Today is the Cancer solstice: the day when the Sun ingresses Cancer. It’s the longest day of the year, kicking off summer in the Northern Hemisphere (in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the shortest day and winter begins). And this year, two of the strongest themes of Cancer certainly are at the forefront of U.S. consciousness: taking care (or not), and emotions/sensitivity.
Excerpt from “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, 1883, on the Statue of Liberty; photo of a mural in Phoenix, Arizona.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a decent amount of time this week making calls to various political officials and departments, signing petitions, and getting pulled into heated social media exchanges — all regarding the continuing separation and detention of young children from their parents at the U.S. border. As I write this on Wednesday, news is breaking that Pres. Trump has signed an executive order to reverse this policy — one that was implemented by his Administration.
While that strikes some as good news on the surface, it does not undo the trauma caused to thousands of children (most appallingly), to their parents, and even to the Immigration employees tasked with carrying out the separation and commanded not to comfort the crying, terrified kids. Additionally, the executive order appears to set up an even more complicated situation. (Addendum: it looks like crossing the border without permission could become a felony rather than a misdemeanor; and, there appears to be no plan to reunite children with their parents or to track them. I’m also seeing reports of a history of giving separated kids psychiatric drugs to keep them subdued. Please see today’s Democracy Now! post for more information on the deepening mess.)
Edward Snowden speaking yesterday. Image: video still
It has been three years since National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden released classified NSA files to media outlets that exposed global mass surveillance operations by the U.S. and British governments. If he returned to the United States from Russia, where he now lives in exile, he would face charges of theft of state secrets and violating the Espionage Act, and face at least 30 years in prison. This week his supporters launched a new call for President Obama to offer Snowden clemency, a plea agreement or a pardon before the end of his term.
The show examines whether he could get a fair trial if he returns to the United States to be tried for violating the Espionage Act. Snowden has said the Espionage Act does not allow a whistleblower or public interest defense, which means his motivations would not be considered in court. Under the act, “it would literally be inadmissible for [Snowden] to tell the jury his motivations,” argues Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Meanwhile, Bradley Moss, a national security attorney who has represented whistleblowers, says Snowden “could have gone to the intelligence committees” with his revelations and stayed within legal guidelines.
A sweeping new investigation has raised questions about the little-known Trump Organization and potential conflicts of interest should Trump become president. The investigation published in Newsweek magazine reveals the Trump Organization is a vast financial network that stretches from New York City to India, Ukraine, China, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey and Russia. It’s connected to Russian mining, banking and real estate billionaire Vladimir Potanin, who himself is closely tied to the Russian government. Trump’s frequent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin has already sparked concern among national security experts about U.S. foreign policy under a possible Trump presidency. The report concludes, “If Donald Trump wins this election and his company is not immediately shut down or forever severed from the Trump family, the foreign policy of the United States of America could well be for sale.” The report’s author spoke to Amy Goodman.
Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.
Note: This is a follow-up to my previous piece, ‘Understanding Trump’. Please read that piece first.
The Responsible Reporter’s Problem
Responsible reporters in the media normally transcribe political speeches so that they can accurately report them. But Donald Trump’s discourse style has stumped a number of reporters. Dan Libit, CNBC’s excellent analyst, is one of them. Libit writes:
His unscripted speaking style, with its spasmodic, self-interrupting sentence structure, has increasingly come to overwhelm the human brains and tape recorders attempting to quote him.
Trump is, simply put, a transcriptionist’s worst nightmare: severely unintelligible, and yet, incredibly important to understand.
Given how dramatically recent polls have turned on his controversial public utterances, it is not hyperbolic to say that the very fate of the nation, indeed human civilization, appears destined to come down to one man’s application of the English language — and the public’s comprehension of it. It has turned the rote job of transcribing into a high-stakes calling.
…
Trump’s crimes against clarity are multifarious: He often speaks in long, run-on sentences, with frequent asides. He pauses after subordinate clauses. He frequently quotes people saying things that aren’t actual quotes. And he repeats words and phrases, sometimes with slight variations, in the same sentence.
Some in the media (Washington Post, Salon, Slate, Think Progress, etc.) have called Trump’s speeches “word salad.” Some commentators have even attributed his language use to “early Alzheimer’s,” citing “erratic behavior” and “little regards for social conventions.” I don’t believe it.
Editor’s note: I have to confess to being rather a big fan of George Lakoff. He’s done some hugely important work on deconstructing language (especially that used by the right wing). This is the first in a two-part series on Donald Trump, published with the author’s kind permission: an exciting and enlightening analysis that in my view cannot be widely enough shared or understood. — Amy
There is a lot being written and spoken about Trump by intelligent and articulate commentators whose insights I respect. But as a longtime researcher in cognitive science and linguistics, I bring a perspective from these sciences to an understanding of the Trump phenomenon. This perspective is hardly unknown. More than half a million people have read my books, and Google Scholar reports that scholars writing in scholarly journals have cited my works well over 100,000 times.
Trump speaking in Arizona. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Yet you will probably not read what I have to say in the New York Times, nor hear it from your favorite political commentators. You will also not hear it from Democratic candidates or party strategists.
There are reasons, and we will discuss them later in this piece. I am writing it because I think it is right and it is needed, even though it comes from the cognitive and brain sciences, not from the normal political sources. I think it is imperative to bring these considerations into public political discourse. But it cannot be done in a 650-word op-ed. My apologies. It is untweetable.
I will begin with an updated version of an earlier piece on who is supporting Trump and why — and why policy details are irrelevant to them. I then move to a section on how Trump uses your brain against you. I finish up discussing how Democratic campaigns could do better, and why they need to do better if we are to avert a Trump presidency.
Matt Taibbi’s intriguing Rolling Stone cover. Image: video still.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump invoked the Cold War as he pledged to wage war against what he described as the “ideology of radical Islam” during a speech in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday. Trump also vowed to institute “extreme vetting” of visa applicants. He also said he’d create a commission on radical Islam, keep Guantánamo Bay open and stop trying people accused of terrorism in civilian courts. The Republican presidential nominee also reversed his earlier threats to defy NATO treaties, and instead said he would work closely with the alliance to defeat ISIS.
For more, Amy Goodman spoke with Matt Taibbi, award-winning journalist with Rolling Stone magazine; Phyllis Bennis, author of “Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror;” and Linda Sarsour, director of the first Muslim online organizing platform, MPower Change, and co-founder of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York.
On Monday, while Trump was speaking, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden held a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Scranton is Biden’s hometown. During her speech, Hillary Clinton slammed Trump’s foreign policy positions on Syria and fighting ISIS. But what about her own positions? Phyllis Bennis and Linda Sarsour comment.
Finally, as the Olympics continue in Rio de Janeiro, Amy Goodman continues her conversation with sports writer Jesse Washington of the site The Undefeated and Anthony Ervin, who just became the oldest-ever individual Olympic swimming gold medalist. Ervin is also the author of the new book, “Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian.”
We are honored to offer this broadcast as part of our affiliation with the Pacifica Network. Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.
What is the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department? Image: video still
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Grimaldi of The Wall Street Journal, who has covered the Clinton Foundation for years, looks at the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, and what it would be if she became president. Newly released State Department emails include exchanges between top members of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s top State Department advisers, including Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills. The FBI reportedly wanted to investigate the Clinton Foundation earlier this year, but U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch pushed back.
As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claims Barack Obama and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton founded the Islamic State by creating a power vacuum when it withdrew from Iraq, journalist Scott Anderson responds with a history lesson about developments in the Middle East since President Bush invaded the country in 2003. “In fact, it was the Bush administration that negotiated the withdrawal of American troops,” Anderson says, adding that Trump himself called for the U.S. to leave Iraq as early as 2007.
We are honored to offer this broadcast as part of our affiliation with the Pacifica Network. Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.
Eric is busy creating the new 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. Covering Jupiter in Libra and other forthcoming astrology, this exciting reading will carry you well into 2017. Get all 12 signs today for just $57. Image from the 2012 Blue Marble by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Former CIA chief General Michael Hayden on CNN: “If someone else had said that outside the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now with the Secret Service questioning him.” Image: video still
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is being accused of inciting violence against his rival Hillary Clinton following remarks he made Tuesday during a rally in North Carolina. At the rally, Trump said, “Hillary wants to abolish—essentially, abolish—the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick—if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.” The comments were widely seen as a call to assassinate Hillary Clinton. The comments sparked widespread outrage from lawmakers, a former CIA chief and the New York Daily News, who wrote: “This isn’t a joke any more. When Trump hinted gun-rights supporters shoot Hillary, he went from offensive to reckless. He must end his campaign.”
David Cay Johnston began covering Donald Trump in the 1980s when he was working as the Atlantic City reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Johnston’s new book, “The Making of Donald Trump,” looks at a side of Trump seldom covered in the press: his ties to the mob, drug traffickers and felons.
In Brazil, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team has pulled off a historic feat, winning the team gold medal by the widest margin of victory since 1960. The five-member gymnastics team is the most diverse the U.S. has ever sent to the Olympics. Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas are African-American. New Jersey-born Lauren Hernandez is of Puerto Rican descent. Madison Kocian and Aly Raisman are white.
But Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas and Lauren Hernandez are far from the first American Olympians of color to make history. Today the show examines a new documentary that looks at the 17 African-American athletes who, along with noted track and fielder Jesse Owens, defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to participate in the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany. Since then, the story of Owens’s four gold medals has dominated the narrative of African-American achievement in the ’36 Games.
In upstate New York, the suspected suicide of 70-year-old prisoner John MacKenzie has drawn attention to how the state is refusing to release aging prisoners who have a low risk of recidivism. MacKenzie reportedly hung himself in his cell at Fishkill Correctional Facility after he was denied parole the previous week. It was his 10th denial of parole since he became eligible in 2000.
Amy Goodman spoke with Kathy Manley, a longtime lawyer and advocate for prisoner rights who represented John MacKenzie in his court case against the New York state Parole Board. And here in New York, Mujahid Farid is lead organizer with the Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) Campaign. He founded the group after he was released from prison in 2011, after serving 33 years on a 15-to-life sentence.
We are honored to offer this broadcast as part of our affiliation with the Pacifica Network. Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.
Eric is busy creating the new 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. Covering Jupiter in Libra and other forthcoming astrology, this exciting reading will carry you well into 2017. Get all 12 signs today for just $57. Image from the 2012 Blue Marble by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Latif Khosa, a Pakistani attorney, speaks out about the bombing. Image: video still
Lawyers in Pakistan have begun a nationwide strike after dozens of attorneys were slain in a suicide bombing outside a hospital in the city of Quetta in Balochistan, the country’s poorest province. Authorities said at least 70 people died in the attack, including as many as 60 attorneys; 120 were injured.
The suicide bombing targeted lawyers who had assembled outside the hospital to mourn the assassination of Bilal Kasi, the president of the Balochistan Bar Association, who was killed earlier on Monday as he headed to court. Kasi had strongly condemned recent attacks in the province and had announced a two-day boycott of court sessions in protest of the killing of a colleague last week. A faction of the Pakistan Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack and for the murder of Bilal Kasi. ISIS also claimed responsibility.
On Monday, protesters interrupted Donald Trump more than a dozen times during a speech at the Detroit Economic Club, in which Trump laid out his economic policies. During the speech, Trump vowed to slash corporate taxes and end the estate tax. He also said he would reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership and renegotiate trade deals including NAFTA. Jacqui Maxwell, a crane operator and a member of the United Auto Workers, interrupted Donald Trump’s speech at the Detroit Economic Club on Monday.
This comes after Donald Trump announced his economic team, which includes 13 men, no women, several billionaires, an Oklahoma oil baron and one part-time professional poker player. For more on Donald Trump’s speech economic plan and his team, Matt Taibbi, an award-winning journalist with Rolling Stone magazine, joins the show. He’s been closely following the Trump campaign. One of his recent pieces is headlined “A Republican Workers’ Party?”
Taibbi also discusses the news that British banking giant Barclays Bank has agreed to pay $100 million in a settlement with 44 U.S. states for rigging Libor, the interest rate which underpins trillions in global transactions. British and U.S. authorities have taken action against a number of banks over alleged rate manipulation since 2012. This was the first settlement between a bank and U.S. states.
Chicago is once again rocked by protests over police brutality, following the release of video showing the fatal police shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager. The newly released video from police body cameras shows the moments before and after police killed 18-year-old Paul O’Neal on July 28. In the video, police are seen shooting repeatedly at the car O’Neal was driving, which police say was stolen.
The video then shows a police officer running over to O’Neal, who is lying face down in a growing pool of blood surrounded by other officers. The officers then handcuff O’Neal with his arms behind his back and search his backpack, as he continues bleeding. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office says he was shot in the back.
In New York City on Monday, over 100 people marched to protest the recent police killing of African-American mother Korryn Gaines in Maryland. On August 1, Baltimore County police killed the 23-year-old mother after what they say was an armed standoff. Police were at Gaines’s apartment to execute an arrest warrant related to a traffic violation. They initially said they entered Korryn Gaines’s apartment with a key obtained from her landlord. But court documents say police kicked down the door.
Once the police entered the apartment, Korryn Gaines was live-streaming the standoff via Facebook before her account was shut down. Police say they killed Gaines after she pointed a shotgun at them. Police also say they shot her 5-year-old son, Kodi Gaines, who suffered an injury to his cheek but survived.
We are honored to offer this broadcast as part of our affiliation with the Pacifica Network. Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.
Eric is busy creating the new 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. Covering Jupiter in Libra and other forthcoming astrology, this exciting reading will carry you well into 2017. Get all 12 signs today for just $57. Image from the 2012 Blue Marble by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
