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by **admin** » Tue Dec 08, 2020 2:56 am

The Real Scandal: U.S. Media Uses Falsehoods to Defend Joe Biden From Hunter's Emails
Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept: An attempt to assess the importance of the known evidence, and a critique of media lies to protect their favored candidate, could not be published at The Intercept
by Glenn Greenwald
Oct 29, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

I am posting here the most recent draft of my article about Joe and Hunter Biden — the last one seen by Intercept editors before telling me that they refuse to publish it absent major structural changes involving the removal of all sections critical of Joe Biden, leaving only a narrow article critiquing media outlets. I will also, in a separate post, publish all communications I had with Intercept editors surrounding this article so you can see the censorship in action and, given the Intercept’s denials, decide for yourselves (this is the kind of transparency responsible journalists provide, and which the Intercept refuses to this day to provide regarding their conduct in the Reality Winner story). This draft obviously would have gone through one more round of proof-reading and editing by me — to shorten it, fix typos, etc — but it’s important for the integrity of the claims to publish the draft in unchanged form that Intercept editors last saw, and announced that they would not “edit” but completely gut as a condition to publication:

TITLE: THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTER’S EMAILS

Publication by the New York Post two weeks ago of emails from Hunter Biden's laptop, relating to Vice President Joe Biden's work in Ukraine, and subsequent articles from other outlets concerning the Biden family's pursuit of business opportunities in China, provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.

One outcome is that the Biden campaign concluded, rationally, that there is no need for the front-running presidential candidate to address even the most basic and relevant questions raised by these materials. Rather than condemn Biden for ignoring these questions -- the natural instinct of a healthy press when it comes to a presidential election -- journalists have instead led the way in concocting excuses to justify his silence.

After the Post’s first article, both that newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.

Individuals included in some of the email chains have confirmed the contents' authenticity. One of Hunter’s former business partners, Tony Bubolinski, has stepped forward on the record to confirm the authenticity of many of the emails and to insist that Hunter along with Joe Biden's brother Jim were planning on including the former Vice President in at least one deal in China. And GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who appeared in one of the published email chains, appeared to confirm the authenticity as well, though he refused to answer follow-up questions about it.

Thus far, no proof has been offered by Bubolinski that Biden ever consummated his participation in any of those discussed deals. The Wall Street Journal says that it found no corporate records reflecting that a deal was finalized and that "text messages and emails related to the venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski, mainly from the spring and summer of 2017, don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture."

But nobody claimed that any such deals had been consummated -- so the conclusion that one had not been does not negate the story. Moreover, some texts and emails whose authenticity has not been disputed state that Hunter was adamant that any discussions about the involvement of the Vice President be held only verbally and never put in writing.

Beyond that, the Journal's columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of documents and "found correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post," including ones where Hunter was insisting that it was his connection to his father that was the greatest asset sought by the Chinese conglomerate with whom they were negotiating. The New York Times on Sunday reached a similar conclusion: while no documents prove that such a deal was consummated, "records produced by Mr. Bobulinski show that in 2017, Hunter Biden and James Biden were involved in negotiations about a joint venture with a Chinese energy and finance company called CEFC China Energy," and "make clear that Hunter Biden saw the family name as a valuable asset, angrily citing his 'family’s brand' as a reason he is valuable to the proposed venture."

These documents also demonstrate, reported the Times, "that the countries that Hunter Biden, James Biden and their associates planned to target for deals overlapped with nations where Joe Biden had previously been involved as vice president." Strassel noted that "a May 2017 'expectations' document shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding another 10% for 'the big guy'—who Mr. Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden." And the independent journalist Matt Taibbi published an article on Sunday with ample documentation suggesting that Biden's attempt to replace a Ukranian prosecutor in 2015 benefited Burisma.

All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important questions about whether the former Vice President and current front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son's business associates. But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial story, a union of the nation's most powerful entities, including its news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these questions rather than try to provide answers to them.

The initial documents, claimed the New York Post, were obtained when the laptops containing them were left at a Delaware repair shop with water damage and never picked up, allowing the owner to access its contents and then turn them over to both the FBI and a lawyer for Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani. The repair store owner confirmed this narrative in interviews with news outlets and then (under penalty of prosecution) to a Senate Committee; he also provided the receipt purportedly signed by Hunter. Neither Hunter nor the Biden campaign has denied these claims.

Publication of that initial New York Post story provoked a highly unusual censorship campaign by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions. And while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for Twitter’s handling of the censorship and reversed the policy that led to the blocking of all links the story, the New York Post, the nation’s fourth-largest newspaper, continues to be locked out of its Twitter account, unable to post as the election approaches, for almost two weeks.

After that initial censorship burst from Silicon Valley, whose workforce and oligarchs have donated almost entirely to the Biden campaign, it was the nation's media outlets and former CIA and other intelligence officials who took the lead in constructing reasons why the story should be dismissed, or at least treated with scorn. As usual for the Trump era, the theme that took center stage to accomplish this goal was an unsubstantiated claim about the Kremlin responsibility for the story.

Numerous news outlets, including the Intercept, quickly cited a public letter signed by former CIA officials and other agents of the security state claiming that the documents have the “classic trademarks" of a “Russian disinformation” plot. But, as media outlets and even intelligence agencies are now slowly admitting, no evidence has ever been presented to corroborate this assertion. On Friday, the New York Times reported that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation” and the paper said even the FBI has “acknowledged that it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.”

The Washington Post on Sunday published an op-ed -- by Thomas Rid, one of those centrists establishmentarian professors whom media outlets routinely use to provide the facade of expert approval for deranged conspiracy theories -- that contained this extraordinary proclamation: "We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren't."

A close look at the evidence shows that neither Biden nor Trump have the facts on their side for now. Take a step back, and the Russian interference of 2016 holds valuable lessons on what to do and what not to do in 2020: We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation -- even if they probably aren't.

Even the letter from the former intelligence officials cited by The Intercept and other outlets to insinuate that this was all part of some “Russian disinformation” scheme explicitly admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” though many media outlets omitted that crucial acknowledgement when citing the letter in order to disparage the story as a Kremlin plot:

We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -- just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a signficant role in this case.
If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.

Despite this complete lack of evidence, the Biden campaign adopted this phrase used by intelligence officials and media outlets as its mantra for why the materials should not be discussed and why they would not answer basic questions about them. “I think we need to be very, very clear that what he's doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation," said Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield about the possibility that Trump would raise the Biden emails at Thursday night’s debate. Biden’s senior advisor Symone Sanders similarly warned on MSNBC: “if the president decides to amplify these latest smears against the vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation."

The few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name trend all morning along with the derogatory nickname “MAGA Haberman.” CBS News’ Bo Erickson was widely attacked even by his some in the media simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a "smear."

That it is irresponsible and even unethical to mention these documents became a pervasive view in mainstream journalism. The NPR Public Editor, in an amazing statement representative of much of the prevailing media mentality, explicitly justified NPR’s refusal to cover the story on the ground that “we do not want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories . . . [or] waste the readers’ and listeners’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

To justify her own show’s failure to cover the story, 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl resorted to an entirely different justification. “It can’t be verified,” the CBS reporter claimed when confronted by President Trump in an interview about her program’s failure to cover the Hunter Biden documents. When Trump insisted there were multiple ways to verify the materials on the laptop, Stahl simply repeated the same phrase: “it can’t be verified.”

After the final presidential debate on Thursday night, a CNN panel mocked the story as too complex and obscure for anyone to follow -- a self-fulfilling prophecy given that, as the network's media reporter Brian Stelter noted with pride, the story has barely been mentioned either on CNN or MSNBC. As the New York Times noted on Friday: "most viewers of CNN and MSNBC would not have heard much about the unconfirmed Hunter Biden emails.... CNN’s mentions of “Hunter” peaked at 20 seconds and MSNBC’s at 24 seconds one day last week."

On Sunday, CNN's Christiane Amanpour barely pretended to be interested in any journalism surrounding the story, scoffing during an interview at requests from the RNC's Elizabeth Harrington to cover the story and verify the documents by telling her: "We're not going to do your work for you." Watch how the U.S.'s most mainstream journalists are openly announcing their refusal to even consider what these documents might reflect about the Democratic front-runner:

These journalists are desperate not to know. As Taibbi wrote on Sunday about this tawdry press spectacle: "The least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies."

All of those excuses and pretexts — emanating largely from a national media that is all but explicit in their eagerness for Biden to win — served for the first week or more after the Post story to create a cone of silence around this story and, to this very day, a protective shield for Biden. As a result, the front-running presidential candidate knows that he does not have to answer even the most basic questions about these documents because most of the national press has already signaled that they will not press him to do so; to the contrary, they will concoct defenses on his behalf to avoid discussing it.

The relevant questions for Biden raised by this new reporting are as glaring as they are important. Yet Biden has had to answer very few of them yet because he has not been asked and, when he has, media outlets have justified his refusal to answer rather than demand that he do so. We submitted nine questions to his campaign about these documents that the public has the absolute right to know, including:

• whether he claims any the emails or texts are fabricated (and, if so, which specific ones);
• whether he knows if Hunter did indeed drop off laptops at the Delaware repair store;
• whether Hunter ever asked him to meet with Burisma executives or whether he in fact did so;
• whether Biden ever knew about business proposals in Ukraine or China being pursued by his son and brother in which Biden was a proposed participant and,
• how Biden could justify expending so much energy as Vice President demanding that the Ukrainian General Prosecutor be fired, and why the replacement — Yuriy Lutsenko, someone who had no experience in law; was a crony of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; and himself had a history of corruption allegations — was acceptable if Biden’s goal really was to fight corruption in Ukraine rather than benefit Burisma or control Ukrainian internal affairs for some other objective.

Though the Biden campaign indicated that they would respond to the Intercept’s questions, they have not done so. A statement they released to other outlets contains no answers to any of these questions except to claim that Biden “has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any business overseas.”

To date, even as the Biden campaign echoes the baseless claims of media outlets that anyone discussing this story is “amplifying Russian disinformation,” neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign have even said whether they claim the emails and other documents -- which they and the press continue to label "Russian disinformation" -- are forgeries or whether they are authentic.

The Biden campaign clearly believes it has no need to answer any of these questions by virtue of a panoply of media excuses offered on its behalf that collapse upon the most minimal scrutiny:

First, the claim that the material is of suspect authenticity or cannot be verified -- the excuse used on behalf of Biden by Leslie Stahl and Christiane Amanpour, among others -- is blatantly false for numerous reasons. As someone who has reported similar large archives in partnership with numerous media outlets around the world (including the Snowden archive in 2014 and the Intercept’s Brazil Archive over the last year showing corruption by high-level Bolsonaro officials), and who also covered the reporting of similar archives by other outlets (the Panama Papers, the WikiLeaks war logs of 2010 and DNC/Podesta emails of 2016), it is clear to me that the trove of documents from Hunter Biden’s emails has been verified in ways quite similar to those.

With an archive of this size, one can never independently authenticate every word in every last document unless the subject of the reporting voluntarily confirms it in advance, which they rarely do. What has been done with similar archives is journalists obtain enough verification to create high levels of journalistic confidence in the materials. Some of the materials provided by the source can be independently confirmed, proving genuine access by the source to a hard drive, a telephone, or a database. Other parties in email chains can confirm the authenticity of the email or text conversations in which they participated. One investigates non-public facts contained in the documents to determine that they conform to what the documents reflect. Technology specialists can examine the materials to ensure no signs of forgeries are detected.

This is the process that enabled the largest and most established media outlets around the world to report similar large archives obtained without authorization. In those other cases, no media outlet was able to verify every word of every document prior to publication. There was no way to prove the negative that the source or someone else had not altered or forged some of the material. That level of verification is both unattainable and unnecessary. What is needed is substantial evidence to create high confidence in the authentication process.

The Hunter Biden documents have at least as much verification as those other archives that were widely reported. There are sources in the email chains who have verified that the published emails are accurate. The archive contains private photos and videos of Hunter whose authenticity is not in doubt. A former business partner of Hunter has stated, unequivocally and on the record, that not only are the emails authentic but they describe events accurately, including proposed participation by the former Vice President in at least one deal Hunter and Jim Biden were pursuing in China. And, most importantly of all, neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign has even suggested, let alone claimed, that a single email or text is fake.

Why is the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they know that the most important event in the reporting's authentication process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the credibility of the reporting.

The silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the material’s authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives.

Second, the oft-repeated claim from news outlets and CIA operatives that the published emails and texts were “Russian disinformation” was, from the start, obviously baseless and reckless. No evidence — literally none — has been presented to suggest involvement by any Russians in the dissemination of these materials, let alone that it was part of some official plot by Moscow. As always, anything is possible — when one does not know for certain what the provenance of materials is, nothing can be ruled out — but in journalism, evidence is required before news outlets can validly start blaming some foreign government for the release of information. And none has ever been presented. Yet the claim that this was "Russian disinformation" was published in countless news outlets, television broadcasts, and the social media accounts of journalists, typically by pointing to the evidence-free claims of ex-CIA officials.

Worse is the “disinformation” part of the media’s equation. How can these materials constitute “disinformation” if they are authentic emails and texts actually sent to and from Hunter Biden? The ease with which news outlets that are supposed to be skeptical of evidence-free pronouncements by the intelligence community instead printed their assertions about "Russian disinformation" is alarming in the extreme. But they did it because they instinctively wanted to find a reason to justify ignoring the contents of these emails, so claiming that Russia was behind it, and that the materials were "disinformation," became their placeholder until they could figure out what else they should say to justify ignoring these documents.

Third, the media rush to exonerate Biden on the question of whether he engaged in corruption vis-a-vis Ukraine and Burisma rested on what are, at best, factually dubious defenses of the former Vice President. Much of this controversy centers on Biden's aggressive efforts while Vice President in late 2015 to force the Ukrainian government to fire its Chief Prosecutor, Viktor Shokhin, and replace him with someone acceptable to the U.S., which turned out to be Yuriy Lutsenko. These events are undisputed by virtue of a video of Biden boasting in front of an audience of how he flew to Kiev and forced the Ukrainians to fire Shokhin, upon pain of losing $1 billion in aid.

But two towering questions have long been prompted by these events, and the recently published emails make them more urgent than ever: 1) was the firing of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor such a high priority for Biden as Vice President of the U.S. because of his son's highly lucrative role on the board of Burisma, and 2) if that was not the motive, why was it so important for Biden to dictate who the chief prosecutor of Ukraine was?

The standard answer to the question about Biden's motive -- offered both by Biden and his media defenders -- is that he, along with the IMF and EU, wanted Shokhin fired because the U.S. and its allies were eager to clean up Ukraine, and they viewed Shokhin as insufficiently vigilant in fighting corruption.

“Biden’s brief was to sweet-talk and jawbone Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine’s Western benefactors wanted to see as,” wrote the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler in what the Post calls a “fact-check.” Kessler also endorsed the key defense of Biden: that the firing of Shokhin was bad for Burisma, not good for it. “The United States viewed [Shokhin] as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs. In particular, Shokin had failed to pursue an investigation of the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky,” Kessler claims.

But that claim does not even pass the laugh test. The U.S. and its European allies are not opposed to corruption by their puppet regimes. They are allies with the most corrupt regimes on the planet, from Riyadh to Cairo, and always have been. Since when does the U.S. devote itself to ensuring good government in the nations it is trying to control? If anything, allowing corruption to flourish has been a key tool in enabling the U.S. to exert power in other countries and to open up their markets to U.S. companies.

Beyond that, if increasing prosecutorial independence and strengthening anti-corruption vigilance were really Biden's goal in working to demand the firing of the Ukrainian chief prosecutor, why would the successor to Shokhin, Yuriy Lutsenko, possibly be acceptable? Lutsenko, after all, had "no legal background as general prosecutor," was principally known only as a lackey of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was forced in 2009 to "resign as interior minister after being detained by police at Frankfurt airport for being drunk and disorderly," and "was subsequently jailed for embezzlement and abuse of office, though his defenders said the sentence was politically motivated."

Reuters: Ukraine appoints Poroshenko ally with no legal experience as top prosecutor

Is it remotely convincing to you that Biden would have accepted someone like Lutsenko if his motive really were to fortify anti-corruption prosecutions in Ukraine? Yet that's exactly what Biden did: he personally told Poroshenko that Lutsenko was an acceptable alternative and promptly released the $1 billion after his appointment was announced. Whatever Biden's motive was in using his power as U.S. Vice President to change the prosecutor in Ukraine, his acceptance of someone like Lutsenko strongly suggests that combatting Ukrainian corruption was not it.

As for the other claim on which Biden and his media allies have heavily relied — that firing Shokhin was not a favor for Burisma because Shokhin was not pursuing any investigations against Burisma — the evidence does not justify that assertion.

It is true that no evidence, including these new emails, constitute proof that Biden's motive in demanding Shokhin's termination was to benefit Burisma. But nothing demonstrates that Shokhin was impeding investigations into Burisma. Indeed, the New York Times in 2019 published one of the most comprehensive investigations to date of the claims made in defense of Biden when it comes to Ukraine and the firing of this prosecutor, and, while noting that "no evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal," this is what its reporters concluded about Shokhin and Burisma:

The Times added: "Mr. Shokhin’s office had oversight of investigations into [Burisma's billionaire founder] Zlochevsky and his businesses, including Burisma." By contrast, they said, Lutsenko, the replacement approved by Vice President Biden, "initially continued investigating Mr. Zlochevsky and Burisma, but cleared him of all charges within 10 months of taking office."

So whether or not it was Biden's intention to confer benefits on Burisma by demanding Shokhin's firing, it ended up quite favorable for Burisma given that the utterly inexperienced Lutesenko "cleared [Burisma's founder] of all charges within 10 months of taking office."

The new comprehensive report from journalist Taibbi on Sunday also strongly supports the view that there were clear antagonisms between Shokhin and Burisma, such that firing the Ukrainian prosecutor would have been beneficial for Burisma. Taibbi, who reported for many years while based in Russia and remains very well-sourced in the region, detailed:

Taibbi reviews real-time reporting in both Ukraine and the U.S. to document several other pending investigations against Burisma and Zlochevsky that was overseen by the prosecutor whose firing Biden demanded. He notes that Shokhin himself has repeatedly said he was pursuing several investigations against Zlochevsky at the time Biden demanded his firing. In sum, Taibbi concludes, "one can’t say there’s no evidence of active Burisma cases even during the last days of Shokin, who says that it was the February, 2016 seizure order [against Zlochevsky's assets] that got him fired."

And, Taibbi notes, "the story looks even odder when one wonders why the United States would exercise so much foreign policy muscle to get Shokin fired, only to allow in a replacement — Yuri Lutsenko — who by all accounts was a spectacularly bigger failure in the battle against corruption in general, and Zlochevsky in particular." In sum: "it’s unquestionable that the cases against Burisma were all closed by Shokin’s successor, chosen in consultation with Joe Biden, whose son remained on the board of said company for three more years, earning upwards of $50,000 per month."

The publicly known facts, augmented by the recent emails, texts and on-the-record accounts, suggest serious sleaze by Joe Biden’s son Hunter in trying to peddle his influence with the Vice President for profit. But they also raise real questions about whether Joe Biden knew about and even himself engaged in a form of legalized corruption. Specifically, these newly revealed information suggest Biden was using his power to benefit his son’s business Ukrainian associates, and allowing his name to be traded on while Vice President for his son and brother to pursue business opportunities in China. These are questions which a minimally healthy press would want answered, not buried — regardless of how many similar or worse scandals the Trump family has.

But the real scandal that has been proven is not the former Vice President’s misconduct but that of his supporters and allies in the U.S. media. As Taibbi’s headline put it: “With the Hunter Biden Exposé, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than the Actual Story.”

With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than the Actual Story: Unprecedented efforts to squelch information about a New York Post story may prove to be more dangerous corruption than whatever Hunter Biden did with a crooked Ukrainian energy company, by Matt Taibbi

The reality is the U.S. press has been planning for this moment for four years — cooking up justifications for refusing to report on newsworthy material that might help Donald Trump get re-elected. One major factor is the undeniable truth that journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate to see Donald Trump defeated.

It takes an enormous amount of gullibility to believe that any humans are capable of separating such an intense partisan preference from their journalistic judgment. Many barely even bother to pretend: critiques of Joe Biden are often attacked first not by Biden campaign operatives but by political reporters at national news outlets who make little secret of their eagerness to help Biden win.

But much of this has to do with the fallout from the 2016 election. During that campaign, news outlets, including The Intercept, did their jobs as journalists by reporting on the contents of newsworthy, authentic documents: namely, the emails published by WikiLeaks from the John Podesta and DNC inboxes which, among other things, revealed corruption so severe that it forced the resignation of the top five officials of the DNC. That the materials were hacked, and that intelligence agencies were suggesting Russia was responsible, [do] not negate the newsworthiness of the documents, which is why media outlets across the country repeatedly reported on their contents.

Nonetheless, journalists have spent four years being attacked as Trump enablers in their overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal cultural circles: the cities in which they live are overwhelmingly Democratic, and their demographic — large-city, college-educated professionals — has vanishingly little Trump support. A New York Times survey of campaign data from Monday tells just a part of this story of cultural insularity and homogeneity:

Wanting to avoid a repeat of feeling scorn and shunning in their own extremely pro-Democratic, anti-Trump circles, national media outlets have spent four years inventing standards for election-year reporting on hacked materials that never previously existed and that are utterly anathema to the core journalistic function. The Washington Post's Executive Editor Marty Baron, for instance, issued a memo full of cautions about how Post reporters should, or should not, discuss hacked materials even if their authenticity is not in doubt.

That a media outlet should even consider refraining from reporting on materials they know to be authentic and in the public interest because of questions about their provenance is the opposite of how journalism has been practiced. In the days before the 2016 election, for instance, the New York Times received by mail one year of Donald Trump's tax returns and -- despite having no idea who sent it to them or how that person obtained it: was it stolen or hacked by a foreign power? -- the Times reported on its contents.

When asked by NPR why they would report on documents when they do not know the source let alone the source's motives in providing them, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Barstow compellingly explained what had always been the core principle of journalism: namely, a journalist only cares about two questions -- (1) are documents authentic and (2) are they in the public interest? -- but does not care about what motives a source has in providing the documents or how they were obtained when deciding whether to reporting them:

The U.S. media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.

A media outlet that renounces its core function -- pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people -- is one that deserves to lose the public's faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored.

As my colleague Lee Fang put it on Sunday: "The partisan double standards in the media are mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear." Discussing his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this way: "The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it's true."

by **admin** » Tue Dec 08, 2020 3:10 am

Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad
by Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge
New York Post
October 14, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.

An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.

Hunter Biden email

The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.

Other material extracted from the computer includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.

The customer who brought in the water-damaged MacBook Pro for repair never paid for the service or retrieved it or a hard drive on which its contents were stored, according to the shop owner, who said he tried repeatedly to contact the client.

The shop owner couldn’t positively identify the customer as Hunter Biden, but said the laptop bore a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother and former Delaware attorney general.

Photos of a Delaware federal subpoena given to The Post show that both the computer and hard drive were seized by the FBI in December, after the shop’s owner says he alerted the feds to their existence.

HUNTER BIDEN DOCUMENTS

A federal subpoena showing the computer and hard drive were seized by the FBI

But before turning over the gear, the shop owner says, he made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello.

Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, told The Post about the existence of the hard drive in late September and Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of it on Sunday.

Less than eight months after Pozharskyi thanked Hunter Biden for the introduction to his dad, the then-vice president admittedly pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk into getting rid of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin by threatening to withhold a $1 billion US loan guarantee during a December 2015 trip to Kiev.

“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden infamously bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018.

“Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

Shokin has said that at the time of his firing, in March 2016, he’d made “specific plans” to investigate Burisma that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

Joe Biden has insisted that the US wanted Shokin removed over corruption concerns, which were shared by the European Union.

Meanwhile, an email dated May 12, 2014 — shortly after Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board — shows Pozharskyi attempting to get him to use his political leverage to help the company.

The message had the subject line “urgent issue” and was also sent to Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, who also sat on the Burisma board at the time.

Pozharskyi said that “the representatives of new authorities in power tend to quite aggressively approach N. Z. unofficially with the aim to obtain cash from him.”

N.Z. isn’t identified in the email but appears to be a reference to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, whose first name is a Ukrainian version of “Nicholas.”

When the alleged shakedown failed, “they proceeded with concrete actions” in the form of “one or more pretrial proceedings,” Pozharskyi wrote.

“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc .to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” he added.

Vadym Pozharskyi and Hunter Biden
Yalta European Strategy / Getty Images

Hunter Biden responded by saying he was with Archer in Doha, Qatar, and asked for more information about “the formal (if any) accusations being made against Burisma.”

“Who is ultimately behind these attacks on the company? Who in the current interim government could put an end to such attacks?” he added.

The exchange came the same day that Burisma announced it had expanded its board of directors by adding Hunter Biden, who was put in charge of its “legal unit and will provide support for the Company among international organizations,” according to a news release that’s since been scrubbed from Burisma’s website.

Hunter Biden actually joined the board in April 2014, according to multiple reports.

His lawyer said last year that Hunter was “not a member of the management team,” adding, “At no time was Hunter in charge of the company’s legal affairs.”

About four months after Hunter Biden’s correspondence with Pozharskyi, Archer forwarded Hunter Biden an email chain with the subject line “tax raise impact on Burisma production,” which included Pozharskyi saying that the Ukrainian cabinet had submitted new tax legislation to the country’s parliament.

Photos from Hunter Biden's hard drive

“If enacted, this law would kill the entire private gas production sector in the bud,” Pozharskyi wrote.

In the Sept. 24, 2014, email, Pozharskyi also said he was “going to share this information with the US embassy here in Kyiv, as well as the office of Mr Amos Hochstein in the States.”

At the time, Hochstein was the State Department’s newly appointed special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs.

Devon Archer
Patrick McMullan via Getty Image

In December 2017, the Naftogaz Group, Ukraine’s state-owned energy company, announced that Hochstein had joined the company as an independent director, but on Monday he announced his resignation.

“The company has been forced to spend endless amounts of time combating political pressure and efforts by oligarchs to enrich themselves through questionable transactions,” Hochstein wrote in an op-ed published by the Kyiv Post.

In addition to denying that’s he’s spoken to Hunter Biden about his overseas business dealings, Joe Biden has repeatedly denied any conflict of interest or wrongdoing by either of them involving Burisma.

Last February, he got testy during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show when co-host Savannah Guthrie questioned whether it was “wrong for [Hunter] to take that position, knowing that it was really because that company wanted access to you.”

“Well, that’s not true. You’re saying things you do not know what you’re talking about,” the elder Biden responded.

Photos from Hunter Biden's hard drive

Last December, Joe Biden also lashed out during a Democratic primary town hall event in Iowa, where a man accused him of sending Hunter to Ukraine “to get a job and work for a gas company, he had no experience with gas or nothing, in order to get access to . . . the president.”

“You’re a damn liar, man. That’s not true and no one has ever said that,” Biden fumed.

Biden then continued berating the man as he stepped forward, called the man “fat” and challenged him to “do push-ups together, man.”

The FBI referred questions about its seizure of the laptop and hard drive to the Delaware US Attorney’s Office, where a spokesperson said, “My office can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

Hunter Biden’s lawyer refused to comment on the specifics but instead attacked Giuliani.

“He has been pushing widely discredited conspiracy theories about the Biden family, openly relying on actors tied to Russian intelligence,” the lawyer, George R. Mesires, said of Giuliani.

Pozharskyi and the Joe Biden campaign did not return requests for comment. Hochstein could not be reached.

Additional reporting by Ebony Bowden

by **admin** » Tue Dec 08, 2020 5:33 am

Inside the life of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued son
by Emily Jacobs
New York Post
October 14, 2020 | 5:34pm

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been back in the news since his father announced his 2020 run last year.

Hunter Biden made headlines again on Oct. 14 when The Post exclusively reported on emails between him and Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.

The emails reveal the possibility of a previously unreported meeting between the elder Biden and an official from Burisma, any involvement with which the Democratic presidential nominee has adamantly denied without going into detail.

Here’s what we know about Hunter Biden before he found himself swept up in yet another scandal.

Early life

Born on Feb. 4, 1970, Robert Hunter Biden and his older brother Beau’s lives were rocked when their mother, Neilia Biden, and sister, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in December 1972.

Just one month later, Hunter and Beau found themselves surrounded by reporters as their father was sworn in as the youngest-ever member of the US Senate.

Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, Beau Biden, Joe Biden Sr.

Hunter Biden (center) with his father, Jill Biden and brother Beau at a campaign event in 1988. AP Photo/Sen. Biden's office

The two boys continued growing up in Wilmington, Del., with their widowed father commuting back and forth each day by train to be with them at night.

The Biden brothers encouraged their father to date in the years after their mother’s passing, and he eventually did, meeting Dr. Jill Jacobs, who later became his wife and took his name.

They had a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.

Love life

Hunter Biden met and married Kathleen Buhle in 1993. The two divorced in 2017 after a 22-year marriage that produced three daughters. In divorce papers, Kathleen accused her ex of blowing family funds on drugs and prostitutes.

The same year as the split — as was first reported by Page Six — Hunter began dating his widowed sister-in-law, Hallie Biden, who had lost her husband, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015.

The two began dating while he was recovering from a crack binge, which he explained in a New Yorker interview last July took place while grieving his brother’s death.

Hunter and Kathleen Biden
Ron Sachs - CNP

Hunter had been kicked out of his marital home with then-estranged wife Kathleen over his failure to stay sober, and began spending most nights at Hallie’s house “sharing a very specific grief” over Beau.

The former vice president did not initially know of the relationship, and found out after being reached for comment by Page Six.

After being made aware, the VP and second lady offered their blessing of the relationship in a statement.

“We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have mine and Jill’s full and complete support and we are happy for them,” the two said at the time.

Hunter and Hallie released a similar statement at the same time, which read, “Hallie and I are incredibly lucky to have found the love and support we have for each other in such a difficult time, and that’s been obvious to the people who love us most. We’ve been so lucky to have family and friends who have supported us every step of the way.”

They dated for about two years before splitting in early 2019.

In late 2019, Hunter entered a court battle over unpaid child support for a baby he fathered with ex-stripper Lunden Alexis Roberts.

Roberts filed a suit against Hunter in November after he denied being the father of their child, born in August 2018, and subsequently declined to pay child support.

The New York Post cover featuring Biden and Lunden Alexis Roberts.

Hunter Biden and Melissa Cohen
TheImageDirect.com

In January 2020, an Arkansas judge ruled that Biden was the “biological and legal father” of the baby, noting that a DNA test had showed “with near scientific certainty” that Hunter was the parent.

The two reached an out-of-court settlement in which Biden agreed to retroactively pay child support going back to November 2018.

Hunter has since gotten remarried to a South African woman named Melissa Cohen, whom he wed just 10 days after meeting her. They welcomed their first child, a boy, in April of this year.

Drug problems

Hunter Biden has long suffered from drug problems, and it even ended his brief attempt at a military career in his 40s. He was discharged from the Navy Reserve in February 2014 after he tested positive for cocaine.

He was serving as an ensign after being given two waivers, one for his age and one for his drug use as a younger man.

“It was the honor of my life to serve in the US Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge,” he said after news of his discharge broke.

When President Trump brought the incident up at last month’s debate, Joe Biden defended his son.

“My son, like a lot of people at home, had a drug problem,” he said. “He’s overtaking it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.”

Hunter discussed his drug use during his New Yorker interview last year, in which he admitted to almost having a brush with law enforcement after damaging a rental car in Arizona in 2016.

After the car was replaced by Hertz, the rental car company, a rental officer found a crack pipe in the car along with a white powder residue.

Police were called, but there was no evidence that Hunter had used the pipe, so narcotics charges weren’t pursued, the magazine reported.

The younger Biden’s drug problems date back far further than 2016, however.

Hunter was arrested in 1988 for drug possession, something he admitted to in a 2006 disclosure form after being nominated to serve on the Amtrak Reform Board.

“I was cited for possession of a controlled substance in Stone Harbor, NJ. There was a pre-trial intervention and the record was expunged,” he admitted.

In November 2019, Page Six exclusively reported that the former vice president’s son was suspected of smoking crack inside a Washington, DC, strip club where he dropped “thousands of dollars” during multiple visits.

Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images

The incident, which took place at Archibald’s Gentlemen’s Club late last year, represents the most recent alleged drug use by Biden, who has acknowledged six stints in rehab for alcoholism and addiction.

Security worker Ranko Petrovic said Biden would routinely hole up in a VIP room and drink during his visits.

Although Petrovic said the club “had no issue with him,” former Archibald’s managing partner James Ritter said one occasion in late 2018 was marred by a “suspicion of drug use.”

He checked into rehab at the Grace Grove Lifestyle Center in Sedona, Ariz., in October 2016, but left after one week and headed to the nearby Mii Amo resort spa.

It was there that Hunter and Hallie launched their affair, he told the New Yorker.

Page Six has also spotted Biden on multiple occasions at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club NYC in Hell’s Kitchen. He was seen on each occasion with a woman who was not a dancer at the club. The two spent thousands each night on pricey booze and were joined by several strippers.

At one point, a stripper was scrambling to buy a sex toy so others could use it on him.

Ukraine

Hunter did not become a mainstay in the news until his role with Burisma during his father’s tenure as vice president became a primary focus of the Ukraine scandal surrounding Trump, an issue that led to the president’s eventual impeachment trial along party lines in the House and acquittal by the Senate.

During the hearings and subsequent trial, Democrats accused Trump of offering a quid pro quo by requesting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky launch an investigation into the Bidens while Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in aid to the country.

Republicans, meanwhile, argued that allegations against the Bidens were damning enough to merit the president asking for a probe, regardless of Joe’s candidacy for president.

Hunter has been accused of profiting off his father’s vice presidential status by earning tens of thousands of dollars per month to sit on a board for a corrupt company in an industry in which he had no prior experience.

At the time, the elder Biden led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

Hunter’s role with Burisma raised red flags for some in the Obama administration’s State Department, which a recent Senate Homeland Security Committee report found were raised to Biden and those in his orbit.

The 87-page report published late last month noted that two American officials — George Kent, former acting deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Kiev, and senior State Department official Amos Hochstein — “raised concerns” to Biden’s staff and directly to Biden, respectively.

“Despite the efforts of these individuals, their concerns appear to have fallen on deaf ears,” the report says.

“Moreover, this investigation has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president’s son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch.”

Joe and Hunter Biden
AP

Joe Biden said last year of Hunter, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” including his reported $83,000 monthly pay on Burisma’s board.

Both he and Hunter have denied any wrongdoing with respect to Ukraine, and spokespeople for Joe Biden’s campaign have repeatedly slammed the Senate probe as biased and political.

That Senate report also found that in 2014, the younger Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow.

“Baturina became Russia’s only female billionaire when her plastics company, Inteko, received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor,” it said in providing background on the businesswoman.

The report described her involvement with Biden as “a financial relationship,” but declined to delve deeper into why the wire transfer was made.

by **admin** » Sat Dec 26, 2020 1:43 am

Instagram is Using False “Fact-Checking” to Protect Joe Biden’s Crime Record From Criticisms: The Facebook-owned platform’s denunciation of a well-established view of Biden shows the dangers of internet censorship and the fraudulent use of “fact-checking.”
by Glenn Greenwald
Dec 17, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

A long-standing and vehement criticism of Joe Biden is that legislation he championed as a Senator in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly his crime bill of 1994, contributed to the mass incarceration of Americans generally and African-Americans specifically.

Among the many on the left and libertarian right who have voiced this criticism (along with President Trump) is then-Senator Kamala Harris, who said during the 2020 Democratic primary race that Biden’s “crime bill -- that 1994 crime bill -- it did contribute to mass incarceration in our country.” When Hillary Clinton was running for President in 2015, Bill Clinton, who as president signed Biden’s bill into law, told the NAACP: “I signed a bill that made the problem worse. And I want to admit it.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Biden during a 2019 presidential debate: “There are people right now in prison for life for drug offenses because you stood up and used that tough-on-crime phony rhetoric that got a lot of people elected but destroyed communities like mine.” Booker then said in an interview with The Huffington Post that that Biden’s “crime bill was shameful, what it did to black and brown communities like mine [and] low-income communities from Appalachia to rural Iowa,” also denouncing it for “overwhelmingly putting people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses that members of Congress and the Senate admit to breaking now.”

NBC News, May 15, 2019

In 2016, author and scholar Michele Alexander argued that Hillary did not deserve the votes of black people due to her and her husband’s support for numerous bills, including Biden’s 1994 crime bill, that led to the mass incarceration of African-Americans. Harvard’s Cornel West said in 2019: “When [Biden] says [the 1994 crime bill] didn't contribute to mass incarceration, I tell him he has to get off his symbolic crack pipe."

While that debate over the damage done by Biden’s crime bill has long raged in Democratic Party politics and the criminal justice reform movement, it is now barred from being aired on the Facebook-owned social media giant Instagram, or at least is formally denounced as disinformation. With Joe Biden about to enter the White House — one that will exercise significant influence in determining Silicon Valley’s interests, will be filled with tech executives, and was made possible in large part by Silicon Valley’s largesse poured into the Biden/Harris campaign — Instagram has arrogated unto itself the power to declare these well-established criticisms of Biden and his crime bill to be “False” and having “no basis in fact.”

As first noted on Monday by former Sanders campaign organizer Ben Mora, Instagram publicly denounced as “False” a post on Sunday by the left-wing artist and frequent Biden critic Brad Troemel, who has more than 107,000 followers on that platform. Troemel’s post said nothing more than what Biden’s chosen running mate, Kamala Harris, has herself said, as well as numerous mainstream media outlets and countless criminal justice reform advocates have long maintained.

Troemel posted a 1994 photo of a smiling, mullet-sporting Biden standing next to then-President Bill Clinton. The photo contained this caption: “Find someone that looks at you the way Biden looked at Clinton after signed Biden’s crime bill into law. Bringing mass incarceration to black Americans.” This was the same photo and caption which an anonymous Trump supporter under the name “realtina40” first posted back in June.

Shortly after Troemel posted this on Sunday, Instagram appended a note in red letters, with a warning sign that read: “Learn why fact-checkers have indicated that this is false.” That was followed by a note plastered over Troemel’s original post with the title: “False,” and which claimed “independent fact-checkers say this information has no basis in fact.” The same thing was done by Instagram to “realtina40” original June post.

Fact-checking label applied by Facebook-owned Instagram to Brad Troemel’s criticisms of Biden’s 1994 crime bill

This is not the first time Troemel has been censored by Instagram for posting criticisms of Biden. In response to questions, he told me he first earned the “false” label when posting a meme in April which he had created that mocked Biden’s campaign messaging. Instagram’s retaliation happened after the Biden campaign loudly complained about Troemel’s satirical ad. Biden campaign operatives falsely blamed the Trump campaign for having created it, and then induced Twitter to censor it.

As Troemel told me: “Here you can see Dems using the Russia-tinged cover of disinformation as a way to discredit any and all criticism of Biden found on social media.” When Troemel re-posted that meme last month with the clear notation that it was satirical, Instagram began “shadow banning” him: severely limiting the reach of his posts. It was those events — all involving Troemel’s criticisms of Biden from the left — that caused Instagram to heavily scrutinize his postings, culminating in its blurring of his latest post with a “False” label that contained these well-documented criticisms of Biden’s crime bill.

The only thing that is demonstrably “false” here is Instagram’s Biden-shielding assertion that there is a “fact-checking” consensus that this criticism of Biden’s 1994 crime bill is false. It is true that one media outlet, USA Today, fact-checked the identical claim posted back in June by the anonymous Instagram user and concluded that “our research finds that while the crime bill did increase the prison population in states, it did not bring about a mass incarceration relative to earlier years.” But that article so concluded even while admitting that Biden’s “crime bill did increase the prison population in states” and “any increase in the overall prison population would automatically translate into a larger number of Black inmates.” The article’s own premises thus bolster, not refute, the claim at issue.

But numerous other media outlets and fact-checking organizations — far more than just one — concluded the opposite: namely, that there is at least a reasonable and substantial basis for these claims about Biden’s bill:

• PolitiFact rated as only “Half True” Biden’s claim that the 1994 crime bill “did not generate mass incarceration,” noting the bill provided funds to states on the condition that they force prisoners to serve longer sentences and that it bolstered the tough-on-crime climate that led to higher incarceration rates in the states (that was the same point Bill Clinton made to the NAACP: “the federal law set a trend…. [W]e had a lot people who were locked up, who were minor actors, for way too long”);

• The Washington Post’s designated fact-checker Glenn Kessler assigned two Pinocchios to Biden’s insistence that his crime bill “did not generate mass incarceration,” noting that “the bill encouraged states to build more prisons — with more money coming to them if they increased penalties.” Kessler cited a Brennan Center report that “the 1994 Crime Bill is justly criticized for encouraging states to build and fill new prisons.”

The Post added: “There are many factors that contributed to the United States having such a high incarceration rate, but few dispute the crime bill was a contributor. Bill Clinton has acknowledged this.” The paper’s “two Pinocchio” rating means Biden’s denial contains “significant omissions and/or exaggerations….Similar to ‘half true’”);

• CNN purported to fact-check the same claims from Biden and found that Biden’s denial “misses the broader impact that federal policy can have on the way that states incarcerate, including the influence of federal money,” concluding that the view that the 1994 crime bill was a significant factor in mass incarceration was, at the very least, debatable.

• The fact-check from NBC News flatly stated that “though the bill was not the root cause of ‘mass incarceration,’ it was ‘the most high-profile legislation to increase the number of people behind bars,’ according to a Brennan Center analysis in 2016.”

• Fact-checking Sen. Booker’s accusations against Biden, The Atlantic said: “it is true that the bill—which extended the death penalty to 60 new crimes, stiffened sentences, offered states strong financial incentives for building new prisons, and banned a range of assault weapons—helped lead to the wave of mass incarceration that’s resulted in the United States accounting for 25 percent of the world’s prison population.” It added that “a 2016 analysis by the Brennan Center concluded that the 1994 bill contributed both to the subsequent decline in crime and to the doubling of the rate of imprisonment from 1994 to 2009.”

• The New York Times’ fact-check of Biden’s denial rated it “Exaggerated,” quoting a criminologist to say that Biden’s bill “encouraged [states] to mass incarcerate further.”

• Regarding Biden’s denial that his 1994 crime bill “led to more prison sentences, more prison cells, and more aggressive policing — especially hurting Black and brown Americans,” Vox pronounced: “The truth, it turns out, is somewhere in the middle,” noting that “the law imposed tougher prison sentences at the federal level and encouraged states to do the same” and also ensured “an escalation of the War on Drugs.”

One could spend literally all day listing media outlets, criminal justice experts, and politicians from both parties who have insisted that Biden’s 1994 crime bill was a significant factor in mass incarceration generally and of African-Americans specifically, or that the assertion is at least reasonably debatable and grounded in empirical facts — exactly what Instagram has decided is out of bounds to state. It is axiomatically true, or at the very least logically reasonable, that if Biden’s crime bill led to more mass incarceration — and few doubt that it did — then the bill, in the words of the denounced Instagram post, “brought mass incarceration to black Americans.”

On Monday, The New York Post sought comment from Facebook about Instagram’s “False” label. The tech giant, in the words of that paper, said “that Instagram won’t end its censorship unless USA Today changes its assessment.” Yet the Post — long an advocate for tough-on-crime legislation — itself echoed virtually every other media outlet by noting that “whether Biden’s law contributed to mass incarceration is a matter of debate.”

Indeed, from what I can tell, USA Today is the only prominent media outlet of all the ones which fact-checked this issue to conclude that the claim about Biden’s bill is “false.” The overwhelming consensus of fact-checkers and experts is that the 1994 crime bill at the very least contributed to mass incarceration generally and of African-Americans specifically, and that the magnitude of that role is debatable.

But Instagram has closed this debate, at least on its platform. They have announced that the claims about Biden’s 1994 crime bill as expressed by not only Brad Troemel — but also Kamala Harris, Bill Clinton, Cory Booker, Cornel West, the Brennan Center and countless others — has been proven false.

NJ.com, Aug. 1, 2019

This episode demonstrates two crucial facts. The first is that what is so often passed off as quasi-scientific, opinion-free “fact-checking” are instead extremely tendentious, subjective and highly debatable opinions. That’s how Instagram can cherry-pick the conclusions of USA Today and treat it as if it is Gospel even though numerous other outlets, mainstream politicians in Biden’s own party, and criminal justice experts reached a radically different conclusion. “Fact-checking” in theory has journalistic value, but it is often nothing more than a branding tactic for media outlets to disguise their highly subjective pronouncements as unchallengeable Truth.

The second, more important point is that Silicon Valley giants lack any competency to determine the truth or falsity of political claims even when they act with the best of motives. Who at Instagram decided to rely on the USA Today claims while ignoring all the conflicting conclusions from other outlets and experts, and who decided how to apply that conclusion to the post at issue? And why did USA Today randomly decide to subject an anti-Biden meme about his crime bill from the account of a relatively obscure, anonymous Trump supporter but ignore similar statements coming from Senators Harris and Booker and Bill Clinton, thus handing Instagram an excuse to label any similar views as “False” and without “any basis”? Why are tech companies trying officiate political debates this way?

Recall that the censorship of Twitter and Facebook of The New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was based at least in part on the claim that the documents were the by-product of hacking and “Russian disinformation” — claims that have “no basis in fact.” As Matt Taibbi put it last week when warning of the dangers of YouTube’s decision to ban from its platform any questioning of the legitimacy of the 2020 election while still allowing similar questioning of the 2016 election: “There’s no such thing as a technocratic approach to truth. There are official truths, but those are political rather than scientific determinations, and therefore almost always wrong on some level.”

Moreover, the assumption that tech giants are acting with the best of intentions is completely unwarranted. Like every faction, these companies are awash with bias, partisanship, ideological dogma and self-interest. They overwhelmingly donated to the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign. Their executives are residing in virtually every sector of the Biden/Harris transition. Currying favor with the Biden administration — by, say, soft-censoring or discrediting harmful critiques of the President-elect — serves their corporate interests in multiple ways. And their overwhelmingly establishment-liberal employees are increasingly insistent that views they dislike should be censored off their platforms.

This is why it has been so dangerous, so misguided, to acquiesce to a campaign that is being led by corporate media outlets to insist that these tech giants abandon a belief in a free internet and instead censor more aggressively. That a person will now be declared by Facebook’s properties to be a disseminator of disinformation for voicing long-standing and well-documented criticisms of Joe Biden’s crime record is yet another bleak glimpse of a future in which unseen tech overlords police our discourse by unilaterally arbitrating truth and falsity, decree what are permissible and impermissible ideas, and rigidly setting the boundaries of acceptable debate.

by **admin** » Tue Dec 29, 2020 4:08 am

Noam Chomsky on Trump, Biden, the climate emergency, Palestine and capitalism
by Owen Jones
Dec 14, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

by **admin** » Tue Dec 29, 2020 6:02 am

Chris Hedges at the Community Church of Boston
Hosted by Joe Ramsey
Dec 20, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

by **admin** » Thu Dec 31, 2020 11:47 pm

After Trump, Is It Dangerous To ‘Return To Normal’? Cornel West Thinks So
by Dena Takruri #CornelWest #DonaldTrump #DenaTakruri
November 15, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Tricia Rose join AJ+‘s Dena Takruri in a conversation about what went wrong in the 2020 election, what went right, and how progressives should be gearing up for a long fight ahead.

by **admin** » Fri Jan 01, 2021 1:04 am

“America’s Moment of Reckoning”: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor & Cornel West on Uprising Against Racism
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org
DECEMBER 31, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

GUESTS
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, assistant professor of African American studies at Princeton.
Cornel West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University.

Scholars Cornel West and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor respond to the global uprising against racism and police violence following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “We’re seeing the convergence of a class rebellion with racism and racial terrorism at the center of it,” said Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “And in many ways, we are in uncharted territory in the United States.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

As we continue to look at the uprisings against police brutality and racism, I want to turn to a conversation Democracy Now!’s Nermeen Shaikh and I had in early June with the scholars Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor of Princeton University and Cornel West of Harvard. I began by asking professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor to talk about the mass uprising and the police killing of George Floyd.

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: Part of what we are seeing is years and years of pent-up rage. Many people have referenced the 1960s, have referenced Ferguson in 2014, but I think it’s important to say that these are not just repeats of past events. These are the consequences of the failures of this government and the political establishment, the economic establishment of this country to resolve those crises, and so they build and accumulate over time. And we are watching the boiling over of that.

Imagine how angry, desperate, rage-filled you would have to be to come out and protest in the conditions of a historical pandemic that has already killed over 103,000 Americans, that has had a disproportionately horrendous impact in Black communities. I believe 23,000 or 24,000 Black people have died. To put it more bluntly, one in every 2,000 African Americans in the United States has died as the result of COVID. So imagine how difficult things have to be for people to come out in those conditions. So, I think that the buildup around police brutality, the continuation of police brutality, police abuse and violence and murder has compelled people to have to endure those conditions, because it is obvious that there is either nothing that our government can do about this or that the government is complicit and chooses not to do anything about this.

And I think that we have to add to that the crisis that is unfolding beyond police brutality in the country, as well, because we all know that the videotapes of police beatings, abuse, murder have never stopped. So, the movement that grew out of the Ferguson uprising, that became Black Lives Matter, the conditions that led to that never actually ended. And I think that what has reignited that is obviously the public lynching of George Floyd one week ago in Minneapolis, but also the conditions, the wider context within which that is spilling over. And because of that wider condition of mass unemployment, of the death that has been caused by the pandemic, that this is not just — I don’t believe these are just protests around or against police brutality.

But we see a lot of — hundreds, if not thousands, of young white people in these uprisings, making these multiracial rebellions, really. And I think that that is important. Some people have sort of described the participation of white people as outside agitators, or I know that there are reports of white supremacists infiltrating some of the demonstrations. And I think that those are things that we have to pay attention to, keep track of and try to understand. But I think we cannot dismiss in a widespread way the participation of young white people, because we have to see that what has happened over the last decade has gutted their lives, too. And there has been some discussion about this with perhaps their parents’ generation, with the description of deaths by despair.

So, we know that the life expectancy of ordinary white men and women has gone into reverse — something, by the way, that does not typically happen in the developed world. And it is driven by opioid addiction, alcoholism and suicide. And so, this generation, whose lives really — you know, if you’ve graduated from college, your life has been bracketed by war at the turn of the 21st century, by recession and now by a deadly pandemic. And so, I think we’re seeing the convergence of a class rebellion with racism and racial terrorism at the center of it. And in many ways, we are in uncharted territory in the United States.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Cornel West, could you respond to what professor Yamahtta Taylor said? You agree that, of course, the murder of George Floyd was a lynching. You’ve also said that his murder and the demonstrations that have followed show that America is a failed social experiment. So could you respond to that and also the way that the state and police forces have responded to the protests, following George Floyd’s killing, with the National Guard called out in so many cities and states across the country?

CORNEL WEST: Well, there’s no doubt that this is America’s moment of reckoning. But we want to make the connection between the local and the global, because, you see, when you sow the seeds of greed — domestically, inequality; globally, imperial tentacles, 800 military units abroad, violence and AFRICOM in Africa, supporting various regimes, dictatorial ones in Asia and so forth — there is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally. Same is true in terms of the seed of hatred, of white supremacy, hating Black people, anti-Blackness hatred having its own dynamic within the context of a predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money, domination of workers, marginalization of those who don’t fit — gay brothers, lesbian sisters, trans and so forth. So, it’s precisely this convergence that my dear sister Professor Taylor is talking about of the ways in which the American Empire, imploding, its foundations being shaken, with uprisings from below.

The catalyst was certainly Brother George Floyd’s public lynching, but the failures of the predatory capitalist economy to provide the satisfaction of the basic needs of food and healthcare and quality education, jobs with a decent wage, at the same time the collapse of your political class, the collapse of your professional class. Their legitimacy has been radically called into question, and that’s multiracial. It’s the neofascist dimension in Trump. It’s the neoliberal dimension in Biden and Obama and the Clintons and so forth. And it includes much of the media. It includes many of the professors in universities. The young people are saying, “You all have been hypocritical. You haven’t been concerned about our suffering, our misery. And we no longer believe in your legitimacy.” And it spills over into violent explosion.

And it’s here. I won’t go on, but, I mean, it’s here, where I think Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rabbi Heschel and Edward Said, and especially Brother Martin and Malcolm, their legacies, I think, become more central, because they provide the kind of truth telling. They provide the connection between justice and compassion in their example, in their organizing. And that’s what is needed right now. Rebellion is not the same thing in any way as revolution. And what we need is a nonviolent revolutionary project of full-scale democratic sharing — power, wealth, resources, respect, organizing — and a fundamental transformation of this American Empire.

AMY GOODMAN: And your thoughts, Professor West, on the governor of Minnesota saying they’re looking into white supremacist connections to the looting and the burning of the city, and then President Trump tweeting that he’s going to try to put antifa, the anti-fascist activists, on the terror list — which he cannot do — and William Barr emphasizing this, saying he’s going after the far left to investigate?

CORNEL WEST: No, I mean, that’s ridiculous. You know, you remember, Sister Amy — and I love and respect you so — that antifa saved my life in Charlottesville. There’s no doubt about it, that they provided the security, you see. So the very notion that they become candidates for a terrorist organization, but the people who were trying to kill us — the Nazis, the Klan — they’re not candidates for terrorist organization status — but that’s what you’re going to get. You’re going to get a Trump-led neofascist backlash and clampdown on what is going on. We ought to be very clear about that. The neofascism has that kind of obsession with militaristic imposition in the face of any kind of disorder. And so we’ve got to be fortified for that.

But most importantly, I think we’ve got to make sure that we preserve our own moral, spiritual, quality, fundamental focus on truth and justice, and keep track of legalized looting, Wall Street greed; legalized murder, police; legalized murder abroad in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Africa with AFRICOM, and so forth. That’s where our focus has to be, because with all of this rebellious energy, it’s got to be channeled through organizations rooted in a quest for truth and justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Professors Cornel West and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. We’ll hear more from them in a moment, but first let’s turn to former Women’s March co-chair Tamika Mallory. She spoke at a rally in Minneapolis days after the police killed George Floyd.

TAMIKA MALLORY: We are not responsible for the mental illness that has been inflicted upon our people by the American government, institutions and those people who are in positions of power. I don’t give a damn if they burn down Target, because Target should be on the streets with us calling for the justice that our people deserve. Where was AutoZone at the time when Philando Castile was shot in a car, which is what they actually represent? Where were they?

So, if you are not coming to the people’s defense, then don’t challenge us when young people and other people who are frustrated and instigated by the people you pay — you are paying instigators to be among our people out there, throwing rocks, breaking windows and burning down buildings. And so young people are responding to that. They are enraged.

And there’s an easy way to stop it: Arrest the cops. Charge the cops. Charge all the cops, not just some of them, not just here in Minneapolis. Charge them in every city across America where our people are being murdered. Charge them everywhere. That’s the bottom line. Charge the cops. Do your job. Do what you say this country is supposed to be about — the land of the free for all. It has not been free for Black people, and we are tired.

Don’t talk to us about looting. Y’all are the looters. America has looted Black people. America looted the Native Americans when they first came here, so looting is what you do. We learned it from you. We learned violence from you. We learned violence from you. The violence was what we learned from you. So if you want us to do better, then, damn it, you do better.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tamika Mallory speaking in Minneapolis over the weekend. Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, if you could respond to her extraordinary speech, and also the way in which public officials, including liberal officials like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, have responded to the protests, simultaneously saying they feel the pain of the protesters but condemning the violence and looting, as they say?

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: I mean, one thing that becomes so apparent with the cops on the street, one, you understand — I mean, for most of America, you get a glimpse of why people are so angry. I mean, look at the kind of wanton, reckless abuse and violence that the police are instigating, and attacking people who are trying to protest. I feel like what we’ve seen over the weekend is a national police riot. And, you know, it’s no wonder. They feel emboldened by the white nationalism of the president of the United States and, really, the lawlessness of the Republican Party writ large. And so, it feels like we’re bearing the consequences of that.

But I think that there is a bigger issue about the cops that is also worth talking about, which is, why these police are never arrested, prosecuted, punished, really, even beyond just arresting and prosecuting people, but just punishing them as public servants for their kind of racist, abusive and violent behavior. And I think that, you know, regardless of what these elected officials have to say, I think that we’re actually going to see a lot more of this, which is why the conflicts will continue.

And the reason why I say that is because it has been a strategy of cities across this country that have committed themselves to not investing in the civic and public sector infrastructure — so, public schools, public hospitals, public libraries — all of the things that make a city function. Those have been systematically defunded, increasingly privatized. And the way that cities manage the inevitable crises that arise from that, when combined with unemployment, when combined with poverty, when combined with evictions and all of the insecurities that we see wracking cities across this country, the police are used to manage that crisis. And that is why, in city after city, as other public institutions take financial hits, as other public institutions are defunded, it’s the police that always get to maintain their budgets. And we look around now, where, because of the COVID crisis, every city is talking about massive budget cuts, but not to the police. The police almost never have to incur layoffs. They never have to incur budget cuts, because they are seen as the public policy of last resort.

And so, this is — when we talk about defunding the police, it is that the police should not be absorbing a third of the budget, as they do in cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, while we’re closing public schools, while public hospitals don’t have the proper personal protective equipment. Look at the way that police are — the gear and the equipment that they have, compared to hospital workers dressing themselves in garbage bags, being forced to use the same N95 masks for weeks at a time. Look at the contrast between that, and then you understand what the actual priorities of the governing politicians and bodies are.

Which is why — and this is the last thing I’ll say — the hypocrisy of someone like Andrew Cuomo or Bill de Blasio or any of these politicians coming on television, on their press conference, wringing their hands about the police, talking about these issues as if they are passive bystanders or just concerned citizens, and not elected officials who have power, who have authority, who have the ability to punish the police, who have the ability to make budgetary priorities, who have the ability to shift resources in one direction or another, but they sit back and act as if they are just watching the train wreck in slow motion, and not that they are actually in control of the gears. And this is part of the hypocrisy that is making people so angry.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Harvard University’s Cornel West.

*************************

Bree Newsome & Prof. Eddie Glaude: The Black Lives Matter Movement Helped the Democrats Defeat Trump
by Amy Goodman
Democracynow.org
DECEMBER 31, 2020

GUESTS
Bree Newsome Bass. artist, antiracist activist and housing rights advocate in North Carolina.
Eddie Glaude. author and chair of Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies.

As President-elect Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris prepare to take power, we continue to look at the growing debate over the direction of the Democratic Party. House Majority Whip James Clyburn recently criticized calls to “defund the police” and argued the phrase hurt Democratic congressional candidates. “It is actually insane that we would think the way to respond to the scale of problems that we confront as a nation is to harken back to an older form of politics that … seems to try to triangulate and appeal to this Reagan Democrat that they are so obsessed with,” responds Eddie Glaude, author and chair of Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies. “It makes no sense that we would go back to the politics that produced Trump in the first place.” We also speak to artist and antiracist activist Bree Newsome Bass, who argues Black voters “are scapegoated when it’s convenient, and then we are thrown under the bus when it’s convenient. … That’s a dynamic that has to end.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end this holiday special looking at the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who will become the first woman vice president, as well as the first African American, Indian American, Caribbean American and Asian American elected to the office.

Two days after the election was called for Biden and Harris, I spoke to two guests: professor Eddie Glaude, chair of Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies and author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, and also, from North Carolina, I talked to Bree Newsome Bass, an artist and antiracist and housing rights activist. She made national headlines in 2015 when she scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol to remove the Confederate flag shortly after the massacre of eight African American parishioners and their pastor by a white supremacist at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. When police ordered Bree Newsome down, she responded by saying:

BREE NEWSOME BASS: You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today!

AMY GOODMAN: “You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today!” she said. I began by asking Bree Newsome Bass about her reaction to the election results.

BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yes, I mean, it is undoubtedly a historic moment, right? I also see a lot of historical parallels right now. You know, I am repeatedly saying that I think that the central conflict in the United States is and has always been this tension between the ideology of white supremacy and this concept of having a multiracial democracy where everyone is allowed to participate in it. And I think that tension is continuing to play out today.

You know, of course, we just had the election of the first woman vice president, Black vice president, a woman of South Asian descent, a descendent of immigrants, I mean. And so, on one hand, you have what kind of like represents again this concept of multiracial democracy. On the other hand, you have — or on the other side, you have a blatant white nationalist movement. And then, somewhere there in the middle is this constant conversation around unifying the nation and trying to, like, heal that divide, which I frankly think is an ideological divide that cannot be unified. I think that part of the reason why this tension is ongoing and is unresolved is because those two things cannot coexist. And so, even while you have, on one side, the extension of the hand and this language around healing the nation and reaching across the aisle and unifying, the other side has still not even conceded the race. The other side is refusing to acknowledge the election results.

And I think it’s important to recognize, as well, that the entire Trump era was in many ways a backlash — right? — to this very concept of having a multiracial democracy, to the election of Obama and what that represented in terms of the shifting demographics. And I think that this election, again, is kind of like another echo of that, where Biden and Harris, they were elected because of this multiracial coalition, essentially, that formed among the voting base. And that’s why we are where we are. And so, while of course it is a very historic moment and you see people celebrating all across the nation, that central conflict has yet to be resolved, just as this election, really, in many ways, has yet to be resolved.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Professor Eddie Glaude — and feel free to channel James Baldwin, if you’d like, which I think you can’t help but do — if you can talk about what your feelings were on Saturday as you watched Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ascend the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, what this all means?

EDDIE GLAUDE: Well, you know, my initial reaction was, thank God we’re going to see the back of Donald Trump’s head, that the disaster of the last four years, at least embodied in the Trump administration — Stephen Miller, Betsy DeVos, William Barr, the whole gaggle of folk, Giuliani, the children — all of those folk will be behind us soon, and, of course, the symbolic significance of Kamala Harris as the first Black vice president, the first Black [vice] president of South Asian descent and Caribbean descent and the like. I was thinking about the National Council of Negro Women. I was thinking about the Atlanta washerwomen strike of 1881. I was thinking about the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery, who were the backbone of the Montgomery bus boycott. I was thinking about Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer. All of these folk are the wind behind Kamala Harris’s back that make her possible. But she’s a symbolic — also the symbolic importance of her, of course.

But we must understand that yesterday was a day, and the day before was a day, of celebration. Today is the day for the hard work. The country is deeply divided, as Bree said. And we have to get about the work of responding to the problems we face as a nation at scale, and not returning back to some sense of normalcy, which in some ways laid the foundation for the disaster that was and is Trumpism.

AMY GOODMAN: As we continue our conversation with Eddie Glaude and as well as Bree Newsome Bass, we’re going to turn right now to a comment that is brewing part of the debate that’s happening right now about the direction of the Democratic Party. This is House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, who went on several Sunday talk shows to criticize calls to defund the police, arguing the phrase hurts Democratic congressional candidates. Here he is on NBC’s Meet the Press citing the defeat of Jaime Harrison in South Carolina against incumbent Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: Jaime Harrison started to plateau with “defund the police,” showed up with a caption on TV right across his head. That stuff hurt Jaime. And that’s why I spoke out against it a long time ago. I have always said that these headlines can kill a political effort.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Congressmember Clyburn speaking on the Sunday talk shows. Clyburn is credited with really Joe Biden winning the Democratic primaries, having endorsed him right before the South Carolina primary, which then launched him to victory. I wanted to first go to Bree Newsome Bass. You’re in the Carolinas, but you’re in the other one: You’re in North Carolina. Can you talk about this major debate, this debate for the soul of the Democratic Party right now, Bree?

BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yeah, certainly. Well, I mean, first of all, to this argument that is being made so fiercely right now, you know, attacking the “defund the police” effort, I mean, I have yet to see anyone provide any concrete data that supports that claim, other than people making this conjecture. I mean, I live in the Carolinas. I have seen all of the ads that have been running. I mean, they were also running a lot of ads trying to tie Jaime Harrison to Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. So, I mean, unless someone is showing data that can really show that one or the other is what led to Jaime Harrison specifically plateauing in South Carolina, which is a deeply red state, you know, was an uphill battle against Lindsey Graham to begin with, I frankly don’t give that a whole lot of weight.

And I think, again, we cannot gloss over the racial aspect of this whole situation. So, we’re talking about a situation where the Democratic leadership is making the claim — simultaneously making the claim that we need to reach across the aisle, we need to engage in bipartisanship with the party that is not acknowledging the election results; the party that just tried to prevent us from having a free and fair election; the party that engaged in rampant voter suppression, disenfranchisement and intimidation, and particularly in communities of color; the party that, you know, is completely opposed to the idea of our existence; the party that is essentially advocating a form of genocide through medical neglect, that has been ravaging our communities. And so, we can’t just gloss over when people are saying that the path forward is to build with Republicans and at the same time to essentially demonize, make a boogeyman of Black activism and Black causes.

It is the organizers, the same exact people who have been organizing Black communities around issues that impact us, that mobilized those voters for the Biden-Harris win. You know, I’ve also seen people making reference to progressives as being the ones who are being divisive or, you know, ending the truce within the Democratic Party. And it’s quite the opposite. You had a situation where you have a significant segment of people who either traditionally vote Democrat, a lot of people who are completely disengaged from the electoral process completely because they feel that regardless of who is in power, their needs are not met; regardless of who is in power, the police continue to kill us; regardless of who is in power, we do not have access to proper healthcare, we do not have access to housing. So, you had a lot of organizers who had to do a lot of heavy lifting to convince folks that it was worthwhile simply to get Trump out, to mobilize behind Biden and Harris. And that’s why you got Georgia turning out as it did. That’s why you got Arizona turning out as it did.

So, in my view, for anyone to look at the election results and for the takeaway to be we need to figure out how to appeal to the Lindsey Graham voters, you know, and the deeply red districts, as opposed to recognizing that there’s an entire electorate that is younger, that represents where the electorate is going — it’s younger, it’s more diverse, it can win you states in the South — this is the argument that Stacey Abrams has been making for quite some time — instead of looking at things and saying, “How can we invest more in Black and Indigenous and people of color organizing? How can we really look at those issues?” I mean, politically, that makes a lot more sense than saying, “How do we tap into the electorate that lost the presidential election, the electorate that is shrinking, and then, morally, the electorate that opposes democracy?” because they are more committed to racism than they are to the idea of a democracy that allows everyone to participate. So, you know, again, I just think that we cannot — we cannot gloss over.

Yes, I recognize, of course, that James Clyburn is a long-standing politician from South Carolina. He is Black. And I don’t — you know, I’m sure that he recognizes what the political landscape is like in South Carolina. But if we’re looking at the bigger picture, they’re going to cost themselves the Senate race in Georgia if the case that they’re making is that we’re going to try to lean more towards Republican than making it clear to people that unless they turn folks out for those Senate seats in Georgia, you’re not going to have access to the things that you need, like healthcare and all these other things. So, if they embrace a more centrist or Republican agenda, then the takeaway from folks is going to be, again, that it doesn’t matter whether they turn out to vote or not. So I think it’s just like the complete opposite.

And the fact that the focus in the immediate aftermath of the election, when we are still dealing with the situation of a president who does not acknowledge the election results, we’ve got him stoking violence among white supremacists who are threatening violence against sitting governors, who have threatened to blow up ballot-counting centers, that folks would pick defunding the police as the target, as the threat, as the danger, when you’re talking about communities that are still being killed by police and still turning out to support this party in spite of that, complete opposite direction of where they should be going.

AMY GOODMAN: That brings us to professor Eddie Glaude. Professor, you tweeted this quote from James Baldwin: “It has always seemed much easier to murder than to change. And this is really the choice with which we are confronted now.” Explain.

EDDIE GLAUDE: Well, you know, there’s a sense in which the reckoning that we find ourselves involves the question of whether or not we’re going to fundamentally embrace the idea that we are a multiracial democracy. And the history of the country suggests that we constantly, when faced with that question, will double down on violence, that white America will choose violence to defend its way of life, to defend those noxious assumptions, that have, in some ways, led to the organization of our way of life predicated upon this idea that white people ought to be valued more than others, that they will in fact exact a certain kind of violence to defend that view. And so, Baldwin, in this moment, is kind of marking this, right? That America is always talking about it changing, but it never changes, right?

And so, what’s so interesting about the conversation around the Democratic Party is that it’s actually insane — right? — that we would think that the way to respond to the scale of problems that we confront as a nation is to harken back to an older form of politics that is DLC, “Third Way” Democratic-oriented — you know, Democratic politics, that seems to try to triangulate and appeal to this Reagan Democrat that they are so obsessed with as a way of responding to this problem. It makes no sense that we would go back to the politics that actually produced Trumpism in the first place. That’s the first point. The second — or the second point.

The third point is this: We can’t allow these folk to disentangle Trumpism from the Republican Party. I think this is what Bree Newsome Bass is trying to suggest to us. We can’t allow them to disentangle these two things. They are one and the same. So what are you asking for when you talk about reaching across the aisle? What are you asking us to do when you talk about reaching across the aisle in unity? We won’t do that again. That’s not going to happen this time.

And then, lastly, we need to get beyond, I think, these narrow labels. The politics is much more muddled. Right? We need to get beyond these narrow labels. We need to get beyond big government and small government and smart government and get to transformational government. We need to understand what “defund the police” means. Budget your values. Budget your values. That’s what it means at the heart of it, right? Why are you spending 60, 70% of your municipal budgets on policing, when you have education, social services and the like? Stop lying. Stop lying.

And then what we need to pay attention to, lastly — I’ll say this really quickly — we need to pay attention to who Biden appoints as his secretary of treasury. If we get another Rubinite, if we see someone in that tradition, we know what we got. And so, remember, we celebrate yesterday and the day before, but today begins the hard work. The problems of this nation require us to break from the old frames. And we will not allow Clyburn, we will not allow Kamala Harris’s symbolic and significance, we will not allow the threat of Donald Trump to get us from seeing that that is the issue. We have to break the political frame that got us in this mess in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Professor Glaude, Black male voters, a lot is being made of, came out in higher numbers for Trump this time than last time. But my colleague, co-host Juan González did a brilliant analysis of the information that’s come out on who voted in this unprecedentedly high turnout campaign, the highest in absolute history. Now, what it looks like at this point, as he was pointing out, white voters did not increase that much. That meant people of color increased. Yes, there were more people of color who voted for Trump, but overwhelmingly more who voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Apparently, many people are concerned about — well, I mean, obviously, many people are concerned about how close the election was — Trump winning possibly about, at this point, 57% of the white vote. And you, in your piece in Time magazine, said, “Alongside the details of policy and the particulars of governing a deeply divided country, [Biden] will have to confront what Donald Trump refused to face: that our way of life is broken.” Can you end with that?

EDDIE GLAUDE: Sure. You know, I think we have to deal with the reality of our dead. Close to 240,000 Americans are dead, and there’s no communal, public rituals to acknowledge the collective grief and individual sorrow that we’re experiencing. We have to deal with loneliness and what does it mean for us to be stuck in our homes and hidden behind our masks, where social interactions are kind of overdetermined by the specter of death and the virus. And then, of course, the principal issue is selfishness, that you have folk who have simply given up stake in the American life for their own selfish ends. And so, when we look at those numbers among Black men and Latino men, we can say that, you know, the epidemic of selfishness doesn’t end at the doorstep of white people. And so you have people who are concerned about their 401(k)s, concerned about their own individual self-gain, individual self-interest. And so, these folk have opted out, in some ways, of any robust conception of the public good. So we’re going to have to deal with death, loneliness and selfishness and how it poses, I think, an existential threat to our democratic way of life.

But, you know, everybody is bringing up Black men. When you look at Black folk, when you think about what happened in Atlanta, when you think about what happened in Milwaukee, when you think about what happened in Detroit, when you think about what happened in Philly, you see the path for the Biden-Harris ticket to get to the White House through Black America, Black folk. Black men voted at 80-plus percent. They need to start talking about why white women have voted at 56% for Donald Trump, given what he’s done. But, again, who’s at the center of the gravity of our politics? Who are folks thinking about all the time in a certain sort of way? We need to — these numbers will allow us to drill down at some point, but we need to understand the reality for what it is.

AMY GOODMAN: Last 30 seconds, Bree Newsome Bass.

BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yes. I mean, I think that there is this constant abusive relationship between party politics and Black communities, where we are scapegoated when it’s convenient, and then we are thrown under the bus when it’s convenient. And otherwise, it’s, you know, “Show up to the polls to help us stay in power, because we can’t get elected without you.” And that’s a dynamic that has to end. When it’s time to try to scapegoat and talk about, you know, why did Trump do better, then they want to talk about Black men. When it’s time to talk about the issues and why 80% of Black men turned out to vote for Biden, no one wants to talk about defunding the police. That’s the dynamic that has to end.

And I think the last thing I would say is it’s important for everyone to recognize that the Black movement, the Black organizing of our communities, that is independent of the Democratic Party. We are interacting with party politics, but this movement began during the Obama administration, it continued through the Trump administration, and it will continue through the Biden administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Antiracist activist Bree Newsome Bass and Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude.

by **admin** » Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:03 am

“The Work Continues”: Cornel West & Maria Hinojosa on the Promise & Dangers of the Biden Admin
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
JANUARY 21, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/1/21/ ... josa_biden

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

We host a wide-ranging discussion of the historic inauguration of President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — the first-ever woman, South Asian and Black vice president — how we got here, and what comes next, with award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa and author and Harvard professor Cornel West. Hinojosa says she had “mixed emotions” watching the inauguration, her sense of hope tempered by memories of the Obama administration. “We all had these extraordinary expectations, and then things didn’t turn out that way,” she says. “The work continues.” West says that while getting Trump out of office was vital, he is still suspicious “of the capitulation to the neoliberal greed and lies and hatred, now that we’ve pushed back the neofascist forms of greed and lies and hatred.” On his first day in office, President Biden ended many of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies. Hinojosa says parts of this agenda are promising, but lack urgency. “In eight years, there could be a new administration. Everybody knows that,” she says. “Do you understand that if you were to do massive immigration reform right now … what that would do to boost the American economy across the board?”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on these actions of the Biden administration, on the overall inauguration and Inauguration Day itself, and what comes next, not to mention what came before, we’re joined by two guests.

Dr. Cornel West is with us, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University, author of many books, including Race Matters and Black Prophetic Fire. His new podcast is called The Tight Rope.

And Maria Hinojosa joins us, award-winning journalist and author of the new memoir, Once I Was You. She’s founder of Futuro Media, host of Latino USA and co-host of the podcast In the Thick.

We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Maria Hinojosa, let’s begin with you. If you can talk about what we watched yesterday, from — and later in the day, the executive orders, a number of them dealing with immigration, not to mention a not exactly perfectly formed immigration plan, or defined, but some outlines of it, but also the swearing in of the first woman vice president, first Caribbean American, Indian American, African American vice president, daughter of Oakland, by Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latinx Supreme Court justice?

MARIA HINOJOSA: Yeah, it was pretty mind-blowing to see that moment, Amy. And it’s great to be here with you and with Cornel on — you know, on a new day, really, when we’re saying that it really is a new day. And I’m so thrilled to be here with you and your audience and Dr. West to talk about all of this.

Now, like you, there were a lot of mixed emotions. I mean, I was getting very emotional, which I was catching myself, because I had that level of emotion — of course, we all did — when Barack Obama was elected and brought into office, and we all had these extraordinary expectations, and then things didn’t turn out that way. So everything was just kind of like, “Oh my god, this is so beautiful! Oh my god, the United States of America! Oh my god, we’re back!” And then it was just like, “Wow! What just happened?”

My husband kept on saying to me, “It was by a hair.” He just looked at me at one point, and he said — he just went like this. By this much, we didn’t lose this democracy. And so, that is real. I mean, they were coming to murder people. This was an attempted coup d’état in the United States, and the entire world saw it.

On the other hand, we are breathing more freely as journalists. We knew that what we could be facing was an even more targeted assault on us. As a journalist who’s Mexican, an immigrant, not born in this country, I didn’t know what was going to come next for me. Like that.

At the same time, Kamala is vice president. This is incredible. This is extraordinary. Dr. Jill Biden continued working in community colleges.

So, you know, it was here in my household. My daughter, you know, who I was just like, “Aren’t you emotional?” And she was like — and she very much active in electoral politics for the first time ever in her life at 22. But she just kept on saying, “I don’t want people to just walk away now. I don’t want people to just think it’s all good.” And so, the work continues. La luta continúa.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Cornel West, if you could respond to what happened yesterday at the inauguration, and your sense of what this new administration might hold?

CORNEL WEST: Well, again, I’m just blessed any time to be with you, my dear sister, and Sister Amy, Sister Maria.

But I was just thinking about this fundamental pattern of American history, where 200,000 Black soldiers had to join the Union Army, break the back of white supremacist slavery, Black freedom movement in the '60s, break the back of white supremacist apartheid. Here again, you've got Black folk coming to keep us going off the neofascist cliff with the gangster Trump. And yet, at the same time, Black folk often, in the end, end up recrucified, especially Black poor, especially Black working class.

This is a point I think that Sister Maria was making about the disappointment, that there’s a rot in the system. And the rot is corporate greed and Pentagon militarism. And no matter how many people of color you sprinkle around, even in high places, if they can’t reshift that trajectory of the empire, then, in fact, you end up with a deep, deep disappointment, you see?

So, it is a new day. I’m so glad we stopped the neofascist threat. I want to thank Aimee Allison with She the People. I want to thank Stacey Abrams, of course, with Fair Fight; Refuse Fascism with Sister Sunsara and Brother Andy — and, actually, I was part of that myself as a co-initiator. But it’s not just mixed emotions, but I’m just now suspicious of the capitulation to the neoliberal greed and lies and hatred, now that we’ve pushed back the neofascist forms of greed and lies and hatred. And so, the issue of poor people, the issue of working people, that’s going to be the crucial thing for me.

And when you look at Biden, you know, you say, “OK, the old Biden is tied to three crimes against humanity”: the invasion and occupation of [Iraq], mass incarceration, especially for young Black and Brown brothers and sisters, and then you’ve got the Wall Street greed unleashed. And we haven’t even got to the vicious Israeli occupation. All of those, Biden, the old Biden, fundamentally tied to, used to brag about each and every one of them. We’ll see whether there’s a new Biden. I want to be open. You know, I’m a person of hope. But I wasn’t born at night, maybe — last night. I wasn’t born last night. Let me put it that way. I was born at night, but not last night. We’re going to see.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. West, I’d like to ask you about comments that you made in a recent interview, saying that, effectively, there’s no democracy left in America because of the nihilism in the country, the various forms of nihilism. And you talk about the fact that the 74 million people who voted for Trump, of which a slim majority were both women and men, white women and men, but also one out of three Asians, one out of three Jews, more than one out of three Latinos, and even one out of five Black men. So, could you say a little bit more about that, the range of people who voted for Trump? And there are 74 million of them. What should happen to them? What will happen to them under this new administration? How should they be dealt with or engaged?

CORNEL WEST: I think part of the problem, though, my dear sister, is that with the corporate duopoly of the two parties — so, you’ve got the Republican Party, you’ve got the Democratic Party, both of them tied to corporate greed, both of them tied to Pentagon militarism, and all of the criminality that goes with that, the drones and so forth and so on — that the deep desperation, along with the deep suffering of people, forces them to have to choose between the two.

So, when neoliberal policies come along and you get all the rationalizers of globalization that don’t say a mumbling word about inequality, don’t say a mumbling word about mass incarceration and so forth, that they say, “OK, let’s try the Democrats.” Then, boom, 1% walks off with most of the wealth. “Let’s try populism.” Well, the populism was much more right-wing than left-wing. Many of us with Bernie tried left-wing. The neoliberals crushed us, unfairly, in many ways. So they try the alternative. Here comes Trump, the neofascist pied piper. What happened? They still get crushed.

How do poor and working people ever get their voices heard? And we know. You know, you’ve got social scientists like Brother Dylan and others who say that the voices of ordinary people are not heard. Seventy-two percent of American citizens want Medicare for All. Biden, the exemplar of empathy and common humanity and compassion, he says he’ll veto that bill in the middle of a pandemic. That doesn’t look like too much empathy for me at all.

What are we talking about here? As long as you’ve got a system with this rot — the neoliberal form of the rot, the neofascist form of the rot — we’ve got to have much more either left populist, much more radical, or we’re going to be right back where we were four years ago, because the neoliberal policy of the old Biden won’t work. But I’m giving the new Biden a chance. He might be FDR. We’ll see. He’s got to be bold. We’ll see. I’m not holding my breath, but we shall see. History has a mystery to it.

AMY GOODMAN: Former President Donald Trump did not attend the Biden-Harris inauguration, but three of his predecessors did: Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. They filmed a video message to President Biden Wednesday while standing in the Memorial Amphitheater at the Arlington National Cemetery.

BARACK OBAMA: Obviously, there was a personal element to see my former vice president become the 46th president, to see Kamala Harris as our first woman vice president. But, more broadly, I think inaugurations signal a tradition of a peaceful transfer of power that is over two centuries old.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, I think the fact that the three of us are standing here talking about a peaceful transfer of power speaks to the institutional integrity of our country.

BILL CLINTON: So, this is an unusual thing. We are both trying to come back to normalcy, deal with totally abnormal challenges, and do what we do best, which is try to make a more perfect union. It’s an exciting time.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to put this question each of you. That was President Clinton, before that, George W. Bush, and starting with President Obama. On the one hand, this sense that the country is returning to normalcy, to a bipartisan consensus, but you look at the men — you look at George W. Bush, responsible for how many deaths, invading Afghanistan and then Iraq; you look at President Clinton, the welfare, so-called, reform bill that led to the impoverishment of so many and mass incarceration, which, of course, Joe Biden was very much a part of; and then President Obama, called by his closest immigrant rights allies the “deporter-in-chief.” Now, on the other hand, you have this slew of executive orders on the first day. As they were recording this, you had President Biden signing off on the executive orders. And the executive orders include fortifying DACA. They include, at least for now, halting border wall construction. They approve reversing the travel ban on Muslim-majority countries and undoing Trump’s expansion of immigration enforcement within the U.S. If you can talk about this, what a return to so-called normalcy means, and if at this point, at this kind of breaking point in American history, does there need to be a break? And I’d like to put that question to both of you, starting with professor Cornel West.

CORNEL WEST: Well, no, when I see those three brothers, they’re tied to crimes against humanity — there’s no doubt about that — from drones dropped on innocent people, from a Wall Street greed that crushes poor people and actually kills them concretely and symbolically, when you look at the role that the occupations and invasions have played both — not just abroad, but even here at home, military occupations in our cities. You see? So that anytime you’re head of an empire, no matter what color, no matter what — either Democrat or Republican, you’re head of an empire, you’re going to be tied to crimes against humanity.

And I refuse to normalize that. You know, I refuse to just look at Bill Clinton and say nothing about a vicious, vicious crime bill and a withdrawal of resources for people who are hungry. You see, just morally and spiritually, that is — that’s wrong. And Obama dropping these drones and bailing out Wall Street rather than working people, and killing, assassinating American citizens with no no due process at all, and he walks around like he’s some grand progressive. Please, get off the crack pipe. We’ve got to tell the truth. The truth is bigger than all of us. Bush, we won’t even get into, in terms of the Iraq War and so on, and the lies and so forth.

This is what we don’t hear on corporate media. Thank God for Democracy Now! That God for what you all do, because we can’t normalize this kind of mistreatment of our fellow human beings. So it doesn’t make any difference what color they are. We’re going to check with Sister Harris and see whether she falls right in step. There’s a good chance she will. Then we have to be critical.

AMY GOODMAN: And Maria Hinojosa?

MARIA HINOJOSA: Look, yes to all of that. I mean, for me, everything that — well, let me just start with the three presidents, because I’m right with you. I think that — that is what America is. America is that country that forgets willingly. We were all alive. We covered what happened with Gore v. Bush and the Supreme Court deciding who was going to be president. That is not a democracy. You know, in my book, Once I Was You, everybody is so just kind of — their minds are blown, because it turns out, yes, it was Bill Clinton, in fact, who started building the wall. It was Bill Clinton who in fact signed all of those laws that led to where we are now, where people can be put into detention, prison-like conditions, simply not being born in this country. So, and George W. Bush, please, the largest liar, por favor. Colin Powell, we lived through this, the lies.

But, on the other hand, I actually disagree with professor, my brother, Cornel West in this. I don’t believe that democracy is dead yet. And I think this is the tricky part, right? Because, for example, more Latinos came out to vote than we have ever seen before. And this was extraordinarily important because they are the second-largest voting bloc in the United States of America. So, the fact that I’m here talking about this is really important, because the other side of the Latino coin for the last, what, 50 years is our invisibility, right? Which ties into what Dr. West was talking about, and this is where I completely agree with him.

The empire, which needs the militarization, which was built on mass incarceration, which is slowly being — slowly being deconstructed — slowly, OK, slowly — but what is it going to be replaced with? The immigration-industrial mass complex, that’s what it’s being. So, the immigration plan that Joe Biden said, it’s amazing that he is going to cut off the “Remain in Mexico” policy for refugees. But he said, “But if you’re there, you have to remain there now. You can’t move.” It’s like, what does this mean? We’re going to have immigration reform; it’s just going to take eight years. In eight years, there could be a new administration. Everybody knows that. Eight years?

So, I’m only hoping that what I want to see around me is more people understanding that democracy is not just about a vote. It is about everything. It is about Democracy Now! It’s about Cornel West and his professorship. It’s about the work that I do at Futuro Media, the books we write, the conversations we have. I’m a little bit in Trump territory here in Bethlehem, Connecticut, and I’m having to find my way to have these conversations with my neighbors. And I do that because that’s my job and because it’s my civic duty, because I chose to become an American citizen. So, all of this, for someone who chose to become an American citizen, oh, hell, yes, but who was also around when Nixon was the first one who I saw impeached. So, we’re not going away. And this fire, this fire that we have for this dynamic, this capacity to not all be on the same page, that is what democracy looks like. We need more of it.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And I’d like to ask each of you — Maria, if you could begin — what do you think — now the Democrats are in control of the House and of the Senate. What do you think the priorities should be? And also, how can more progressive Democrats push the Biden-Harris administration to pursue policies that will differentiate this Democrat administration from the Obama one? Maria, if you could begin?

MARIA HINOJOSA: Yeah. Well, look, if you ask me — and I suppose I’m a little bit of a radical on this — what I would do, because, you know, we are much stronger than we think, that we’ve been able to live through this pandemic and staying home and not seeing anyone, not hugging people, not seeing our family, but I want it to stop. I would do a full shutdown. I would. And I would pay people. I would pay people. I would have checks going out so that people can be home, that we’re protecting the most essential workers, really, so that the economy and people can chill out and relax and not be freaking out at this point. And that takes care of COVID and the economy, I think, you know, inspiring the economy.

Immigration reform, you know, people see it as kind of an issue. Do you understand that if you were to do massive immigration reform right now — and I’m talking like in three years — what that would do to boost the American economy across the board? So, I kind of feel like the neoliberalism stops this administration from being what they think is going to be called radical. And what I say — and I know what both of you say, too — is, this is not radical. What is radical is taking the uterus from a woman simply because she was not born in this country. What’s radical is putting children in cages. What’s radical is a police officer murdering a Black man for doing nothing, while being captured on camera. That is radical. The solutions — and the question here for the Biden administration — we’re on the same page here — is: Can you change the narrative? Can you take accountability, apologize in a very big way, the both of them, so that we can begin to trust that there will be a deeper commitment to this real new day that we want to get to?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And Dr. West?

CORNEL WEST: Indeed. Yeah, no, I’m with my dear Sister Maria. In fact, I would even go further in embracing Sister Maria here — and you tell me what you think, my sister — that, see, I would say, as long as there’s persons like all of us, as long as there’s artists like Yolanda Adams, as long as there’s poets like Sister Amanda and Gabrielle, her sister, and Joan, her mother, that democracy is alive in the hearts and minds of people. And as long as we’re willing to fight, as long as we’re willing to tell the truth, as long as we’re willing to hold onto integrity as opposed to superficial popularity, democracy is alive in the hearts and minds of people.

But it’s our structures that are profoundly anti-democratic. It’s the big money. It’s the lobbyists. It’s the Wall Street greed. It’s Big Tech greed. That’s what stands in the way. It’s the white supremacy and the male supremacy and so forth and so on, the hatred of gays and lesbians and trans and nonbinaries and so forth, so that, in that way, there’s always a struggle going on.

So, if I were asked what the Biden administration ought to do, they ought to look at the 14 points of the Poor People’s Campaign, that my dear Sister Theoharis and my dear Brother Barber, they lay it out — massive cuts in military, fundamental investment in schools, in housing, in jobs with a living wage, the empowerment of the trade union movement, the defense of rights and liberties.

And this is very, very important, you see, because when Bidens talk about — critiquing white supremacy is a beautiful thing. We’ve never had a president talk about white supremacy like that. Even Obama, with two inaugural speeches, never talked about white supremacy like that. But when he talks about domestic terrorists, the next thing you know, I’m a domestic terrorist, because I’m critical of Israeli occupation. If I’m critical of any form of Zionism by using the very term “Zionism,” that makes me an enemy of the state. So we have to be very clear that we’re not for massive repression and censorship and the defense of rights and liberties, even as we’re against white supremacy and male supremacy and any other ideology that leaves aside the humanity of people.

And this is going to be a very important challenge, but we must raise our voices no matter what, based in part on what the Poor People’s Campaign and other progressives are doing, not the fashionable, glitzy neoliberals who trot around as if they are progressives but in fact are in the hip pocket of Wall Street and corporate greedy elites and Big Tech elites and military militaristic elites. That’s going to be the challenge. And that’s the legacy of our dear brother this week, Martin Luther King Jr. That’s what is so powerful in the poetry of Sister Gorman and the music of Yolanda Adams, if we listen very closely and let it touch our souls.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of Martin Luther King and others, the new Oval Office decor has busts of Martin Luther King and César Chávez and Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosa Parks, among others, along with a portrait of FDR. We’re going to get final comments from Maria Hinojosa and Dr. Cornel West after break and after we play this remarkable five minutes during the inauguration, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history. Stay with us.

***

AMY GOODMAN: Twenty-two-year-old Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history.

This is Democracy Now!, as we end our conversation with Dr. Cornel West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University, and award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa. In the last few minutes we have, Professor West, you were in Charlottesville, Virginia, when the Klan marched, when the white supremacists marched. Amanda was writing her poem through the riot, the white supremacist attack on the Capitol. Your final thoughts?

CORNEL WEST: Just that we say to Brother Biden, you know, when he stood on the floor the Senate, November 18, 1993, and said, “These young Black folk are predators on the street beyond the pale, to be taken out of society,” if you’re going to talk about empathy, you ought to extend your empathy to the cousins of the brilliant, visionary poet Amanda on that street. They’re human beings, even when they’re incarcerated. Extend your sympathy to the immigrants trying to make their way, often coming into a country that used to be theirs, our Mexican brothers. Extend your sympathy to poor, no matter what color, working-class, no matter what color — yes, Jewish folk hated in France, Palestinians hated on the West Bank. Where is your concrete empathy and compassion and acknowledging common humanity?

That’s the kind of pressure that he’s going have to expect from love warriors, freedom fighters,, like both myself and the Amanda Gormans, with memories of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman and Toni Morrison, and John Coltrane’s Love Supreme.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Maria, your final thoughts?

MARIA HINOJOSA: Wow! Just also Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells, my founding fathers and founding mothers, right? That’s why we do this.

Look, the only thing that I — and I’m trying to stay inspired. I really am. Because, otherwise, what happens? So, we just have to realize that those of us who have this understanding of what democracy looks like got to deepen it. OK, sometimes you can chill. You’ve got to take a — you know, relax, whatever. I understand. But we deepen it. That’s why I love being on with both you, Amy, who I’ve known for years, and Brother West, is because there’s such a humanity here. And I think that if Joe Biden and Kamala can do something, it would be to actually try to humanize, as Cornel was saying, the brothers and sisters of our dear poet, of Amanda, of so many — right? — to humanize those who were not born here, like myself.

So, this is our challenge. As I tell my students — I’m about to start teaching any minute now at Barnard, and I’ll tell my students: There are some days when you cannot, in fact, be that unifier. So don’t try it on those days. On the days when you can have dialogue, yes. But you know what? At the same time now, maybe this isn’t a time for that right now. Give ourselves a little bit of a break also to take critical pause for what we’re seeing and to understand, finally, we are much stronger than we think. We never thought we could make it this far. But also, we did not all make it. We did not all make it. And so, for that, I’m very sorry.

But I’m looking at the sun, and I’m incredibly hopeful. Nature is what grounds me, and I hope it grounds the both of you, too — the three of you. It’s been such a pleasure to be with all of you.

AMY GOODMAN: We thank you so much for being here on this post-inauguration broadcast, Maria Hinojosa, award-winning journalist, author and professor, and Dr. Cornel West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University.

by **admin** » Wed Mar 17, 2021 1:41 am

Vijay Prashad Warns Biden Is “Doubling Down” on Trump’s Anti-China Cold War Policy
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
March 16, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/3/16/ ... na_rivalry

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

GUESTS
Vijay Prashad, author and director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
LINKS
Vijay Prashad on Twitter
"Biden continues the US conflict with China through the Quad"
"Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations"

Beijing has accused the U.S. of perpetuating a Cold War mentality as President Joe Biden and senior administration officials shore up alliances in the Pacific region to counter China’s growing influence and increasingly describe the country as a geopolitical threat. Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, says the “bellicose” tone out of Washington is not because the U.S. sees China as a military threat, but because China threatens U.S. dominance in the scientific, technological and diplomatic spheres. “It’s very chilling what the U.S. government is doing in ramping up this cold war,” says Prashad.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at U.S.-China relations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with their counterparts in Japan today and will next head to South Korea as part of their first overseas trip. The meetings are widely viewed as an attempt by the Biden administration to secure allies in Washington’s campaign to counter China’s growing power. Blinken spoke earlier today in Japan.

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: We’re united in the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific region, where countries follow the rules, cooperate whenever they can, and resolve their differences peacefully. And in particular, we will push back, if necessary, when China uses coercion or aggression to get its way.

AMY GOODMAN: The Japanese foreign minister also spoke at the joint news conference.

TOSHIMITSU MOTEGI: [translated] We agreed to oppose China’s unilateral bid to change the status quo, including in the East China Sea and South China Sea, and shared concerns about China’s coast guard laws.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, also speaking at the joint news conference.

DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN: I know Japan shares our concerns with China’s destabilizing actions. And as I have said before, China is a pacing challenge for the Department of Defense.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, President Biden met virtually with the leaders of India, Japan and Australia in the first meeting of the so-called Quad, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Beijing has accused the Quad of perpetuating a Cold War mentality. On [Thursday], Secretary of State Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with their Chinese counterparts in Alaska for the first direct talks between Beijing and the Biden administration. Earlier this month, Blinken described China as the “biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century” for the United States.

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system, all the rules, values and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the United States and China are taking markedly different approaches to vaccines and the COVID pandemic. While the United States faces accusations of hoarding vaccines and blocking efforts to waive vaccine patent rights at the World Trade Organization, China has shipped millions of vaccine doses to nations in the Global South in what’s been described as a form of vaccine diplomacy. China has sent free samples of Sinovac’s vaccine to 53 countries and has exported it to 22 nations that have placed orders. Recipients include Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia.

To talk more about the U.S.-China relations, we are joined by Vijay Prashad, director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, author of many books, including The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. His latest book, Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations. He’s a senior nonresident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. His latest article for Peoples Dispatch is headlined “Biden continues the US conflict with China through the Quad.”

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Vijay. Well, let’s begin right there, with that headline. Can you talk about the Biden administration’s approach to China, how it compares to Trump, and what you see needs to happen and change?

VIJAY PRASHAD: It’s great to be back with you, Amy. The first thing I’d like to say is that there are deep continuities not only between the Biden approach to China and the Trump approach, but also, before that, the Obama approach, because Obama, after all, inaugurated something called a “pivot” to Asia.

I just want to point something out, which is that, you know, when they say that China is a threat, as Antony Blinken said in what I thought was a very sharp and rather bellicose speech — when he says China is a threat, what do they mean? I think, here, precision is important. They don’t mean that China is a military threat to the United States. After all, the Chinese military has the capacity to defend its homeland, but it’s not in any way threatening the United States. In fact, it’s U.S. naval vessels that are sailing very close to the Chinese mainland in so-called freedom of navigation sorties right close to Chinese territorial waters. So, the Chinese don’t have a military threat against the United States at all.

What they’re talking about has been very closely clarified at this Quad meeting, which is that the United States government understands that China’s scientific and technological developments, particularly in robotics, in telecommunications, in green technology and so on, has far surpassed that of U.S. and European companies. And this is an existential threat, as far as the United States is concerned, the U.S. government is concerned, to Silicon Valley. China doesn’t threaten the American citizen, the average American citizen. But Chinese telecommunication companies, like Huawei and ZTE, are perhaps a generation ahead of U.S. telecommunications companies. And rather than compete, you know, in a, as it were, free market with these companies, the United States government is using immense military pressure, diplomatic pressure and a sort of information war to push China back into its boundaries. It’s one thing, as far as the U.S. is concerned, Amy, for China to deliver its workers to produce products for U.S. companies. It’s quite another when Chinese companies are competing fair and square against U.S. companies.

That’s the real issue here. It’s not human rights. It’s not military pressure. It’s not what Lloyd Austin, I think quite gingerly, called destabilization. That’s not the issue. The main issue here is scientific and technological competition. And China, I’m afraid, as far as Silicon Valley is concerned, is ahead of the United States in that game.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Vijay, I wanted to ask you about how China is covered in the U.S. and the Western media. You mentioned the technological competition that often gets some play, but the main issues that the U.S. press seems to concentrate on are the trade deficit with China, the democracy movement in Hong Kong or the fate of the Muslim Uyghurs in China. Very little attention is paid to China’s role as the principal reducer of poverty in the world. Today, there are about 112 million manufacturing workers in China. That’s more than the combined workforce, manufacturing workforce, of the United States, Germany, France, Germany, Italy and Japan combined. So, what’s happened over the last 30, 40 years is that China has lifted about 700 million people out of extreme poverty. Could you talk about this role of China as really changing the nature of the distribution in terms of — now, of course, American companies have benefited from that, from the low wages in China, but the Chinese people have also had an enormous change in their living standards, as well, no?

VIJAY PRASHAD: The first thing I’d like to respond to, Juan, is you mentioned the U.S. media. Look, frankly, most of the U.S. corporate media have become stenographers of the U.S. State Department. You know, the credibility to have Mr. Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state, stand up there on behalf of the Muslims of China, after what the United States has done in Afghanistan, in Iraq — and, don’t forget, Pompeo used to head the CIA — I mean, it strains credibility. When the U.S. government is defending people in the Hong Kong — Hong Kong, which was a colony of the British Empire for a hundred years and was ruled as a colony, the British government now standing up for human rights and democracy, it’s extraordinary that nobody asks the question about their own integrity on these questions. But let’s leave that aside.

Yes, it’s certainly true that as far as a developing country is concerned, China has played an extraordinary role in producing the ability for the Chinese people to lift themselves out of poverty. Let’s be clear about one thing: China had the longest Second World War on the planet. It started in 1937, ended in 1949. That’s years more than the Second World War in Europe. The country was devastated when the Chinese communists took power in 1949. They have fought a very serious battle to end poverty. And they didn’t do it merely by transfer payments, by cash payments. They did it by improving social indicators, by improving healthcare, literacy, education in general, and so on. This is an enormous, enormous feat that they’ve done by lifting, as you say, 700 million people out of poverty. This should be the headline, but it’s not.

And even more so, you know, Amy, you’re quite right to mention what’s been called vaccine diplomacy, rather than the vaccine nationalism we’re seeing in North America, Canada, where, for instance, there’s double the number of vaccine doses needed, and Canada, shamefully, has taken vaccine out of the COVAX vaccine fund, which is supposed to provide vaccines to developing countries. Yes, China is producing a kind of vaccine diplomacy rather than vaccine nationalism. But more than that, Chinese medical personnel, like Cuban medical personnel, have been going around the world assisting countries in combating COVID-19. You know, we are all for the Cuban doctors to get the Nobel Peace Prize this year, but we should also recognize the number of Chinese doctors who have been overseas providing assistance in the Global South.

Recently, even The Atlantic magazine ran a story to show that the myth of the Chinese “debt trap” needs to be called into question. In other words, China has been lending enormous amounts of money for development purposes in the Global South, in countries like Bolivia, where the United States has come in with a project called American Crece, trying to undercut Chinese investments by bringing in U.S. private sector investments and strong-arming countries, as we saw in El Salvador, strong-arming the government, saying, “If you don’t take American money and cut the Chinese out, we’re going to make great trouble for you.” I mean, this is old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy, and people need to see it for what it is. If you’re going to talk about human rights, what about the human rights of the people of El Salvador to craft their own foreign policy? Why should they be dictated to by Washington, D.C.?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Vijay, I wanted to center on that a little bit, the situation in Latin America. Latin America has now become the second major region for Chinese investment abroad, and the kinds of projects that the Chinese are helping to finance, they are really astounding. There’s the $5 billion that’s being spent to build two hydroelectric dams in the Patagonia section of Argentina over the Santa Cruz River, a transcontinental railroad between Peru and Bolivia, and, of course, a new canal across Central America, across Nicaragua, that would basically compete with the monopoly that the Panama Canal has had over world shipping. Could you talk about the sheer size of these projects? Really, most Americans are not aware of this enormous infrastructure that is resulting from the Belt and Road policy of China.

VIJAY PRASHAD: You see, Juan, during this pandemic, people have been aware of what we call the digital divide, you know, some people not having access to the internet. This is, of course, very difficult at a time when 168 million children have not been able to go to school, because they don’t have access to the internet. It’s not just a digital divide. There’s an electricity divide. There’s an infrastructure divide around the planet. It’s one thing to live in the United States and bemoan developments overseas, but you have to understand that in countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, even in the southern part of Argentina, there’s an electricity divide, there’s an infrastructure divide, there’s a lack of transportation and so on.

Very little capital has come into these countries from the World Bank, from the International Monetary Fund that’s enabled infrastructural projects. So what the Chinese have done with the Belt and Road Initiative is provide vast amounts of finance, as you mentioned, to develop some of this infrastructure, to bridge the electricity gap, to bridge the transportation gap.

This is very clearly in the case in Bolivia, where, during the administration of Evo Morales, they cut some very important deals with the Chinese, not only to mine lithium, which is a key component of batteries, but also to develop the processing of lithium in Bolivia and to create electric cars. I think people don’t know that during the last year of Evo Morales’s government, Bolivia produced electric cars for domestic consumption. It’s really quite incredible what’s happened in that partnership. They want to upskill these countries, not just leave them as a place to draw out raw materials and to sell products produced in China. They seriously have a project of upskilling, and I’m quite impressed to see, particularly in Bolivia.

But look at what happens to this. In Ecuador, the government of Lenín Moreno, under some pressure from the U.S. — but it must be said, Lenín Moreno of Ecuador doesn’t need much pressure from the U.S. government — decided to cut out Chinese loans, which had been taken by the previous government of Rafael Correa, and substituted for U.S. loans. You know, we looked closely at these two agreements. It was very clear that the Chinese loans were far less onerous than the U.S. loans that were coming in, because the Chinese, during the pandemic, essentially said, “We suspend all payments for another two years.” The U.S. has not been suspending debt servicing payments from developing countries. So, if you just look at the case of Ecuador, it’s a better deal to take the Chinese money.

Rather than accept this, rather than say, “Let’s have a collaborative approach between China and the United States” — I very much hope that in Alaska this becomes part of the worldview, that there should be a collaborative approach — rather than a collaborative approach, I’m afraid the Biden administration is doubling down on the Trump administration’s cold war policy against China.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Vijay Prashad, there is a tweet, a kind of meme, that a lot of the Chinese diplomats are putting out there right now, where they are saying that — oh, what is it? — China hasn’t dropped a single bomb on foreign soil in more than 40 years; meanwhile, the U.S. drops 46 bombs a day, on average. Your response to that?

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, you know, Amy, the Stockholm Institute for Peace and Research releases their report every year on arms deals and on military spending. And the report recently released shows that the United States government has increased its military spending, and China has actually decreased its military spending. At the same time, just a few weeks ago, Admiral Philip Davidson of the Indo-Pacific Command went before the U.S. Armed Services Committee, and he basically has asked for $5 billion for the Indo-Pacific Command this year and $27 billion over the next period.

Mr. Davidson said something very chilling, Amy, at this hearing. He said the United States government must “be prepared to fight a war” against China. “Be prepared to fight.” The Chinese have not used any belligerent language. In fact, they have cautioned and said, “Look, we need to dial back this tension. This so-called freedom of navigation sorties by the U.S. Navy needs to stop. The United States needs to draw back. There’s no need to militarize Guam.” A conflict is unimaginable between two nuclear powers, and yet United States ramping up the language, spending more to militarize its Pacific outlets, the bases in Japan and so on. I haven’t seen anything comparable coming from China.

This is at a time when the U.S. government has developed a hypersonic cruise missile, which can fire from anywhere in the world, hit Beijing in 15 minutes. It’s very chilling what the U.S. government is doing in ramping up this cold war in the name of human rights, in the name of, you know, non-destabilization, democracy and so on. You’ve got to cut through the rhetoric and see who’s really violating the U.N. Charter.

For this reason, China and a host of other countries, about 10 other countries, have created a group called Friends of the U.N. Charter. This group of friends is going to be a group in the United Nations. They’re going to try and push the objectives of the Charter against groups like the Quad. You know, China has said that the Quad is fine. You can meet as the Quad, but don’t produce groupings like the Quad whose intent is to destabilize a country like China, destabilize another member nation of the United Nations. I think that was a very sober statement coming from Beijing. But more than that, this group of Friends of the U.N. Charter is a significant development, and I hope more people pay attention to it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Vijay, I wanted to ask you about the role of the major multinational American companies, which clearly have benefited from being able to offshore their production capacity in China while selling the products in the West. Their role, as increasingly U.S. administrations become more and more belligerent toward China, but yet the companies still have to make money as a result of their relationships with China?

VIJAY PRASHAD: See, Juan, these companies know that what they make money on is on the patents against the technology. You know, Apple doesn’t make anything. Apple collects rent off products made by, in fact, a Taiwanese company inside China. Apple doesn’t make iPhones. It outsources the production of the iPhone. They make money off the rent, you know, off the patent. So, when Chinese firms develop new patents — and, indeed, the last couple of years, China has registered more patents than U.S. companies — as China develops new technologies and so on, this is what’s going to outflank U.S. companies.

It’s very significant that during the Trump years, none of the Silicon Valley firms opposed the trade war prosecuted by Mr. Trump against China. In fact, when the head of Apple went to see Mr. Trump, he didn’t say, “Dial back the trade war.” I mean, this is really important. He didn’t say, “Dial back the trade war.” He said that the trade war is unfairly helping South Korean companies like Samsung and that there needs to be a way to figure out this trade war so that a South Korean, a third country, is not benefiting from the U.S. trade war on China, because the real beneficiary, as far as the CEO of Apple was concerned, should be Apple.

You know, in other words, Silicon Valley understands that they require U.S. pressure on China to make China surrender its advances in high-tech, in telecommunications, in robotics, in green technology and so on, so that U.S. firms can continue to make money off the patents, to continue to make money as rent-seeking companies, because they are certainly not making money as innovative producers. You know, what are the new major technologies in green technology produced in the United States? Not much. Most of the big developments have taken place in Germany and in China. This is the reason why U.S. high-tech firms are basically aligned with this Cold War mentality that has emanated in Washington from the Obama administration onwards.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Vijay Prashad, back to the issue of vaccine, this idea of China dropping vaccines all over, and the U.S. still involved in these wars around the world and fighting waivers at the Word Trade Organization that allow for more vaccines to be made available to the developing world. I mean, The New York Times has a front-page piece. China is giving Latin America vaccines and gaining leverage. It’s about during Trump — under Trump, taking on China. Brazil, which is now in a massive surge of coronavirus, because Jair Bolsonaro was considered the tropical Trump, such a close ally of Trump — he refused to deal with China and Huawei, the large telecommunications company. But now, in their desperation and with Trump gone, they are turning to China in a major way, both around telecommunications and, at the same time, asking China, “Can you get us vaccines?” Chile is the — China is the dominant supplier of vaccines in Chile and, as we said, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia. And here the U.S. is either being accused of hoarding vaccines or fighting the ability to get these vaccines around the world.

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, you know, India and South Africa — India, a major part of the Quad. Nonetheless, these two countries have asked that the patents on the vaccine be unlocked, so that anybody can produce these vaccines, you know, and that you would have, therefore, ramped-up production. It’s very clear when you talk to people at DHL and other couriers. They say that the issue isn’t getting vaccine places. The issue right now is that the production lines have slowed down, that people are not producing it at the scale that they have to.

Look, this pandemic should not be looked at politically. Countries need to come together under the leadership of the United Nations, under the leadership of the WHO. We need to ramp up the production of these vaccines. By the way, these vaccines are almost all produced with massive public financing. There should be no patent on these vaccines. They need to be unlocked. India and South Africa were quite right to ask for them to be unlocked.

What the Chinese are doing with the Sinovac is, essentially, treating it as if it’s an unlocked vaccine, delivering it at scale to countries around the world. This should not be seen as a political issue. Why should a Swiss company or a U.S.-based company be making billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars, on the pandemic? You know, we used to talk about something, Amy, called war profiteering, during a war, when companies made money producing armaments and so on. There should be no pandemic profiteering. Pandemic profiteering should be an immoral thing. Companies should not be making money during this pandemic. There should be no politics in this. There should be no profit in this. This should be treated as a human tragedy which has to be dealt with in a collaborative way by human beings.

And I must say, once again, here, the Chinese, but not only the Chinese, the Cubans, other countries are showing the way, because they are treating this as a human tragedy. Look, China doesn’t have a political litmus test where it sends its Sinovac. It’s not saying, you know, “Mr. Bolsonaro, you and your son have made horrendous, racist comments about the Chinese, therefore we won’t send you the vaccine.” No, the Chinese say, “We don’t really care what you say. It’s a human tragedy. The Brazilian people should not be held hostage by the ill humor of Mr. Bolsonaro.” And they’ve been providing vaccines. I think this is a very mature attitude.

And I hope this kind of attitude defines the policy not only at the United Nations, but at the WHO. We need a little more maturity in the world. And I feel that all of this warmongering, war talk, this false talk about destabilization and so on, should be set aside. I am not actually governed much by what Blinken said in his speech in early March. I thought a little bit of reality would have been useful. And despite the fact that Mr. Blinken is fluent in French, he is very, very, very much like Mike Pompeo.

AMY GOODMAN: Vijay Prashad, I want to thank you for being with us, author and director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, senior nonresident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in China.

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