrophic.

...There is a major difference between 2018 and today, however. The recent decision by the Trump administration to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC) a terrorist organization has complicated the issue of Iran’s oil sales, and America’s reaction in response.

The IRGC has long been subject to U.S. sanctions. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), determined that National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was an “agent or affiliate” of the IRGC and therefore is subject to sanctions under the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012 (ITRSHRA). Other Iranian oil companies have likewise been linked to the IRGC, including Kermanshah Petrochemical Industries Co., Pardis Petrochemical Co., Parsian Oil & Gas Development Co., and Shiraz Petrochemical Co.

While in 2012 the United States determined that there was insufficient information to link the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) as an affiliate of the IRGC, under the current sanctions regime imposed in 2018 the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and the NITC have been blacklisted in their entirety.

By linking the bulk of Iran’s oil exporting capacity to the IRGC, the United States has opened the door to means other than economic sanctions when it comes to enforcing its “zero” ban on Iranian oil sales. Any Iranian oil in transit would be classified as the property of a terrorist organization, as would any Iranian vessel carrying oil.

Likewise, any vessel from any nation that carried Iranian oil would be classified as providing material support to a terrorist organization, and thereby subject to interdiction, confiscation, and/or destruction. This is the distinction the world is missing when assessing Iran’s current threats to close the Strait of Hormuz. It’s one thing to sanction Iranian entities, including the IRGC—Iran has historically found enough work-arounds to defeat such efforts. It is an altogether different situation if the Unite[d] States opts to physically impede Iran’s ability to ship oil. This would be a red line for Iran, and a trigger for it to shut down all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Ritter points out that, so far at least, "U.S. naval and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz continue to respond to the queries transmitted by the IRGC naval forces responsible for securing Iran’s portion of the strategic waterway—an awkward reality given that the IRGC has been designated a terrorist organization, which means the U.S. Navy freely communicates and coordinates with terrorists."

But what will happen when the sanctions inevitably fail? As Ritter points out, Iran’s Foreign Minister has bragged that “Iran has a PhD in sanctions busting.” Will the "real men" in the Trump administration — the Pompeos, the Boltons, and Trump himself perhaps — be forced to "do something" or sacrifice their manhoods on the altar of pointless threats? 

If the U.S. attempts to deny or restrict traffic through the Strait, Iran could enforce the 1982 United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea that grants all countries the right to declare its "territorial waters" out to a maximum of 12 miles from the coastline, and then close the Strait to all U.S. shipping. Ritter is certain this is their next step if the U.S. tries to "do something" to enforce its failed sanctions.

What then? Do "real men" back down or respond with force? If the U.S. does respond militarily to Iran closing the Strait to U.S. shipping, the U.S. will be the aggressor under international law, and this time few nations that matter will support us.

Stay tuned.