My Letter to LA Times editorial page editor Nick Goldberg

This morning, I wrote the following email to LA Times editorial page editor Nick Goldberg.

Dear Nick,

On Tuesday of last week, you published “A Note to Readers” indicating that The Times had serious doubt about the veracity of my May 11, 2015 blog post and, as a result, would no longer be publishing my work. Those doubts, you wrote and told me on the phone, were based upon an audiotape of my 2001 jaywalking arrest given to you by someone at the LAPD.

As I informed you Thursday, new information has since come to light confirming my account. As I have maintained all along, I told the truth. Will Durr, the LAPD officer who ticketed me in 2001, lied when he told Internal Affairs that he did not handcuff me, that there was no angry crowd, etc.

I asked an L.A.-based company, Post Haste Digital, to analyze the LAPD-supplied audiotape. The enhanced version of the audiotape, which you can listen to here:

http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/02/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-second-enhanced-tape-reveals-all/

proves beyond a reasonable doubt that your “doubts” were, as I told you repeatedly, completely unfounded and utterly without merit. You did not allow me to defend myself to the members of the editorial board, or to allow them to ask me questions. You treated me as though I was guilty until proven innocent, as though the burden of proof was upon me to prove that my story was true, rather than for the police to prove that my version was not. Your logic and reasoning were bizarre and incomprehensible, as when you questioned why I did not angrily protest the arrest while I was in cuffs — although I clearly stated that I had been polite and compliant in my blog and in my complaint to Internal Affairs. You believed the LAPD narrative based on a tape that appeared to be mostly noise.

You do not seem to have investigated the provenance of the tape, though it was provided by the LAPD, which has a long history of institutional violence, corruption and law-breaking. Despite the LAPD’s poor reputation for truth-telling, you did not take the basic step of having it independently analyzed for authenticity, or to see if additional data could be found on it. It fell to me, after your editorial smear, to do what you should have done yourself, with your far greater resources than I, a freelance cartoonist earning $200 per cartoon plus $100 per blog.

As a result of your poor judgement, I have been defamed in the pages of a major American newspaper and on hundreds of websites on the Internet. You have deprived me and my family of an important source of income and a prominent position in the world of journalism. You have tarnished my reputation in a way that I will never be able to fully repair.

What you have done to me is shameful. The chilling effect you have had on American journalism, sending the message that a major newspaper will fire a journalist at the request of the police, without solid proof, and to attempt to destroy his reputation, is incalculable.

In light of this new information, Nick, I hereby request that you retain, and not destroy or modify, all communications, records and information currently in your possession and control pertaining to me and my work, and that you direct all employees of The Los Angeles Times to do the same.

In light of the new information on the audiotape, I further request that you issue a full retraction of greater or equal prominence, of your July 27 “Note to Readers.” I request that you tag the original Note to indicate that it is incorrect.

In light of the new information, I request that you issue a formal apology in the pages of the Times, including your description of how you came into possession of the tape, who gave it to you or the Times, explain why you didn’t bother to check the tape, and that you ask an ombudsman or independent journalistic investigator to look into this fiasco.

In light of the new information, I request that you restore my cartoons and blog to the pages of the Los Angeles Times.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Ted Rall

Published at ANewDomain.net: “Ted Rall LAPD Scandal: Second New Tape Reveals Startling Details”

Originally published by ANewDomain.net:

Update, Aug. 2, 2015: We now have the latest enhanced version (v. 2) of the Los Angeles Police Department tape dub that cops used to convince Los Angeles Times editors that Ted Rall lied in print about police mistreatment on a 2001 jaywalking stop on Melrose Ave. The Times fired Rall early last week as a cartoonist and columnist based on that tape.

But this latest pro-enhanced version, released by Rall and aNewDomain today, Monday, Aug. 3, 1 a.m. Pacific, conclusively backs up Rall’s story that LAPD officer Will Durr in fact handcuffed him in front of a crowd of loudly protesting onlookers.  The LAPD and Times never bothered to enhance the 6:20 tape, six minutes of which was incomprehensible static. But we did. Here’s Rall on this new tape, which even clearer and more damning than the version we released late last week. – Ed

By Ted Rall, with Gina Smith reporting.

aNewDomainted-rall-on-greece — Three weeks after 9/11, I was walking on Melrose Avenue in the West Hollywood section of Los Angeles. I had just appeared for a taping of the TV show “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” at nearby CBS Television City’s studio.

I was buoyant. There, I’d met former MTV VJ Kennedy. And Woody Harrelson, who was hanging out in the green room, had just told me he was a fan. I was having a great night. I was on my way to dinner with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, agent, radio producer and some friends. I crossed the north side of Melrose at the corner of Gardner Street. With the light. In the crosswalk.

That’s when the cop, LAPD Officer Will Durr, appeared.

Ted Rall LAPD LaTimes scandalOfficer Durr (shown at right) angrily accused me of jaywalking, though he would’ve known full well I did no such thing if he’d actually watched me cross Melrose.

He threw me against a wall. I’m a big guy, so that’s saying a lot. Then he handcuffed me and began writing up my ticket. As he wrote it up and I stood there, stunned and cuffed, an angry crowd of people gathered on the street; many of them loudly protested his mistreatment of me. He whistled, strangely, in response to most of the comments of the people giving him a hard time. And then he was done, he threw my license in the gutter.

On May 11, 2015 I wrote about my experience in a blog for the website of The Los Angeles Times, where I’d been a cartoonist and commentator since 2009. (It was a long relationship. The Times ran my syndicated editorial cartoons since the early 1990s.)

LA Times-editor-Nick-Goldberg-believed-the-cops-over-rall-in-the-ted-rall-lapd-la-times-scandalBut last week, on July 27, Times reporter Paul Pringle and editorial page editor Nick Goldberg (pictured at left) called me at my New York home office. Based on an audiotape I never knew existed, one that Officer Durr clandestinely recorded on the scene 14 years ago, they told me my May 11, 2015 blog post was a lie.

According to the LAPD and that tape that someone at the LAPD gave them (the Times refuses to answer questions from reporters, so we don’t know who slipped it to them), they believed I had never been handcuffed, there had been no angry crowd and no nasty toss of my license. And they said they believed the tape evidence alone made it clear that, based on the tape and the tape alone, I was a liar.

Pringle played me the tape. The audio was awful (listen here). The 6:20 tape contained only about 20 seconds of semi-audible speech — and lots of bizarre whistling. But the majority of the tape — fully six minutes worth — was incomprehensible noise and static.

The LAPD and the Times made no apparent attempt to enhance, or authenticate, the LAPD-supplied audio using commonly available audio technology and talent. Nevertheless, Goldberg informed me, I was fired, based on that tape. Not only that, I would be publicly humiliated. The next day, he published an Editor’s Note announcing my firing and the LAPD’s allegations in the print and online editions of the newspaper. It took me two days to come up with the first enhanced version. Still mostly inaudible, it revealed at least one bystander’s voice loudly asking Durr to “take off his handcuffs.”

The audio engineers we hired at Post Haste Digital to clean it up gave us this new tape, the newly enhanced version of the tape we’re posting now, early Aug. 3, 2015. It gives a really clear idea of what went down October 3, 2001 at the corner of Melrose and Gardner.

See the full transcript below the fold. And listen to both tapes below. Caution: Both contain adult language, including obscenities, frank sexual innuendo and vulgar language not suitable to family viewing or listening.

Here’s the newly enhanced version of the LAPD police tape dub (release: August 3, 2015)

For comparison, here’s the original LAPD-made dub of LAPD Officer Durr’s personal tape of the incident, as supplied to the Los Angeles Times as “proof” that I was lying.

Transcript of the New Tape

3.364 – Officer Will Durr, to Ted Rall: “You have an ID?”

7.570 – Officer: “the LA County Police Department, the reason I stopped you, you got a red light, and you just walked across just as free as you wanted to, so…”

15.654 – Ted Rall: “I’m really sorry, I totally missed”

16.902 – Officer: “That’s alright, you’re gonna get a ticket for it, I need you to take that out, of your wallet, please.”

30.585 – “Is this your current address? ‘kay…”

34.173 – Click Click (may be handcuffs going on)

(at this point, Ted is waiting, and probably handcuffed, while officer writes ticket)

55.363 – Officer whistles

1:00.580 – Officer hums

1:03.186 – Unintelligible noise – possibly zipper. (Note: Officer may be attempting to cover up microphone by zippering uniform more, as he notices bystanders coming closer.)

1:26.700 – Voice, female

2:05.207 – Voice, unclear if male or female

2:13.000 – Voice, female

3:00.314 – Officer whistles, possibly to cover up her voice

3:07.426 – Voice, unclear if male or female

3:13.662 – Voice, unclear if male or female

3:17.756 – Woman1 (possibly Asian): “Why’d you handcuff him?”

3:21.672 – Voice, male

3:22.549 – Woman1: “Why’d you…”

3:26.706 – Ted talking to Woman1: “, and I’m from New York,” Woman1: “yeah!” Ted: “So I can say that.”

3:33.351 – Woman1, to Ted: “You just tell him…”

3:35.000 – Officer whistles while Woman1 yells

3:37.864 – Woman2, to officer, disgusted: “Don’t think about his family”

3:39.621 – Ted, protesting: “I have a right to a ”

3:43.500 – Woman1, agreeing: “Yeah”

3:46.442 – Woman2, incredulous: “So he’s really detaining him?”

3:47.000 – Woman3: “He was just jaywalking… you need to take off.. no, take off his handcuffs!”

3:54.073 – Officer: “No no no no. First, I’m giving him a ticket.” Note: The officer is admitting that Ted is handcuffed.

3:57.179 – Woman3: “Then take off…”

4:01.305 –Woman2, disparaging officer: “He’s overdressed”

4:04.845– Woman2, mocking officer, disgusted: “Let’s go murder some widows!”

4:06.730 – Woman3: “Stop it!” (shouting)

4:07.063 – Officer: “I’m doing the right thing.”

4:11.736 – Woman2 mocking, “You’re gonna make a big tip!”

4:14.054 – Woman2, mocking officer, “I’m just a big girly-boy, give or take”

4:15.908 – Possibly woman3: “He’s behind him, this makes it…”

4:18.738 – Woman3 or 4, British, “Don’t forget to ride his asshole!”

4:21.054 – Officer, mocking back: “Well, I appreciate it.”

4:22.209 – Woman1 , mocking officer: “Here, fuck me and get over it!”

4:23.450 – Woman2, to officer: “I mean, don’t you got other problems going on in LA right now?”

4:27.114 – Officer responding to woman2, “Not especially.”

4:28.192 – Woman2, disgusted: “Well, go over there.”

4:31.198 – Officer, mocking back “Oh, I feel really scared.”

4:36.500 – Officer, humming into mic.

4:34.500 – Officer, humming into mic.

4:51.452 – Officer: “Alrighty, sir, you’ve been cited for 21456(B) of the vehicle code”

4:58.224 – Officer, sarcastic: “Here, I’ll take that until we’re done, there ya go” – (Here he seems to be referring to taking off handcuffs, so Ted can sign ticket

5:00.930 – Officer: “You did a violation, so…”

5:04.436 – Officer: “I need you to go ahead and sign at the X, you’re not admitting guilt …”

5:08.094 – Officer: “It has the before the you”

5:11.948 – Ted, withdrawn: “ ‘kay… can you tell me how much it is?”

5:15.317 – Officer: “’Scuse me?”

5:16.000 – Ted: “Can you tell me how much it is, or?”

5:17.352 – Officer, sarcastic tone: “No, we don’t know how much it is. There, I’ll show you a number on the back of the ticket. You can call and find all that information out as well as where you can go if you want to fight the ticket, or any other options.”

5:36.719 – Officer, sarcastic tone: “Here’s your license back…”

5:42.644 – Click, then scuffle noise – This may be license hitting the ground and the sound of Ted getting down to pick it up

5:46.048 – Officer: “Copy of your citation, like I said, there’s a lot of information on the back, you might wanna read it..”

5:50.766 – Ted, “Do what? Okay..”

5:53.400 – Officer, sarcastic: “Thank you sir… what?”

5:58.158 – Ted:

6:00.428 – Officer: “You know what? This is my first month here, so I don’t know any of the local eateries, unfortunately… I don’t hang out down there. Alright, have a good day.”

6:16.276 – Officer: “Contact complete.”

Select Clip – Optimized

Below, find a comparison between the LAPD dub the police gave the Times as proof that I lied about the crowd and the handcuffing and the newly enhanced (v. 2) tape we received from audio engineers on Sunday, Aug. 2.

3:17.756 – Woman1 (possibly Asian): “Why’d you handcuff him?”

LAPD-supplied audio clip:

Enhanced audio clip:

At this writing, spokespeople for neither the LAPD or the Los Angeles Times have returned our reporters’ repeated calls for content. And Goldberg’s Editor’s Note, which explains Rall’s firing as a result of the original tape’s contents, is still online.

For aNewDomain, I’m Ted Rall.

Special thanks to: Audio Enhancement by Post Haste Digital, Los Angeles

Additional reporting: aNewDomain editor-in-chief Gina Smith, aNewDomain senior ed/investigative reporter, Nancy Imperiale and aNewDomain legal analyst Tom Ewing of aNewDomain and SkewedNews.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: L.A. Confidential: How The LAPD Conspired To Get Me Fired From The Los Angeles Times — And How I Proved They Lied

 On Monday night, I was in tears.

The editorial page editor of The Los Angeles Times, which has run my cartoons for six years, had called me to tell me that the paper would run an “Editor’s Note” announcing that they were firing me because I had lied about my treatment by a Los Angeles police officer when he arrested me for jaywalking in 2001.

I was about to be disgraced. Compared to Brian Williams and Jayson Blair. As a journalist, nothing is worse than being accused of willfully lying about a story. It’s the end of your career.

You’re dead.

Tuesday, when the piece appeared in print as well as online, word spread like wildfire that the police had a secret audiotape of my arrest. I had written in the Times that I had been treated rudely: shoved, handcuffed, and finally, the cop tossed my driver’s license on the ground. The audiotape, claimed my editor, proved that none of that had happened. It was, in fact, a polite encounter with a friendly officer.

The Internet exploded. Predictably, right-wing blogs led the charge, dutifully transcribing editor Nick Goldberg’s accusations against me, which he accepted at face value from the LAPD: Breitbart, Newsbusters, the usual gang of idiots. Soon Twitter was full of taunts. My email filled with mirthful, snarky insults.

Amid the chaos of my career falling apart. I asked people familiar with audio technology to check the LAPD-supplied tape, which contains about 20 seconds of talk and 6 minutes of unintelligible noise, for signs of tampering — and to see if there was any way to clean it up.

On Friday morning, I woke up like a kid on Christmas morn. But what I found in my in box was better than a bike and a skateboard: an enhanced audiofile that proves, unequivocally, that I was telling the 100% truth when I wrote that essay in May.

On the tape, you can clearly hear a female bystander shouting at the LAPD officer who’d stopped me for jaywalking to “take off his handcuffs.” She yells this twice.

Officer Will Durr responds first with a “No, no, no … ” and then by whistling loudly into the mic.

The enhanced tape clearly proves that the cops are lying, not me — and it even suggests cops might have knowingly tampered with the tape.

You can listen to the tape at ANewDomain.net. My incident is at the 03:30 mark.

You can hear a female witness — a witness the LAPD convinced my editors at the Times did not exist and I was making up — on the tape. She protests: “He was just jaywalking …  you need to take off … you need to take off his handcuffs.” She says that at 3:30 and repeats it at 3:50.

To this, LAPD Officer Will Durr replies: “No, no, no, no, no.”

When the bystander persists in protesting the cop’s handcuffing my wrists, LAPD Officer Durr whistles. At the time of the incident, I was puzzled by his whistling, which seemed like unusual behavior. Now I believe I understand, that it is the officer’s technique to tamp down sounds (like protesting bystanders) that he doesn’t want on the recording.

The recorder was on his uniform secretly. I had no idea the encounter was being recorded or that a copy existed until this week.

Any way you look at it, the Los Angeles Police Department is lying. Cops lied when they said that I didn’t get handcuffed. They lied when they said I was mistaken about the presence of protesting witnesses. And they lied when they told my editors at The Los Angeles Times that I’m a liar who should be fired.

And the Los Angeles Times believed the LAPD, not me, their columnist. So they sacked me.

We know the officer deliberately used whistling to alter the recording. It is also clear that he deliberately muffled it.

It is the job of the media to question authority, not to blindly defend it and eat its own.

Even in its defense of the LAPD, the Times couldn’t be bothered to do due diligence. Editors made no effort to investigate longtime traffic Officer Will Durr’s bizarre claims that he has never, ever handcuffed anyone. I exposed that lie yesterday. The Times didn’t even bother searching its own website before siding with the LAPD.

If they can’t type “Will Durr” into a search field, I suppose it’s too much to expect the LA Times could be bothered to track down a sound engineer in L-friggin’-A?

Classic Streisand effect: In their attempt to discredit me and destroy my reputation as a journalist, the LAPD wound up discrediting themselves and further eroding its own reputation. And they’re taking the Times with them.

But the LAPD’s reputation has, of course, already been destroyed by decades of police brutality, systematic corruption and fatal police shootings of one unarmed black man after another.

Will the Times do the right thing: apologize, issue a retraction, and return my cartoons and blogs to the pages of the newspaper? I hope so.

What a week.

(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for The Los Angeles Times, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower, to be published August 18th. Want to support independent journalism? You can subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)

COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

LAPD Tampered with Audiotape LA Times Used to Fire Me – Which Has Now Vindicated Me

Originally published by ANewDomain:

Ted Rall-LAPD-LATimes Battle: New Tape Proves Cops Lied [exclusive]

EXCLUSIVE — Audio engineers hired by Ted Rall and aNewDomain today released a cleaner version of an audio tape Los Angeles police used to convince Los Angeles Times editors to fire political essayist and cartoonist Ted Rall early this week. It is damning.

On the tape, you can clearly hear a female bystander shouting at the LAPD officer who’d stopped Rall for jaywalking to “take off his handcuffs.” She yells this twice. Officer Will Durr responds first with a “No, no, no … ” and then by whistling loudly into the mic. Listen for yourself, below.

The LAPD and the Times have been claiming that the original version of the tape, released on Monday, proved the officer did not handcuff Rall or otherwise rough him up as Rall had written in a May 2015 Times column. They claimed the tape proved Rall was lying. That was the basis for the Times abruptly dumping him this week. But this newly enhanced tape clearly proves that the cops are lying — and it even suggests cops might have knowingly tampered with the tape. Why? We’re pursuing this developing story. For now, here’s what Ted Rall has to say about the tape and what you’ll hear on it. – Ed

aNewDomain — We now have an enhanced version of the LAPD tape that cops used to convince the Los Angeles Times to fire me as its political cartoonist and blogger this week.

On the cleaned-up version of the tape, which you can hear below, just advance the recording to minute 3:30. You’ll hear a female witness, one the LAPD told my former editors at the Times I was lying about, and one they said didn’t exist, on the tape. She protests: “He was just jaywalking …  you need to take off … you need to take off his handcuffs.”

She says that at 3:30 and repeats it at 3:50.

To this, LAPD Officer Will Durr replies: “No, no, no, no, no.”

When she persists in protesting the cop’s handcuffing me, LAPD officer Durr whistles. At the time of the incident, I was puzzled by his whistling, which is unusual behavior for a cop. Now I believe it’s his technique to tamp down sounds (like her) that he doesn’t want on the recording. (The recorder was on his uniform, secretly.) Any way you look at it, though, this proves he and the LAPD are lying: Cops lied when they said that I didn’t get handcuffed, lied when they said I lied about the presence of protesting witnesses, and lied when they went to my Times editors and called me a liar.

Listen for yourself:

So we know the officer deliberately used whistling to alter the recording. It is also clear that he deliberately muffled it.

It’s the media’s job to question authority, not to blindly defend it and execute on its behalf.

Even in its defense of the LAPD, the LAT couldn’t be bothered to do due diligence. Editors made no effort to investigate long-time traffic cop Will Durr’s bizarre claims that he has never ever handcuffed anyone. We disproved that cop’s lie yesterday. They didn’t even bother searching their own website.

If they can’t type “Will Durr” into a search field, how can they be bothered to track down a sound engineer in L friggin A?

Classic Streisand Effect: In their attempt to discredit me and destroy my reputation as a journalist, they wound up discrediting themselves and further eroding their own reputation, which has already been destroyed by decades of police brutality, systematic corruption and fatal police shootings of one unarmed black man after another.

Two shorter clips, enhanced differently, follow. Listen to them, below.

So the cops lied. And there are other questions …

The main question is: Why? Why would they lie?

The audio tape was not a public record. No one requested my permission, required under California law, to release it. Did The Los Angeles Times file the required papers to get it?

Did The Los Angeles Times approach the LAPD to request the tape, or did the cops (or a third party, like the LAPPL police union, or the pension fund for cops) approach them?

Did the LAPPL (the police union) which has been gloating on its blog that the Ted Rall incident should be a “lesson” other media outlets should learn from — go out of their way to get me out?

Why would the LAPD spend taxpayer money to dig out an ancient audio tape and go to the trouble of doctoring it, if they did, and transcribing it, which they did, and walking it over to the Times to get me fired?

Under LA law and LAPD rules, an officer must include contemporaneous date, location and other identifying data within each uninterrupted recorded incident — otherwise it’s a violation of citizens’ privacy rights. That info isn’t on the tape, which means it was either illegal, or it was spliced out/tampered with. Which was it?

Also, was it illegal for the Times or the LAPD to get the tape, which isn’t public information, without my approval? Our legal analyst Tom Ewing will be following up with analysis around that question later in the day.

Does the fact that a big chunk of The Los Angeles Times is now owned by Oaktree Capital, an investment firm that itself is powered by billions in investment from the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension Fund, have anything to do with this?

This pension fund, points out investigative reporter Gina Smith, has previously demanded firings of editorial writers and commentators at a San Diego daily, one that the LA Times’ parent company, Tribune Publishing, just bought. Watch for that report, too.

Notes on Audio Enhancement Methodology

The long enhanced version posted here was processed by a technician who wishes to remain anonymous because he lives in Los Angeles, is African-American, and has frequently been harassed by the LAPD. Here is his statement about how he was able to isolate the sound of the eyewitness to me being handcuffed —  the one who the Times said didn’t exist, about an act the LAPD said never happened: “I used a noise reduction plugin to diminish hiss, handling, and street noise. An equalizer cuts low frequency rumble and boosts the upper mid range to enhance intelligibility. A limiter brings up the overall volume.”

A different person, who lives near Los Angeles and also prefers to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation by the LAPD, used this longer version to create the two shorter clips. She said: “I’m using audio repair software to remove surface/street noise with de-noise filters, and an equalizer targeting the vocal ranges of the bystanders.”

I have hired a professional audio technician based in Los Angeles to further clean up the tape provided by the LAPD. I will post the results when I get them.

Additional reporting: Gina Smith, Nancy Imperiale and Tom Ewing of aNewDomain and SkewedNews.

My Reply to the LAPD…er, LA Times.

The Los Angeles Times, which has published my editorial cartoons about Los Angeles and California since 2009, has fired me. The reason: the LAPD supplied them with “evidence” they say proves I lied when I wrote in May that the LAPD falsely charged me with jaywalking and treated me roughly and rudely in 2001. Listen to the audiotaped “evidence” — mostly unintelligible garbage — and read my detailed reply to this disgusting example of journalistic cowardice in the face of a violent and corrupt police department willing to lie to protect itself here, at ANewDomain.net.

Added at 8:08 EDT: Here’s a collection of videos that proves that handcuffing alleged jaywalkers isn’t unusual in LA, and may in fact by standard procedure.

Here’s The Real Reason Why Some Americans Hate Iran Nuclear Deal

Originally published by ANewDomain.net:

The nuclear deal with Iran is a good thing. President Obama deserves credit for initiating the dialogue and for negotiations that led to terms to which both sides can agree. As Winston Churchill said but too few Americans believe:

“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”

So why are there still so many high-profile opponents to this agreement, which provides for an inspections regime to enforce Iran’s promise not to develop a nuclear weapons program in exchange for lifting international economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic?

According to the vast majority of writers and broadcasters working for corporate media, the opposition is ideological.

Saudi Arabia, they say, is afraid that Shiite Iran will violate the agreement in order to become the second nuclear state in the Middle East, after Israel, and might threaten to use it against them or one of their Sunni allies. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel, by this way of thinking, are also worried that Iran might increase its support of terrorist organizations as its economy improves.

Since President Obama has promised to veto any attempt by the Republican-led Congress to derail the agreement, and it would be difficult for the GOP to muster the two thirds majority necessary to override the president’s veto, resistance is pretty much pro forma.

According to the Republicans, they’re not afraid of peace or jonesing for war against Iran – they just don’t think there’s any way to prevent the Iranians from cheating the inspectors, and in an echo of the classic complaint that a restaurant has terrible food and such small portions, the inspections don’t go far enough into the future.

The media has been playing his usual role as government transcriber, taking GOP officials at their word.

Even Obama has paid lipservice to these concerns, expressing his own complaints about Iran’s “threats” against Israel in his speech announcing the deal.

In fact, the much-ballyhooed statement by former Iranian President Ahmadinejad about wanting to “wipe Israel off the map” has been debunked. He never said that.)

The truth is, opposition to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran has a lot more to do with business than ideology.

Iran has the fourth-largest proven oil reserves in the world. After all the sanctions are lifted, energy analysts believe that there will be a significant price drop for a barrel of crude worldwide. “The thinks Iran can get back to producing 4 million barrels of oil per day — the level it was at in 2008 — by the end of this decade. Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh wants Iran to resume its spot as the world’s No. 2 oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia (a spot currently occupied by Russia). But that’s far from assured, and there could easily be hiccups on the way,” reports Vox.

Oil prices have already been declining. This is been terrible news for Saudi Arabia, the world number-one oil producer, currently responsible for about 10 million barrels per day of production. “A potential return of Iranian oil to the market could not have come at a worse time,” Barclays commodities analyst Michael Cohen says. “An increase in Iranian exports beyond 300,000 to 400,000 barrels a day would be difficult for the market to absorb.” Goldman Sachs agrees. So do commodities markets, which pushed oil futures lower when news of the Iran deal broke.

The only terrorism that the Saudi royal family cares about is a 9/11-style attack on their numbered Swiss bank accounts, which they fear might be the effect of all that new Iranian oil coming online. (Anyway, Saudi Arabia is probably in a better position than just about any other country to put a dent in terrorism if it ever felt like it, since it funds radical Wahhabi-inspired madrasahs and insurgent groups throughout Asia and Africa.)

Here in the United States, opposition to allowing Iran to enjoy full trading relations and diplomatic links with the global community is centered around right-wing Republicans in the House and Senate. As with the Saudis, the real reason that they’re against this deal is that it represents a clear and present danger to big oil.

87% of donations by oil and gas companies and 95% of those from the coal industry to members of Congress go to Republicans. The Republican Party is owned lock, stock and barrel by energy conglomerates, which stand to see their profits shrink as oil prices drop in response to the increasing global production anticipated by the revival of Iran’s oil sector.

So the next time you watch talking heads go on and on about the fear that the crazy mullahs of Tehran want to fire an ICBM into Tel Aviv, remember that this rhetoric has a lot less to do with worrying about terrorism or the safety of Israel, and everything to do with oil company profits.

 

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Conservatism with a Heart? It’s Called Socialism

American conservatives are staring down the barrel of a future that looks increasingly bleak for them due to two major demographic shifts: the country is becoming more ethnically diverse, and younger voters – Generation Xers, Millennials, and presumably whoever comes next – are left cold or even repelled by the Republican Party’s Christian evangelical base and “social issues,” i.e. its obsession over who everyone has sex with. Anticipating their imminent irrelevance, some on the right say it’s time to reboot conservatism by bringing it more in line with the increasingly tolerant tone of most Americans on social issues, and by addressing their economic concerns.

One rightist getting attention these days is Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank. He’s out pimping a new book, “The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America,” which “shares his insights as to how conservatives can reach skeptical voters, smash stereotypes about conservatives and recast the political playing field,” according to The Washington Post.

It’s an interesting read. So are Brooks’ interviews to promote it. But the reason it’s interesting probably wouldn’t please him; what makes the current “conservative reform movement” worth knowing about is that it reaches the very heights of the human capacity for self-delusion.

At its core, conservatism is an ideology dedicated to the status quo. As such, it reflexively resists suggestions that the system is less than perfect, that things could be better, that the leadership caste isn’t deserving, or that there is inherent unfairness or injustice in the current state of affairs. The main thing about conservatism is, it doesn’t have a heart. To conservatives, and I know many of them, fail succeed ought to blame themselves – too lazy, too dumb – rather than structural impediments like racism or endemic poverty.

Parenthetically, the one point even my smartest conservative friends and acquaintances can’t refute is inheritance – how can capitalism be fair if Donald Trump starts his life worth millions, and you were an abandoned crack baby?

Conservatives trying to make their message more palatable to the country furious about the depredations of the top 1%, who have stolen 99% of national income in recent years, are faced with a set of options, none of which are likely to get them where they want to be, beloved by the electorate.

They can continue to defend big business and its prerogatives, and spin that policy with their traditional “a rising tide lifts all boats” meme. The problem there is, no one believes in trickle-down anymore.

Alternatively, they can embrace a new set of priorities and policies, which put ordinary American workers first. No more NAFTAs, no outsourcing, higher wages, protect the ability to unionize. But then, you’re not really conservative anymore. Even worse, you’ve abandoned your base of support, big business, in order to court a new constituency that will never trust you as much as liberals and progressives.

Boiled down to its essentials, the argument of would-be conservative reformers like Brooks is that it sure would be swell if capitalism could be made fairer. But the thing about capitalism is that unfairness isn’t an unfortunate side effect of this particular economic system. It’s a core feature.

Capitalism without unfairness and built-in inequality isn’t capitalism; it’s socialism. You don’t have to be Karl Marx to have been able to personally observe the tendency of power and money to aggregate into fewer and fewer hands over time, what we call monopolization, and to leverage those advantages in order to gather an even greater share.

Brooks tries to obscure this in an interview with the Dianne Rehm show on NPR. “About 2% of the American public considers income inequality, per se, to be the biggest economic problem that we have in America,” Brooks said. “Everybody believes, including President Obama because we have discussed this, believes that opportunity inequality is a real crisis. So what I would recommend to Democratic office holders and aspirants to higher offices that they pivot from their emphasis on income inequality, which is about a 2% issue, to an opportunity inequality, which is about 100% issue and then we can have a realistic competition of ideas between right and left on how to increase opportunity and mobility in America.”

On this point, I think most people can agree with Brooks: the core of the problem is a lack of class mobility. At this point in US history, it’s harder for someone born poor to get ahead and break into the middle class or upper class than it is in Europe, a continent that many of our grandparents and great-great-grandparents fled due to lack of opportunity.

So how do conservative reformers propose to give the chance to get ahead to everyone?

Brooks: “And the answer is not just the redistribution of income, although that has to happen, such that we can have goods and services for the poor. The answer is for — to find better policies so people can earn their success through education reform, through serious cultural conversations about the predicates of success.”

I give Brooks credit: he admits that “redistribution of income…has to happen.” That is for damn sure.

Education reform? No, that’s never going to do it. Nor will right-wingers agree to the federalization of education that would be necessary to ensure that a kid in Compton went to a school as good as one in Bel Air.

Cultural conversations? Don’t make me laugh.

Redistribution of income. And wealth. That’s the ticket to solving income inequality. When the time comes, however, I’m going to trust my local Communists – who have been pushing for and thinking about it forever – a hell of a lot more than the reform conservatives who think Ronald Reagan, who trashed the social safety net, was some kind of hero.

(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for The Los Angeles Times, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower, to be published August 18th. Want to support independent journalism? You can subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)

COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

Greece Bailout: Selling Out to Scummy International Bankers

Originally published by ANewDomain.net:

This is not what democracy looks like.

In January, Greek voters stunned Western political analysts by electing Alexis Tsipras of the self-proclaimed socialist Syriza party as prime minister in what was, by all accounts, a cri de coeur, as close to a primal scream as one can deliver via a voting booth: Enough! Enough austerity! Enough budget cuts! Enough hopelessness!

Syriza ran on a clear platform: No more kowtowing to Germany and the European Union. No more savaging of the social safety net.

Even if that meant leaving the Eurozone and reverting to the drachma, even if that meant currency devaluation and even more misery in the short run, Greeks said, they were willing to endure those sufferings to avoid more of the same: 25 percent unemployment, the sight of graduate students and once-elegant women scavenging food from wastebins.

Alexis Tsipras Greece Bailout

Just over a week ago, Tsipras asked Greeks for a “No” vote on a referendum he called: No on austerity. No to debt slavery, euro-style. No. More. They gave him that vote, decisively.

But now here we are, watching Tsipras engaged in one of the most extreme sellouts of the modern political era.

Neil Irwin of The New York Times’ The Upshot writes:

In exchange for a cash lifeline, the country has agreed to much greater concessions than those that were under discussion a few weeks ago. Among them: higher taxes, cuts to government pensions and a sell-off of $55 billion worth of state assets in order to recapitalize banks and make debt payments. That last strategy is a little like a family selling off its furniture to make its mortgage payment; you can do it, but it does not exactly amount to a long-term solution.” 

Details of the new loan terms still have to be negotiated, but the basics are clear: Things will get worse for Greeks — much worse than they are now. And that’s really, really bad — comparable to the grisly state of the U.S. at the peak of the Great Depression — all as the result of Tsipras’ sellout.

Reports USA Today:

One proposal floated in Brussels would require Greece to place $56 billion of state assets in an off-shore trust for liquidation, a huge sum that equals the value of every single thing the government owns … “

“I thought it couldn’t get worse, but the last week seems like it was designed specifically to humiliate my country. We are not without blame, but it seems as if nobody wants to reach an agreement with us. They want to embarrass us and punish us. When will it end?” asked Maria Scafidi, 29, a Greek tour guide.

This is what the seeds of revolution look like.

“By Wednesday, the country must promise to broaden its tax base to increase collections and reform its pension program, including raising the retirement age,” reports The Politico.

What is the point, from the standpoint of Greek voters, of electoral democracy, if elected “representatives” are elected with clear messages, reinforced by clear mandates delivered via referenda, who then ignore those popular directives when they feel squeezed by the so-called “great powers” in distant, fancy conference rooms?

If a national desire as clear-cut as that delivered by the Greek public — No. More. Austerity! — can be shrugged off just like that, it becomes clear that there is only one route left to effect real change: violence, revolution, violent revolution (which are one and the same).

No one knows what comes next.

But I know what’s unlikely: Greeks bending over and taking it. Google the phrase “Greece revolution” and you get more dates than you know what to choose from. The German-led European push for even worse austerity, the further gutting of pensions and seizing the nation’s public assets, including its municipal parks, would push even a nation of stoner losers to riot.

This being Greece, already past the breaking point, the safe bet is that nothing is safe.

“I’m relieved that Greece remains in the eurozone, but I still find the terms of the agreement offensive and full of the arrogance the rich and successful often have towards their poorer relations,” Pierre Haski of the French website Rue89 said after the deal was announced.

This is worse than arrogance. It’s hubris.

Not for the first time, the Germans have gone too far.

Not for the first time, their victims will pay first.

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