A coisa começou com uma série de tuítes disparados no sábado à noite por @pppholanda, perfil da jornalista Paula Holanda, que usa VOTEM LULA HADDAD como nome na rede social. Holanda soltou uma bomba: revelou que havia sido contratada por uma agência mineira de marketing digital chamada Lajoy para promover “conteúdo de esquerda” em seu perfil mas que, na verdade, a empresa estava pedindo para que ela e outros tuiteiros fizessem campanha política a favor de candidatos do PT – o que é proibido pela legislação eleitoral.

Um pedido para que ela publicasse tuítes elogiando o governador petista do Piauí, Wellington Dias, candidato à reeleição, foi o estopim para a revelação da jornalista, ela argumentou. “A intenção da pauta de hoje é divulgar & enaltecer a trajetória e as ações de Wellington Dias, que concorre ao seu quarto mandato de governador do Piauí”, disse o briefing enviado ao grupo de WhatsApp criado para juntar os influenciadores.

Holanda decidiu jogar o caso no ventilador das redes. “O combinado foi manter sigilo sobre a ação. Mas o combinado também foi que a ação seria de esquerda, não uma ação partidária”, ela escreveu em sua conta. “Eu comecei a ficar desconfiada pois as duas primeiras pautas eram sobre petistas. Minha desconfiança explodiu hoje, na terceira pauta, sobre o governador petista do piauí Wellington Dias”, afirmou.

Àquela altura, posts de influenciadores tecendo loas a Dias se avolumavam no Twitter. Mas não passou batido, para tuiteiros piauienses, que muitos dos que publicavam elogios ao governador sequer moravam no estado. Antes, Gleisi Hoffmann (candidata a deputada federal), Luiz Marinho (candidato a governador de São Paulo) e Lindbergh Farias (que tenta se reeleger senador) também tinham sido elogiados por membros do grupo. Os tuiteiros recebiam frases enlatadas pela Lajoy no grupo de WhatsApp e muitos deles simplesmente faziam cópia e cola em seus perfis no Twitter.

Um deles era o jornalista William de Lucca, de São Paulo. “Que @wdiaspi (perfil de Wellington Dias no Twitter) siga, ao lado de #LulaPresidente, fazendo o Piauí melhor! :)”, escreveu. Horas depois, ele apagou a publicação, registrando que por um mês fizera parte “de uma ação com outros ativistas para debater pautas progressistas aqui no Twitter”. E escreveu: “Quando topei, deixei claro que não falaria sobre o que não acredito, e assim o fiz. Por conta da condução da agência em relação a ação, eu me desliguei da mesma”, tuitou. A história ganhou vida própria no Twitter por meio das tags #MensalinhodoTwitter e #WellingtonDiasGate.

Campanha para o PT

Em um e-mail publicado nas redes e que teria sido enviado pela Lajoy aos influenciadores, a ação é bem mais explícita do que apenas “defender pautas de esquerda”. A agência cita especificamente o PT. “Estamos com um objetivo de fazer ações de militância política para a esquerda e eu gostaria de saber se você está aberta a conversar sobre uma ação nível Brasil para ativismo de partidos de esquerda, como PT, que defendem abertamente e são favoráveis a causa LGBT, empoderamento feminino, movimento negro, movimento dos trabalhadores, causa animal etc”, lê-se na mensagem.

No e-mail, Lula e Dilma também são mencionados: “O objetivo é realmente você publicar suas opiniões pessoais de apoio aos candidatos de esquerda que já trabalhamos, como por exemplo: Lula, Dilma etc”, prossegue o texto, antes de sugerir exemplos de pauta: “Fale sobre a candidatura do Lula de maneira descontraída”, “Fale como a direita não apoia e não sustenta abertamente os LGBTs e por aí vai…”

A mensagem revela os valores a serem pagos pelos tuítes. Cada influenciador aceitou postar ao menos uma vez por dia em sua conta pessoal – alguns deles têm dezenas de milhares de seguidores – as mensagem pré-cozidas pela Lajoy. “Temos de verba R$1.500,00 por mês para a entrega de 1 conteúdo por dia publicado na sua rede social mais relevante, pode ser 1 tweet, 1 story, você escolhe…” Noutras publicações que circularam pelo Twitter, falou-se em “ganhos mensais de até R$2.000″.

A Lajoy era só a ponta

A agência Lajoy, que fez os contatos com os tuiteiros, não era a responsável pela gênese da ação. Segundo sua dona, a também tuiteira Joyce Moreira Falete Mota, a empresa foi contratada por outra firma para buscar os influenciadores e ser o canal de comunicação com eles. Mas qual era essa outra empresa?

Ouvida pelos jornais O Globo e Folha, Joyce Moreira Falete Mota diz que o trabalho foi encomendado pela Beconnected. O Globo conseguiu falar com um dos sócios da Beconnected. Ele se chama Rodrigo Queles Teixeira Cardoso e disse “que sua empresa não foi contratada para fazer campanha eleitoral”. Mas confirmou que ela é contratada pelo PT desde junho “para fazer o monitoramento de redes sociais”. Ele negou que qualquer influenciador tenha recebido pelo serviço.

O Intercept teve acesso a um áudio enviado por Joyce a um influenciador que não aceitou participar da campanha. Nele, a dona da Lajoy diz que a compra de tuítes foi feita por uma plataforma chamada Follow, que pertence ao deputado federal Miguel Corrêa da Silva Júnior, que até janeiro deste ano era secretário de Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior em Minas e se licenciou para concorrer ao Senado pelo PT. A Follow fica no mesmo endereço da Beconnected, citada por Joyce publicamente como o comprador dos tuiteiros. “Surgiu um pedido de um cliente, que é uma plataforma chamada Follow”, diz Joyce, no áudio enviado ao influenciador. Ela revela também o tamanho do grupo: “Atualmente temos mais de 70 influenciadores de esquerda trabalhando conosco.” E termina: “Eu acho que já te mandei o e-mail com a proposta de remuneração, se você está de acordo com o valor…”.

Follow e Beconnected estão, ambas, registradas na sala 501 do Edifício Comercial Pavarotti, na rua Fernandes Tourinho, 669, na Savassi, em Belo Horizonte.

Sócios e assessores políticos

No mesmo endereço estão sediadas outras empresas cujos donos também são apadrinhados de Corrêa – a sala 501 do Condomínio Pavarotti funciona como uma espécie de gabinete informal do candidato ao Senado. Rodrigo Queles, ouvido pelo O Globo como sócio e porta-voz da Beconnected, foi assessor de Miguel Corrêa – segundo seu próprio currículo público – na Secretaria de Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior em Minas.

O principal nome que circula pelo prédio é o de William Vinicius Lopes Camargos. Ele é sócio, juntamente com Queles, da Sharing, empresa aberta em maio deste ano e sediada na mesma sala 501. Camargos, que ocupa o cargo de diretor da Sharing, é um velho braço direito de Corrêa. Ele teve um cargo, em 2012, na Ouvidoria Parlamentar na Câmara dos Deputados em Brasília, enquanto o ouvidor era o próprio Miguel Corrêa.

Camargos é petista de carteirinha, literalmente. Ele faz parte do Conselho Fiscal do PT de Belo Horizonte, já apareceu na Secretaria de Estado de Governo de Minas e atualmente exerce uma secretaria executiva no governo do petista Fernando Pimentel em Minas. Ele também aparece como doador de R$ 6,5 mil para a campanha de Cristina Corrêa, irmã de Miguel. Ela concorreu a deputada estadual em 2014 e perdeu.

Outro sócio da Sharing é Breno Eduardo Neves Nolasco. Ele também está lotado na Secretaria de Ciência comandada por Miguel Corrêa.

Além da Lajoy, os influenciadores também eram contactados por uma pessoa cujo e-mail estava ligado a uma agência chamada Vbuilders (xxxx@vbluiders.studio). O texto do e-mail de alistamento era o mesmo usado pela Lajoy. Não encontramos a Vbuilders nas bases de dados das empresas brasileiras, mas uma busca pelo nome da firma nos levou a Luis Felipe Veloso de Lima, que se apresentava no LinkedIn como um de seus fundadores. A informação foi excluída de seu currículo, mas há ainda outra, mais interessante. Lima é cofundador da Golz, outra jovem empresa – ela foi aberta há pouco mais de um mês. Onde fica? No Edifício Pavarotti.

Antes de fundar a Golz, Lima trabalhou na Secretaria de Ciência de Miguel Corrêa. Em seu currículo público, ele diz que era “um dos responsáveis por gerir mais de 30 agentes de inovação, em 17 cidades do interior de Minas Gerais”, em um projeto chamado Minas Digital.

Há ainda uma última empresa instalada no Pavarotti. É a Formula Tecnologia Ltda, que tem como sócios o próprio candidato Miguel Corrêa e também Lidia Correa Alves Martins, membro do Diretório Municipal do PT de BH e ex-chefe de gabinete da Câmara Municipal de BH. Não conseguimos confirmar se ela tem parentesco com o deputado licenciado.

Crime eleitoral e velhas denúncias

Ontem, pelo Twitter, a procuradora Janice Ascari disse que o caso estava sendo apurado pelo Ministério Público Eleitoral. “Meus amigos procuradores eleitorais, especialmente os do Piauí, estão em plena atividade.”

A lei permite que partidos paguem apenas para impulsionar conteúdo em redes sociais – são permitidos posts patrocinados no Twitter ou no Facebook. Mas as publicações devem deixar claro que se trata de propaganda partidária e mencionar qual legenda está bancando. O que o MP tentará descobrir agora é a origem do dinheiro que teria alimentado as empresas ligadas a Miguel Corrêa.

Corrêa é político desde 2004, quando se elegeu vereador em Belo Horizonte pelo PPS. No ano seguinte, filiou-se ao PT. Elegeu-se deputado federal em 2006. Entre setembro de 2008 e março de 2009, foi vice-líder do PT na Câmara. Em 2010, foi reeleito e voltou a ser vice-líder do PT na Casa. Em 2014, conseguiu mais um mandato.

Em 2011, reportagem do jornal O Estado de Minas envolveu Corrêa na suspeita de desvio de dinheiro que deveria ser utilizado para beneficiar jovens mineiros. Segundo a denúncia, a verba serviu para bancar candidaturas de deputados da base de apoio do governo Lula e Dilma e para enriquecer um empresário.

Tratava-se do Instituto Mineiro de Desenvolvimento, o IMDC, que segundo reportagem do jornal “recebeu cerca de R$ 100 milhões, somente nos últimos quatro anos, de acordo com estimativa de publicações oficiais”. Parte do valor veio graças à emenda parlamentar de Corrêa, “que destinou emenda de R$ 400 mil a Belo Horizonte, para que o IMDC pudesse realizar o carnaval temporão da cidade. Corrêa admitiu a transação e se desculpou pela triangulação do recurso, que está sendo apurada pelo Ministério Público Federal.”

Corrêa é atualmente candidato ao Senado – faz dobradinha com a ex-presidente Dilma Rousseff na tentativa de levar as duas vagas a que Minas tem direito. Ao TSE, ele declarou bens que somam pouco mais de R$ 142 mil, a maioria em depósitos bancários e quotas de capital. Curiosamente, em 2014, dissera ter um patrimônio quatro vezes maior – R$ 580 mil, incluindo duas casas e um terreno que, juntos, tinham valor declarado de R$ 330 mil.

Atualização publicada às 16h38.

Sobre o caso da compra de tuiteiros, Corrêa respondeu, via assessoria que “trabalhou diretamente com o desenvolvimento de startups, deste trabalho surgiram diversos aplicativos dentre eles o Follow, app do qual é um dos fundadores. Em alguns trabalhos Follow e Be connected apresentaram para clientes, análises de monitoramentos de redes de perfis reais de grandes influencers (perfis com grande alcance) para apontar comportamento e análise deste novo ambiente de debate democrático, de onde nasceram movimentos de unificação de conteúdo. Para finalizar, ressaltamos que para realização de tal ação NUNCA existiu o pagamento de qualquer tipo de valor a estes perfis de grande influência.”

Colaborou: Amanda Audi.

The post Dona de agência diz que empresa de deputado do PT está por trás de compra de tuiteiros appeared first on The Intercept.

The 2018 campaign cycle has seen a bumper crop of such videos, a reflection of the diminishing influence of TV and the heightened importance of digital organizing. A viral spot by Randy Bryce, a Wisconsin congressional candidate, propelled him to a multimillion dollar war chest and a primary victory in the seat being vacated by House Speaker Paul Ryan. (The ad may have even contributed to the timing of Ryan’s retirement.) In Kentucky, Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot, beat her establishment-backed opponent with a lift from her own viral ad, and in Texas, MJ Hegar’s video, “Doors,” similarly launched her candidacy.

The ads, by stretching to two minutes or longer, are able to give a more visceral feel of the candidate than the bubbly 30-second spots that typically air on TV.

But while McGrath’s ad, which has been viewed nearly 2 million times, is at times a celebration of violence and militarism — it shows footage of a bombing, in which people presumably died, a jarring image for a political ad — Harris’s begins with a rumination on how her time in the sky as an Air Force loadmaster gave her a different perspective on things going on down below.

As the two-minute spots proliferate, some differences are beginning to appear within the form, as some focus exclusively on biography and generalities, while others take a more ideological turn. The ads by Ocasio-Cortez and Harris fit the latter category, as the Bronx candidate zeroed in on campaign finance — “we’ve got people, they’ve got money” — “Medicare for All,” a federal jobs guarantee, and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Harris, meanwhile, goes right at the heart of Delaware’s political culture. She hones in on the power of banks and pharmaceutical companies, which dominate the state. “We’re going to ensure that a corporation never outranks an individual,” she intones in her ad, released 10 days ahead of the September 6 primary. “Those of us that live in the trenches know what it takes to change our communities and make them better,” she says, over footage of her working on cars. (Harris previously worked as an auto-mechanic.)

Harris’s ad was directed by Winnie Wong and shot and edited by Josh Hansen at a cost of less than $5,000. Both Wong and Hansen are Harris supporters. Wong was a prominent Occupy Wall Street activist and later founded Ready For Warren, which morphed into People For Bernie when Elizabeth Warren declined to run for president in 2016.

Carper’s spot focuses on how he has stayed in touch with the community despite his decades in office, highlighting his regular Amtrak trips to return home to Wilmington most nights. Harris highlights her own connection to her community by including footage of her feeding the homeless underneath the train tracks.

We see Carper, in between vows to fight President Donald Trump and protect the Affordable Care Act, head to the YMCA for a predawn workout, chit chat on the train, glad-hand at parades, and cruise the state in his locally iconic Town & Country, with its 482,000 miles and counting. “I get my energy from connecting with the people I serve,” he says. “You can’t represent Delaware unless you build real connections with people from all walks of life and listen to their stories. Service is not about making headlines. It’s about dedicating your life to the job.”

We see testimonials for Carper as well. “Five thousand new jobs at the Port of Wilmington. Tom’s going to get it done. That’s why we stand with him,” say a klatch of union workers.

I’ve put more than 482,000 miles on my minivan traveling up and down the state, meeting with Delawareans and listening to their concerns about the future of our state and country.

Every day I head to work in Washington, I’m fighting for every Delawarean. pic.twitter.com/PMVXVZAirK

— Tom Carper (@TomCarperforDE) August 16, 2018

Carper’s ad never mentions Harris. Hers, similarly, never mentions Carper, but it alludes to politicians who’ve been in power for too long.

Carper and Harris will meet Monday night for their first and only primary debate, hosted by the News Journal, a Wilmington newspaper.

Top photo: Kerri Evelyn Harris, Democratic candidate for Senate from Delaware, is photographed in Lewes, Delaware, on July 21, 2018.

The post Democrats Are Releasing Two-Minute Campaign Ads, Hoping to Replicate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Viral Success appeared first on The Intercept.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attend a campaign rally at Pima County Fairgrounds, March 26, 2010, in Tucson, Ariz.

Photo: Darren Hauck/Getty Images

Donald Trump might not be sitting in the White House today.

At first glance, that might sound odd. The six-term Republican senator, who passed away Saturday, has been hailed as an outspoken opponent of the president, while Trump himself despised McCain and famously claimed the former prisoner of the Vietcong was “not a war hero.”

McCain has also been held up, by both right and left alike, as an exemplar of political civility, integrity, and decency; a nonracist Republican; the anti-Trump. Bernie Sanders called him “a man of decency and honor;” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised him as an “unparalleled example of human decency.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Even if you discount the fact that McCain once publicly dismissed his wife as a “cunt.” Or that he referred to two of his fellow Republican senators as a “fucking jerk” and an “asshole.” Or that he mocked Chelsea Clinton, then a teenager, as “ugly.” Or that he refused to apologize for calling his Vietnamese captors “gooks.” Or that he slammed anti-war protesters as “low-life scum.”

Ignore all of that and you’re still left with his hate-mongering, race-baiting, Trump-precursing 2008 presidential campaign — against the first black Democratic nominee for the White House. How have the vitriol and smears of a decade ago been so easily forgotten by his eulogizers? So casually consigned to the media memory hole?

Remember: McCain introduced the loathsome Palin to the world in August 2008, when he plucked her from Alaskan obscurity and made her his running mate. In doing so, he granted prestige, influence, and credibility to a know-nothing demagogue and conspiracy theorist; a woman who thrived on racial and cultural resentment and would later become a leading figure in both the tea party and the “birther” movement. Sound familiar? Palin, as the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote in 2016, was “politically, the Mother of Trump.”

As even Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC host and former adviser to McCain, conceded during the 2016 campaign: “Mr. Trump is riding the wave of anxiety that Ms. Palin first gave voice to as Senator John McCain’s running mate. Mr. Trump has now usurped and vastly expanded upon Ms. Palin’s constituency, but the connection between the two movements is undeniable.”

Is it any wonder then that the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin, in an otherwise fawning piece on the late Arizona senator in May, observed how “many in Mr. McCain’s own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party”?

Remember also: McCain has never apologized for picking Palin. As Martin reported in his piece, McCain did express regret that he hadn’t selected his friend and fellow Sen. Joe Lieberman as his 2008 running mate, but “he continues to defend Ms. Palin’s performance.” Yes, her racist and conspiratorial performance. That performance.

It’s easy, though, to blame all of the Trumpish campaign of 2008 on the former governor of Alaska. It was McCain, however, who unleashed and empowered her — and failed to restrain or rebuke her as she incited angry crowds against Obama. “The growing furor in the Republican Party was something that we, as a campaign, failed to address,” admitted Wallace. And, while it was Palin who shamelessly accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists” and dog-whistled to rally-goers that the black Democrat wasn’t “a man who sees America the way you and I see America,” it was McCain who spent much of the days and weeks before the election trying to tie Obama to his former acquaintance, Bill Ayers, the co-founder of a Vietnam War-era militant group. It was McCain who authorized his campaign spokesperson to remind reporters of “Barack Obama’s long association with a domestic terrorist.” The spokesperson added, “The American people know radical when they hear it, and John McCain is not the candidate in this election they should be concerned about.”

You think shouting “lock her up” and “CNN sucks” at Trump rallies is bad? McCain-Palin rallies in 2008 featured Republican supporters in the audience shouting “Traitor!”, “Terrorist!”, “Off with his head!”, and “Kill him!” at the mere mention of Obama’s name. “Watch the tape of the guy screaming, ‘He’s a terrorist!’ McCain seems to shudder at that, he rolls his eyes … and I thought for a moment he’d admonish the man. But he didn’t,” wrote Joe Klein in Time magazine on October 9, 2008. “True enough: he no longer has his honor. But we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn’t done the right thing all year.”

On October 11, 2008, Democratic congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis lambasted both McCain and Palin for “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” and even compared their dangerous campaign rhetoric to that of arch-segregationist George Wallace.

Some conservatives expressed outrage with McCain, too. David Frum accused him of “whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November.” Andrew Sullivan urged the Arizona senator to desist from dangerous and inflammatory attacks on a young, black Democrat: “For God’s sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.” Republican activist and former McCain ally Frank Schaeffer denounced the GOP presidential candidate for “playing with fire,” unleashing a “monster of American hate and prejudice,” and holding rallies that “are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.”

Yet, astonishingly, all of this has been whitewashed from McCain’s political record. None of it makes an appearance in the raft of unctuous obituaries that have been published since Saturday. Instead, a single moment from that campaign — in which a woman at a town hall accused Obama of being “an Arab” and McCain replied by saying, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man” — has become the only thing anyone seems to remember from it. Over the past couple of days, the clip of that exchange has gone viral on Twitter, with everyone from former Bush administration official Fran Townsend to liberal author Stephen King, citing it as proof of the late senator’s “character and integrity” and his “finest moment.”

Sorry, what? I have never understood how this was a badge of honor for McCain — nor do many Arab-Americans, for that matter. Actor Ben Affleck summed up the problem on “Real Time with Bill Maher” a few days after the incident. “What if someone said, ‘I heard he’s a Jew.’ ‘No, no, he’s not a Jew, he’s alright … he’s a decent guy’?” Affleck asked the audience. “‘Arab’ and ‘good person’ are not antithetical to one another. … We’ve allowed this idea where denying … that Obama is not an Arab, nor is he a Muslim, we’ve allowed that denial to turn into the acceptance of both of those things as a legitimate slur.”

In 2008, McCain could have pushed back against this idea, expressed by the increasingly Trumpish GOP rank and file, that there was something wrong with being Arab or Muslim; after all, his fellow Republican and Vietnam veteran Colin Powell did so rather eloquently on television around the same time. But, no, McCain, whether wittingly or unwittingly, allowed a distinction to be drawn between being an Arab and being a decent family man. Some suggest he should be given the benefit of the doubt on that remark because it was a spur-of-the-moment, off-the-cuff response to a rambling and racist questioner; his intent, they say, was noble.

Maybe. But context matters. How do you explain the rest of his shoddy election campaign? Shamefully, he ran for president while repeatedly claiming his black opponent was a friend of terrorists. Embarrassingly, he chose to give the nativist Palin a national platform she didn’t deserve. Disgracefully, he stayed silent as his own supporters called for the killing and beheading of Obama.

So the reality is this: if you were drawing up a list of Americans who share blame for the rise of Donald Trump, John McCain’s name would have to be somewhere near the top of it. With the noxious Palin at his side, the Arizona senator ran a nasty, bigoted, and desperate presidential campaign in 2008 that paved the way for Trump and Trumpism in 2016.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. It’s been reported that McCain requested for Obama to speak at his funeral. Perhaps the former president can start his eulogy by repeating aloud what he told New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait in October 2016: “I see a straight line from the announcement of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential nominee to what we see today in Donald Trump … and the shift in the center of gravity for the Republican Party.”

Thanks, John McCain. Thanks a lot.

The post Hold the Plaudits, John McCain’s 2008 Campaign Paved the Way for Donald Trump appeared first on The Intercept.

A partir desta semana, programas de televisão no horário nobre serão interrompidos diariamente com o aviso da “transmissão do horário eleitoral gratuito”. Apesar desse adjetivo, esse espaço é extremamente bem pago a todas as emissoras de rádio e TV. Neste ano, o valor chega a R$ 864,7 milhões, o maior da história – estimativa 17% inferior à de R$ 1,04 bilhão que a Receita havia previsto no orçamento apresentado ao Congresso Nacional.

É impossível saber quanto cada emissora receberá por isso. O governo se resume a publicar uma estimativa de quanto será a isenção total para o ano e não detalha quanto desse dinheiro vai para cada empresa. Esses valores somam até R$ 6,6 bilhões desde 2002, quando os dados começaram a ser disponibilizados pela Receita.

Os candidatos não podem comprar espaço para propaganda na televisão, a exemplo de empresas e outros anunciantes. Para que eles possam aparecer em rede nacional, o próprio governo age como um bom anunciante para cada uma das emissoras.

De uma pequena rádio do interior à Rede Globo, todas emissoras do país ganham para ceder espaço a candidatos e partidos todos os anos. Quando não há eleição, rádios e TVs recebiam pela propaganda partidária, que deixou de ser exibida desde o início deste ano. Nos anos pares, o valor dispara com a exibição dos candidatos no horário eleitoral: no ano passado, a Receita repassou R$ 335 milhões aos partidos. Neste ano, o total é quase três vezes esse valor.

A lei eleitoral prevê como o espaço publicitário deve ser pago: 80% das tabelas de preços estipuladas pelos próprios veículos, o que vale tanto para as duas propagandas diárias de dez minutos quanto para as inserções menores distribuídas ao longo do dia. Esse valor é convertido em isenções no imposto de renda das empresas.

Receita alega sigilo fiscal

Desde 2012, venho tentando descobrir quanto cada emissora recebe pelo horário eleitoral por meio da Lei de Acesso à Informação, mas a Receita tem negado meus pedidos. O órgão usou um trecho do Código Tributário Nacional de 1966, segundo o qual não é permitido divulgar qualquer informação sobre “a situação econômica ou financeira” de empresas, para negar meu pedido.

Em outra tentativa de obter esses documentos, em 2014, o caso chegou a Controladoria Geral da União, órgão responsável por decidir questões controversas da lei de acesso à informação. Argumentei que não seria necessário divulgar quanto uma emissora paga de impostos, mas somente quanto deixa de pagar com o espaço reservado aos políticos. Logo, informações sensíveis não seriam divulgadas.

A CGU negou. O argumento foi que o valor da renúncia fiscal é proporcional ao faturamento da emissora. Assim, a divulgação dos dados seria uma forma de ferir o sigilo fiscal das empresas. Negativas posteriores continuaram na mesma linha de argumentação. Uma busca no portal da CGU mostra que outras pessoas fizeram mais tentativas de obter esses dados, mas esbarraram no mesmo problema.

Neste mês, a Receita negou um novo pedido que fiz para obter os dados detalhados. Além dos argumentos anteriores, alegou que dividir os dados por emissora exigiria “trabalho adicional”, uma exceção prevista na lei de acesso.

Hoje, existe somente uma pista de como esse dinheiro é distribuído. Em seus relatórios, a Receita mostra a distribuição da isenção por região do país. As emissoras da região sudeste recebem a esmagadora maioria dessa verba. Enquanto todas as emissoras do norte do país recebem menos de um por cento desse dinheiro, as emissoras do sudeste recebem 67% dele, em um total de R$ 697 milhões de reais.

Quais emissoras e quanto dinheiro, ao menos por enquanto, é impossível saber.

The post Horário eleitoral ‘gratuito’ custa R$ 864 mi. E o governo se recusa a mostrar quem recebe a grana. appeared first on The Intercept.

In 2006, McCain spoke at Columbia University in New York City and delivered a small homily on the importance of friendship across bitter political divides:

I had a friend once, who, a long time ago, in the passions and resentments of a tumultuous era in our history, I might have considered my enemy. He had come once to the capitol of the country that held me prisoner, that deprived me and my dearest friends of our most basic rights, and that murdered some of us. He came to that place to denounce our country’s involvement in the war that had led us there. His speech was broadcast into our cells. I thought it a grievous wrong and I still do.

A few years later, he had moved temporarily to a kibbutz in Israel. He was there during the Yom Kippur War, when he witnessed the support America provided our beleaguered ally. He saw the huge cargo planes bearing the insignia of the United States Air Force rushing emergency supplies into that country. And he had an epiphany. He had believed America had made a tragic mistake and done a terrible injustice by going to Vietnam, and he still did. But he realized he had let his criticism temporarily blind him to his country’s generosity and the goodness that most Americans possess, and he regretted his failing deeply.

The friend to which McCain was referring was David Ifshin. In 1970, Ifshin, then a student at Syracuse University and a prominent anti-Vietnam War activist, traveled to Hanoi. There, he delivered a speech condemning the war which was carried on Hanoi radio and broadcast in the Vietnamese prison in which McCain was being held.

During the 1980s, Ifshin, by then the general counsel for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, apologized to McCain, and, as McCain said, they become friends. Ifshin then served as general counsel for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. McCain defended Ifshin when Ifshin’s Vietnam speech was used to attack Clinton, and spoke at Ifshin’s funeral when he died at age 47 in 1996. All in all, it’s a pleasing tale about the humanity of both men.

The problem is that the core of the story doesn’t make any sense.

McCain and Ifshin’s reconciliation was possible because, in McCain’s words, Ifshin had an epiphany when “he witnessed the support America provided our beleaguered ally” Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Before then, Ifshin had been blinded to “his country’s generosity and the goodness that most Americans possess.” But afterward, Ifshin understood what McCain had always known, creating the basis for their later warm relations.

But if Ifshin and McCain knew anything at all about America’s actions during the Yom Kippur War and our rearmament of Israel — called Operation Nickel Grass — they would not have understood it as a shining example of U.S. goodness and generosity. Rather, America engaged in some fairly gruesome realpolitik — intentionally allowing Israelis to die because that served our preferred ends.

To begin with, U.S. policy during the Yom Kippur War was carried out by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, then the secretary of state. Neither man is renowned for their goodness and generosity, in foreign policy or anything else. Kissinger himself, in a memoir, writes about how Americans — Americans like Ifshin — foolishly interpret our foreign policy “in legal and idealistic ways.” While in office, Kissinger told aides, “This is not an honorable business conducted by honorable men in an honorable way. Don’t assume I’m that way and you shouldn’t be.”

The specifics of the Yom Kippur War show that Kissinger definitely wasn’t kidding.

The war grew out of a previous Arab-Israeli conflict, the Six-Day War, in 1967. During the Six-Day War Israel attacked first, crushing the Arab militaries and seizing the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza (from Egypt), the Golan Heights (from Syria) and the West Bank (from Jordan).

Beginning in 1971, Egypt offered full peace to Israel several times on the condition that Israel return to its 1967 borders — i.e., what was required under the relevant United Nations resolutions. Israel ignored the offers, tensions rose, and Egypt made clear that the alternative to negotiations was war.

Neither the U.S. nor Israel took this seriously, generally seeing Arabs as incompetent peasants. Kissinger’s main concern at the time was pulling off a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, the U.S. wanted to turn Israel into a client state, but Israel was recalcitrant and difficult to control. On the other, we needed good relations with the Arab world because it had one weapon we did respect: a potential oil embargo, something much more serious in 1973 than it would be today. Therefore, as war appeared more and more likely, Kissinger repeatedly urged Israel not to attempt a repeat of its 1967 success with a pre-emptive strike — with his last warnings coming in telephone calls just hours before the war began on October 6, Yom Kippur.

Egypt and Syria’s goal was not to destroy Israel, but simply to recapture Sinai and the Golan Heights, respectively. They therefore did not attack Israel itself, concentrating on the occupied territories. During the first days of the war, both Egypt and Syria stunned Israel with their military effectiveness. The Israeli government panicked, with some, such as Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, believing Israel was going to be conquered. To make matters worse, Israel was quickly running out of war matériel, and desperately needed to be resupplied by the U.S.

This is where America’s goodness and generosity came in. Kissinger did not want to anger the Arab oil states. Nor did he want Israel to triumph outright, since he hoped for a post-war settlement in which Israel would be amenable to returning some of the territory from the Six-Day War. Nixon was also being lobbied by U.S. petroleum companies not to come in heavily on the side of Israel, since, the companies told Nixon, this might cause the oil states to start working with “Japanese, European, and perhaps Russian interests, largely supplanting United States presence in the area.”

Kissinger thus dragged his feet on sending Israel supplies. His goal, as a top U.S. official described it, was to “let Israel come out ahead, but bleed.” Other officials have been quoted with similar perspectives, saying that America wanted an outcome in which “Israel won, but had its nose bloodied in the process.”

But Israel then forced the issue, arming numerous missiles with nuclear weapons — something it certainly knew the U.S. would detect. Some reporting states that Israel directly informed the U.S. that it was preparing to use them.

The degree to which Kissinger and Nixon worried that Israel would actually do this remains unclear. They also were certainly motivated by a large-scale shipment of arms to Egypt by the Soviet Union. But in any case, the U.S. began an enormous airlift of weapons to Israel on October 12. Kissinger’s plan was for the planes to arrive at night, so the Arab states would be less likely to know what was happening. But weather forced delays that caused some to arrive in broad daylight. This is why Ifshin was able to witness the arrival of “huge cargo planes bearing the insignia of the United States Air Force.”

Israel was then able to regroup and counterattack. By the end of the war, several weeks later, Kissinger’s diplomacy was aimed at making sure Israel didn’t obliterate a large section of the Egyptian army.

What’s the moral of this story? If you’re an admirer of Israel, like McCain, it should be that America’s actions had nothing to do with any purported “generosity and goodness.” Rather, they show that our foreign policy is like that of all other countries: driven by the perceived self-interest of the people who run it, indifferent to the lives of others, and generally quite squalid. And indeed, this is how more sophisticated supporters of Israel look at it.

But McCain couldn’t see this obvious reality staring him in the face. The ugly facts about America were transformed in his imagination into a shining demonstration of our honor and glory.

And this, of course, is what McCain always did where America and its wars were concerned — in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Yemen, and all around the world. That’s why this story is worth remembering, and why his constant, vain folly was so dangerous.

Top photo: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., looks on during a brief press conference before an Armed Services conference committee meeting on the National Defense Authorization Act on Capitol Hill, Oct. 25, 2017, in Washington, D.C.

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Quando cheguei na redação, rapidamente compreendi que era muito diferente dos meus trabalhos anteriores e que, mesmo experiente, eu tinha muito a aprender.

O primeiro impacto, sem dúvida, é a total liberdade para dar nomes aos bois, citar empresas, governos, revelar conexões e mexer com qualquer um, desde que haja interesse público. Está lá na nossa missão: fazer um “jornalismo destemido e combativo. Acreditamos que o jornalismo deve promover transparência, responsabilizando instituições governamentais e corporativas”.

Aqui na redação nos dedicamos, e estimulamos uns aos outros, a confrontar o poder porque o que fazemos não é um serviço à venda. Não é assessoria de imprensa disfarçada de jornalismo. O Intercept não depende de propaganda do governo, não faz parcerias com empresas ou associações empresariais, nem admite político sugerindo pauta em troca de favores. Fazemos essa escolha para que possamos ter independência absoluta — algo tão raro no meio.

Foram alguns meses de pesquisa e análises de dados do Disque Denúncia para que pudéssemos fazer um verdadeiro raio-x da expansão das milícias no Rio de Janeiro. Mostramos como “tá tudo dominado” pelas milícias e como isso se reflete na violência urbana. É preciso dedicação também para conseguir contar chacinas e mortos que simplesmente não aparecem nas estatísticas oficiais, nem nos jornais. Em abril do ano passado contamos ao menos 21 chacinas e 76 pessoas mortas.

Mesmo com o luxo de tempo, há muito horror por aí acontecendo de maneira permanente, mas que às vezes não temos o olhar educado para perceber. Foi assim que mexemos com os fazendeiros que ofereciam uma “experiência turística” peculiar no interior do Rio de Janeiro: a possibilidade de ser um escravocrata por um dia. Lá, você podia ser servido por pessoas negras vestidas como escravas, “sem racismo”, óbvio. A matéria chamou a atenção de nossos leitores e também do Ministério Público que acabou propondo um Termo de Ajustamento de Conduta para os proprietários. Finalmente os quitutes servidos pelas mãos de pessoas negras vestidas de escravas deram lugar a placas com nomes de 162 pessoas, 46 delas nascidas no continente africano e que foram escravizadas ali, com os escritos: “A Fazenda Santa Eufrásia foi palco, no século XIX, do que hoje é considerado crime contra a humanidade: a escravização de africanos, muitos sequestrados ainda crianças”.

Seja o exército não cumprindo suas promessas, o MBL espalhando mentiraspor aí, uma fabricante de armas cujos produtos defeituosos matam inocentes, a imprensa “imparcial” espalhando preconceitos ou um pré-candidato prometendo “dar carta branca para a polícia matar”, a revelação de hipocrisia, injustiça e ganância é o que me motiva a fazer jornalismo. E o Intercept Brasil é o único lugar onde posso dizer tudo isso sem um editor me obrigar a inserir um monte de qualificações ou eufemismos por medo de ser processado.

Agora, estamos planejando uma cobertura especial das eleições 2018 — serão as mais importantes dos últimos 30 anos. Além de nossa cobertura normal, vamos publicar uma série de investigações reveladoras; fazer tudo ao nosso alcance para desmistificar as questões mais importantes para você; e  lançar uma ferramenta de dados inédita no país para que você leitor, jornalistas e pesquisadores possam facilmente fuçar as histórias de todos os candidatos ao Congresso Nacional e à Presidência. Mas tudo isso demanda mais recursos e mais braços.

São tantas crises acontecendo ao mesmo tempo que eu nem vou arriscar listá-las aqui. Você sabe do que eu estou falando e sabe que tudo piora nesta era de fake news e incertezas. Aliás, é por isso que a internet e o jornalismo investigativo serão tão importantes na campanha. Não basta carimbar mentira ou verdade na notícia, é preciso mostrar a quais interesses ela atende, o que está por trás das informações falsas que convencem tanta gente e quem ganha com esses boatos. É isto que pode oxigenar o ambiente democrático e derrubar máscaras.

É o que você quer também? Bom, porque precisamos da sua ajuda! Na última semana o Intercept colocou no ar uma campanha para levantar os recursos necessários para executar a cobertura das eleições do jeito que precisa ser feito. Nós queremos continuar trabalhando sem vender espaço, sem dar explicação para os donos do dinheiro e confrontando o poder. Temos a sorte de ter financiamento para existir, mas não é nada em comparação com os recursos dos nossos adversários: os verdadeiros donos do Brasil. Para ir mais longe, precisamos de mais recursos. Para isso, só podemos contar com nossos leitores. Lá no Catarse nós explicamos detalhadamente a campanha. É só clicar no link aí embaixo.

Vamos fazer jornalismo sem rabo preso juntos?

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The captors? Bad faith claims of bigotry.

According to an increasingly popular narrative among the center-left, a dispiriting plurality of progressives are “class reductionists” — people who believe that economic equality is a cure-all for societal ills, and who, as a result, would neglect policy prescriptions which seek to remedy identity-based disparities. 

Of course, race and class are so interwoven that any political project that aims to resolve one while ignoring the other does a disservice to both. As Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., presumptive leader of the progressive movement, put it this spring when I asked him about the never-ending race versus class debates: “It’s not either-or. It’s never either-or. It’s both.”

The fear that identity-based issues might be “thrown under the bus” in favor of more populist, “universal” policies is legitimate: The Democratic Party has certainly done as much in the recent past for causes less noble than class equality. But the irony is that anxiety over class reductionism has led some to defensively embrace an equally unproductive and regressive ideology: race reductionism.

If you’re #online, like I am, you’re probably already familiar with the main argument. It goes something like this: If a policy doesn’t resolve racism “first,” it’s at worst racist, and at best not worth pursuing.

According to one popular iteration of this theme, “Medicare For All” is presumptively racist or sexist because it won’t eliminate discriminatory point-of-service care or fully address women’s reproductive needs if it’s not thoughtfully designed. Perhaps you remember Rep. James Clyburn’s claim that a free college and university plan would “destroy” historically black colleges and universities. Maybe you’ve heard that the minimum wage is “racist” because it “Kills Jobs and Doesn’t Help The Poor,” or that it’s an act of privilege to care about Wall Street corruption, because only the wealthy could possibly mind what the banks do with the mortgages and pensions of millions of Americans. Perchance you’ve even been pitched on the incredible notion that rooftop solar panels hurt minority communities.

Libertarian journalist Conor Friedersdorf recently entered the fray with a piece titled, “Democratic Socialism Threatens Minorities.” His argument? That “top-down socialism” (which progressives want just about as badly as they want top-down capitalism) would create a tyranny of the majority and put minorities at risk. Completely ignoring the market failures of our current system, and eliding the widespread prejudice and violence black Americans face under capitalism, he concern-trolls by imagining a world in which black women struggle to find suitable hair products. Of course, this is a world we already live in. 

Friedersdorf, though, was merely building an addition on a house of cards first constructed by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential primary campaign: “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow,” she famously asked, “would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?”

It was a daring and adroit deception: Ignore this structural salve that would upset the status quo, she implied, because it won’t resolve that more personal, more visceral issue which goes straight to the heart of your identity.

Notice that this trick is aimed at policies which would threaten significant corporate or entrenched interests: The insurance industry, the banking industry, the energy sector, lenders. As the University of California, Berkeley, law professor and leading scholar on race Ian Haney-López observed as we discussed the motives behind this framing, mainstream Democrats, like Republicans, “are funded by large donors. Of course they’re concerned about the interests of the top 1 percent.” It’s almost as if the real agenda here isn’t ending racism, but deterring well-meaning liberals from policies that would upset the Democratic Party’s financial base.

It’s almost as if the real agenda here isn’t ending racism, but deterring well-meaning liberals from policies that would upset the Democratic Party’s financial base.

The cruel irony is that as much as it wouldn’t have ended racism, breaking up the banks, and properly regulating them, would have a positive effect on the economic, and consequently, the social status of black and Hispanic Americans. Banks, left to their own devices, systematically give blacks worse loans with higher interest rates than whites with worse credit histories. Yet there was little talk of those racial impacts when, this spring, 33 Democrats (including 9 Congressional Black Caucus members) joined with Republicans to roll back protections contained in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

African-Americans are disproportionately victimized by predatory lending, and as a result, we were among the worst affected by the 2008 housing crisis (from which the bottom still hasn’t recovered). Of course, the goal of breaking up banks was to avoid a repeat of the collapse which wiped out 40 percent of black wealth — hardly an incidental issue to African Americans, who rank the economy, jobs, health care and poverty above race relations when asked to rate our chief political concerns.

Rep. Clyburn’s claim that free college and university would “kill” historically black colleges is similarly a misdirection. HBCUs are facing a funding squeeze, and might suffer somewhat if tuition paying applicants go elsewhere. But Clyburn’s defense of black institutions ignores that black students have the most to gain from college debt relief.

Although there is a black/white college graduation gap, black Americans actually apply to and enroll in college at higher rates than white Americans. Why don’t we matriculate? An inability to pay ranks high among reasons. And black students carry a disproportionate amount of scholastic debt — more than any other group. The idea that free college would hurt HBCUs is intended to suggest it’s ‘bad for blacks,’ and therefore regressive (or even racist). Given that the opposite is true, it would be easy to interpret Clyburn’s spin as cynical politicking against the interests of the very community he’s presumed to faithfully represent. Affording him the benefit of the doubt earned by his storied legacy of advocacy for the black community, his comments were, at best, a mistake.

Moreover, although immigration is coded as the “Hispanic” issue by the media, only 1 in 10 Latinos are undocumented, while 1 in 3 non-elderly Hispanics are uninsured — that’s the largest uninsured demographic group in the country.

Over-policing is a critical issue, but while approximately 1 in 6 blacks will be incarcerated in our lifetimes, 1 in 4 non-elderly black Americans is uninsured — that’s compared to 13 percent of non-hispanic white Americans. Even the Black Lives Matter platform, which calls for universal health care, recognizes that health care is not a peripheral issue, but an existential one for black Americans. The reason it’s not perceived as a “POC” issue is a matter of marketing, not substance.

So will Medicare for All cure racism? No. Will it completely eliminate point-of-care discrimination? It won’t. But neither will doubling down on the status quo. Those who admonish these broad economic policies on the grounds that they won’t end bigotry rarely, if ever, propose alternatives that will, nor do they suggest reforms to make flawed universal programs more perfect. This fact, more than anything, exposes the bad faith motives of at least some race reductionists. 

Our Revolution President and former Bernie Sanders surrogate Nina Turner described race reductionism as “ludicrous.” “Identity can be used in a positive way to say, ‘Hey: we must recognize that there’s an undergirding concern across all issues in this country,’” for which race is a “major variable,” she told me. “But it is entirely another different story to say we’re going to use some of the most progressive ideas and advancements in this country and say we can’t do them because they hurt [marginalized people]. To me it’s just asinine.”

She’s right.

Crowds in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the The March for Jobs and Freedom, also known as the March on Washington for civil rights, on Aug. 28, 1963.

AP

But those days are behind us, killed by corporate interests who feared the people’s momentum and derived a strategy to defeat it. Attacks on labor laws gutted unions just as people of color were gaining access to them and reaping incredible benefits from collective action. And following the embarrassing loss of George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election, the Democratic party committed to corporations as a more reliable source of support. After all, with the right staking out their claim as pro-white so clearly, where did the more melanated “base” have to go?

When Republicans pivoted to the Southern Strategy in the 1960s — uniting rich and poor whites on the promise that they’d always have racial superiority — the Democrats positioned their party as a refuge for everyone else. Identity, consequently, has become centrally important to liberals. It’s not just a useful way to frame experiences which stem from broadly shared characteristics, nor is its political relevance limited to its significant organizing value. Today, identities other than white, cis, straight and male are foundational to the Democratic party’s understanding of itself, and its ability to persist. Like the clumsy signifier “people of color,” the party defines itself via its relationship to a white male status quo. The coalition, by its very nature, depends on it.

No wonder, then, that identity has become such a lightening rod, and why critiques of identity politics are so polarizing.

Just look at presumed 2020 hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris’s recent defense of identity politics at the Netroots conference earlier this month.

Seeming to either misunderstand or ignore the critique of identity politics from the left, she argued that the term “identity politics” is used to “divide and it is used to distract. Its purpose is to minimize and marginalize issues that impact all of us.” “It is used to try to shut us up,” she said.

This is certainly true of the political right, which generally rejects identity politics because acknowledging its validity would require them to admit that identities are politicized in response to systemic oppression (which they deny is real), rather than a rejection of individualism.

But the left’s critique of identity politics is not really a critique of identity politics at all, but of the cynical weaponization of identity for political ends. By conflating the two, Harris managed to delegitimize the left’s critique, and strengthen the Democratic Party’s ability to continue to weaponize identity with impunity — whether or not that was her intent. 

This shoring up of identity politics is not just a defense against attacks on substantive equality from the right. It’s preparation for a war against leftist candidates sure to enter the ring in 2020.

Harris averred that she wouldn’t be dissuaded from talking about immigrant rights, women’s rights, equal justice, or other concerns relating to marginalized groups. Nor should she. But I suspect that this shoring up of identity politics is not just a defense against attacks on substantive equality from the right. It’s preparation for a war against leftist candidates sure to enter the ring in 2020.  

The root of why some Democrats have adopted this approach feels obvious. Faced with a challenge from the left, the Democratic Party’s usual tactic of comparing itself favorably to Republicans, doesn’t work. Where the establishment offered a $12 minimum wage in 2016, Bernie Sanders argued that $15 was better. When Hillary Clinton sought to protect the ACA, Bernie Sanders said it didn’t go far enough.

The growing popularity of left movements among blacks prompted the KKK to use the threat of violence to deter blacks from communist meetings, as evidenced by this flyer from the 1930s.

Images: Alabama Department of Archives and History

Jake Sullivan, my top policy advisor, told me it reminded him of a scene from the 1998 movie There’s Something About Mary. A deranged hitchhiker says he’s come up with a brilliant plan. Instead of the famous “eight-minute abs” exercise routine, he’s going to market “seven-minute abs.” It’s the same, just quicker. Then the driver, played by Ben Stiller, says, “Well, why not six-minute abs?” That’s what it was like in policy debates with Bernie. We would propose a bold infrastructure investment plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger.

Today, most 2020 hopefuls seem to have responded to the popularity of the progressive movement by simply embracing many of its policy prescriptions. (They kind of have to: Medicare for All has gone from something that Clinton insisted would “never, ever” happen, to a policy which has the backing of a majority of the American public — including Republicans.)

But some still employ a mixed strategy, which pairs a shift to the left with an attack on progressivism under the pretext of anti-bigotry. This needs to end, before it ends badly.

The organization Progressive Democrats of America holds a news conference to announce the launch of a Medicare for All Caucus at the Capitol on July 19, 2018.

Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP

But that’s not a reason to forestall initiatives aimed at economic equality until some far off time at which racism is cured. Rather, it’s incentive to improve upon them.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, the policy director for former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and the brains behind his comprehensive suite of policy proposals, understands this. In a recent interview, she explained that she takes an “intersectional” approach to policy — a reference to Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw’s insight that identities intersect, overlap, and diversify the priorities of individuals within broad identity-group categories.

Gunn-Wright believes that “universal” programs are rightly criticized when they adopt a rising-tide-raises-all-ships philosophy, which can ignore or reinforce disparities across groups. But she says that policy makers can work to avoid that outcome. “The analysis of intersectionality was all about how systems are designed with either a deep inattention to all identities or attention to one identity at a time, and therefore ignoring people who lived at the intersections of those identities,” she told me. But that’s a design problem — not an argument against broad economic programs.

“I think it’s very interesting intersectionality has become such a buzzword now, and you can tell alot of people have picked it up without ever reading the black women who created the concept,” Gunn-Wright said. “I can never imagine Kimberlé Crenshaw being like: ‘You know what? We definitely should not have single-payer until we figure out race.’”

“I can never imagine Kimberlé Crenshaw being like: ‘You know what? We definitely should not have single-payer until we figure out race.'”

No identity should ever be sidelined. As Haney-López told me, “there’s a danger to thinking exclusively in race terms. But you kind of want to be balanced about what that danger is and how it relates to dominant political dynamics and what the resolution is, because at the same time that there’s a risk to talking about race, there’s an enormous risk to erasing it.” He’s right. But while I understand where concerns about “de-centering” race are coming from, by definition, there is no fixed “center” in intersectionality. It’s not a zero sum game. 

“We think that race, in particular, is a purely social issue and not connected to economics or reproductive justice or criminal justice,” said Gunn-Wright, arguing that, in fact, both class and race are always part of the equation. “I think identities are incredibly important and shape the way we move throughout the world, and they shape the way that people treat us and the way our government treats us. . . It’s just been deployed in this way that shuts down progress instead of embracing it, and also assumes in a very strange way that black people wouldn’t want this sort of progress, or wouldn’t benefit from it.”

Dr. Touré Reed, professor of 20th Century U.S. and African American History at Illinois State University, observed that the presumption that black Americans aren’t equally or more invested in economic interventions as white Americans is “pregnant, of course, with class presumptions” which work well for the black and Latinx professional middle class — many of whom play a significant role in defining public narratives via their work in politics or media. Since “the principal beneficiaries of universal policies would be poor and working class people who would disproportionately be black and brown,” he told me, “dismissing such policies on the grounds that they aren’t addressing systemic racism is a sleight of hand of sorts.”

“Dismissing such policies on the grounds that they aren’t addressing systemic racism is a sleight of hand of sorts.”

Intersectionality, the “buzzword” taken up so faithfully by mainstream Democrats in 2016, requires an acknowledgment that like race and sexual identity, class is a dimension that mediates one’s perspective. That means the hashtag #trustblackwomen shouldn’t collapse the interests of Oprah, a billionaire, with, well, anyone else’s. Similarly, not all blacks or latinos should be presumed to speak equally to the interests of poor and working class people of color. This is a truth easily internalized when Democrats consider figures like Ben Carson or Ted Cruz. It’s a more difficult reality to swallow when considering one of our own.

None of this is to say that in every scenario, race, gender, sexuality, and class are equal inputs. Affluent black athletes are still tackled by cops despite their wealth, and black Harvard professors are arrested trying to unlock their own front doors. But the fact that racism hurts even those with economic privilege is not “proof” that class doesn’t matter, as some race reductionists have claimed. It’s simply affirmation that racism matters too.

Consider, for instance, my colleague Zaid Jilani’s review of comprehensive police shooting data in 2015, in which he found that 95 percent of police shootings had occurred in neighborhoods where the household income averaged below $100,000 a year. Remember that Philando Castile was pulled over, in part, because he was flagged for dozens of driving offenses described as “crimes of poverty” by local public defender Erik Sandvick. Failure to show proof of insurance, driving with a broken taillight — these are hardly patrician slip ups. If anything is privileged, it’s the fiction that there’s no difference between the abuses suffered by wealthy black athletes and working class blacks like Philando Castile. Race can increase your odds of being targeted and abused. Money can help you survive abuse and secure justice — something which sadly eluded Castile.

“There is a tendency to reduce issues that have quite a bit to do with the economic opportunities available to all Americans, African Americans among them, and in some instances overrepresented among them, to matters of race,” explained Dr. Reed, who is currently writing a book on the conservative implications of race reductionism. He pointed to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as the mass incarceration crisis, as examples. “In both those instances, Flint and the criminal justice system, whites are 40 percent, or near 40 percent, of the victims,” he said. And that’s an awfully high number for collateral damage.” He went on: “There’s something systemic at play. But it can’t be reduced, be reducible, to race.”

 About a month ago, in anticipation of writing this, I asked Twitter to remind me of any tweets or articles that had unfairly framed progressive policies as negative because they would not end bigotry. I expected maybe a dozen responses. But that thread is now at over 200 posts, and has been retweeted over 2,000 times. The scale of this is unnerving.

Sally Albright, a Democratic Party communications consultant, argues often that free college is “racist” because mostly white people go to college and it reinforces the status quo.

Senior Legal Analyst at Rewire News and popular Twitter personality Imani Gandy suggested to her 124,000 followers that caring about Wall Street is evidence of white privilege, writing: “I would love to wake up in the morning and have my first thought be ‘I hate Wall Street.’ That’s the whitest thing I’ve ever heard.”

In a similar vein, Deray McKesson, popular podcastor, charter school advocate, and Black Lives Matter icon, retweeted a tweet which read: “Wall Street didn’t nominate a Sec of Education that believed guns and bibles have more place in schools than LGBT and disabled students,” implying that because Wall Street isn’t to blame for anti-LGBT policies, the financial industry doesn’t merit critique from black and/or LGBT Americans at all.

When someone pointed out that New York Times columnist Charles Blow shouldn’t be uncomfortable with a 50-plus percent tax rate for rich because taxes were even higher in the New Deal era, Blow tweeted back: “You can feel free to return to the 30s. Wasn’t so great for my folks” — as though a high tax rate necessitates a return to Jim Crow terrorism.

An anonymous, but popular, Twitter personality disparaged a job guarantee program because black people “had 100% employment for 250 years,” meaning slavery, and it “didn’t help” racism.

In a Vice article, Monica Potts claims to support single-payer health care while cautioning against Sanders’s plan on the basis that it would destroy jobs worked by low income women — never mind that it would provide those women with health care they disproportionately lack. (Her point that any job-eliminating programs would cause less harm if a strong social safety net were in place is a sound one, but it ignores that Sanders’s plan is being proposed in conjunction with exactly the types of social safety net fortifications she seeks.)

Terrell Jermaine Starr, a journalist at The Root with a history of writing articles on the theme of Sanders’s alleged black problem, wrote a begrudging acknowledgment of the Senator’s new bill addressing the inequities of cash bail in a piece ungenerously titled: “Bernie Sanders Takes on Unjust Cash Bail System, but Still Doesn’t Make Direct Connection to Institutional Racism.”

Sally Albright distilled the essence of this dominant strain of criticism when she tweeted: “Sorry kids, no way around it, if you say a policy ‘helps all Americans equally,’ that policy is racist. Structural racism must be addressed.”

Some of the worst of these interlocutors aren’t mainstream, thank goodness, even though they have significant influence on Twitter. The anonymous Twitter user who argued that we have to maintain capitalism because “Ending capitalism WILL displace people of color. Money is what keeps us in the game,” or Sally Albright’s tweet that “Income inequality’ is only a priority for cis white men,” ultimately don’t matter. But I’m concerned that the growing popularity of this framing will make it that much easier for politicians to exploit the left’s good faith concern about identity-based disparities in order to disperse enthusiasm for policies that seek to transform the economic status quo.  

Ending racism is a necessary, critical goal. But that goal should be pursued in tandem with efforts to address the effects of racism. The wage gap, the health care gap, the education gap, the debt gap — all these disparities would be narrowed by progressive, intersectional economic programs. As popular opinion coalesces around these policies, it’s crucial that we not let our best impulses be weaponized against our interests, any more than conservatives weaponize the worst impulses of their constituents against theirs.

The post Beware the Race Reductionist appeared first on The Intercept.

No último debate presidencial, o jornalista Reinaldo Azevedo fez uma pergunta bastante simples sobre dívida interna para Bolsonaro, mas que o fez perder o chão. Durante o minuto de resposta, o candidato ficou tenso como se estivesse acabado de ficar nu diante de todo o país. O mito da força e da ordem derreteu ao vivo e se transformou em um garotinho assustado, com olhar vazio. Ficou perdido como o meme do John Travolta. Foi possível enxergar em seu semblante “sofrimento interior”, ‘desequilíbrio emocional” e “angústia”— os mesmos sentimentos que o acometeram quando o deputado do PSB carioca Carlos Minc o chamou de machista, homofóbico e racista, como consta no processo que abriu contra o ex-ministro.

Entre um silêncio interminável e outro, falou qualquer coisa que lhe veio à cabeça, sem nenhuma conexão com a pergunta, e apresentou soluções constrangedoramente infantis como: “fazer com que empregados e patrões sejam amigos, e não inimigos”. Escolhido para comentar a resposta, Ciro Gomes teve a chance de escancarar ainda mais o despreparo de um candidato minúsculo, mas preferiu ser cortês, talvez para não parecer arrogante aos olhos do eleitor. Se uma pergunta trivial sobre economia causou todo esse estrago no emocional de Bolsonaro, não é difícil imaginar como seria o seu comportamento na hora de tomar grandes decisões, administrar conflitos e atender demandas complexas de uma sociedade que passa por crises de toda ordem.

O avanço recente da extrema-direita no mundo tem suscitado discussões sobre como os líderes políticos que emergem desse espectro devem ser abordados. Nos EUA, Europa e agora no Brasil, jornalistas tentam descobrir a melhor maneira de entrevistá-los sem oferecer palanque para suas propostas antidemocráticas. A experiência americana com Trump indica que confrontar os absurdos racistas e homofóbicos, por exemplo, não funciona e só ajuda a alimentar a fúria dos seus seguidores. Primeiro porque o confronto em si é uma das principais estratégias da extrema-direita, que busca a briga com a imprensa a todo custo para poder posar de vítima perseguida pelo establishment. Segundo porque todo extremista é, via de regra, intelectualmente limitado e se perde ao ser convocado a falar sobre temas que estão fora da sua caixinha moralista.

Há uma tendência da imprensa mundial em querer em apontar os absurdos dos extremistas, mas são exatamente esses mesmos absurdos que têm aumentado os seus capitais políticos. Grandes temas fundamentais acabam ficando em segundo plano, o que não acontece com políticos não extremistas.

Uma pergunta banal de Reinaldo Azevedo revelou a fragilidade do Bolsonaro, coisa que a bancada inteira do Roda Viva inteiro não conseguiu em horas de entrevista. Os entrevistadores do programa da TV Cultura se focaram nos mais famosos episódios de agressividade e preconceito do candidato, o que o fez nadar de braçada. É justamente por causa desses episódios que o candidato está onde está. Reforçá-los não ajuda em nada.

Bolsonaro entra em pânico com uma pergunta corriqueira sobre economia.

(Foto: Reprodução/Youtube)

A jornalista americana Emily Schultheis, que atualmente mora em Berlim, escreveu um artigo para o The Atlantic citando essa entrevista e analisando as dificuldades que a mídia internacional tem encontrado ao lidar com extremistas de direita: “A mídia alemã (e europeia) tem sido criticada por dar um enfoque sensacionalista nas questões de refugiados e migração. O constante foco da mídia nessas questões ajuda a mantê-las na mente das pessoas, mesmo depois que o fluxo de refugiados tenha diminuído de forma significativa.”

Quando perguntado sobre a fala de um correligionário que propôs uma “mudança no sistema previdenciário”, Gauland se limitou a dizer que o “partido ainda está discutindo” e que não há “nenhum conceito determinado”. O jornalista insistiu no tema e perguntou se o partido não tinha, de fato, uma proposta para as aposentadorias. O líder extremista respondeu que “agora, não”, mas que apresentaria uma após a próxima reunião do partido.

Em outra pergunta, Walde se referiu à retórica nacionalista que prega a proteção do povo alemão (e que geralmente explora a perda de empregos para imigrantes) e perguntou sobre como os locatários locais serão protegidos das grandes empresas internacionais de locação como o Airbnb, que fizeram os aluguéis em Berlim dispararem. Mais uma resposta melancólica: “Não posso lhe dar uma resposta no momento. Isso não foi votado no programa do partido.”

Sobre a digitalização — tema importante na Alemanha, já que o país tem uma infraestrutura digital bastante precária em relação a outros países europeus —, a resposta seguiu o padrão vergonhoso das anteriores.  “Eu não posso explicar isso. Você precisa perguntar a um deputado”, acrescentando que ele próprio não tem “nenhuma familiaridade com a internet”.

Depois da entrevista, Gauland sentiu o golpe e resmungou publicamente. Disse que o jornalista foi “excessivamente tendencioso” e “absolutamente anti-jornalístico”. As perguntas simples e técnicas irritaram também o exército de militantes virtuais de extrema-direita, que atacaram o jornalista alemão em suas redes sociais — exatamente o que o fã-clube de Bolsonaro fez com Reinaldo Azevedo.

No mês passado, Luciano Caramori, um redator publicitário com experiência em campanhas eleitorais, escreveu uma série de tweets propondo um modo de como abordar Bolsonaro. Trata-se basicamente da mesma estratégia utilizada por Azevedo e por Walde.

“Por mais absurdo que seja, os comportamentos RACISTA, HOMOFÓBICO, VIOLENTO do candidato não me parecem os melhores argumentos contra ele. Infelizmente, existe uma tendência mundial em relevar essas atitudes. O que interessa é SEGURANÇA, EMPREGO, SAÚDE. O argumento que ele não fez NADA pela segurança do Rio de Janeiro em 30 anos de mandato vai ser mais eficaz do que comentar que ele espancaria o próprio filho se fosse gay.”

Essa deve ser a postura dos jornalistas ao abordar não só Bolsonaro, mas todos os candidatos de extrema-direita que têm pipocado por aí. Questões básicas e técnicas sobre segurança, economia e saúde, que demandam respostas complexas, são as principais armas contra o extremismo. Políticos que exaltam a ditadura militar e propõem que fazendeiros se armem com fuzis e tanques de guerra, por exemplo, devem ser confrontados com perguntas técnicas sobre segurança pública, sem ter espaço para o proselitismo ideológico de sempre. É só oferecer a corda que o extremista se enforca sozinho.

Depois de ter sido nocauteado por uma pergunta simples e, temendo que o fato se repita nos próximos debates, Bolsonaro anunciou que é melhor já ir se acostumando com sua possível ausência nos próximos debates. O presidente do PSL justificou dizendo que seu candidato é diferente, que não apresenta soluções fáceis, “mas novos direcionamentos para um Brasil, que está sofrendo com a esquerdopatia que está aí há mais de duas décadas”. Apelou até para a convocação do comunismo imaginário para justificar a fuga do seu Dom Quixote.

O fato de Bolsonaro não ter a mínima noção dos problemas básicos que poderá vir a enfrentar como presidente deve ser cada vez mais exposto. Ele está há quase 30 anos na vida pública parlamentar sem ter feito nada de relevante — nem em favor de suas odiosas bandeiras, diga-se — e até hoje não adquiriu a mínima noção de economia. O povo quer emprego, segurança e comida na mesa, e para isso é preciso que fique claro que o polemismo por si só não resolverá essas questões.

Que Bolsonaro continue pregando para convertidos apenas em suas bolhas nas redes sociais. Quando sair delas, deve ser confrontado com questões técnicas e práticas do mundo real. Não dá pra ser presidente de um país em profunda crise econômica cumprindo exclusivamente o papel de guardinha da moral e dos bons costumes, enquanto na economia cumpre o de fantoche. Não se governa um país do posto Ipiranga.

The post Lições de como enfrentar Bolsonaro e a extrema-direita sem fortalecê-los appeared first on The Intercept.

No interviews with the detainees were allowed, so reporters were left to record random sounds and observations: phalanxes of baby strollers, a salad bar in the cafeteria, and, as the Wall Street Journal noted, “a speaker blasting a Jimmy Buffett song.” But The Intercept has been in contact with some of the occupants of Dilley by phone — many of them children — and the circumstances they’re enduring are decidedly less sanguine than Buffett’s tunes.

Ninety percent of Dilley detainees were apprehended after President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy was rescinded on June 20, and they never experienced family separations. These days, detained families are typically freed after two weeks to join friends and relatives elsewhere in the U.S. who’ve agreed to sponsor them.

But for the unlucky 10 percent, the fallout from Trump’s policy is ongoing.

Under the “zero tolerance” policy, all adults who entered the United States illegally were prosecuted. The effect of that policy was to separate children from their detained parents and place them with relatives, foster homes, or shelters.

In June, Trump responded to public pressure and ended the policy. Shortly thereafter, a federal judge in California ordered immigration authorities to reunite families within 30 days.  

But the “zero tolerance” families at Dilley are still caught in a peculiar bind: Under the law, children can stay in detention for no more than 20 days. But federal judges in California resolved that if parents contest their deportation orders, the families can be held indefinitely. As a result, some families have been locked up for weeks: They’re no longer separated, but not free, either.

Daniel Bible, a field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s San Antonio sector, told the Associated Press that the formerly separated children and their parents were not “showing signs of trauma that would set them apart from other families being held.” But several “zero tolerance” policy survivors have called The Intercept during the past weeks and described feeling desperately unhappy and emotionally damaged. According to medical experts, all children who were separated from their parents under the “zero tolerance” policy are at increased risk of developing long term health problems from “toxic stress.” But for the children who continue to be confined, the damage is still accumulating.

One call I received was from a 10-year-old girl. In a weary voice, she told me, in Spanish, that she is afraid to attend the school that Dilley maintains for child detainees. “I’m afraid to leave my mom and go to class,” she said. “I’m afraid that’s when they’ll separate me again from my mom, like at the dog pound.” “She cries in the morning,” her mother said.

A drawing made by one of the children held in detention in Dilley, who was previously separated from her mother.

Illustration: Courtesy of the family

After the separation, officials told the child she was being flown to New York to see her mother, even though her mother was in detention in South Texas. The child was put in a shelter in New York for 32 days.

Now, back in Dilley, she is hyperaware of the government’s desire to deport them both.

“If we leave them just for a minute they start crying,” said another mother, also in a phone call. “They don’t even want to see us signing a paper because they’re afraid it’s about deportation. ‘Mami, no te vayas!’ they say. They’re terrified.”

Some children told me that they dislike school at Dilley because within a few days of befriending classmates from families who weren’t subjected to Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, those children are released from detention. “They come and then they go, you don’t know where to. You don’t know why they get to go, but you have to stay,” said a 12-year-old girl. “It makes you feel hopeless,” said a 16-year-old boy.  

Some departures have been even more dramatic. On August 9, for instance, during a hearing appealing her deportation decision in Washington, D.C., a Salvadoran woman and her young daughter were taken from Dilley and put onto an ICE plane bound for the country the two had fled. They were en route to El Salvador when the judge overseeing the hearing found out about the deportation and angrily ordered the plane to be turned around. Today, they’re still at Dilley, and their presence has been a constant reminder of the capricious nature of the system.

Susan Henner, an immigration lawyer from White Plains, New York, says that her Guatemalan client at Dilley, a woman named Mirza, was also put onto a plane with her young son and deported at the behest of the Dilley court. This happened even though a court in Arizona, where Mirza first entered the system, had just granted the woman permission to remain in the U.S. for a hearing scheduled for October. Henner did not learn of Mirza and her son’s sudden exit until several days after it happened. By then, the mother and child were long gone, and Henner hasn’t been able to track them. The story of their deportation has lingered at Dilley, providing grist for the anxiety mill.

While caged in the “dog pound,” and throughout their stays in shelters around the country, some of the separated children were issued “notices to appear” — mandates to show up in immigration court and tell a judge why they fear returning to their countries. The children whom The Intercept spoke with have plenty of reasons.

The 10-year-old fears religious persecution. The 12-year-old Honduran told her lawyer that a gang threatened to kill her, and that she was abused by her father, who also threatened her life. But the children were not given an opportunity to convey these fears to immigration authorities via “credible fear” interviews, which, under normal circumstances, would start the asylum process.

Moreover, their parents were offered a coercive “choice” after the “zero tolerance” policy ended: Reunite with your children “for the purpose of repatriation,” or return to your home country without your children. If the parents chose the second option, their kids would still have a shot at asylum. But leaving their children behind in a foreign land without parents to guide them through the asylum process didn’t seem like a real “choice” to many parents, who signed waivers agreeing to be reunited with their children and deported.

Now, apparently on the basis of those waivers, the government has revoked the children’s notices of appearance, or declined to file them all together. As a result, they’ve effectively been denied access to the asylum process.

A lawsuit filed in late July by several parents, detained at Dilley and Karnes, another Texas facility, on behalf of their detained children, alleges that these minors have been denied their constitutional right to seek asylum. Both the 10-year-old Mormon and the 12-year-old are named plaintiffs.

The complaint argues that for the children to make their best case, they need their parents to remain in the U.S., where they can help them to gather the details about the violence against them in their home countries. As the suit argues, the children “have a right to be accompanied by their parents” during the asylum claims process. Therefore, parents can’t be deported during that time.

The complaint further argues that the adults deserve new credible-fear interviews. “All of the plaintiffs’ parents were suffering from emotional distress” during their original interviews, reads a declaration by Shalyn Fluharty, managing attorney of the Dilley Pro Bono Project. She represents the Dilley children named in the lawsuit. The parents’ anxiety about their separated children made it “nearly impossible for them to focus on anything other than the location and wellbeing of their children,” according to another declaration, by Manoj Govindaiah from the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, who represents children at Karnes.

The lawsuit also argues that, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, all the family members of children who pass their interviews should be eligible for asylum — even parents who’ve already received negative findings.

The government feels differently, responding that the undocumented parents voluntarily signed deportation waivers, and that they have the right to make such decisions for their children.

On Thursday, The Intercept learned from a detained mother that ICE officials had convened a meeting for mothers who were formerly separated from their children. The mothers were apparently told that they and their kids would be released next week. But attorney Justin Bernick of Hogan Lovells, who is representing the children, says he doesn’t know yet whether that information is accurate. “We’ve heard this, too, from folks on the ground,” he said, “but we have no confirmation from the government that it’s actually going to happen. And we’ve seen many instances of misinformation” from the government, Bernick said. (ICE deputy press secretary Sarah Rodriguez told The Intercept that ICE cannot comment “due to pending litigation.”)

The families are now cautiously hopeful, but still wary. Until they know more, all they can do is wait.

Correction: August 27, 2018
A previous version of this article misspelled the first name of Shalyn Fluharty. It has been updated.

Top photo: The South Texas Family Residential Center, privately owned by CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, in Dilley, Texas, on August 23, 2017.

The post Children Separated Under Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” Policy Say Their Trauma Continues appeared first on The Intercept.

“The wind has really shifted in the last few weeks,” Teachout told The Intercept in an interview Friday.

The Times made its endorsement based on the candidate’s independence from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a willingness to use the power of the office to hold President Donald Trump accountable, terms Teachout has long argued make her the strongest candidate.

Letitia James, New York City’s public advocate, has been both boosted and hampered by her connection to Cuomo, who has endorsed her. James has said criticisms for her ties to the governor unfairly overlook her decades of progressive and independent accomplishments. 

The man on the minds of many Democratic primary voters, however, will be Trump, who has been floating the prospect of pardons of those caught up in the Mueller probe, even as he has himself been implicated by his longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, in a campaign finance violation.

On Friday, the rising progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a new endorsement video for Teachout and rallied with her in Long Island. A day earlier, Teachout picked up the endorsement of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which also backed her failed 2016 congressional run in upstate New York, and was the only national group to back her 2014 challenge to Cuomo. Teachout was criticized recently by the New York Daily News for getting more than half of her money from outside of New York, and while the PCCC has tens of thousands of New York members, it is a national organization, likely to bring in still more small dollar donations from out of state.

The charge underscores a paradox of the new small-donor movement in Democratic politics. In order to match big dollar fundraising, candidates need a national following, even if they are running for a House seat or a statewide office. But that leaves them vulnerable to the criticism that their support isn’t homegrown.

It remains to be seen whether that will be a potent criticism within the party in the long term, but in Teachout’s case, it’s plain to see why people outside New York are interested in who will be the next prosecutor with authority over the Trump Organization.

“New York state attorney general is in the process of becoming critical, absolutely critical in the Trump fight.”

“New York state attorney general is in the process of becoming critical, absolutely critical in the Trump fight,” Teachout said, “but also absolutely critical in financial regulation, in environmental protection, absolutely critical in taking on pharmaceutical companies, because we can’t trust the federal government. Who thinks that [U.S. Attorney General] Jeff Sessions is going to protect people’s civil rights? The role of this office and the importance of this race is really central to [the New York Times’s] endorsement. And I was really proud of that.”  

Teachout said that she is the only candidate in the race who has called for a return of the Moreland Commission, which was investigating corruption in Albany until Cuomo shut it down in 2014. She added that she was the first candidate for attorney general to call for state lawmakers to repeal laws protecting defendants against double-jeopardy prosecutions, a loophole that could protect convicts such as Cohen or Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chair, from being prosecuted at a state level if they are pardoned by Trump.

James recently called for the legislature to be brought into a special session to close the loophole. State lawmakers in April introduced legislation to do just that, but Senate Republicans refused to bring a vote on the pardon bill to the floor. 

It is only because of Cuomo and the Independent Democratic Conference that the Republicans were able to block it, Teachout said. The IDC, which was created by Cuomo and disbanded earlier this year, was a group of Democrats who caucused with Republicans, giving the GOP control of the Senate. By dividing the power of the legislature, Cuomo accrued more power, freeing him of the obligation to pass the full suite of progressive legislation he had campaigned on, as he had a ready foil in Senate Republicans.

“Understand why it didn’t pass last time: It’s the IDC, and Cuomo’s support of Republicans in the Senate set up a structure where there was a Republican veto and this critical, critical legislation for holding Trump to the rule of law was not able to pass,” Teachout said. So these machinations that were designed for other reasons have these terrible, terrible, grotesque side effects, both in terms of not being able to pass the DREAM Act, not being able to codify Roe v. Wade, but also not being able to amend New York’s law to allow for prosecution in the case of a self-serving pardon. And I’m the only candidate that’s supporting all the IDC challengers and I’ve been outspoken about that.”

A third candidate in the attorney general race, Sean Patrick Maloney, represents a congressional district in upstate New York, where Teachout’s support was strongest in her 2014 run against Cuomo. He is seen as a Teachout spoiler, and his ability to siphon votes away from her may prove decisive. Her campaign has blasted him for endorsing a Republican for state Senate four years ago.

Teachout’s campaign has touted its refusal to take corporate money to contrast it with the James operation, which has gotten a fundraising boost from Cuomo and the companies who back his machine. The Times argued that James’s ties to Cuomo rendered her less likely to be able to take Albany on.

Ms. James has for decades been a standout fighter for tenants, children and other vulnerable New Yorkers. But she has embraced political contributions from donors to Mr. Cuomo, who held a fund-raiser for her earlier this summer.

Ms. James has countered that she is “unbossed and unbought,” and described suggestions she is too close to Mr. Cuomo as “disrespectful,” insinuating that they are asked only because she is poised to become the first black woman to win statewide office. But given the political landscape in New York and elsewhere, the state attorney must be absolutely independent. Such political contributions could become a conflict of interest for any candidate.

Cuomo, according to multiple news reports, endorsed James for attorney general after she agreed not to seek the endorsement of the Working Families Party, with which she had long been allied. Cuomo is in a feud with the WFP over its support of his gubernatorial challenger, Cynthia Nixon. James acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that Cuomo “had a conversation with me” about the WFP endorsement. (Her campaign did not comment in time for publication.)

Teachout said that independence from Cuomo is key because he has shown a willingness to intervene in corruption investigations, particularly by shutting down the Moreland Commission. But, she said, he never legally rescinded some of its authority, so the next attorney general will be able to bring it back. “There’s existing authority both under an existing executive order to investigate corruption in Albany, which Andrew never formally rescinded, Executive Order 106, and that order was actually the order that created the Moreland Commission. He shut it down in a press conference, but he never formally rescinded the order and I’m fully ready to use that,” she said.

The “gold standard,” Teachout said, “is a full legislative grant of authority, criminal and civil, to look into Albany corruption.” While her opponents agree with her on this, she said what sets her apart is that she’s the only candidate willing to confront Cuomo over it. 

“The glaring absence is the willingness to turn around and face Andrew Cuomo squarely and say, ‘Start the Moreland–restart the Moreland Commission tomorrow,’” she said. “It’s a marker of independence that is going to be necessary because there’ll be a thousand more moments where the attorney general is called upon to speak up to the governor, whether that be Governor Cuomo, or Governor Nixon, and be very clear about the authority that she needs, and you’ve got to know that your attorney general is not going to hesitate to publicly ask for that authority and to force the governor to justify why he or she isn’t giving it, instead of to quietly make backroom deals.”

Update: August 26, 2018

On Sunday, The Daily News also endorsed Teachout, after opposing her against Cuomo in 2014.

Top photo: Zephyr Teachout speaks during a press conference outside of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan on Aug. 8, 2018.

The post Zephyr Teachout’s Fundraising Spikes In Wake of New York Times Endorsement in Attorney General Race appeared first on The Intercept.

According to records released by the EPA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Sierra Club, the chief executive of Chemours, Mark Vergnano, along with two of his company’s government affairs staff and an outside lobbyist, met with then-head of the EPA Scott Pruitt and several EPA staffers in May 2017 to talk about its new refrigerants, known as HFOs. Chemours, which had spun off from DuPont in 2015, had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in these chemicals, which are designed for use in supermarket chillers, ice rinks, air conditioning, freezers, and refrigerators, as it wrote in a May 2017 letter requesting the meeting with the EPA. Beyond wanting swift approval for its new products, the company was seeking help to stave off competition, asking the EPA to “help protect U.S. leadership in [the refrigerant] space and protect significant new U.S. investments the company has made.”

Of particular concern were “so called ‘natural’ refrigerants,” as Chemours described the naturally occurring chemicals, including propane, iso-butane, ammonia, air, water and carbon dioxide, which are increasingly relied on for cooling around the world. In its letter, Chemours acknowledged that natural refrigerants “may indeed be preferred for some uses and equipment types,” but also described the alternative products as having “poor energy performance, higher operating costs, and severe safety risks” — which is largely incorrect. While some of the cooling systems using natural refrigerants may be more expensive than HFO-based systems, many are less expensive and the substances themselves, which aren’t patented, always cost less than HFOs. And though the natural refrigerants propane and iso-butane are flammable, so are HFOs.

“They are greatly exaggerating the safety concerns,” Keilly Witman, a refrigeration consultant and former EPA staffer, said of Chemours’ statement. “They pick out an issue that effects a small area and imply that it’s true for the entire natural refrigerant world.”

The company was also seeking the environmental agency’s help staving off competition in a field it already dominates. Michael Garry, the only U.S.-based employee of Shecco, which advocates for the climate-friendly refrigerants, regularly finds himself outgunned by Chemours and Honeywell and other chemical companies when he tries to spread the word about natural refrigerants at supermarket conferences and other gatherings where he might reach users of the alternative technology. “These are billion dollar companies. They have all the clout,” Garry said of the HFO manufacturers. “It’s a whale to a minnow.”

Yet, Chemours wanted EPA’s help ensuring a “level playing field” against these natural competitors.

Chemours did not respond to several requests for comment for this story. The EPA did not provide an on-the-record comment.

There may be no more important products for this warming age than refrigerants, which represent a multibillion-dollar industry, as Chemours pointed out in its letter requesting the meeting. The huge demand isn’t just because of the growing need to cool people and food as the earth’s temperature spirals upward. It’s also because a global effort is underway to shift away from the current generation of chemicals that serve this purpose.

The chemicals now in use, hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, many of which were first made by DuPont and have been passed onto Chemours, are massively heating the planet while they keep us cool. It’s a strange heating spiral – in a warming world, we need more refrigeration to cool ourselves and our food, but the use of these cooling systems accelerates climate change, which in turn leads us to use more coolants.

HFCs are such huge contributors to global warming that they’ve been dubbed “super climate pollutants.” While carbon dioxide is the best-known greenhouse gas, these fluorinated gases, which leak out of refrigerators and air conditioners and wind up in the atmosphere, cause the earth to heat up hundreds and sometimes thousands of times more than C02 does. (Despite being a major problem when emitted from burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide — which is referred to as R-744 in the cooling sector — turns out to be environmentally friendly when used as a natural coolant in refrigerators.)

Apartment building in Manhattan.

Photo: Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images

R-404a, which is an HFC that was developed by DuPont and is now sold by Chemours, for instance, has a global warming potential, or GWP, of 3,922, meaning it traps 3,922 times more heat than carbon dioxide does. Around the world, as air conditioners proliferate to cope with climate change, HFCs have become the fastest-growing greenhouse gas emissions in every country on Earth.

The Kigali Amendment, an international accord passed in 2016, promises to phase-out HFCs, with the first drop in production and use starting in 2019. If fully implemented, the resulting reductions of HFC emissions are expected to help the world avoid a 0.5 degree Celsius increase in global temperature by the end of the century. While 42 countries have ratified the Kigali Amendment, the U.S. has yet to sign onto it (Republicans are split over the agreement, with a faction of extreme climate deniers arguing against ratification).

Makers of natural refrigerants and HFOs agree that HFCs should be phased out, but haven’t decided what should replace them. A coalition of HFO manufacturers called the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, which includes Chemours, Daikin, and Honeywell, wrote to President Donald Trump in June, encouraging him to submit the Kigali Amendment to the Senate for ratification.

These companies use an economic, rather than environmental, rationale to justify the switch from HFCs. In its letter to Trump, the coalition made clear that its interest lay in in the opportunity the agreement offers to dominate the refrigeration industry:

We believe this action will help secure a position of strength for American companies in a highly competitive global market for next generation air conditioning, refrigeration, thermal insulation, aerosols, medical uses, fire suppression, semiconductors and other technologies that utilize fluorocarbons. With Senate ratification comes American technological leadership, and a head-start for American industry in the global race to provide the world with state-of-the-art products.

The industry push for its new chemicals hinges on the idea that HFOs are “very low GWP alternatives” to HFCs, as Chemours described them in its letter to EPA. The chemicals do contribute less to global warming than the older chemicals. But, in terms of both climate and toxic pollution, HFOs present environmental hazards that natural refrigerants do not.

Part of the problem is that, while they are advertised as climate-friendly and, on their own, may have GWPs in the single digits, HFOs are often sold in mixtures with HFCs, which means that they can still have a dramatic warming effect on the Earth. Chemours markets Opteon XP10, a blend of refrigerants containing HFOs, as having a “low global warming potential,” yet its GWP is actually 573 — meaning it traps 573 times as much heat as CO2. Similarly, Chemours has touted Opteon XP40, the HFO blend used in the NHL’s Greener Rinks Initiative, as having a “proven” low global warming potential, though its GWP is 1,282.

In comparison, natural refrigerants, which can serve many of the same purposes, have a global warming potential between zero and four.

While Chemours is hoping that the EPA will help it get the best return on its investment, others argue that environmental consequences, rather than business interests, should drive decisions about which refrigerant chemicals we use.

“It makes sense to go with the lowest GWP possible for every sector,” said Avipsa Mahapatra, climate campaign lead of the Environmental Investigation Agency. Though different cooling systems use differing refrigerants depending on their purpose and size, in most cases, natural refrigerants can do the job, according to Mahapatra.

One area in which HFO use has already taken hold is in car air conditioning. HFO-1234yf, which is sold in its pure form and has a GWP of just four — about 350 times better for the climate than the chemical it replaces. While the natural refrigerant CO2, which is being introduced in some cars, has a negligible climate advantage over HFOs in the car market, it offers the possibility of reducing two toxic chemicals associated with HFO-1234yf. One of them was, until recently, on its way out. Carbon tetrachloride, which has been deemed a probable carcinogen by the EPA and is now one of the first 10 hazardous substances being evaluated under the new chemical law, is already a widespread air pollutant, responsible for more than three cancers for every 1 million people in every census tract in the country, according to EPA data.

Because it was used to make some of the chemicals now being phased out by the Montreal Protocol, the use of carbon tetrachloride was decreasing, according to a recent EPA report. But because the chemical is also used to make some HFOs, including HFO-1234yf, demand for carbon tetrachloride is now expected to increase by 50 percent in coming years, according to comments submitted to the EPA by three environmental NGOs.

Some HFCs and HFOs, including the one used in car air conditioners, also degrade into a persistent toxic substance called trifluoroacetic acid, or TFA, which persists in the environment and can be toxic to aquatic plants. While its potential long-term effects on people and other animals are still being studied, TFA is accumulating in water around the world and is extremely hard to remove from drinking water. According to a 2015 study done in Beijing, the amount of TFA in water increased 17-fold over a 10-year period. A Norwegian Environment Agency report recommended “phasing out HFOs (and consequently TFA)” to protect public health, though the chemicals are just now being phased in.

Together, the range of issues has led groups like Greenpeace and the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council to push for the next generation of coolants to be natural refrigerants, rather than HFOs. Shecco’s Garry sees the chemicals as the latest in a long cycle of regrettable substitutions. “It’s foolish in the long term to take the chemical companies’ newest version of synthetic refrigerant when every preceding version has been a problem,” he said.

Indeed, the history of using fluorinated gases for cooling is long and troubled. DuPont introduced the first of these chemicals, CFCs, in the 1930s. They remained on the market for decades before scientists discovered that CFCs were eroding the layer of ozone that protects the Earth from much of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. CFCs were also widely available for more than a decade after that 1974 discovery, as DuPont questioned the science about the effect of CFCs on the ozone and waged a well-financed public relations campaign against the effort to restrict their use.

It was only after it received assurances from U.S. officials that European competitors wouldn’t be able to get a competitive advantage through the treaty that DuPont ultimately changed course and supported the Montreal Protocol, which phased out CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals in 1987. Although the company had produced hundreds of millions of pounds of the chemicals that caused the planet-altering ozone problem, it was given much of the credit for the treaty’s success in phasing out CFCs.

The phase-out of CFCs ultimately proved to be a boon to DuPont, as the company became one of the major suppliers of HFCs, the refrigerants that replaced ozone-depleting chemicals.

Now, as the world moves ahead with the effort to replace those replacements, DuPont’s offspring, Chemours, could be headed for a similar payday from their next round of refrigerant gases. But the question of what replaces HFCs has the power to dramatically impact the climate and water pollution around the world.

In many parts of the world, companies have already begun disrupting the reliance on a series of fluorochemicals with natural refrigerants. Some governments in Europe and Japan have encouraged that switch. In Switzerland, for instance, carbon dioxide is now the standard coolant use in all supermarkets by law. These carbon dioxide-based systems now account for 12 percent of the European market and 5 percent of supermarket coolers in Japan, where the government subsidizes natural refrigerant cooling.

The natural refrigerants also present a particular opportunity for developing countries, according to Helena Molin Valdés, director of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition Secretariat at the U.N. Environment. In developed countries that rely on cooling systems that were designed to use HFCs, it can be easier to switch to HFO products, which are often designed to be “drop-in replacements.” But because many of the developing countries have yet to switch to HFCs, “they have the opportunity to do what we call leap frogging and not do the regrettable substitutions,” said Molin Valdés. “Developing countries can go directly to the alternatives.”

In the U.S., natural refrigerants are used less often, in part because they don’t have a large chemical industry group that stands to profit from their use. “Ammonia and propane and water, these are cheap alternatives that don’t use chemicals and it doesn’t have the same industry interest because the profit margins are much lower,” said Molin Valdés. Lower profit margins mean that natural refrigerants don’t have a well-funded industry that can promote their products as aggressively as the makers of HFOs.

Still, even without the push from big industry, natural refrigerants are slowly gaining a toehold in the U.S. Earlier this month, the EPA issued a rule clearing the way to use the hydrocarbons iso-butane and propane in household refrigerators and freezers. The impact could be huge; over a year, the switch could prevent the emissions of greenhouse gases equivalent to taking 800,00 passenger vehicles of the road.

While celebrating the new rule, the Environmental Investigation Agency’s Mahapatra points out that the U.S. decision to use hydrocarbons in refrigerators comes many years after other countries decided to make the switch. “If you talk about trying to move to hydrocarbon fridges anywhere else in the world, people laugh at you because they’ve been using them since the 1990s,” said Mahapatra.

As the world heats up further and moves toward replacing the super climate polluters, Mahapatra is focused on preventing future delays in adopting technologies that spare the climate. “Hopefully the other cooling sectors in the U.S. will not lag behind the rest of the world as much,” said Mahapatra. “As we seek more cooling, we have to be more mindful that we are not increasing the heat.”

Top photo: A logo outside a facility of the Chemours Company in Penns Grove, New Jersey on December 11, 2016.

The post How a DuPont Spinoff Lobbied the EPA to Stave Off the Use of Environmentally Friendly Coolants appeared first on The Intercept.

A morte de Otavio Frias Filho expôs em cores vivas a crise que acomete o jornalismo diário no Brasil. Diagnosticado com câncer do pâncreas em setembro de 2017, o diretor de redação do jornal Folha de S.Paulo sucumbiu à doença em atordoantes 11 meses. Uma saída de cena com tamanha rapidez surpreenderia, obviamente, os mais previdentes editores e obituaristas.

Ainda assim, não se trata de personagem menor. Envolvido desde a adolescência no comando do “maior jornal do país em circulação e audiência”, Frias Filho entrara na história muito antes de sair da vida. Nenhum herdeiro ou diretor de conglomerado brasileiro de mídia teve relevo igual ao seu nos últimos 30 anos. Isso torna ainda mais chocante a superficialidade da cobertura de sua morte nos jornais tradicionais.

A imensa maioria dos obituários disponíveis na praça exibe, antes de tudo, uma gritante incapacidade de relacionar o diretor de redação da Folha ao contexto histórico em que viveu. Neles, Frias Filho figura como uma espécie de Hamlet relutante, que assume o jornal da família aos 27 anos e dá início a uma bem-sucedida ofensiva modernizadora contra vento e maré, apanhando pelo caminho a bandeira das Diretas.

Esquece-se, assim, que o Projeto Folha é a culminância de uma estratégia empresarial por meio da qual uma cadeia de jornais anódina e subserviente à ditadura militar tornou-se porta-voz dos anseios por redemocratização. A cautela política por trás desse plano esteve longe de ser espontânea: foi inspirada pelo próprio regime, perplexo diante da oposição intransigente do conservador O Estado de S. Paulo, dominante na maior metrópole do país.

O próprio Frias Filho contou esse episódio, em entrevista de 1997 a Alzira Alves de Abreu e Fernando Lattman-Weltman:

“Golbery [general aliado ao futuro presidente Ernesto Geisel e artífice da abertura política] delineou os rumos que eles pretendiam impor ao novo governo, falou da necessidade de uma descompressão política, enfim, expôs todo aquele ideário que se tornou bastante conhecido. Inclusive, chegou a mencionar para meu pai [Octavio Frias de Oliveira, publisher da Folha] – me lembro disso, pelo relato que meu pai me fez – que não era conveniente que houvesse em São Paulo só um jornal forte, em termos de peso na opinião pública, que era do interesse do governo que houvesse dois jornais.”

Abria-se assim o caminho para a série de reformas “politizantes” (termo utilizado por Frias Filho em oposição a “esquerdizantes”, preferido por integrantes do regime que viam o jornal com maus olhos) que distinguiriam a Folha nos 10 anos seguintes. É dessa época, por exemplo, a seção Tendências em Debate, na qual articulistas expõem visões diferentes, muitas vezes opostas ao posicionamento editorial do próprio jornal, sobre assuntos da atualidade. Passados mais de 40 anos da posse de Geisel e mais de 30 do fim da ditadura, essa seção continua sendo um monumento ao pluralismo numa imprensa diária que, em muitos aspectos, se recusa a sair do armário.

Na quase totalidade dos textos, omite-se o papel de Cláudio Abramo como mentor de Frias Filho no jornalismo. Foi de Abramo o toque de arejamento da Folha nos anos 1970, com escalação do melhor time de colunistas do país (Alberto Dines, Samuel Wainer, Tarso de Castro, Lourenço Diaféria) e cobertura corajosa de atrocidades como a morte do jornalista Vladimir Herzog sob tortura no DOI-Codi do II Exército. Pelo mesmo passe de mágica, desaparece a gestão de Boris Casoy, de 1977 a 1984, após o afastamento de Abramo da direção de redação.

O Manual da Folha resultou em texto tipicamente pobre.

Entre outros efeitos de ilusionismo histórico, estão o esquecimento da longa (e, ao final, vitoriosa) campanha de Frias Filho contra a obrigatoriedade do diploma para o exercício profissional do jornalismo, talvez um de seus legados mais duradouros. Declaradamente voltada contra o corporativismo e os privilégios, a medida, sacramentada pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal em 2009, teve como principal efeito a precarização do trabalho nas redações de todo o país, em particular no interior.

Quase não se fala dos efeitos contraditórios do Manual da Folha, que, se por um lado reforçou a preocupação com precisão e equilíbrio, por outro resultou em texto tipicamente pobre, verdadeira maldição que assolou o jornal por anos. Outra instituição patrocinada por Frias Filho foi a figura do ombudsman, inédito na imprensa brasileira. O jornalista que tinha por dever criticar o próprio jornal de dentro, por vezes, esbarrou nos limites impostos pelos próprios interesses dos proprietários.

Assim, o veículo que um dia publicou em branco a coluna de um colaborador preso por crime de opinião e ostentou a marca de primeiro jornal processado por um presidente da República, Fernando Collor, no exercício do cargo, foi o mesmo que patenteou a vergonhosa expressão “ditabranda” para se referir ao regime liberticida de 1964 e atribuiu os protestos de junho de 2013 a “jovens predispostos à violência por uma ideologia pseudorrevolucionária”.

Nos obituários de Frias Filho, somos brindados com uma torrente de informações irrelevantes: o Grande Homem era pós-graduado em Ciências Sociais, dramaturgo e ator de teatro infantil. Melhor seria dizer por que foi importante. Isso exigiria reconhecer que Frias Filho, politicamente conservador, economicamente liberal e culturalmente sofisticado, foi um dos responsáveis pela transformação de um diário provinciano num “veículo de opinião nacional”, capaz de exibir – em seu melhor momento – rara sintonia com a pressão social por democracia, direitos e livre debate.

Em outras latitudes, essas façanhas garantiriam a uma publicação, no máximo, o título de “jornal”. Entre nós, foram suficientes para mudar a história da imprensa e do país. Não é muito, mas tampouco é mais do mesmo.

The post O jornalismo nunca mais foi o mesmo depois de Otavio Frias Filho. Para o bem e para o mal. appeared first on The Intercept.

Now facing a challenge from his left in a Democratic primary — Air Force veteran and community organizer Kerri Evelyn Harris — he’s eager to tout his progressive credentials. Carper’s weapon of choice? His environmental record.

As Carper rose through the ranks of the Senate, his decision to prioritize his climb up the ladder of the Environment and Public Works Committee over his position on the Banking Committee has left him with the institutional support of national environmental groups like the League of Conservation Voters, or LCV, and the National Resources Defense Council, or NRDC.

In narration over dramatic music, a recent ad from the Carper campaign, titled “Fierce,” highlights the Trump administration’s push to expand offshore drilling. “Sen. Tom Carper has a simple message for Trump,” a female narrator intones, adding Carper’s response: “Over my dead body.”

That message may not be so simple after all. While Carper has opposed offshore drilling in Delaware, he’s voted four separate times in support of drilling off the coast of Virginia (2007), on the Outer Continental Shelf (2003), and in the Gulf of Mexico (2001, 2006).

Donald Trump’s support for offshore drilling, meanwhile, didn’t stop Carper from voting to confirm Rick Perry to be head of the Department of Energy. (Carper did oppose Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.)

He also voted repeatedly in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline. (He later stated that he only backed the project because Republicans had promised to in turn deliver their support for geothermal and offshore wind capacity in exchange, and said that he pulled his backing once they failed to deliver.)

This Senate term alone, Carper has accepted $163,468 from energy and natural resources companies, along with $73,510 from agribusiness corporations. That’s more than his opponent, Harris, has raised in total.

A spokesperson for the Carper campaign declined to comment as to whether he had spoken with these donors about his votes on issues that impact their industries, or whether he had changed his position on offshore drilling since his earlier votes in favor of the practice.

Like more than 1,000 candidates this cycle, Harris has sworn off donations from fossil fuel companies, and corporate donations more generally. “Regardless of where you look with his policy decisions, we are seeing that his policies reflect his allegiance to his donors,” Harris told me by phone. “It’s not just Senator Carper. The majority of Congress has come to the belief that in order to get elected at that level, you have to accept funds from large corporations. And when the choice is between the people and corporations, they choose the corporations.”

Asked about his record on offshore drilling, Harris said Carper is a “’not in my backyard’ kind of person. He doesn’t seem to realize,” she added, “that we have one planet, and we’re affected by everything that happens negatively to this planet. When we’re looking to keep below 2 degrees Celsius of warming — that’s all we have to do to devastate our earth — there is no room for saying ‘not in my backyard,’ but it’s OK over there.”

As Harris alluded to, when it comes to carbon emissions, the planet is indifferent as to whether they originate in Virginia or China or Delaware — one of the lowest-lying states in the union. According to a 2015 analysis by Oil Change International, fully developing just the world’s already-known oil reserves would be nearly enough to push the United States past the 1.5 degree warming target outlined in the Paris Agreement. Harris supports a Green New Deal involving massive investment in sustainable infrastructure, and transitioning the U.S. off coal, oil, and gas by mid-century.

How strong environmental protections are in Delaware also hinges on precisely whose backyard we’re talking about. A 2017 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that in the industrial corridor in the north of the state, where much of Delaware’s black and Latino population lives, health risks from pollutants are much greater.

While a spokesperson for Carper reiterated his commitment to expanding renewable energy and curbing carbon dioxide emissions, calling climate change “the greatest environmental threat of the 21st century,” she declined to comment as to whether Carper believes that the U.S. should transition off of fossil fuels.

Still, the League of Conservation Voters waded into the Democratic primary to hand Carper their endorsement. Tiernan Sittenfeld, LCV’s senior vice president of government affairs, told me that Harris did not seek her group’s endorsement, and that the idea of endorsing Carper had been floated long before she entered the race “because he is an environmental leader who has done has done so much to fight back against Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt’s myriad assaults on the environment and public health.”

Harris, she noted, also began to look like a more viable contender thanks to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset win in New York in late June. That said, the LCV endorsement was announced on July 17, several weeks after Ocasio-Cortez’s election and endorsement of Harris. Asked whether candidates’ campaign contributions are considered in deciding on criteria for the endorsement process, Sittenfeld said that while the organization has been having conversations on the subject, “to date we have not made that a dealbreaker for us,” and that they instead focus largely on the candidates’ records. The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund endorsed Carper as well, in January.

Kerri Evelyn Harris, Democratic candidate for the United States Senate from Delaware, prepares to walk in a parade celebrating Delaware City Day in Delaware City, Delaware on July 21, 2018.

Photo: Michelle Gustafson for The Intercept

Insurgent, left-leaning candidates haven’t fared well with endorsements from green groups overall, which in several cases have backed the establishment opponents of more progressive candidates who — like Harris — have sworn off donations from fossil fuel companies and run on ambitious climate and environmental platforms. The Sierra Club in Michigan backed Gretchen Whitmer against Abdul El-Sayed — who ran on a detailed environmental justice plan — in that state’s gubernatorial primary. In New York, the Sierra Club backed incumbent Joe Crowley against Ocasio-Cortez, whose platform includes support for a Green New Deal and transitioning entirely off fossil fuels by 2035. The Sierra Club has not waded into the Delaware Senate primary.

Neither has Climate Hawks Vote, a more progressive environmental group. “Carper has been good about traditional old school pollution even though his climate record is decidedly more miKXLed,” wrote political director R.L. Miller in an email, making a reference to his support of the Keystone XL pipeline, and adding that the group “almost never” endorses a candidate if they won’t pledge to reject fossil fuel money.

The Sierra Club is agnostic on the question of campaign contributions. “When we consider supporting candidates, we look at their record as a whole from where they stand on protecting our lands and wildlife to stopping toxic trade deals and advancing clean energy to tackle the climate crisis,” Sierra Club National Political Director Ariel Hayes said via email. “We have no litmus test — we have to weigh the positive and the negative in each specific instance in order to determine who is best positioned in the long run to work alongside us to protect the environment, climate and public health.”

Asked about how LCV decides to weigh into primaries, Sittenfeld said that “when we think about getting involved in a primary, we historically have a high bar for doing so. In general, we look for where is there a really clear material difference between the candidates who are running.”

Decisions on endorsements are made at the national level by LCV’s national political committee after candidates fill out a questionnaire on a range of issues, from conservation to voting rights. After an endorsement is decided on, the group will send out a press release and support the campaign on its social media sites, as well as making a PAC contribution; for this cycle, LCV is Carper’s largest non-corporate donor. Depending on the race, they’ll also recruit volunteers to knock doors and phone bank for LCV-endorsed candidates, although Sittenfeld said that was “not happening” in the primary.

Unlike LCV endorsements, most Sierra Club endorsements happen mainly at the state level. “Our endorsements originate from the ground up. The process differs between federal and state specific races, but in both cases, it is driven from the grassroots level up. We also do not endorse in every race,” Hayes said.

Sittenfeld noted, as well, that LCV communicates regularly with Carper on a number of issues — as it does with most all of the candidates it supports — and has cultivated its organizational relationship with him mainly since he become the top-ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, or EPW, in 2017. Given his reputation as a centrist, she says, “I think people were really nervous,” but added that LCV has been “extremely pleased” by his willingness to go after the Trump administration “and efficacy in doing so.”

It’s not as if Carper doesn’t boast an impressive set of environmental credentials. As chair of the Senate’s Environment and Public Workers Committee, Carper — alongside Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, helped lead the charge on Capitol Hill to investigate Scott Pruitt’s myriad conflicts of interests and challenge his policy priorities, sending 70 oversight letters to Pruitt from his EPW post. He sparred publicly with Kathleen Hartnett White as she sought to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which has been credited with her eventually withdrawing from that nomination process.  In 2002, he introduced one of the first bills to cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, the Clean Air Planning Act, and has been a reliable proponent since that time of increasing fuel efficiency standards, as well as preserving and extending tax credits for clean energy. Since Trump took office, he’s been one of the loudest voices calling out the administration’s climate and energy policy.

Carper certainly isn’t alone in having a mixed-bag record on environmentalism. Many Democrats — even self-styled climate champions — are in a kind of collective denial about the scale of changes needed to actually take on the climate crisis — and the conflict with polluters that will almost certainly entail. In part because climate change has been such a back-burner issue in American politics — and because Republicans have been so reliably obstinate on the issue — presenting a foil to the GOP isn’t exactly hard. Compared to outright Republican climate denial, proposing tax credits for clean energy and common-sense regulations looks an awful lot like resistance. Compared to the physical realities of climate change, not so much. Of course, incentivizing renewables and pushing for moderate emissions reductions is better than nothing. Yet it’s wildly out of synch with the kinds of changes that science demands — as one researcher put it to me recently, a “wartime footing” involving the rapid decarbonization of the world’s economies.

But it’s not as if there aren’t proposals nearly this ambitious on the table, even in the Senate. Harris has said she would support Merkley’s “100 by 50” Act, to transition the U.S. entirely off fossil fuels by 2050. Carper has not spoken in support of that legislation, and his spokesperson declined to comment when pressed. She also hopes that future climate bills will include plenty of input from the communities that stand to be hardest hit by climate impacts, and give them a seat at the table. “Until we have more voices involved in the environmental justice fight helping drafting that type of legislation, my concern is that in the name of advancing economically, we’re still going to step on communities of color and low-income white people,” she said.

Speaking in favor of placing more stringent regulations on polluters, Harris told The Intercept that “the truth is that a business has one job and that’s to make money. They’re going to cut out any expenses that they can,” she said. “Sometimes it costs you money to be good stewards of the environment. If you’re not told you have to do it, the majority of companies are going to say, ‘Let me make my bottom line work for me and the government will clean up the rest.’ We don’t have time for the government to clean up the rest.”

Indigenous leaders and climate activists disrupt business at a Chase Bank branch to protest funding tar sands development and projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, in Seattle, Washington on May 8, 2017.

Photo: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images

Carper’s donors may hope he sings a different tune. Among his biggest campaign contributors has been the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant. Blackstone also finances the energy company PBF Holding Company LLC, which opened a refinery in Delaware City earlier this year. At the ribbon cutting ceremony for the facility — which mainly processes crude oil from Latin America — Carper called the reopening of the facility a “huge win for the state of Delaware,” appearing alongside Blackstone President and COO Tony James, who said that “saving this refinery is what private equity is all about.”

Several other banks that have contributed generously to Carper’s campaigns are major financiers of fossil fuel infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, including Bank of America, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase — Carper’s biggest donor over the course of his Senate career, having given him $147,279 since 2002.

Carper is also a member of the bipartisan Senate Chicken Caucus, formed at the behest of the National Chicken Caucus to advocate in Congress’s upper house on behalf of the poultry industry — the source of one of Delaware’s longest-running public health crises.

When the town of Blades reported that their drinking water was contaminated in February, state officials were quick to respond, with Gov. John Carney personally delivering water bottles to residents. Carper — along with fellow Democratic Sen. Chris Coons and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester wrote that “access to safe and clean drinking water is an absolutely essential and basic human necessity, and we are extremely troubled by the situation in Blades.” No such statement came when the residents of Millsboro — an unincorporated, largely African-American town 20 miles south of Blades, where the median income is around $20,000 below the state average — first reported that their groundwater was being contaminated by chemicals sprayed indiscriminately by the chicken manufacturer Mountaire Farms some 20 years ago. Mountaire was also the fifth-largest contributor to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Residents and advocates familiar with the situation in Millsboro have likened their situation to a “mini-Flint” and have been attempting to bring attention to the issue for well over a decade. Nitrate levels in the drinking water there are six times the legal limit. State and federal inspectors first found evidence of the pollution in 2003, but very little has been done since.

“Some of the wells are deep enough that it took 30 years to contaminate,” Harris said of the situation in Millsboro, and Sussex County more generally. “At what point did our state and national governments say enough is enough? The hard truth is they still haven’t. We have people dying and being born with birth defects because of the poisoned water we have here.”

Carper has accepted around $20,000 from corporate PACs linked to chicken industry companies, including from the National Chicken Council. Christine Brennan, the spokesperson from Carper’s campaign, declined to comment when asked about the situation in Millsboro.

Though largely silent on what’s happening there, Carper has gone explicitly to bat for the chicken industry at the federal level. This February, he co-sponsored legislation (the Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act, or FARM Act) to exempt agricultural producers from reporting waste emissions under the federal Superfund law, a move Brennan described as an effort to “provide certainty for chicken farmers regarding EPA’s reporting requirements for animal waste emissions.”

Climate and environmental politics have long had a kind of apolitical sheen to them, of the sort found in corporate greenwashing campaigns, Davos, and vendors dotted around U.N. climate talks. For years, climate issues been siloed off from more traditional venues for left policy like labor and economic justice fights. As Carper’s career helps show, there’s a throughline between his storied alliance with the banking sector and his reticence around embracing a climate agenda. Figuring out that link isn’t overly complicated: Just follow the money.

Given how loudly money talks in Washington and the mounting reality of climate change, you might think that politicians accepting money from the same corporations that are wrecking the planet would be automatic grounds for green groups to turn down their endorsement requests, if not throw their backing behind more progressive opponents. The fate of the planet, after all, depends on it. At least for now, you’d be mistaken.

Top photo: Sen. Tom Carper, D-DE, leaves the weekly Senate Democrats’ policy lunch in the Capitol on June 14, 2016.

The post Tom Carper Touts His Environmental Record, but a Closer Look Suggests It’s Not So Clean appeared first on The Intercept.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert called for a “thorough and transparent investigation into the incident,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly raised the issue in a phone call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters that he supports the State Department’s call for an investigation, adding that he’d dispatched a three-star general to Riyadh to “look into what happened here.”

But as calls for an investigation mount, a new report from Human Rights Watch finds “fundamental problems” with the way the coalition investigates allegations of civilian harm, accusing its members of trying to “shield parties to the conflict and individual military personnel from criminal liability.”

The 90-page report, released Friday, digs into the Joint Incidents Assessment Team, or JIAT, a body the coalition created to investigate civilian casualty claims after the bombing campaign began in Yemen in 2015. By its own count, the assessment team has investigated 79 incidents in which airstrikes allegedly killed or wounded civilians. But the vast majority of its reports — only 75 of which Human Rights Watch could actually find — absolve the coalition of legal responsibility for the strike in question, either by claiming the coalition wasn’t responsible or by determining that the attack was an “unintentional” result of technical errors.

The report also documents 17 instances in which JIAT’s conclusions were profoundly at odds with Human Rights Watch’s own findings. In 2015, after coalition fighters bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa, the assessment team concluded that “there was no human damage as a result of the bombing,” while interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch indicated that two patients had been injured and the hospital had been forced to shut down, endangering the 200,000 people it serves.

In the years after it was established, the Trump and Obama administrations pointed to JIAT as a sign that the coalition was aware that its attacks were killing civilians and that it was seeking to improve. But critics say the body is a cynical mechanism contrived to make it look as if the architects of the air war in Yemen care about reducing civilian casualties, when in fact their aims are something else entirely.

“For more than two years, the coalition has claimed that JIAT was credibly investigating allegedly unlawful airstrikes, but the investigators were doing little more than covering up war crimes,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Governments selling arms to Saudi Arabia should recognize that the coalition’s sham investigations do not protect them from being complicit in serious violations in Yemen.”

The wreckage of a bus at the site of a deadly Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Saada, Yemen, on Aug. 12, 2018.

Photo: Hani Mohammed/AP

JIAT released incident results on September 12, 2017 during discussions at the UN Human Rights Council regarding the possible creation of an international investigation into violations in Yemen; Saudi diplomats and their allies then used the released JIAT results to argue against the need for an international mechanism. On March 5, 2018, JIAT released results immediately before Saudi Crown Prince and Coalition Commander Mohammed bin Salman travelled to the United Kingdom to meet with senior British officials.

Human Rights Watch determined that out of 75 JIAT investigations, only two had resulted in findings that officers may have violated the rules of engagement. In one case, the team found that the officers had done so, and in another, suggested that they might have and recommended further investigation.

In 12 cases, JIAT recommended giving some type of financial restitution to victims’ families, referring to it variously as “assistance” or “appropriate action,” though not always finding fault with the coalition. However, Human Rights Watch researchers are “unaware of any concrete steps the coalition has taken to implement a compensation process,” according to the report.

The report quotes a man identified as “Yasser,” whose relatives were killed in an airstrike on a water bottling factory in 2015. Yasser, whose name was changed by the report’s authors for his protection, told the group that he “heard about the compensation as everyone else heard about it, through the TV,” but that no one had contacted him about receiving payments on behalf of his lost relatives.

“None of the people we’ve spoken with have received any form of compensation or any communication about being compensated,” Kristine Beckerle, a Yemen researcher for Human Rights Watch, told The Intercept. Beckerle acknowledged, however, that secret payments may have taken place without her knowledge.

In announcing the results of JIAT’s first inquiry in 2016, Saudi state media said the commission “consists of 14 members with experience and competence in military and legal fields,” all from countries that were part of the coalition at that time. But the coalition has never produced a public list of the members, Beckerle told The Intercept. In a letter last January, Human Rights Watch asked the spokesperson for JIAT to share the names of its members, whose command they fell under, and information about their legal and military experience. The group received no response.

JIAT’s only publicly known member, legal adviser and spokesperson Mansour al-Mansour, is a military lawyer from Bahrain, where he was reportedly involved in the prosecution of hundreds of peaceful protestors in the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. Earlier that year, Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain over fears that unrest there could topple the monarchy.

Top photo: Yemenis carry the coffin of a boy who was killed by a Saudi-led airstrike during a funeral in Saada, Yemen, on Aug. 13, 2018.

The post Saudi-led Coalition Team to Investigate Civilian Casualties Is “Covering Up War Crimes” in Yemen appeared first on The Intercept.

O Grupamento de Mergulhadores de Combate é a tropa de elite da Marinha, comparada ao Bope do Rio de Janeiro e aos Navy Seals dos EUA. O Grumec, como é chamado, é conhecido pelo treinamento pesado e pelo alto nível técnico. Na semana passada, até o ator Rômulo Estrela pôde ser visto por lá fazendo um workshop para seu próximo personagem em uma novela da TV Globo. Mas nem todos são bem-vindos naquele lugar. Gays, por exemplo, não são. No formulário de admissão de novos recrutas, aplicado este ano, o Grumec perguntou explicitamente:

‘Já teve algum envolvimento com jogo, agiotagem, homossexualismo, furto?’

Quando foi convocado para servir no Grumec, Carlos Freitas* já havia passado por outros quartéis. Gay não assumido – ele tem medo do ambiente carregado de homofobia da corporação –, nunca tinha sido questionado abertamente sobre sua sexualidade. Até ver a papeleta de admissão, o formulário que deve ser preenchido pelos militares que entram no Grumec.

1 ‘PSO': Plano de Segurança Orgânica.
2 A pergunta feita aos militares: ‘Já teve algum envolvimento com jogo, agiotagem, homossexualismo, furto?’
3 O documento, segundo a Marinha, é de ‘uso interno’.

Papeleta de admissão do Grumec coloca homossexualidade ao lado de furto e agiotagem.

“Eu fiquei em choque quando vi”, me contou o militar, que pediu para não ser identificado por correr risco de punição. Indignado, ele fotografou a papeleta no momento da admissão. “Tenho certeza que quem já teve alguma relação homossexual não marcou ‘sim’, até porque está explícito como algo pejorativo.”

Sim, está. Além de colocar a homossexualidade ao lado de crimes, como furto e agiotagem, o Grumec usa a palavra “homossexualismo” – o que é homofóbico, porque o sufixo “ismo” dá o sentido de doença à orientação sexual. A Organização Mundial da Saúde deixou de considerar a prática uma doença em 1990. Hoje, o termo recomendado para chamar quem tem relações afetivas com o mesmo sexo é “homossexualidade”.

A pergunta do Grumec aos militares não é apenas ofensiva, ela é criminosa. A discriminação por orientação sexual é inconstitucional – portanto, ilegal, mesmo em ambientes militares.

Até 2015, o Código Penal Militar tinha outras preocupações: classificava como crime o “ato libidinoso, homossexual ou não, em lugar sujeito à administração militar”. Naquele ano, no entanto, o Supremo Tribunal Federal decidiu retirar os termos “pederastia” e “homossexual ou não” do código. O argumento dos ministros foi que essas menções eram discriminatórias e inconstitucionais porque violavam os princípios de igualdade, dignidade, pluralidade e direito à privacidade.

A Marinha nega. Depois, admite.

O formulário homofóbico também está, segundo a fonte que enviou a fotografia ao Intercept, fixado no Plano de Segurança Orgânica, um conjunto de normas para proteger o quartel. Ou seja: para o Grumec, se relacionar com pessoas do mesmo sexo é um problema de segurança, no nível de furtar ou chantagear alguém.

Procurado, o Grumec negou a existência do formulário e me orientou a procurar o comando da Marinha, em Brasília. A corporação, por meio de sua assessoria de imprensa, disse que o processo seletivo para servir em determinadas áreas tem avaliações psicológicas e físicas, mas também afirmou desconhecer o formulário e disse rejeitar “o uso de qualquer papeleta de admissão para a atividade, muito menos com questionamentos sobre opção sexual”.

Com as negativas oficiais, eu decidi buscar outra fonte para confirmar a autenticidade do documento. Conversei com José Rodrigues*, que também serve no Grumec. Ele me disse que a papeleta é verdadeira. “O documento existe e é confidencial.”

Entrei em contato novamente com a Marinha e a questionei mais uma vez sobre a autenticidade do papel. A corporação disse, enfim, que a cópia em posse do Intercept “é um modelo desatualizado”, utilizado, “à época”, “internamente para o credenciamento de segurança”. E argumentou que serve apenas para informação, jamais foi usado em processo seletivo.

“O referido questionário não faz parte do processo seletivo para militares servirem no Grupamento de Mergulhadores de Combate, bem como não está em vigor naquela organização militar ou em qualquer outra da Marinha”, escreveu a corporação.

A Marinha também não respondeu se há algum procedimento para manifestações de homofobia na corporação.

Segundo o comunicado, o “respeito à dignidade da pessoa humana” é um dos “valores e preceitos éticos” cultuados pela corporação. “Nesse contexto, repudia-se qualquer atitude preconceituosa ou de intolerância no âmbito da Força Naval.”

A corporação não respondeu, no entanto, o que aconteceria com um recruta que assinalasse “sim” para a pergunta “você já teve algum envolvimento com jogo, agiotagem, homossexualismo, furto?”. A corporação vetaria a entrada de um militar no grupo especial? Ou simplesmente deixaria sua orientação sexual assinalada, ao lado de furto e agiotagem, por motivos de “segurança”?

Eles também não responderam se há algum procedimento prático do comando em relação a manifestações de homofobia em seus quartéis.

The post ‘Já teve algum envolvimento com homossexualismo?’ A tropa de elite da Marinha quer saber. appeared first on The Intercept.

“Viram essa?”, piscou a mensagem de WhatsApp na tela do computador, seguida da propaganda de um candidato a deputado federal propondo o seguinte: “Se um pedófilo aborda o seu filho, você prefere que ele se defenda mostrando UMA ARMA ou MOSTRANDO A LEI DIZENDO QUE É CRIME? Os bandidos só tem medo de armas!”

“Contra os pedófilos: liberação do porte de arma para crianças e adolescentes”, disparou o Professor Michel Cascudo em sua página no Facebook. Minha primeira reação foi acreditar que o candidato e sua proposta fossem reais. “Era previsível que ia aparecer alguém assim”, devolvi, no grupo da redação. Lá, editores corriam ao site do TSE para conferir a situação do candidato e do seu Partido da Transformação Social, o PTS.

Faz sentido, afinal. Um candidato a deputado federal na Paraíba, Diego Dusol, do Novo (sic), disse que ruralistas devem ter direito a ter não apenas armas, mas “tanques de guerra” para se defenderem de trabalhadores sem-terra. Outro candidato do Novo incentivou crimes contra militantes da esquerda. Por que eu desconfiaria de Michel Cascudo?

Reprodução Facebook

Foi aí que nos tocamos que dar armas para crianças era absurdo demais até para os padrões da atual campanha eleitoral. O site do TSE não mostrava nada sobre o candidato.

Cascudo é fake.

Mais dois minutos e decidimos ir atrás dos criadores. Enviei uma mensagem pelo Facebook, não muito certo de que teria uma resposta – nem de qual seria ela. Foi com alguma surpresa que vi alguém bastante solícito responder em poucos segundos.

‘Oi, sou Rafaela quero trabalhar pra vc’.

“A ideia é satirizar a extrema direita”, me disse Renato, um gerenciador de mídias sociais de 33 anos, me passando seu número de telefone do Rio de Janeiro. Não contive um “Ufa” na resposta – até ali, me parecia possível que a ideia fosse espalhar propostas radicais para serem abraçadas por protofascistas de carne e osso. O que mostra o grau de irracionalidade que tomou conta do debate político no Brasil.

“Quisemos inventar o candidato mais bizarro possível para ver qual seria o potencial dele, com a galera odiando ou apoiando”, me contou Renato, que preferiu omitir seu sobrenome, mas disse ter alguma familiaridade com o universo político – revelou ter trabalhado em campanhas políticas desde 2010, inclusive na de um senador, em 2014.

Entre as “dezenas” de mensagens que a página recebeu – a maioria com ofensas às ideias defendidas ali –, uma chamou a atenção dos criadores. “Oi, sou Rafaela quero trabalhar pra vc Eu voto em vc”, disse uma moça que se identificou com o arrazoado do candidato fake. Espantado, Renato preferiu não responder.

“Por sorte, a maioria das interações ou leva a sério as propostas, mas reage indignado, ou percebe logo que é zoeira”, falou Renato, que não escondeu que isso também lhe trouxe algum alívio. “Eu estava realmente com medo das pessoas levarem o candidato fake a sério e começarem a espalhar isso em grupos de WhatsApp de família.”

‘Alcançamos meio milhão de pessoas.’

A inspiração do Professor Michel Cascudo é bem real e óbvia: Jair Bolsonaro. “Essa primeira postagem foi muito inspirada nele fazendo arminha na mão da criança. E o argumento é o mesmo que ele usa para defender o porte de armas para mulheres como solução contra estupros. Só usei crianças, em vez de mulheres. Está no limiar da realidade”, revelou Renato.

Bolsonaro ensina menina a fazer uma arma com a mão.

Foto: reprodução vídeo

A página no Facebook é nova: entrou no ar na quarta-feira e, até o final da tarde seguinte, tinha 250 seguidores. Mas a postagem defendendo armas para crianças e adolescentes se espalhou rápido: mais de 4,5 mil compartilhamentos e 2,5 mil comentários. “Alcançamos meio milhão de pessoas. E sem patrocínio”, espantou-se o criador de Professor Michel Cascudo.

Renato trabalha auxiliado por uma amiga, Maria, de 29 anos, responsável pelo design da página. As fotos do candidato fake – negro, cabelos raspados e um sorriso amistoso perpetuamente no rosto – são na verdade de Michael Hancock, o prefeito democrata de Denver, cidade norte-americana do estado do Colorado, a primeira do país a liberar o consumo da maconha e que se tornou, por isso, uma espécie de Eldorado para hipsters e progressistas.

Trata-se de uma ironia calculada. “Procurei [fotos de um político] que tivesse um rosto que passasse por brasileiro e que fosse do Partido Democrata. Pesquisei a história dele [Hancock] e achei interessante. É um cara que está em evidência, e pode vir a ser um candidato a presidente dos EUA”, apostou Renato.

Enquanto eu batia esse texto, a segunda proposta do Professor Michel Cascudo já estava no ar: “Você prefere um país que invista na ciência, onde tenhamos pesquisadores descobrindo curas para doenças, pensando em novos meios de transportes, em novos combustíveis, em soluções arquitetônicas para as cidades ou FILÓSOFOS/ SOCIÓLOGOS falando em ‘direitos humanos’ para defender os bandidos e ensinando esquerdismo para as crianças? Acha justo nossos impostos pagarem faculdade de PINTURA e DANÇA em vez de pagarem cursos que serão úteis para a sociedade?”, ele bradou. “Minha ideia é: quer fazer faculdade de humanas? Faça, mas pague por ela. Faculdade pública deve ser de EXATAS.”

Quando eu já escrevia esse texto, veio a terceira. Proibição de votos para beneficiários do Bolsa Família – algo que já foi defendido, a sério, pela influente Associação Comercial, Industrial e Empresarial de Ponta Grossa, uma das maiores cidades do Paraná. “O perfil é fake, mas a ideia é correta”, empolgou-se um visitante.

“Nossa ideia, no final, é fazer um post revelando qual o objetivo da página e o perigo de uma candidatura assim”, contou-me um otimista Renato, ao final de nossa conversa.

Quando desliguei o telefone, vi que outra mensagem de WhatsApp piscava na tela. Uma colega compartilhava matéria sobre a visita de Jair Bolsonaro a Araçatuba, interior de São Paulo. “Você sabe dar tiro? Atira”, disse ele a uma criança. Em Glicério, a cerca de 40 km dali, o militar bradou a jornalistas: “Meus filhos todos atiraram com cinco anos de idade, real, não é de ficção nem de espoleta não, tá ok?”

The post Esse candidato fake defende armas para crianças – e comprova o absurdo dessa eleição appeared first on The Intercept.

The defense agreed to the plea deal in part to bring closure to Winner and her family. Her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, said when the plea was first announced that it was in her daughter’s “best interest” since the Espionage Act does not afford her any public interest defense.

But it should not bring closure to the crucial issues raised by this case, namely, the Justice Department’s contention that “national security” claims by the executive branch can never be challenged; that the executive branch has the sole authority to decide when information should be secret; and that the DOJ can prosecute journalists’ sources for “harming” national security with no public evidence whatsoever.

At issue in Winner’s case is a document she leaked to a news outlet. The Intercept published an article on June 5, 2017 about a five-page National Security Agency report that detailed how alleged Russian hackers targeted election vendors with phishing attacks in an attempt to access voters rolls in several states. The Intercept was not aware of the identity of the source who provided the document, though other news organizations connected it to Winner.

In its sentencing memorandum two weeks ago, the prosecution made several dubious statements about why a sentence of this unprecedented length was necessary, chiefly that “the defendant’s unauthorized disclosure caused exceptionally grave harm to our national security,” a claim that was repeated several times. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia Bobby Christine, who was appointed last year by President Donald Trump, went further on Thursday, calling Winner “a quintessential example of an insider threat.”

“Winner will serve a term of incarceration that will give pause to others who are entrusted with our country’s sensitive national security information and would consider compromising it,” Christine told reporters after the sentencing at the federal courthouse in Augusta, Ga. “Anyone else who may think of committing such an egregious and damaging wrong should take note of the prison sentence imposed today and the very real damage done.”

The government did not produce one iota of public evidence to back up its claims, citing only an unnamed “expert” whose comments are completely classified, and referring to the “top secret” marking on the document that they say “by definition” proves their point.

But new evidence published by The Intercept for the first time today, along with one of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recent indictments, undercuts the government’s claims.

When The Intercept first published the top-secret document, reporters and editors went to the government — as they do every time The Intercept publishes classified documents — to hear the NSA’s views about any information that might truly harm national security. After listening to the agency’s arguments, and out of an abundance of caution, The Intercept redacted a few pieces of information from the document before publishing it.

A key phrase that the government wanted withheld was the specific name of the Russian unit identified in the document. The government was particularly insistent on that point. Since it wasn’t vital to the story that the unit’s name be revealed, nor was it clear — at least at the time — that revealing the unit’s name was in the public interest, The Intercept agreed to withhold it.

But in the indictment of alleged Russian military intelligence operatives that Mueller’s office released last month, the Justice Department revealed the same name: GRU unit 74455. (The unit is also known as the Main Center for Special Technology or GTsST.) The indictment went on to reveal information almost identical to that contained in the document Winner admits to disclosing:

In or around June 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators researched domains used by U.S. state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and other election-related entities for website vulnerabilities. KOVALEV and his co-conspirators also searched for state political party email addresses, including filtered queries for email addresses listed on state Republican Party websites.

In or around July 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators hacked the website of a state board of elections (“SBOE 1”) and stole information related to approximately 500,000 voters, including names, addresses, partial social security numbers, dates of birth, and driver’s license numbers

In or around August 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators hacked into the computers of a U.S. vendor (“Vendor 1”) that supplied software used to verify voter registration information for the 2016 U.S. elections. KOVALEV and his co-conspirators used some of the same infrastructure to hack into Vendor 1 that they had used to hack into SBOE 1.

The Justice Department is trying to have it both ways: It’s OK for Mueller to publicly release this information in an attempt to prosecute alleged Russian hackers because it’s in the public interest. But at the exact same time, the government is also claiming that a document including very similar information causes grave harm to national security when disclosed to the public by someone else.

Maybe timing was the issue, you might say. Maybe the government is arguing that the Winner document, released more than a year before the Mueller indictment, somehow could have tipped off the accused Russian operatives that the NSA was spying on them. But the special counsel’s allegations point to a different conclusion.

In the indictment of the alleged Russian intelligence officers, the Special Counsel’s Office describes how the FBI itself tipped off the GRU unit to the U.S. surveillance almost a year before The Intercept published the NSA document. As the indictment notes:

In or around August 2016, the FBI issued an alert about the hacking of SBOE 1 and identified some of the infrastructure that was used to conduct the hacking. In response, KOVALEV deleted his search history. KOVALEV and his co-conspirators also deleted records from accounts used in their operations targeting state boards of elections and similar election related materials.

If the GRU was already aware that the U.S. was watching its activities in 2016 — thanks to the FBI and not the media — how could the Winner document have “gravely harmed” national security almost a year later?

Even without the Mueller indictment, the claim that the release of the NSA document seriously endangered national security was specious to begin with. There were no “sources and methods” in anything The Intercept published. By the summer of 2017, Russia’s attempted cyberattacks around the 2016 election had been widely reported.

Reality Winner walks out of the courthouse in Augusta, Ga., after her sentencing on Aug. 23, 2018.

Photo: Dustin Chambers for The Intercept

In fact, the day after The Intercept’s story came out, the Election Assistance Commission — the federal agency in charge of assisting state election officials — wrote an urgent bulletin to states, calling the report “credible” and urging state officials to read it. The EAC then provided advice on how to take action. (The commission, unbelievably, tweeted the hashtag #RealityWinner to promote its bulletin on social media).

The long history of the U.S. government claiming that a document published by the press was a “closely held” secret — when in fact it was anything but — may be why J. William Leonard, the former classification czar under George W. Bush, agreed to act as a defense witness for Reality Winner on a pro bono basis. Since leaving office in the mid-2000s, Leonard has sought to draw attention to abuses within the U.S. government classification regime and has acted as an expert witness in several leak investigations.

Leonard has also testified to Congress several times about our broken secrecy system. In 2016, he spoke before the House Oversight Committee about leak prosecutions similar to Winner’s: “The opaque nature of the classification system can give the government a unilateral and almost insurmountable advantage when it is engaged in an adversary encounter with one of its own citizens, an advantage that is just too tempting for many government officials to resist.”

He went on to explain in his congressional testimony that even as government employees are regularly and harshly punished for revealing information that the government considers secret, “to my knowledge no one has ever been held accountable and subjected to sanctions for abusing the classification system or for improperly classifying information.”

Leonard never got to testify in the Winner trial, so the court will never hear his expert opinion on the document at issue. What we do know is that the executive branch under both parties has insisted for decades that the classification of documents is virtually unreviewable by either the judiciary branch or Congress. And history is littered with examples of the government abusing its classification authority.

If you want to understand how the government classifies virtually any information in the national security space, no matter how benign, just read this recent account from BuzzFeed’s Jason Leopold about an “illegal animal killing” on CIA property involving a government employee. After Leopold got wind of an Inspector General report on the subject, he filed a FOIA request for more information. The CIA stonewalled him and withheld the IG report on the incident in full, claiming it would “harm national security” to release it — or even to disclose the type of animal that was killed.

So Leopold sued. Three years later, the government finally relented and revealed that the animal in question was a deer. The rest of the report remains classified.

It is, of course, conceivable that some unknown detail in the document Winner disclosed could have caused consternation at NSA headquarters. But because the government will never tell the public how something “damaged” national security, and uses the secrecy system to ensure that its arguments cannot be challenged, we’ll never know.

We’ll also never know exactly how much national security damage the government caused by not releasing this information to state election officials and the public much earlier.

In Augusta on Thursday, Winner spoke about her now-deceased father, who she said “expected us to engage in intellectual discourse as soon as we were out of diapers.” She said that like many Americans, her family was deeply affected by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which sparked her interest in“the languages and the cultures of the countries involved.” Winner joined the Air Force, then left to further her education and seek humanitarian work. She took a job at the government contractor Pluribus to “improve the language skills I developed in the Air Force.”

In a small measure of relief for Winner and her advocates, Judge Randal Hall endorsed her request to be sent to FMC Carswell, a Forth Worth federal medical facility where she will be about a seven-hour drive from her family in Kingsville, Texas. In court, Winner mentioned her 12-year struggle with bulimia, calling it “the most pressing internal challenge in my day-to-day survival,” and said that seeking treatment is one of her top goals. Her defense attorneys requested the Fort Worth facility so Winner could receive adequate medical care and “further her humanitarian objectives” through assisting other inmates with “debilitating illnesses.”

Taylor Barnes contributed reporting.

Top photo: Reality Winner walks out of the Federal Courthouse in Augusta, Ga., on June 26, 2018.

The post The Government’s Argument That Reality Winner Harmed National Security Doesn’t Hold Up. Here’s Why. appeared first on The Intercept.

In this video, I ask whether the prime minister of Israel is part of the solution to rising anti-Semitism — or part of the problem.

The post Benjamin Netanyahu Is Fine With Anti-Semites — as Long as They Support Israel’s Occupation appeared first on The Intercept.

On June 5, 2017, The Intercept published a story about the document. We did not know the identity of the source who had sent it to us. Shortly after we posted our story, we learned that Winner had been arrested two days earlier. After an internal review, we acknowledged shortcomings in our handling of the document. However, it soon became clear that the government had at its disposal, and had aggressively used, multiple methods to quickly hunt down Winner.

The information in The Intercept story on the NSA report played a crucial role in alerting local election officials who had been in the dark about the cyberattack — a public service that was implicitly acknowledged in a recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. As a former official from the Department of Homeland Security told The Intercept’s Sam Biddle, transmitting word of the cyberattacks down the chain was “not a high priority issue” for the NSA.  The vulnerability of the American electoral system is a national topic of immense gravity, but it took Winner’s act of bravery to bring key details of an attempt to compromise the democratic process in 2016 to public attention.  Those same details were included in the July indictment of alleged Russian military intelligence operatives issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Instead of being recognized as a conscience-driven whistleblower whose disclosure helped protect U.S. elections, Winner was prosecuted with vicious resolve by the Justice Department under the Espionage Act. Her plea agreement reflects the conclusion of Winner and her lawyers that the terms of this deal represent the best outcome possible for her in the current environment. She not only faced unrelenting pressure from prosecutors, but a series of setbacks in the courtroom severely restricted her lawyers’ ability to defend her.

The Intercept’s parent company, First Look Media, contributed to Winner’s legal defense through the Press Freedom Defense Fund.

Reality Winner’s courage and sacrifice for the good of her country should be honored, not punished. Selective and politically motivated prosecutions of leakers and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act — which dramatically escalated under Barack Obama, opening the door for the Trump Justice Department’s abuses — are an attack on the First Amendment that will one day be judged harshly by history.

The post Statement on the Sentencing of Whistleblower Reality Winner for Disclosing NSA Report on Russian Election Hacking appeared first on The Intercept.

A contundente afirmação que você acabou de ler não é de um candidato da esquerda à presidência da República, nem de um intelectual universitário ou de um militante do movimento da reforma sanitária brasileira. Seu autor é Eduardo Moreira, economista e ex-sócio do antigo Banco Pactual. Curiosamente, um ex-banqueiro é quem identifica a perda de combatividade da luta popular, que só tem resultado em derrotas.

É comum entre os sanitaristas a reclamação de que até hoje nenhum governo levou o SUS a sério e tomou para si a tarefa de expandi-lo e consolidá-lo – ainda que em quase metade desse tempo a presidência da República tenha estado nas mãos do PT, originário da mesma luta popular contra a ditadura empresarial-militar da qual emergiu o movimento sanitário.

A produção de estudos sobre o subfinanciamento, a publicação de notas públicas por entidades representativas do setor, a formação de campanhas e frentes políticas defendendo mais recursos e as tentativas de construção de maiorias no Congresso Nacional para a superação desse gargalo não foram poucas.

A realidade parece nos mostrar que o papel do Estado é, em última análise, defender os interesses de manutenção e avanço do sistema do capital.

Será, então, mero acidente de percurso que durante três décadas a tão buscada correlação de forças favorável ao SUS não tenha dado o ar da graça? É a mera existência de cúpulas governamentais descompromissadas e articulações partidárias malsucedidas que explicam a perda de terreno do SUS? Acredito que não.

The post Só a luta popular salva o SUS appeared first on The Intercept.