The Nation Newspaper

Tag: America

  • Whither, America?

    Whither, America?

    As Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, more significantly the 258th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence; as they mark this evocative milestone of their history in the febrile run-up to the 2024 presidential election, there is no better time than this to reflect on where the Union has come from and where it is headed.

    The Declaration furnishes the template for carrying out the former task; the pronouncements of the Republican nominee and putative runner Donald Trump, in what the best authorities are calling the most consequential American election in more than a century, as well as his record as the 46th president of the United States provide a tapestry for the latter.

    From the outset, practice fell far short of theory, what with the enslavement of hundreds of thousands in the populace and its codification.  Gradually, some of its most horrid aspects were rendered untenable or unprofitable by revolt, social pressure, and technology, among other factors.  Its structured manifestations remained and were enforced by the system of laws and order.

    Even at the most brutal, the resonant clauses of the Declaration, its magniloquent phrasing, signified aspiration, and inspired hope.  The Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., envisioned in his immortal “I Have a Dream” speech, that one day, even “down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interpretation” and “nullification” —  that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers . . .”

    That is already happening, even in Alabama.

    Today, 51 years later and 258 years after the Declaration of Independence, a key goal of which was to free the American colonies from the yoke of the English sovereign, there comes along a demagogue who would roll back the gains of the ensuing years and institute a renewed system of tyranny over them – with the consent and approval of a clamorous section of the population.

    There comes along a smooth-talking fellow who is all calculation and no introspection, a cult figure whose sole desire is to replace the rule of the Constitution with the tyranny of the Donald and to turn the Land of the Free into the Home of the Captive.

    In the ringing words of that storied Founding document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. .  .”

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    Here are the particulars of the crimes and misdemeanors with which the colonies charged the British sovereign:

    He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.

    He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone

    He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people,

    For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

    He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

    He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.

    A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

    Therefore, having regard to the foregoing and other stated grievances, the people of the Colonies solemnly declared themselves “absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown. . .”

    “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant,” they declared “is unfit to be the ruler of a free people,”

    Now, these are precisely aspects of the Trump agenda, the policies, plans and he says he is seeking office to implement. Yet they are hailing him in many parts of the United States as a champion of the people and a liberator.

    If the adoring crowds and the approving polls and the bourgeoning financial support are any indication, every passing day heralds the possibility that Donald Trump might well be elected 48th president of the United States.  Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance in last week’s televised debate with Trump only enhanced that grim possibility.

    But Trump, not President Biden, is the reason America is heartily disliked and disrespected in those parts of the world where reason has not been supplanted by panic, and where human solidarity has not been overtaken by fear and loathing.

    Trump’s campaign is rooted in intimidation and grievance. He intimidates the courts.  He intimidates judges.   He intimidates law enforcement.  He intimidates immigrants and citizens.  He intimidates jurists and jurors.  He intimidates election officials.  He intimidates voters.  He intimidates lawmakers.  He intimates the armed forces.  He intimidates civil servants.  He has no respect for the classification system that undergirds National Security.  He intimidates the armed forces.

    He intimidates other countries and their leaders.  He intimidates regulatory agencies and their officials.  He disdains science and intimidates scientists.  He disdains due process and the rule of law.   He disdains the poor and the underclass.  He disdains those who look different, think differently and worship differently. 

    He disdains women and has nothing but contempt for their struggle to control their bodies.

    He built a financial empire on fraud, tax evasion, and breach of promise and law.  He never saw a covenant that he did not seek to break or disavow.  He is a sworn enemy of stability and coherence.

    His quest for another term as president, he has made clear, is fueled by a desire to exact revenge and retribution on those who frustrated his carefully-laid plans to steal the election.  He and his confederates failed in more than 60 court challenges to substantiate their claim that the 2020 election was rigged for Biden.

    With the declaration that he cannot lose the coming race unless it was rigged for his opponent, Trump has laid the groundwork for a repeat of the January 6 2024 insurrection in which a mob he cultivated, nurtured and inspired, invaded the U.S. Capitol with murder on their minds, trashed it, and left in its wake blood and mangled flesh and broken bones and tears and thick layers of excrement.  Trump call them “patriots.”

    There was a time in America, and not long ago, when a person so uniquely unqualified would not have had a ghost of a chance of being elected president.  In the first instance, he would not even have entertained the thought, however fleetingly.  And if he was vain or temerarious enough to do so, he would have been checkmated at the threshold by the system of checks and balances.  Such a person could not hope to be elected to the local school board.  Today, they are cheering him on and serenading him with song and dance.

    Four years ago, he was sufficiently mindful of public opinion and morality that he had his media enablers “capture and kill” the so-called Access Hollywood tape, on which he was heard boasting that his wealth and celebrity licensed him to grab and drag women along by an unmentionable portion of their anatomy and that, in any case, they never objected.

    After last Thursday’s televised debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, one admirer declared that Trump was welcome to grab her by any portion of her anatomy anytime, any day, anywhere.

    That is a sign of the times.

    But the lady had better cool her ardour.  Trump’s people probably took notes.  And one of these days, their boss will call to collect or invite her to come deliver.

    • This piece was submitted before yesterday’s United States Supreme Court ruling that the President is entitled to substantial immunity from prosecution.
  • How America treats migrant workers, by undersecretary Lee

    How America treats migrant workers, by undersecretary Lee

    Thea Lee is the deputy under secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labour and head of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). She speaks at a Washington Foreign Press Center briefing. United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU was there. Excerpts:

    Migrant workers in America

    Recently, we rolled out MigrantWorker.gov in six new languages with expanded content and new resources. Our goal is to get valuable information into the hands of migrant workers in this country about their rights and protections under U.S. law. MigrantWorker.gov and TrabajadorMigrante.gov was originally launched in August 2023 in just two languages, English and Spanish. Now, we have rolled out six additional languages: Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, and Arabic.

    ILAB promotes labor rights and social protection for workers globally. This work is integral to the department’s work to ensure good jobs for workers here in the United States. Our mandate includes protecting the rights of all workers, but particularly the most vulnerable to exploitation, who might be hesitant to come forward if their rights are violated. ILAB also works with other governments to strengthen their capacity to protect labor rights and to ensure that people have access to good jobs to remain and thrive in their home countries.

    When workers do migrate to the United States, we want to ensure they know their rights, that those rights are protected, and that U.S. employers are engaged in an ethical and fair recruitment processes. Last year, the United States signed on to the International Labor Organization’s Fair Recruitment Guidelines, and we are working with partner governments, the private sector, and migrant worker organizations to aid in its implementation. We work closely with our colleagues in the Department of Labor’s domestic agencies and with foreign embassies and consulates through the Consular Partnership Program.

    MigrantWorker.gov is a critical part of those efforts. When migrant workers cross borders for work, they also cross multiple legal, policy, and geographic jurisdictions. Understanding who does what and where they should go for help can be confusing for anyone, but particularly for migrant workers who sometimes do not speak English, likely do not understand how these systems work, and are often afraid to come forward with questions or concerns. This is why we created MigrantWorker.gov. It is a central repository of information for migrant workers. It gets them the answers to the questions they need and links them quickly to the right agency. We’ve also created short videos, meant to reach migrant workers through social media and on their phones, based on scenarios and common questions in a plain language and worker-friendly format.

    The need for translations

    Finally, we know we need to reach migrant workers in their own language, and that is why we are delighted to expand MigrantWorker.gov with six new languages. The development of these materials and the choice of languages was informed by input from migrant workers and their advocates as well as our analysis of the data. Nothing would be possible without the extensive collaboration among other Department of Labor agencies in making this possible, including the Wage and Hour Division, the Assistant Secretary for Policy, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Women’s Bureau, and the Office of Public Affairs, which have been instrumental in ensuring the effectiveness and reach of MigrantWorker.gov. We encourage you to explore MigrantWorker.gov and hope you will help us spread awareness among migrant workers and their communities about these resources.

    Risks that migrant workers face in America

    I would say it’s a pretty broad question and it depends a little bit on the circumstances under which migrant workers come to the United States – if they come legally or illegally, on a visa, if they’re working in agriculture. But we certainly have seen that even on the legal visa programs workers in agriculture sometimes can be subjected to heat stress. Maybe migrant workers in general – and I would say this is not just in the United States but around the world – tend to be a little bit vulnerable to wage theft, to unpaid overtime hours, and issues like that.

    So I think we just recognize in the United States, because we have a lot of folks who are coming who may have language challenges, who may or may not be here legally, that we want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect their rights. So I think that they face a lot of challenges, maybe not even all that different from the challenges that American citizens might face, but because of some of the sectors that they’re employed in, because many of them are here temporarily and are unfamiliar with the systems, they’re unfamiliar with the laws, so they might – the laws in the United States, of course, are going to be different from the labor laws in other countries.

    So we just want to make sure that we are educating migrant workers so that they know their rights and can exercise their rights. We also want to educate our own employers to make sure that they know how to recruit responsibility and how to comply with all applicable laws and standards.

    U.S. as home to a lot of workers that are not documented

    I think for the purpose of MigrantWorker.gov and the resources that we’re providing here, we want those to be available to all workers in this country. Some of them will be documented, some of them will be undocumented, but the truth is that American labor laws apply to workers, that people shouldn’t have to work long hours without pay, they should be able to exercise their rights, they should have a safe and healthy workplace, they should not be subject to violence or harassment. So for this particular website, this resource that we’re providing, what we really want to reinforce is that every worker needs to be protected, and every worker should be able to be safe and healthy at work and get paid for the hours they do, get paid legally.

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    So obviously there are different provisions, and workers who are undocumented tend to be more vulnerable. They’re more precarious, they’re more fearful of coming forward, because they fear deportation and other risks.

    Protecting workers from excessive heat

    This is something that the Labor Department is working to develop a heat standard that will be applicable, but we are in process of putting that in place. But in the meantime, we just want to make sure that both employers and workers are aware of some of the risks of heat stress, that they are certainly provided water and rest breaks and some respite from the heat if possible. So some of this is not at the level of law at this time, but it is at the level of, certainly, common sense and decency. And we are working in the Department of Labor – our Occupational Safety and Health Administration is in process of developing and getting approval for and putting through the legislative system a new heat stress standard. But in the meantime, we just want to make sure that people are taking good care and that that they’re getting protections they deserve to stay healthy, even during heat.

    Average time that an undocumented worker needs for his or her documents

    I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that off the top of my head, and I think it varies a lot. Obviously the person is asking for the average time, but I’m afraid I don’t have that. But we can – we can try to provide that to you, at least, Doris, and maybe that can be available at a later date.

    Working with other countries

    We – in ILAB we try to work with other countries as well to address these issues for migrant workers. Cannot speak particularly to what offices may exist, but for example, we do closely – work closely with other countries – for example, Mexico – where they are able to provide kind of these resources for their migrant workers as well, and kind of give just a view of how we do things and kind of like guiding resources on how we address these issues for migrant workers. Like we mentioned, in the consular partnership program, we partner with other countries as well. Right now, we currently have partnerships with the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, where we provide also these resources for them.

  • Understanding America’s voter registration, by professor

    Understanding America’s voter registration, by professor

    Dr. Christopher Mann is a professor of Political Science at Skidmore College in Sarasota Springs, New York. He is also serving as the research director at the Center for Election Innovation and Research. United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU reports that Mann breaks down voter registration in America at a Speaking at a Foreign Press Center briefing. Excerpts:

    Voter registration as a state function

    One of the key things to understand about voter registration in the United States is that it is a profound reflection of federalism. The registration process is administered by state. There is no national role in the voter registration process. The national government plays no direct role at all, and therefore the process varies by state. I’m going to talk about several of these policies, but just quickly, there’s a whole bunch of ways in which registration varies from state to state.

    The other thing you should know about this that is distinct from many other countries is that in the United States the voter registration process is largely distinct from other government processes. I’m going to talk about automatic voter registration, which is a relatively new way in which they have been linked. But that is a decision that was made by policymakers across all of the states to keep registration separate from other government processes.

    And we’ll also talk about some of the national legislation and, in a couple of cases, constitutional provisions that guide aspects of registration that apply to what we call federal elections, national elections here in the U.S. And one of the messier parts that I’m not going to talk about too much is the fact that these national pieces of legislation apply to federal elections or registering for federal elections. States can, in principle, have separate requirements for state and local elections, and I’ll talk about one exception around the question of noncitizens voting. But by and large, they run the same system and use it for all types of elections from the very most local all the way up to elections for president.

    So very quickly, the first milestone is in the wake of the United States Civil War. The 15th Amendment adds to the Constitution a provision that does not allow discrimination in voter registration or access to voting on account of race. Move forward to 1920, the 19th Amendment addresses gender and sex, extending the right to vote to women. This is an interesting example where most of the states had already extended the franchise to women, although not quite all states. So when this was passed, it was the federal government following states, not leading the states.

    The next big moment is the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And if you follow U.S. elections today, you will hear references to this frequently, usually around the question of congressional or state districting and gerrymandering, but the core of the original bill was actually around discrimination and voter registration and voting. It takes a number of steps, specifically around voter registration to ban literacy tests, requirements that people be able to read a passage, and that was a very subjective judgement by voter registration officials; grandfather clauses, which said you could only register if your grandfather had registered; poll taxes, and other tactics that were used in a discriminatory way. So those were all outlawed in 1965, almost a hundred years after the 15th Amendment in theory did that. And in many ways, this was just the enforcement of that. It also crucially provides some provisions for supervision and enforcement.

    Civil Rights period

    Another related piece and very much the same Civil Rights period was the 24th Amendment, which specifically bans poll taxes. The cartoon on the right here is from Dr. Suess, who is famous as a children’s author in the United States, but before he became famous as a children’s author, he had a career as a political cartoonist. And one of the things that I’d like to point out here is that this cartoon does not highlight people of color. So poor whites were also massively disenfranchised by the poll tax. So it was economic discrimination as well. I’ll also note that just last week, in a very timely piece of research, some academic research about the period between the Civil War and the Civil Rights period in the 1960s looking at what of the discriminatory policies that were used had the most impact, and it was in fact the poll tax, followed by felony disenfranchisement that I’m going to talk about in a minute.

    The next milestone is something called the National Voter Registration Act passed in 1993. It has a couple of key requirements around voter registration. So it’s often referred to as the motor voter law. And so this is one of the links – one of the rare links – between registration and government activity. So it requires that at all driver’s license bureaus, which are run by the states – again, a federal system; there is no national driver’s license – so when people go to their state to get their driver’s license, they have to be offered the opportunity to register, but it is still a separate process. Compliance with this law is problematic. Happy to talk about that. That’s – I’ve done some research on that.

    It also requires states to offer voter registration at social service agencies, military recruiting, and a variety of other agencies. But, again, using those social services or joining the military does not automatically register you to vote. You are simply required to be given the opportunity to participate in a separate process.

    Mailing voter registration forms

    Another step in here is that it requires all states to accept mailed voter registration forms, and it sets the maximum amount of time before Election Day when voters can be required to register at 30 days. So prior to 1993, sometimes those requirements were many months in advance. And since many voters don’t pay attention until close to Election Day, they would then not be able to vote.

    The last big provision of this – and I’m spending a little more time on this one because it is the big piece of federal legislation – is that there’s a set of regulations about what states can do about removing voter registration records from the roles. So this is part of the current controversy. And so the key provisions there – there’s some nuance to it, which I’m happy to talk about – is that records – and I’m being careful here to say records and not people – records have to stay on the voter rolls until there is no recorded vote by a person for two consecutive federal elections. And the states are required or local election officials are required to also mail notifications to the address.

    The last piece you should know about is legislation in 2002, which was passed in the wake of the controversial presidential election in 2000. It’s largely about voting and the problems that were seen in Florida and elsewhere, but it has a key requirement, which is that for the first time states are required to have a computerized state-wide voter registration database. And one of the issues that we talk about today is that the federal government funded the creation of those databases but has not provided funding for infrastructure to update and upgrade those, although there is a bill under consideration in Congress at the moment.

    Multiple ways to register

    You can appear at the election office. You can appear at the agencies that I just talked about that are designated by the National Voter Registration Act. You can submit a form that is mailed in. There are some states – and I’ll show you a map of those states – that’ll allow you to show up and vote and – to register and vote on the same day, so we call that either same-day registration when it occurs before Election Day or Election Day registration when you can do it on Election Day. There’s an increasing number of states that allow voters to register online through an online portal. And then I will talk about what is known as automatic voter registration, which is related to this idea of registering when you get your driver’s license, and I’ll talk about that momentarily.

    So there – despite – so the maximum distance before the election that you – that states can require voter registration is 30 days, but this various considerably across the country. I’m not going to spend time on these maps because you’ll have access to the recording, but this map gives you a sense of that variation – the darker colors are the longer voter registration periods.

    Voter files

    All states actively maintain voter files. They do largely the same things, many of them dictated by requirements of the National Voter Registration Act, but some of them best practices shared across the states. The goal is to identify people who have moved, deceased, other changes, such as name changes – people who change their name due to marriage or divorce or other reasons. And so these are actively maintained on a regular schedule by every state.

    There are some cooperatives among the states. The biggest one is the Electronic Registration Information Center, which has been in the news over the last year or so that are ways that states share information, for example about people moving from one state to another, or taking advantage of scale to make them more efficient in dealing with things like trying to identify deceased records. I’m happy to talk about the ERIC, Electronic Registration Information Center in the Q&A, but that’s a tangent that could take a while.

    Another piece that is in the news a lot these days are what are known as third-party voter registration challenges. This is where states allow individuals to raise questions about whether someone is legitimately registered, for example saying that someone has moved, doesn’t live at an address anymore. What I want to highlight about this is because of the first piece, because of the active voter registration maintenance by the states, the primary effect of this is disrupting election administration by making election officials spend time addressing these, because they’re often sent – especially in the last year, couple of years – a long list of voters who are being challenged, and it turns out that those people have either already been removed from the rolls, are in the process of being removed from the rolls, within compliance with the National Voter Registration Act. And so this is something that is of great concern to election officials about the distraction and amount of resources that have to be spent on it.

    Statistics on turnout

    This is where I have to go and be a professor for a moment. So this is really hard to untangle. At a superficial level, there is a pretty strong correlation between easy voting rules and higher turnout. The question – and the reason that I’m being cautious about saying that easier rules lead to turnout – is that places with a history and a culture of higher turnout are more likely to pass laws that make it easier to register to vote. So we have a chicken-and-the-egg problem here from a scholarly point of view.

    That said, there are some examples and some research where it’s quite clear. For example, the requirement to register to vote in advance is something that’s – that was largely a 20th century – late 19th but largely a 20th century process, and we can look at when that was instituted across the 20th century and seeing that the requirement to register in advance did tend to lower turnout.

    There is mixed evidence about some of the more recent reforms – automatic voter registration. I am looking forward to new research that I just saw as work in progress at a conference but not yet finished enough to say that about automatic voter registration or online voter registration. There is very, very clear evidence by my friend and colleague, Mike Hanmer from the University of Maryland, and others that same-day registration probably does increase turnout versus having the requirement to register in advance.

    So probably, or I should say some things are definitely increasing turnout – not by huge amounts. So we’re talking 1, 2, 3 percentage points, not 10 or 20 percentage points, for these individual reforms. And some reforms it’s not clear how much it is easing the administrative burden on election officials, making it easier for them, making it easier for voters to do things like update their registration and register for the first time, but they would get over the hurdles if they had to do it a harder way. So – but yeah, I’ll stop there because I feel like I’m going in the academic weeds here. So I’ll stop myself.

  • America and campaign cash

    America and campaign cash

    Transparency. Accountability. Fairness. These three words are never far from America’s mouth. This nation of nations is ever ready to talk about these principles as the pillars on which its democratic ideals stand.

    I remember these words as President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, his main rival in the November 5, 2024 quadrennial presidential election, intensify the race for campaign cash. They have for months now been on the neck of donors—big and small— for financial assistance. Their campaign teams bombard Americans with messages daily on why they need to contribute to their campaign funds. Of course, with each team explaining why the other side must be stopped and the role of cash in achieving this onerous task.

    In one message from the Biden team, donors are told that “when you chip in any amount today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to meet the Bidens so they can personally thank you for your continued support”.

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    The Trump team also has catchy tactics of getting Americans to fund the campaign of the man who once rose to power with a promise to “make America great again”, a promise he is still making in his second attempt at America’s most important job.

    Both have raked in millions of dollars, and more will flow in as the campaigns hot up for the soul of America, the world’s most known nation.

    These funds being raised are being monitored by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a crucial pillar in the landscape of American democracy. The agency is tasked with overseeing the flow of money into political campaigns. Established in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, its primary goal is to ensure transparency and integrity in the electoral process. However, the FEC faces formidable challenges in fulfilling its mission.

    One of the core responsibilities of the FEC is to monitor and disclose campaign finance activities, shedding light on who funds political campaigns and how these funds are utilised. This transparency is essential for voters to make informed decisions during elections. However, the staggering increase in campaign spending over the years, reaching record highs in recent election cycles, raises concerns about the influence of money in politics.

    The exponential growth in campaign spending, especially with the advent of digital platforms and online advertising, has outpaced the regulatory framework designed to ensure transparency. Loopholes in existing laws allow for significant amounts of “dark money” to flow into campaigns, often without disclosure of the true funding sources. This opacity undermines the principle of informed democracy, leaving voters unaware of the forces shaping political narratives.

    The FEC’s ability to enforce campaign finance laws effectively is hindered by internal challenges, including staffing shortages and budgetary constraints. The commission’s reliance on achieving consensus among its members, often resulting in deadlock on critical issues, further impedes its regulatory efficacy. Members of the commission are drawn from the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, a situation which often contributes to deadlock in taking necessary actions.

    Trump has really capitalised on the weakness of the commission. Some days back, reports indicate that Trump has been using a chunk of these funds to fight his legal battles.

    The Brennan Centre for Justice captures it well in these words: “The former president has relied almost entirely on donations to his campaign and affiliated PACs to pay his lawyers, to the tune of more than $100 million, as of early 2024.

    “Following his 2020 election loss, Trump received more than $250 million in donations from supporters to fuel an “election defense fund.” He divided that money between two campaign entities: his 2020 presidential campaign committee, which he subsequently converted into a freestanding PAC called Make America Great Again (MAGA) PAC, and a second entity called Save America PAC, which is a so-called “leadership PAC” (a type of PAC that a federal candidate can establish for the ostensible purpose of supporting other candidates).

    “Beginning in early 2021, Trump began spending funds from these two PACs on his myriad legal proceedings — including personal matters. The fact that MAGA PAC was no longer a campaign committee enabled him to take advantage of a loophole in campaign finance law prohibiting candidates from using campaign committee funds for personal expenses, but not PAC funds. Through early 2024, MAGA PAC spent $30 million on Trump’s legal expenses. Roughly another $70 million has come from Save America, which is subject to a similar loophole.

    “By early 2024, however, Save America was running out of money, even as Trump’s legal bills continued to mount. To boost his leadership PAC’s cash base, Trump began to steer online donations to it and also set up a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee, under which the RNC prioritizes funneling money to Save America over filling its own coffers. (The party has also directly paid some of Trump’s legal bills, as it did when he was president and as the Democratic National Committee has done for President Biden.) Additionally, Save America has clawed back a $60 million donation it made to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, through an unusual series of monthly payments. Despite these efforts, Save America is running low on funds: the PAC had just $4 million on hand at the end of March, as Trump headed into his first criminal trial.”

    What the current situation shows is that urgent reforms are needed to strengthen campaign finance regulations.

    For example, legislative measures, such as the Honest Ads Act, which seeks to extend reporting requirements to online political advertisements, are crucial steps toward enhancing transparency in the digital age. Also, closing loopholes that allow undisclosed contributions and ensuring robust enforcement mechanisms are imperative to safeguard the integrity of elections.

    It is also essential to address the influence of foreign money in U.S. elections because it remains a paramount concern. We can also not rule out the need for stricter oversight and enforcement against foreign interference. Enhanced disclosure requirements for political spending is essential to protect the sovereignty of American democracy.

    My final take: To uphold the principles of transparency, accountability, and fairness in America’s campaign finance, comprehensive reforms are needed. Only through concerted efforts to mitigate the influence of money in politics can it safeguard the democratic ideals upon which the nation stands. The Department of Justice, which handles criminal violations of the law, also needs to bite more in this matter. And the Congress need to close the loopholes which allow politicians to run their adverts online without disclosing them to the commission and concealing both the adverts’ sources and the money spent on them.

  • Make America blaspheme again

    Make America blaspheme again

    It’s election year in the United States and electioneering for the country’s presidency, touted as the most powerful office in the world, is coming to the wire. Former President Donald Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee, is throwing all aces in the ring for his square off with incumbent President Joe Biden of the Democrats. It is a rematch of the 2020 race that Trump grudgingly lost to Biden and he is apparently leaving nothing to chance to gain an edge this time. His latest card is patenting the Bible – a divinely authored and universal literature – for sale as America’s patriotism codebook and item of merchandise.

    The ex-president posted a video on his Truth Social network by which he urged his supporters to buy the ‘God Bless the USA Bible,’ named after a ballad by country singer Lee Greenwood alongside whom he’s appeared at events, and whose song he airs whenever he takes the stage at his rallies. The mercantilist motive underpinning  the venture seeped through in the choice of the Passion Week, a week highly significant in the Christian faith, for its outing. “Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible,” Trump wrote, directing his supporters to a website selling the Bibles for $59.99, inclusive of shipping and tax – a price tag higher than the average price of Bibles on American shelves.

    “All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” the ex-president said in his video. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country and we must make America pray again,” he added in obvious adaptation of his campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again (MAGA). Billing itself as “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” the product’s website describes it as “easy-to-read, large print and slim design” that “invites you to explore God’s Word anywhere, any time.” It added: “This Bible has been designed so that it delivers an easy reading experience in the trusted King James Version translation. This large print Bible will be perfect to take to church, bible study, work, travel, etc.” Besides the KJV text of scripture that it contains, the product features a copy of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as handwritten chorus to the famous Greenwood song, ‘God Bless The USA.’

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    Money from the sale of the Bible is not being funneled to Trump’s campaign, according to the Bible’s website, but Trump did license the agreement, implying that he’s benefiting from it. The website states that the item is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign – a statement that only underscores the mercantilist motivation: after all, it isn’t only Republicans who read the Bible in America and thus should be its intended buyers, Democrats and people of other political persuasions do as well. “GodBlessTheUSABible.com is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates,” the website further states. But it also provides the explanation that “GodBlessTheUSABible.com uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.” CIC Ventures LLC is a firm Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure, and thus while he may not be directly selling the Bible, he stands to draw royalties from purchases. Besides, he may already have drawn hefty cash for the “paid license.”

    The Bible sales pitch comes as Trump appears to be confronting significant financial squeeze amidst mounting legal fees as he fights four criminal cases and a slew of civil lawsuits. He began promoting the Bible on social media a day after a panel of state appeals judges in New York required him to post $175million as bond to stop enforcement of a $454million civil judgment for corporate fraud. That ruling came after he posted another $92million bond earlier in March to stave off enforcement of a verdict against him for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused the ex-president of raping her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Trump denied the claim, but a federal civil court jury found him liable for sexual assault.

    Bible merchandising is only the latest venture that Trump is promoting in his political and business careers. In February, he debuted a new line of Trump-branded sneakers on a venture platform that also sells other Trump-branded footwear, cologne and perfume. The ex-president was last year reported earning between $100,000 and $1million from a series of digital trading cards that portrayed him in cartoon-like images, including as an astronaut, a cowboy and a superhero. Indeed, there’s very little he hasn’t tried to license or brand with his name printed in massive golden letters. Before he ran for office, he famously hawked everything from frozen steaks to vodka, water, airline, casinos and a Trump University that was later sued for fraud. Now, at Easter, the Bible gets in the equation.

    The ex-president remains deeply popular with white evangelical Christians, who are among his most ardent supporters, although the thrice-married former reality Tv star has a behavioral reputation that fell at odds with teachings espoused by Jesus Christ, the central character of the scripture. Neither is he very familiar, at least from indications, with the content of the Bible that he calls his “favorite book” in the new sales pitch, even though he’s used the holy book as visual prop on outings. In a 2015 interview with Bloomberg, Trump was asked to share his favorite Bible verse and he demurred, saying: “I wouldn’t want to get into that. Because to me, that’s very personal. The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.” During his electioneering for the presidency in 2016, he raised eyebrows at a university townhall when he cited “Two Corinthians” instead of the standard “Second Corinthians.” And during his presidency, law enforcement agents aggressively cleared racial justice protesters from a park close to the White House, allowing Trump to walk to nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church where he stood his ground and held aloft a Bible – apparently unwittingly, upside down! That manoeuvre was promptly berated by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

    Trump’s seeming lack of touch with the Bible apart, there are many things wrong with his commercial venture with the holy book. Christians and non-Christians alike regard the Bible as a sacred literature that is divinely authored. No living human has a patent on it, and it isn’t exclusive to any people or nation; meaning that endorsing the Bible as a document of national patriotism is blasphemy writ large. And neither is the Bible a conventional item of merchandise. Price tags at sales points across the world usually reflect the cost of printing, value additions like commentaries, and allied logistics, but certainly not endorsement royalties. Licensing the Bible for merchandising  as Trump did, and the timing of introducing the product into the market darkly echoed the original text in the holy book where money changers and hawkers of religious items seized the occasion of the Passover to take over the temple with their wares during the first Passion Week, prompting Jesus to get a whip and drive them out saying they made the temple a den of thieves.

    The Bible as God’s word does not need any man’s endorsement to reinforce its appeal. Also, co-opting nationalistic documents and a favorite ballad into the package infringes its sanctity and universality. No, Trump’s Bible won’t make America pray again, it is making America desecrate the holy book.

    • Please join me on kayodeidowu.blogspot.be for conversation.   

  • America in six books

    America in six books

    America is a behemoth. This monstrous creature has fifty arms and each with its own peculiarities. The country is heaven, the country is hell, depending on which side it decides to show to you or which side you choose to face.

    America, an amalgam of components capable of being countries on their own, is a nation that has tickled the fancy of African writers in the Diaspora and they have captured it in different lights.

    The brilliant writer, Sefi Atta, is one of those who have captured this giant of a nation. In Atta’s ‘The Bad Immigrant’, the America that emerges is a bully, a country that values conformity over merit, a country where an immigrant’s academic prowess is no guarantee of success, a self-appointed defender of the universe, a nation always looking for trouble overseas, a nation which runs away from race issues yet confronts it every day, a nation united and divided in equal measures and a nation that will always have to watch its back because of the enemies it has created for itself.

    Set in New York, New Jersey and Middlesex, it follows the Ahmed-Karims and America. Through the eyes of Lukmon, the narrator, we glean race relations between blacks and whites, between Africans and African- Americans. Racism, we see, is a reality, which many an American still deny but denial or not, it leaves the country divided.

    We get so much insight into American lives, including how the people, at times, give so much personal information to strangers. We also see their ignorance, not just about things outside their shores but also about things within their shores. The craze for Ivy League degrees as pathways to success is also x-rayed.

    The book brings to mind a number of major events in America’s history such as Hurricane Katrina, the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and The Pentagon, the 2008 recession, the emergence of Barack Obama as the first black president, the killing of Amadou Diallo and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s  2009 Christmas Day underwear bomb attempt.

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    America was home to Bisi Adjapon, the author of ‘Teller of Secret, before she decided to return to Accra. While her ‘Teller of Secrets’ is set in Africa, her latest, ‘Daughter In Exile’, takes on America and the America that we see is one that doesn’t reveal its complete picture to the rest of the world. The novel strips the artifice off America, with Lola,  the protagonist, wondering: “Why didn’t Americans tell the truth about how hard life was in America?”

    The novel lays New York bare. Without the razzmatazz of Manhattan, we see its challenge with homeless people. Seeing someone sleeping in a bathroom is one of the shocks the protagonist has in New York.

    We also see how growing up in Africa and America are poles apart. In Africa, children are taught that only prostitutes and bush people chew gum noisily. In America, there is nothing to it. We see racism and we see what is undoubtedly black-on-black prejudice; or how best do we describe a family with Haitian roots rejecting an African?

    We are also treated to the role of the Church in the life of immigrants. The author subtly examines faith, the belief in the existence of God, and sundry matters.

    The ignorance of many an American about Africa, how they assume the worst of the continent, how they wonder how we’re able to speak English, how they assume Africa is a country, and such ridiculous notions also get some space.

    The novel shows that Africans, at a certain point, will realise that no matter how long they have lived in America, they will always be Ghanaian, Nigerian, or wherever they’re from.

    Like Atta, America is still home to Chika Unigwe. In her ‘The Middle Daughter’, she shows us that America is not ‘all sheen and glamour’. When Mother and Ugo move to Atlanta, Ugo discovers that her vision of the United States is vastly different. She sees a city and a country that are as flawed and imperfect. We also see a bus station in Atlanta that smells like a public urinal and makes Ugo feel like she is in a wrong country. The book also shows us there are beggars in America who beg for leftovers from McDonald’s lunch. Also, we learn that the land of the free is not free from the homeless, cold callers, thieves and racism. Through the book, we learn that Atlanta gets so hot they call it Hotlanta and that it is home to so many Nigerians that one can easily forget it is in America. “It’s just like living in Nigeria, only with no power cut.”

    Akpan Uwem, who also lives in America, used his debut novel, ‘New York My Village’, to make us see a ‘funny’ side of New York, one of America’s most important cities. We see the glittering Manhattan and the author didn’t forget to show us that bedbugs are enemies this famous city has been unable to conquer. The narrator, Ekong, takes us to Times Square and Starbucks. We see racial prejudices and the racial politics of publishing and how racism is often masked with progressive rhetorics. One of the prejudices which we come across in this book is the claim that an African is not  conversant enough about American culture to edit American stories yet Americans edit African fiction.

    In her 2013 novel, ‘Americanah’, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie took on racism and other issues in America. Ifemelu, who moves to the United States to study, struggles for the first time with racism and the several varieties of racial distinctions. In America, Ifemelu discovers what it means to be culturally black. Using Ifemelu’s blog, “Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black”, Adichie reaches for the underbelly of race issues in America. The book shows that though America is a symbol of hope and economic mobility, it is also a symbol of disappointment and the American Dream is a lie to many who dare to dream.

    Unlike the other books, another America-based Nigerian author, Akwaeke Emezi downplays New York, the city that perhaps holds the ace as a setting for most American-centric novels. Emezi’s ‘You Made A Fool of Death With Your Beauty’ manages to dwarf sociology and focuses on the characters and their actions and inaction. The great city stays in the background for the characters to shine in all their glories and horrors. Even the beautiful Caribbean Island that is also a setting stays on the periphery. What shines all through are the characters and the plot. 

    My final take: America is good. It is, however, not heaven. It has its own challenges, many of which (like homeless people and shoplifters) it has learnt to manage because stopping them altogether hasn’t been possible. It has also been unable to answer the race question convincingly.

    Tomorrow is not promised

    From time immemorial, the rich have been unable to stop death with bags of cash. The poor’s parlous state has never been able to buy them more time from death. When it is time, it is time and the Grim Reaper will claim its own. Today is all we’ve got. In fact, this moment is what we’ve got. The next moment can be pregnant with death.

    Let’s make the best of today, of this moment. Tomorrow is not promised. Farewell to all 2024 has so far taken from us. Till we meet to part no more.

  • Like the prince in ‘Coming to America’, I met her in Queens –Hubby, Chief Fakunle Oyesanya

    Like the prince in ‘Coming to America’, I met her in Queens –Hubby, Chief Fakunle Oyesanya

    How did you meet your wife; you have practically Yorubanised her?

    I don’t know if you have watched the movie, Coming to America. In that movie, you’d recall that there is an African prince that went to Queens to get his queen. Same way, when I went to Queens, though not deliberately, I met my queen. And ever since, we sort of gravitated towards each other. We discovered that we were always flowing on the same page. Also she is somebody who is spiritual, and as a Babalawo, we got closer.  Yes, I’m a babalawo, that’s what I do in the United States. I practise Ifa and I also deliver Ifa lectures all over the United States. That was how we met. So she’s my Olori. I am also the Eletu of Ojokoro.

    So what are you studying now?

    I am studying Psychology, with a specialisation in Advanced Studies in Human Behaviour. 

    How easy was it for her to settle into the Nigerian life?

    She blended very easily. She’s somebody who is well cultured and homely and loves to live among people. So when she came to Nigeria and saw that this was kind of similar to the kind of life she was used to in Trinidad, she adapted. And of course, she doesn’t even want people to call her oyinbo. She is always quick to correct them that, ‘I’m not oyinbo, I am African like you.’ She is related to so many races like she pointed out, but of course she also has African blood in her and I think that African blood is stronger than the others. I think that’s why she loves to be with me and to come to Nigeria. As a matter of fact, we have decided that we’re not going to live till old age in the United States; we are coming back to settle finally in Nigeria.

    What would you say about Nigerians who are jumping on every means and opportunity to go to Europe and America?

    The truth is that a lot of them don’t really know how it is over there. It is not everybody that japa that becomes successful. There is a lot going on in the United States now, even in European countries; things are not really as rosy as they used to be. I’ve seen people in the United States sleeping under bridges, picking food from garbage, roaming about, doing all sorts of unimaginable things to survive. Its’ like the Yoruba proverb of Omo onile Olona (Son of a wealthy man, who now do dishonourable things to survive.)

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    How did you get into this babalawo profession?

    I was born into it. My father was a babalawo. He was the Araba of Odi-Olowo; I was born and raised in the Ifa religion. While I was growing up, I was learning Ifa and going to school at the same time, although I never thought I would choose Ifa as a profession.

    How come you now ended up practising it?

    One thing we have to realise is that destiny can never be changed. We all have chosen our path in life, but getting to the earth, because of environmental factors and other distractions, we tend to choose glamorous professions like doctors and co, without taking time to find out whether it aligns with your path in life. I first studied Fine Art at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. I majored in painting and have done a lot of exhibitions at the National Museum at Onikan, Didi Museum; in Japan, in America; but I really never got anything substantial in terms of reward or any achievement that I could point at. It’s like I was just working and working without getting anything out of it. But people were always approaching me to get something out of Ifa; and I had already been told that no matter what, I was always going to come back to practise Ifa as a babalawo. I now discovered that when I now settled down to really focus on it, I started seeing a lot of changes. So not onto me but onto Ifa be the glory. Whatever I have become today is by the grace of Ifa. And of course that is the more reason I chose to study psychology, because it has to do with human behaviour, same as Ifa. So I see psychology as a way of complementing the Ifa work.

  • In America: 2024,shaping up like 2016

    In America: 2024,shaping up like 2016

    January 6, 2024, marked the third anniversary of the terror unleashed on the U.S. Capitol by a frenzied mob grimly resolved to cancel – pardon my employing the locution du jour – one of the most hallowed traditions of the American political system: The peaceful transfer of power to the winning candidate.

     In light of what has happened to America under Donald Trump‘s debauched presidency, it can be said that the tradition had remained in place mainly by default.  When it was put to a severe test for the first time the previous year in recent memory, it came out so bruised and battered that few will now cite it with confidence as an American tradition.

    Call it the Trump Effect: the erosion of values, the corruption of institutions, the suborning of the machinery of government, the capture of government and its underlying processes, the use of terror or threat of terror as an instrument of governance, demeaning high officials of the state by the use of coarse, vulgar language, utter disdain and disregard for the rule of law, and even common decency.

    On January 6, 2021, American lawmakers convened in the Capitol to affix the final seal on the election of Joseph R. Biden as the 46th President of the United States.  His opponent, Donald Trump, would have none of it.  He had laid the ground for an insurrection by leading millions of his Twitter followers to believe that the only way Biden could win – or Trump lose – was if the vote was rigged.

    Trump lost; ergo, the election had to have been stolen. The legislators were in effect convening to consecrate a theft.

    “Show strength” and “stop the steal,” he exhorted them as they stormed the Capitol   “That’s the only way you are ever going to take our country back.”

    For the next 187 minutes, America and indeed a global television audience watched in horrified disbelief as a surging, seething, murmuring, bilious crowd, men and women, veterans and enlisted persons, scrambled up the ramparts and raced up the steps to the landing, men and women, young and old, belting out blood-curdling imprecations, smashed windows and doors and impaled police officers with flagpoles and just about any object they could weaponise.

    There was no mistaking the grim resolve, the murderous frenzy with which they went about their mission.

    When they bellowed “Hang (Vice President) Mike Pence” over and over again, they were not posturing or grandstanding. They had erected a scaffold on the grounds, a noose dangling ominously from it.  Trump would say later that it was a pity they didn’t hand him.

    From a private room in the White House, Trump watched the proceedings with glee, according to a former staffer. Not even the frantic pleas of the First Lady and his oldest son could move him to try to restrain the demons he had loosed on the Capitol.

    As they slunk away, the insurrectionists performed one final act of obscenity:  They plastered the chambers with excrement.  That is the kind of company Trump keeps.

    You would think that this assault on every good thing America claims to stand for would call forth a groundswell of denunciation and recrimination.  Perhaps civil society was too stunned for words, too traumatized to make a  concerted move?   Perhaps the outrage, then muffled, would gather momentum and translate into an insistent demand for an accounting, for justice, and yes, for punishment?

    You would think that the character who masterminded this brazen assault on the political and moral values on which America’s claim of exceptionalism rests would have by that very act disqualified himself from seeking any elected office.  And if he tried to muscle his way into the local School Board, he would be disenfranchised even if, unlike Trump, the fellow was not standing trial on 91 criminal charges in various courts across the country.

    Civil society could find no coherent voice, no rallying point.   Even President Joe Biden, newly vested with political and moral authority, could not employ it to change the narrative.  He consumed this precious capital in pursuing a bogus bi-partisanship and continued to do so even as Trump blockaded his legislative agenda at every opportunity.

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    Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had at first blush placed the blame squarely where it belonged, would declare that he would vote again for Trump if Trump secured the Republican nomination.

    Even before the insurrectionists dispersed, the shock, the horror of the siege was already dissolving.  With ample support from his ultra-right confederates, Trump wasted no time recasting the events of the day Trump as an excursion, and a patriotic one for that matter.

    And the new narrative has taken such a hold that, if you had not witnessed the insurrection as it unfolded and had no access to their iterations and reiterations across the media, you would have entertained some doubt about whether it transpired. 

    Even before the insurrectionists dispersed, the shock, the horror of the siege was already dissolving.

    The police who lost six of their officers to the mob were being as denounced as bullies and human-rights abusers. The insurrectionists were cast as freedom fighters and patriots, and as tourists who just took a day off to check out the attractions and delights of Washington, DC.

    And even among those who witnessed it, many could be forgiven if they now doubt the evidence of their own eyes.  Such has been the slickness, the intensity of the recasting.

    If reality is so susceptible to manipulation at this stage before the full coming of Artificial Intelligence, wherein lies the future of society, of civilization?

    But it is not sober, remorseful, penitent Trump that has achieved this improbable feat. It is the good old Trump, only more venal, more demagogic, and more sociopathic, driven by grievance and a desire to exact vengeance, not merely on those he says have corruptly employed the machinery of the state to persecute him but on virtually on all institutions of state.

    In frenzied speeches before fevered crowds, he has characterized not just those institutions but the entire American establishment as illegitimate, and doomed. And it is his singular mission of his second coming to dismantle it.  Perhaps he will refashion it after his own image later, but he is not letting on.

    That is how we came to the conjuncture where, almost all a sudden, the concepts and ideals on which the United States founded and nurtured a political system that has been the envy of much of the world for centuries increasingly count for less and are now held with little conviction.

    The Rule of Law became the rule of Trump, which could mean one thing one day, another thing the following day, and yet another thing the day after; in short, Trump’s caprice.  Trump tied up the judicial system in knots, the better to emasculate it.  The doctrine of “separation of powers” was exposed as the elaborate fudge it always was.

    It is early yet in the Election Year, and 2024 is not 2016.  Trump’s lock on the Republication nomination is so tenacious that it is almost inconceivable that he could lose it.  But it is not inconceivable that President Biden, whose support has slipped significantly among younger voters and minorities could lose the race the way Hilary Rodham Clinton lost it to Trump in 2016.

    If that happens, Biden’s blank cheque underwriting Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal war in Gaza is sure to be cited as one of the reasons.

  • Exit Henry  Kissinger, America’s  symbol of glamour, diplomacy

    Exit Henry  Kissinger, America’s  symbol of glamour, diplomacy

    • Bisi Olawunmi

    With the death of Dr.  Henry Kissinger,  America’s former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State,  on Wednesday, November 29, 2023, it was sun-down on the life and times of a colossus of American diplomacy .  He  was aged 100.  Longevity runs in his family – his father, Louis Kissinger, a school teacher, died at 95; mother, Paula, a homemaker, died at 97 while younger brother, Walter, a businessman, also died at 97 in 2021.  It was fitting  that the most prominent Kissinger attained the most prominent age of 100, making him a centenarian ! Figure 3 has magical resonance in Kissinger’s  life –  he was born a German-Jew  in Furth, Germany  in 1923  ( May 27 ) and died in 2023.  In between, he attained two milestones :  American citizenship  in 1943 and  was appointed U.S. Secretary of State in 1973.   

    Dr. Kissinger, canonized in the media as ‘ Henry , The  k’, and invested with charisma, bestrode the global diplomatic arena with pomp and pageantry in the 1970s  when he served as Secretary of State to two American presidents. He was appointed by President Richard Nixon in 1973 and retained  ( 1974-77 ) by President Gerald Ford who succeeded  to the Presidency  when Nixon was forced to resign his office in 1974 over the Watergate scandal.  Nixon had appointed him National Security Adviser in January 1969 , a position he combined with that of Secretary of State, giving him dominance of  American foreign policy.  On  7  October  1973,  less than three weeks after his appointment as Secretary of State, war broke out in the Middle East between Israel  and her Arab neighbours, known as the Yom Kippur war.  Israel was about to be overwhelmed by the Arab forces in the surprise attack, when America, led by a gung-ho Kissinger , came to Israel’s  rescue, handing the Jewish  nation an eventual, outstanding victory..  His Jewish nativity at play ?    That war consolidated  Israeli military superiority in the Middle East  and launched Kissinger’s global visibility  as he engaged in frenetic diplomatic shuttles among the various capitals of  the warring nations  – Cairo, (Egypt) ;  Tel Aviv, (Israel);  Aman ( Jordan) and Damascus, (Syria)  – to broker ceasefire in the fighting  and eventual restoration of peace.  He was dubbed the father of Shuttle Diplomacy.      

    In physical appearance,  a pudgy  Kissinger with his guttural  Bavarian German accent  lacks personal charisma and mesmerizing  speech.  But that was no hindrance to American mainstream media – they simply went ahead to create a public persona of flamboyance , swagger and diplomatic wheeler-dealer for him and it stuck. He assumed the role with aplomb, making touchdowns in  world’s  trouble spots with a pool of a doting press in tow !!

    Kissinger had also been pivotal in  driving  President Nixon’s doctrines of rapprochement with China and détente with the Soviet Union to ease the tensions of the Cold War, reduce the arms race and  promote  global economy with the United States in the saddle. In the course of negotiations leading to summit meetings between President Nixon and the leaders of Soviet Union and China, Kissinger had to make several trips to Moscow and Beijing, making such trips into  media events with adulatory reporting  of  his diplomatic skills  and reinforcement of his  super diplomat  aura.  Détente and rapprochement were long term strategic plans of Nixon to seduce Soviet Union and China into  a fatal embrace with the U.S., intended to  lead to the unraveling and eventual collapse  of the  two countries. The Soviet Union suffered that fate with its collapse and dissolution into several countries while China emerged  stronger from the embrace, to the consternation of America !!  The ultimate goal for President Nixon and Kissinger was the emergence of America as the world’s Sole Superpower, not an altruistic world peace.   In all of these, Kissinger  became larger than life , virtually consumed about projecting the Kissinger Brand.  In his heydays, he was projected  as a diplomatic legend.      

    However,  Kissinger’s media projection as a can-do, avuncular, glamour diplomat masks his hard line,  dogmatic ruthlessness as a  doctrinaire  warrior,  for whom lives – thousands of lives – are expendable.  For President Nixon and Kissinger, justice and morality count for nothing in foreign policy and international power play.  Addressing the press at his inauguration as Secretary of State on September 22, 1973, Kissinger had sold the media a dummy by claiming  that America’s foreign policy commitment , under his watch, would be to  ” a world based not upon strength  but upon justice”.  He had, however,  been reminded by President Nixon, in a phone call the following day, of their mutual position on  international power  relations : ” This idealism  (justice) in policy is good.  (But) You and I know, Henry, that a lot of that is malarkey”. Malarkey is  ‘nonsense; meaningless talk’ as defined by Oxford  American dictionary. So, American foreign policy, under Nixon and Kissinger,  made nonsense of justice and morality  as war hawks went on a global rampage of destabilising democratically elected governments, considered not kowtowing  to American dictates, while supportive of dictatorships which are deemed friendly.

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    Three instances will avail us here. In Chile, after the failure of its financially mobilized  political parties  to defeat Salvador Allende in the 1970 elections, Kissinger , with CIA backing, continued support for destabilization of the democratically elected government of President Allende  because of his Marxist  ideology.  Allende was found dead after coupists’ bombing of  the Presidential Palace on September 11, 1973.  Ironically, years  later , September 11, ( 9/11 ) was  to become a day of horror for America when thousands were killed as terrorists plane-bombed the Twin Towers in New York and attempted crashing into The Pentagon, the U.S. Defense Ministry, in Washington  D.C.  Kissinger became an apologist for the more brutal Chilean  military junta of Gen.  Augusto Pinochet under whose regime thousands were killed or disappeared.  When the military junta’s move against  the anti-Allende opposition democratic parties which had encouraged the coup and started detention of civilians in their thousands became  ” a source of much anguish”  ( Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, page 411) to many Americans, Kissinger dismissed such emotion as resulting from  memory loss about Allende’s many anti-American policies and actions !

    In Cambodia,  when the U.S.-supported  regime that deposed  Prince  Norodom  Sihanouk  could not contain the Communist insurgents, the Khmer Rouge,  backed by North Vietnam ( Viet Cong ),  America extended the Vietnam war to Cambodia . It engaged in carpet-bombings  of what it described as Viet Cong  ”sanctuaries ” inside Cambodia leading to thousands of Cambodian casualties, a development that drew public outrage in the U.S. and for Congress to pass a law stopping the bombings.  Kissinger  was not moved by the casualties , but was rather miffed  by the action of Congress .  He had fumed : ”Everything is just going to come apart in Cambodia  if we stop bombings”, in defence of continued bombings. The incident remains  one of the major black spots in Kissinger’s  career.

    Vietnam was America’s most horrific foreign policy engagement and ultimate disaster – both for American servicemen and American tax payers who funded the war bill and the Vietnamese people whom the Yankees sucked into their ideological war with Communism. In three decades ( 1950 – 1975 ) of war in Vietnam, America lost 58,220 military  personnel, more than 150,000 were wounded, with 21,000  of them permanently disabled ,  while the total cost of the war was put at $352 billion .

    In spite of these sacrifices in men and material, a humiliated super power had to cut  and run like scared crows, in chaotic evacuation of the embassy staff, other Americans and South Vietnamese support staff when the Viet Cong swept into Saigon, capital of South Vietnam, on April 30, 1975, effectively ending America’s military misadventure in Vietnam.  Predictably, Kissinger laid the blame on the U.S. Congress that rejected a $300 million in military  aid package for South Vietnam to stem the tidal wave of the Viet Cong southwards. The Vietnamese , in North and South,  suffered an estimated 1.1 million dead.

    It is a measure Kissinger’s vanity that he gleefully accepted the award of the 1973  Noble Peace Prize, announced by the Nobel Committee on October 16, 1973 for the jointly negotiated Paris Peace  Agreement with North Vietnamese delegate,

    Le Duc Tho, signed on January 27 of that year but which had not brought North and South Vietnam closer to peace as at the time of the Nobel award.  Tho had prudently rejected the award, citing violations of the Peace Agreement. When U.S-supported South Vietnam was overrun by the Communist North Vietnam on April 30, 1975, an apparently humbled Kissinger offered to return the Peace Prize and the cash award, both of were rejected by the Nobel Committee.

    A major lesson to learn from Dr. Henry Kissinger’s global engagements is that foreign policy goals are better achieved when the back-up diplomacy  is intellectually driven, as in the cases of  rapprochement with China and détente with the Soviet Union that eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet communist behemoth, without firing a shot.  On the contrary,  when America as a global power, allows its foreign policy to be driven by power drunkenness and the illusion of its invincibility , then the outcome is disaster, as witnessed in Vietnam , and repeated recently in Afghanistan where it lost the war to the Taliban and had to exit Kabul in chaotic circumstances. 

    These failed foreign forays project the all powerful  America, according to a Yoruba saying ,  as ” alagbara ma me ro, baba ole ” – a powerful man who rushes into a fight without exercising discretion ending up in defeat by a less powerful but discerning opponent.

    Going forward, America must heed the advisory in the title of  former President Nixon’s second book, post Vietnam defeat  : ‘ No More Vietnams ‘. (1985).  Apparently, Nixon wrote with  the benefit of hindsight !!! But are the successors in The White House listening ?

    Dr. Bisi OLAWUNMI, Senior Lecturer, Department of Mass Communication, Adeleke University, Ede. Osun State, is a former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria.  Email : bisi.olawunmi@adelekeuniversity.edu.ng  PHONE ( SMS ONLY ) 0803 364 7571.

  • COP28: America’s energy agenda

    COP28: America’s energy agenda

    David Turk is United States Deputy Secretary of Energy. He speaks at the Washington Foreign Press Center’s on COP28 and U.S. energy policy priorities. United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU attended the briefing. Excerpts:

    Importance of COP28

    Every country should be going to the COP reflecting on what they’re doing.  And I’m heading there on Saturday and will be there for a few days, joining Secretary Kerry and other members of the U.S. delegation.  Every country should be going.  This is the global stocktake year. 

    What are we all doing, right?  This is a global challenge; these are global emissions.  We’re seeing impacts of climate change around the world.  We’re certainly seeing extreme impacts of collimate change in the U.S. over the last year.  I know your countries are seeing it as well.  There’s not a country around the world that’s not being harmed and impacted in one way already, and emissions impacts will get even worse, especially if we don’t get our acts together.

    So during this global stocktake year, it’s incumbent upon all of us to look at what we’re doing.  Important to focus on pledges – and they’ll be a focus on the nationally determined contributions, of course, as there is in every COP – but it may be even more important to focus on what we’re actually doing:  What are the investments?  Where’s the progress?  Where’s the lack of progress?  What more do we need to focus on?

    I’m pleased to be part of this Biden administration in which we’ve made historic progress, unprecedented progress on our own climate footprint, reducing our GHG emissions and investing in a clean energy transition and into the clean energy future.  I’m not sure it can be overstated just how impactful these last few years have been, and maybe even more importantly the kinds of investments, the scaled investment, that we’re making in our own clean energy transition and what means in years to come, and frankly decades to come, given the volume and scale of what we’re doing.

    Inflation Reduction Act

    A lot has been talked about the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure legislation.  These are historic pieces of legislation that were passed in a previous Congress.  Just to give you a few numbers by way of scale, it’s an estimated – just at the tax incentive part of that – and these are 10-year tax incentives literally across the board in terms of encouraging, many of them 30 percent, some even bigger than that – encouraging our buildout of solar, of wind, of geothermal, of nuclear, you name it on the clean energy front, green hydrogen, clean hydrogen – we’re incenting it, we’re encouraging it, and we’re using a tax incentives lever about it.

    Important that these are 10-year tax incentives.  There’s been estimates of this being as – the original estimate was about $369 billion.  There’s been some other estimates that had it maybe even a trillion dollars of incentives going in the U.S. to build out our clean energy infrastructure as quickly as we possibly can.  That’s just one part of what we’ve done, one part of this historic legislation.

    Just in our department, the Department of Energy alone, we’ve been given $100 billion to work mostly in grants that go out to private sector to build out hydrogen, to build out geothermal, again to build out – in a complementary way to all these tax incentives, to build out our clean energy infrastructure.  We’ve recently announced $7 billion, just to give you one example, to build out clean hydrogen hubs across our country.  That is a big investment; that is a historic investment.  That’s not the kind of investment that we make on a regular basis, even in U.S. Government, as we big as we are and as much funding as we have.  These are really historic levels of funding that we’re working on here in the U.S. side.

    One other data – just in our department alone, in order to administer this $100 billion of grant program, it ends up being about 70 new program – seven, zero new programs – just to give you a sense of the diversity of what we’re talking about, in addition to the volume of funding.  We’ve hired up 800 new people to come and run these programs.  Again, that’s just one data point showing the scale of what we’re doing and we’re starting to see the real impacts of that — $150 billion worth of battery manufacturing investment, which is supporting our EV transition in our country going forward along those lines. 

    And we’re starting to see some real impacts on our own emissions as well.  Of course, that’s what we’re after, is we’re after emission reductions.  The latest estimates that we have is that our emissions in 2023 across the U.S. will go down 3 percent, even in the face of quite robust GDP growth that we’ve seen. 

    More must be done

    So we need to do more.  All countries need to do more.  We need to do more to make sure that we are achieving our climate reduction targets that we put on the table, that the President has put on the table, rightfully ambitious in our country.  And of course, other countries need to not only again set targets, set ambitious targets, but it’s actually how we’re achieving those targets. And I’m happy to get into any of those particulars if folks would want to, in terms of how we’re actually implementing our domestic strategy.

    Second point I’d like to just share is how does this dovetail with our international strategy and what we’re working on with partners across the world.  I’d like to highlight in particular what our department, our Department of Energy, is working on.  And this is very complementary to all the things that Secretary Kerry’s working on, that other departments across our government are working on.  I wanted to give a few examples.

    One, we have very robust bilateral partners with key countries around the world from the Department of Energy with our counterpart.  For instance, in Japan, we have a very robust partnership with METI.  We have a very robust partnership with the UK.  We have a very robust partnership with Nigeria.  We have a very robust partnership with Chile.  Literally countries around the world in a bipartisan or a bilateral basis trying to help each other, trying to share information, trying to work jointly where it’s appropriate on particular projects. 

    I mentioned the fact that we are building out a clean energy infrastructure in an unprecedented scale.  That has huge economic opportunities for our partners around the world.  And I’ve had a chance to travel in Latin America and Africa over the last year, and what I hear from countries is they not only want to take advantage of their natural resources, whether it’s lithium or other critical minerals that we’re going to need at scales unprecedented because of this clean energy transition, but they want to move up that value chain.  They want to make sure that they’re getting as much economic opportunity from those natural resources that they have.  That is very complementary and supportive by the United States to make sure that countries who have natural resources, the people in those countries, benefit from those resources, they move up that value chain. 

    From our end, from our perspective, the more diverse the supply chains, the more there are countries out there in this space, the better off in terms of the security of supply, the economic benefits from this clean energy transition being widely felt, including and especially for the most vulnerable countries, the least financially endowed countries around the world.  So that’s another area that we’re working on is global clean energy supply chains and making sure those benefits are felt around the world. 

    Net zero world

    The other effort I wanted to highlight in particular is something we call Net Zero World.  We have phenomenal resources here – technical resources, expertise here in our country, including 17 national labs across our country.  The Department of Energy administers those national labs.  We call upon that expertise.  I think it’s about 70, 80 thousand people that are employed in these labs all across the country – phenomenal expertise in any and all clean energy technologies.  Many of these labs were involved in early development, solar PV that we’ve now taken to sail around the world, and so many people around the world have been benefiting from that. 

    We came in, in this administration, very consciously wanting to not only have that expertise tapped for our own domestic purposes, accelerating our clean energy transition, but through Net Zero World, we’re working with a select number of partners around the world – if other countries are interested, and we’d be happy to have discussions – to make that national lab expertise available to help countries achieve their own clean energy targets but to do it quicker – to do it with modeling expertise, to do it with technological expertise, whether countries want to invest in hydrogen or their EV transition, or geothermal, or solar, or offshore wind.  This technical expertise is helping countries around the world that the U.S. is making available in a way that’s very mutually beneficial and supportive of our overall diplomacy as well. 

    And then the last point I wanted to make is specific to the oil and gas industry.  This climate conference in particular is getting a lot of attention, a lot of focus on the oil and gas industry.  The oil and gas industry is a major supplier of energy around the world, but it’s also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions around the world as well. 

    The two points I wanted to make on that front – and we’re working on this as the U.S. Government not only domestically but working internationally, and there’ll be some announcements that are made on this front – first of all is methane emissions, methane emissions throughout the oil and gas sector.  There are other sectors that have methane emissions – landfills, agriculture.  But there’s been a particular focus over the last several years, including the Methane Partnership that the U.S., working with the EU and countries around the world, have been really championing on that front.  This climate conference has an opportunity to really deal with methane emissions in the oil and gas sector. 

    To me this is the biggest no-brainer opportunity to reduce emissions, to reduce emissions quickly, to reduce emissions at scale.  It requires companies, not only the independent oil companies around the world but national oil companies around the world being serious, being transparent, allowing third-party verification so that we all can reduce our methane emissions and do it as quickly as we possibly can.  And again, there’ll be some announcements that are made in our continuing effort on that front. 

    Second point on oil and gas I wanted to make is focused on scope 3 emissions.  For those who follow these issues, there’s scope 1 emissions, scope 2 emissions, scope 3 emissions.  Scope 3 emissions for the oil and gas sector by far are the largest.  These are the emissions that are caused when people drive and get oil, spend gasoline in their cars, or diesel in their cars – the emissions that are put out by the products of oil and gas companies, so oil and natural gas whether it’s in a car or in a powerplant.  Scope 3 emissions for oil and gas companies are ten times or more higher than their scope 1 and scope 2 combined. 

    And so there’ll be some discussion at the COP of progress needing to be made on scope 1 and scope 2 in particular.  I just wanted to make the point that scope 3 is so much larger than scope 1 and scope 2.  Our hope is that there is an awful lot of focus on the Scope 3 emissions in oil and gas companies – again, whether they’re private companies, international companies, or the national oil companies are also constructive, aggressive, ambitious on Scope 3 emissions because they’re so much larger than Scope 1, Scope 2.  We’ve got to deal with all of those emissions if we’re going to be successful on our shared objectives.

    Nuclear power

    We think nuclear power – nuclear power right now in the U.S. is about 20 percent of our electricity generation, and a significant part, a quite large part of our existing clean energy generation.  And it’s 24/7 generating power as well. 

    Japan has an even higher percentage; France has an even higher percentage.  Other countries have different policies and approaches to nuclear, but within the U.S. we view it is a key part of our current clean energy generation, but also an expanding opportunity and an expanding part of our future mix and future mixes around the world.  That’s why we’re proud to be part of this effort to get countries signed up to triple the capacity for nuclear by 2050 period of time.  And this applies not only to existing nuclear, the bigger nuclear plants that folks are most familiar with, but this also applies to what’s called small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear technology that we’ve invested a lot of money in, Japan has, others have as well to have a diversity and array of nuclear options going forward. 

    There’s also a lot of exciting efforts and focus – and we’re doing this certainly at the Department of Energy and in the U.S. Government more generally – on fusion as well, which is getting new attention, including from the private sector investing $6 billion in fusion development, so that we have fission, we have fusion, we have a diversity of efforts going forward.  But this, I think, will be – the pledge you’re referring to will be one of the biggest announcements that’s made at the COP, and we’ll hopefully get a further momentum behind really building out and taking advantage of this terrific resource. 

    China and Middle East

      So let me take the China question first and then talk about the Middle East dynamics and at least how I see that playing out going forward.  First, on the China front, I want to really give a genuine and deserve a shout out to our leader on our international climate effort, Secretary Kerry.  His diligence – and I’ve known Secretary Kerry for years; I’ve had the privilege of working with him in trying to support what he’s doing – his diligence in working with and on all things climate, but especially working on the bilateral relationship with China, has just been extraordinary.  And a lot of the progress that was made at Sunnylands – in fact, a very large amount of that progress is really due to his doggedness, his determination, his leadership to go above and beyond. 

    We did have some challenges in getting China to come to the table, have discussions, and get this working group set up and really do the kinds of things that we did at Sunnylands.  Frankly, we would have loved to have had that kind of announcement a year or two years ago, and we’ve been working on it.  But you make the progress where you can find the progress on that front. 

    I think the important thing I’m watching for China coming out of this COP and then the weeks and months after that – important for them to self-reflect, just like I said every country needs to self-reflect, on the global stocktake.  And are they doing enough?  Is their NDC, their 2030 NDC – nationally determined contribution – as ambitious as it needs to be and should be as part of an overall global solution?  When I look at this, putting on my energy and climate analyst hat, is the answer is no, it’s not as ambitious as it needs to be.  (Inaudible) by 2030 for China is just not good enough.  They can do it earlier, they will do it earlier, and they should update their NDC accordingly – again, wearing my energy analyst, climate analyst – just trying to make the numbers kind of add up on that front. 

    To me, a lot of this is following the money, following the investment, and following the policy.  And China is expanding their solar and their wind at huge, unprecedented numbers.  That’s great.  But there’s also a lot of investment and investment decisions going into coal right now.  And so I think there needs to be an awful lot of focus on what is actually happening not only within China but what they do with their BRI, the Belt and Road Initiative, as well working with other countries.  And so I think every country needs to take a look at what they’re doing and make changes accordingly on that end. 

    On the Middle East dynamic, I think it’s really interesting if you take a step back and view the world – not only the government but the private sector’s focus on climate change over the last few years.  We’ve had COVID; we’ve had a Russian invasion of Ukraine and all that that has wrought.  We’ve got now the situation in the Middle East.  We’ve had some bumps on the road, but I think what’s interesting is the support – the public support, the government support, the private sector support – to deal with climate change as an existential challenge and to deal with it urgently – has had some fluctuation.  Different countries have had different elections, but it’s remarkable how durable that is and how much momentum there is behind clean energy transition. 

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    One data point for you there:  We’re now up to 10 percent of our vehicles sold here in the U.S. being electric vehicles.  That’s up from 3.4 percent two years ago and 6.7 percent a year ago, so the trajectory of what we’re doing – Europe’s already over 20 percent, China’s well over 20 percent, and I saw a statistic that they’re at a third of their vehicles sold being electric vehicles. 

    So we’re starting to see some real momentum, and a lot of that is just driven by the fact that these clean energy technologies are cheaper in many cases and certainly getting more cheaply by the day.  And the economics of it, the jobs of it, the industrial strategy of it is a very powerful momentum, powerful motivation for countries around the world.  So I think it’s remarkable how much progress, how much momentum we’ve had even in a very challenging few years geopolitically.

    Climate Change

    I feel incredibly proud to be part of this administration.  One of my big motivations for joining this administration – I’ve been working on climate issues, clean energy issues for quite a few years in my own career, and to be part of an administration, a historic administration that has seen the most progress ever – not only by any government in the U.S. but, I would argue, by any government in the world – over the last several years with this historic legislation, the volume of what we’re doing with the tax incentives, all of the things that I talked about.  So I feel incredibly proud of what we’re doing domestically.

    I think there’ll be a lot of – the key deliverables at the COP will be ones that the U.S., I’m proud to say, will be very much part of championing.  It was mentioned already, the tripling of nuclear capacity by 2050.  There’s also a tripling of renewables by 2030, and that’s something that we’re very supportive of.  There’s a doubling of energy efficiency rates by 2030 as well.  I feel like our NDC of reducing our emissions over 50 percent by 2030 is a very ambitious initiative and very much in line with a 1.5-degree scenario. 

    So I feel like we are not only putting the pledges on the table and working on the deliverables side, but the most important part – and I would ask everybody focus on this – is where are the investments, where are you actually achieving progress on the ground in reducing emissions, in reducing costs for technologies that benefit not only citizens and folks here in the U.S. but countries around the world.  And I feel like our record is a very strong one and feel very proud.

    I’d also say – I mentioned Secretary Kerry earlier – I think his record going back decades in terms of his commitment to climate is incredible.  I had a chance to work for Senator Biden when he worked – President Biden when he was a senator, and I know that climate is something that he is personally very passionate about.  Secretary Granholm, who I get the privilege of working with on a daily basis as our Secretary of Energy, is incredibly passionate about climate, as I am as well.  So the personal commitment – again, not just to show up in meeting and make a speech, but the commitment to actually walk the talk and to deliver – is incredibly impressive.  I think that is more important than, again, delivering a speech here or there.  It’s really the personal commitment to actually change the real world for the better and all the benefits that come from it.

    The issue – sorry, you mentioned one – oh, climate-smart agriculture.  I think climate-smart agriculture should get an awful lot more attention.  Secretary Vilsack and his team over at the Department of Agriculture is doing some remarkable work.  They got a lot more money from these historic pieces of legislation to work with farmers, ranchers across our country to do climate-smart agriculture.  I know there’s some efforts that they’re doing internationally as well, but I think this is a huge opportunity space.  It can be a win-win for farmers and ranchers but a win-win for our clean energy and climate transition going forward.

    One area I’m particularly excited about is something called agrivoltaics, which is working on the agriculture but the clean energy side and thinking about how to do clean energy, whether it’s solar or wind or others, as you’re doing farming and having another revenue stream for farmers and ranchers but also being part of the clean energy transition as well.  And I think (inaudible) a really exciting area.