No Institutional Safeguards Stand Between Donald Trump and Nuclear War,DOJ Demands Data on Visitors to Anti-Trump Protest Website, Community Groups Join Forces to Make New Haven, CT a Leading U.S. Sanctuary City

No Institutional Safeguards Stand Between Donald Trump and Nuclear War

Interview with Mark Hertsgaard, investigative editor at large for The Nation magazine and the author of seven books, including, “Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden”, conducted by Scott Harris

Before the media spotlight shifted away from the dangerous war of words between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the tragic events in Charlottesville, the nation and the world had become alarmed at the apparent threat of a nuclear confrontation on the Korean peninsula. Not since the days of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union had any two nations rattled their nuclear armed sabers at each other in such a dangerous fashion.

In response to a string of typical taunts from Kim Jong Un and his nation’s increasing capability to launch nuclear armed missiles that could reach the U.S. mainland, President Trump issued an extraordinary ultimatum to Pyongyang on Aug. 8, warning the isolated communist government not to make any more threats or they will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with author Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation Magazine’s investigative editor at large. Here, Hertsgaard discusses his recent Nation article, titled “Do You Trust Donald Trump’s Finger on the Nuclear Button,” examining growing concern about Donald Trump’s fitness for office – and the president’s unilateral control of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.
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MARK HERTSGAARD: Of course, immigration matters. Of course, health care and Obamacare matters. Of course, Black Lives Matter and all the other issues we can talk about. But those are issues where you can lose today and resume the fight tomorrow. But with nuclear weapons, that’s not case. You get one chance, you go wrong one time and it can be all over. And you know, only climate change has that kind of impact. But climate change does not have that short of a fuse. And such a hair-trigger aspect of the nuclear crisis – and I say this again as a reporter. I’ve covered nuclear weapons since the 1980s since the Reagan- Gorbachev years and I haven’t been this frightened, frankly, this those days before Gorbachev arrived and the U.S. and the Soviets were very, very close. A lot of bellicose rhetoric and very close, much closer than most people realized at the time, to nuclear war.

Now, we have someone as commander-in-chief – who, forget Donald Trump’s politics, forget his ideology, forget his racism and all the rest of it. Just compare his temperament to every other U.S. president, Democrat or Republican that we have had since World War II ended with nuclear weapons and we opened the nuclear age. There has not been one president who has been this erratic, this impulsive, this uninformed, this easily baited. This vindictive. Somebody who many psychologists have said, is arguably, mentally ill. This is not somebody who should be able to decide unilaterally whether we go to nuclear war.

And that’s, again, a situation that existed before Donald Trump. It’s been true for basically every president since Kennedy, where we have our weapons on a hair trigger, just as the Soviets and now the Russians do, and the argument was always OK, the president has to be able to fire back immediately. Six minutes is the waiting period. And that’s why, every president of the United States has always been shadowed by a senior military officer who is carrying the so-called nuclear football. He is never more than 15 feet away from the president. If the president suddenly takes an elevator ride up to the top of some building, that person is in there with the nuclear codes. And that is what, to me, is most scary about Donald Trump. He does not have to ask anyone to push that button. He can, he can choose to ask people, but he’s under no obligation and he can unilaterally start a nuclear war.

Maybe he just decides, “Okay, I’ve had enough of North Korea. They need to be taught a lesson.” And he could give the order. Now, that to me, is a very terrifying situation that should unite everyone across the political spectrum, whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, and anarchist. It doesn’t matter. Everyone should be worried about this individual’s temperament having his finger on the nuclear button.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Describe for our listeners this legislation that is being initiated in Congress, Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017. As I understand it, this was in the works before Donald Trump was elected president.

MARK HERTSGAARD: Correct.

BETWEEN THE LINES: But, where are things at with that and how can our listeners support it?

MARK HERTSGAARD: You’re talking about the Marquis-Lieu legislation as it’s known. That’s named after Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who is one of the co-sponsors, and then Rep. Ted Lieu, who is actually a military veteran. He’s from out in California, and they are two Democrats and nobody on Capitol Hill currently gives that legislation a high chance of passage. But, it’s important, especially at moments like this, to talk about it because the circumstances on the ground are going to lead more people to support it. And basically what the legislation does – it’s a reformist piece of legislation, but it’s a smart reform. It basically says that a nuclear first strike can only be launched by the president of the United States if the Congress agrees. Not a retaliatory strike, but a nuclear first strike. And they say, There’s no argument that if we launch nuclear weapons at somebody, that is war. And only Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war. So the Lieu-Markey legislation would essentially require any president – this president or any president – before they do a first strike to consult with Congress. It’s a small step, but in this current situation, it’s a very important one.

The other thing that needs to be done immediately is to take our nuclear weapons – and to talk to the Russians about this, obvious – to take both sides’ nuclear weapons off of “hair trigger” alert. There’s no reason for us to be on “hair trigger” alert. Six minutes of window for decision-making. Vladimir Putin and Russia has an ever shorter four-minute time. There’s too many in the history of nuclear weapons over the last 60-plus years now – there’s too many times where we’ve had almost accidental war because of miscalculation or you see the wrong thing on the radar screen and you think that that flock of birds is an attack or you think that Norwegian weather satellite launch is a nuclear attack – and both of those were real incidents that we barely escaped.

So we need to get the weapons off of hair-trigger. We need to prevent a first strike and the Ted Lieu and Ed Markey legislation would do that. I think it would be very important if and when people talk to their members of Congress and representatives to do both of those things. Support that legislation, but in the meantime, call the Pentagon. Call the White House and say Trump is not allowed to make this decision unilaterally.

For more of Hersgaard’s writings, visit The Nation at thenation.com/authors/mark-hertsgaard.

DOJ Demands Data on Visitors to Anti-Trump Protest Website

Interview with Chip Gibbons, policy and legislative director with the group, Defending Rights and Dissent, conducted by Scott Harris

The Justice Department, under U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is demanding data from a webhosting company on more than 1.3 million IP addresses, as well as the email addresses and photos of thousands of people who had visited a website that organized protests at Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration in Washington, D.C. A search warrant was approved by Judge Robert Wertheim.

DreamHost, the company targeted, hosted the DisruptJ20.org website has thus far refused to comply with the Justice Department search warrant, declaring that the order constitutes “investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority.” Civil liberties advocates raised alarm that the government’s demand would chill dissent and free speech.

The Justice Department has indicated that the demand for this data is linked with more than 200 people who were arrested on felony riot charges during the inauguration for allegedly engaging in property destruction, such as breaking store windows and setting a limousine on fire. Journalists and legal observers sere among those arrested in police sweeps. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Chip Gibbons, policy and legislative director with the group, Defending Rights and Dissent. Here, Gibbons explains why he believes that this search warrant is designed to silence dissent, and make people afraid to speak out. After this interview was conducted, the Department of Justice dropped its demand for 1.3 million IP addresses, but still seeks subscriber account information.
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CHIP GIBBONS: The Justice Department claims there is evidence relating to the DC felony rioting statute that they can obtain. Their warrant demands practically all company records and information associated with the website. If Dreamhost were to comply with the request, it would have to hand over roughly 1.3 million visitor IP addresses, in addition to contact information, email contact and photos of thousands of visitors to the website. It would have to give the content of all the email inquiries sent to the website and comments submitted from numerous private email accounts. And if you think about it, this is an absurd amount of information to look for to have an isolated incident apply. I mean, it’s such a broad warrant. It’s, at its best a fishing expedition and at the worst – this is what I suspect – to chill dissent.

BETWEEN THE LINES: To their credit, the webhosting company, Dreamhost, is fitting this search warrant. What effective measures are they taking to try to tamp down this Justice Department request for this data?

CHIP GIBBONS: They’re trying to fight the warrant by saying it’s unconstitutional; it’s a law that violated some U.S. statutes. Their argument is that it is a Fourth Amendment search that has potentially First Amendment information that could be gathered from it and therefore, there needs to be a higher standard in reviewing it. It has to have particular exactitude and that it’s not a very exact warrant.

There’s also claims it breaks the Privacy Act and some other constitutional claims. It comes very close to me to feeling like a general warrant, which of course, the general warrants from the colonial days are what the Fourth Amendment is supposed to prevent from happening. But even beyond the Fourth Amendment issue, I mean, we have the First Amendment issue. They’re getting the information about people who engaged in First Amendment protected activity. I don’t ever want to make predictions about these kinds of things, but I am cautiously optimistic.

I had read the EFF’s legal brief on behalf of Dreamhost; I think it’s very well argued and very well-reasoned. I think this warrant is shocking. But if you yourself want to take action, a number of groups including Defending Rights and Dissent are gathering signatures to Jeff Sessions asking him to withdraw the warrant. If you want to sign one of those, you can go to www.rightsanddissent.org. And while legal victories are important, I also think social movement victories are important. And while I know people are probably thinking Jeff Sessions is not the most sympathetic recipient of a petition for this, I think it’s really important to show that regardless of what we think Jeff Sessions will do, that there’s political opposition. Politically mobilized against it. I think that we’ve seen a lot of some of the worst instincts of the Trump administration curtailed by popular movements and I think if they see how horrified people are by this and those people start speaking out, that will send a powerful message because the purpose of this warrant is to silence people but we need to be speaking out right now about it.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What’s the danger here in terms of the legal precedent that could be set if the Justice Department gets their way and they get this data that would give them specific information on how to find some 1.3 million people who visited this website, this anti-Trump organizing website?

CHIP GIBBONS: I mean, the biggest danger is its going to chill speech. I think most people, many people don’t want the Trump administration to be compiling a list of anti-Trump people with their name on it. So if people know that you go to the DisruptJ20 website, you could get your name sent to the Department of Justice. You might think twice about going to a different anti-Trump website and then people aren’t organizing.

There’s also the consolation of activism with criminality, and I think that is just all part of a larger program to crack down on dissent. You see it with the warrant. You see it with these prosecutions. And see it in state legislatures across the country that are trying to pass these really awful bills meant to deter people from protesting.

For more information, visit Defending Rights and Dissent at rightsanddissent.org.

Community Groups Join Forces to Make New Haven, CT a Leading U.S. Sanctuary City

Interview with John Jairo Lugo, a founder of New Haven, CT’s grassroots immigrant rights group Unidad Latina en Accion, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

This summer, New Haven, Connecticut has welcomed undocumented immigrants from two different countries that have taken sanctuary in two city churches. New Haven, a city of 130,000 and home of Yale University, was the first municipality in the country to grant resident ID cards regardless of citizenship in 2007. Nury Chavarria, a Guatemalan refugee and mother of four who lived in Norwalk, Connecticut, sought sanctuary in New Haven on July 21 after Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered her deportation. She took refuge in the city’s la Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Church. After five days, ICE issued a stay of deportation allowing her attorney to appeal her case, and allowing Chavarria to return to her family and job.

On Aug. 8, Ecuadorean immigrant Marco Antonio Reyes, a father of three from Meriden, Connecticut, took refuge in First & Summerfield Methodist Church, also in New Haven. As of Aug. 22, he remains there. Chavarria has lived in the U.S. for 24 years; Reyes for 20.

Today, New Haven proudly and defiantly proclaims itself a “sanctuary city.” But it was a combination of top-down and bottom-up strategies that resulted in the city declaring itself a sanctuary for at-risk immigrants. Mayors past and present, along with the faith community and the grassroots immigrant rights group, Unidad Latina en Accion all played important roles in making New Haven a safe haven for those hoping to avoid deportation. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with John Jairo Lugo, a founder of Unidad Latina en Accion in 2002. Here, he describes how various forces came together to declare New Haven one of the nation’s leading sanctuary cities.
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JOHN LUGO: Maybe some people will disagree with me, but I feel strongly that all the good things happening in New Haven regarding the sanctuary city is because we started the conversation many years ago. I believe those conversations started back in 2002, when we got together as a community and brainstormed how to make New Haven a model city and the treatment of immigrants. That’s when the idea to stop racial profiling on immigrants and pass some kind of policy where the police doesn’t call immigration on our people, the ID card, the translation of public documents in the city in Spanish, and that’s when we started talking with Junta and Kica Matos in that time. And then as both organizations, we got together and we had a meeting with (then Mayor) John DeStefano, so we’re the ones who brought all these conversations. We’re the ones who convinced them that it was a good thing for the city and also for the community. So I don’t want to say it was Unidad Latina only, you know, because in the past it has also been Junta, but also the support of community leaders and then the city officials.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So, the fact that you got the city officials on your side, did that make it easier to get what you wanted?

JOHN LUGO: Yes, of course. When I say “city officials,” I call them the politicians. When you have the politicians on your side, because they’re the ones who have the power to change the local laws or to pass resolutions – so, yes.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So, in the past month there have been two people who came from two different cities in New Haven to seek sanctuary, and they were both on the verge of flying back to their native countries, which was Guatemala and Ecuador, even though both had been here, one 20 years, one 24 years, and they had no criminal offenses. They came to New Haven to seek sanctuary; one is from Norwalk, one is from Meriden. Why do you think that is?

JOHN LUGO: That’s one of my frustrations. I love Nury and I love Marco, and when they came asking for help, the different organizations that helped them, we agreed to be on their side, because we’ve been talking since the beginning of the year how we can start creating, put together a list of churches that can be, like, sanctuary, because we thought that this kind of situation would happen eventually. But my frustration is more related to the lack of organizing in many other cities around the state. So in New Haven, yes, we have been doing the work for, like, 15 years, but I don’t see the same level of organizing in other cities. And everybody looks at New Haven as an example, which is pretty good for us, but at the same time, I hope these two cases will help to open up a bigger conversation on how each community in each city should be doing their own organizing because I think this is just the beginning of attacks on the community. I really believe it’s going to be worse. What’s going to happen when we have 50 people seeking sanctuary? We don’t have enough space in New Haven to house them, so I think this is the right time to start having the conversation and going back to local communities like Norwalk, Bridgeport, Meriden, Hartford, New London and start talking about real organizing.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Is there anything you want to say about sanctuary in the nitty gritty, when you actually interact with the person who’s hoping to not have to go back to their home country?

JOHN LUGO: Yeah, I see Marco every day. I spend most of my day at this church with him. But I have to say – and this is maybe a call to everyone who is listening – the secret of sanctuary is when you get support from the community; when you see the community writing letters to him; when you see the community stopping by the church and give him moral support. So I think he’s doing okay; this is just like his second week and I think it’s going to get harder, and I think his hope will increase or decrease depending on how much support he has from the community; how much support the people show, too. Because it’s not just like saying, Oh, that’s nice, what’s happening in New Haven. No, I think it’s important to come in to New Haven and see for yourself what’s happening in this church and how the community works directly with the faith community, and how these buildings became like a refuge for people who are in jeopardy to be deported.

For more information, visit Unidad Latina en Acción at ulanewhaven.org and on Facebook at facebook.com/ULANewHaven.

This week’s summary of under-reported news

Compiled by Bob Nixon
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs escalated when police carried out a deadly raid on the home of Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog’s on the island of Mindanao. The late-night raid killed the mayor, his wife, brother, sister and his security guards. The Mayor of Ozamiz was among 150 Philippine government officials including mayors, judges and police officers that Duterte had linked with the drug trade. Since Duterte was sworn in as president last July, over 7,000 people have been killed in his violent campaign against drugs, including two other mayors. (“Philippine Police Killed a Mayor and Much of His Family. Was It a Raid Gone Wrong, or a Massacre?” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 7, 2017; “Philippines Sees Bloodiest Day in Its Deadly War on Drugs,” New York Post, Aug. 16, 2017)
Indian and Chinese soldiers briefly clashed in the disputed Kashmir region of the Himalayas in mid August, with soldiers throwing stones at each other near Pangong Lake, a major tourist destination. Indian Police officials told the Guardian newspaper that summer clashes were relatively common along the de facto border known as the Line of Actual Control, but this season’s conflict has been prolonged. (“Indian and Chinese Troops Clash in Disputed Himalayan Border Region,” The Guardian, Aug. 16, 2017; “A Himalayan Spat between China and India Evokes Memories of War,” The Economist, July 29, 2017; “What’s behind the India-China Border Stand-Off?” BBC, July 5, 2017)
The rally of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and militia groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of anti-racist protester Heather Heyer, was the largest gathering of the far right in a generation. Far right extremist groups, which fragmented in the in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing carried out by rightwing terrorist Timothy McVeigh that killed 168, are eager to display a new clean “frat boy” image which was on display during the Tiki Torch light march in Charlottesville on the University of Virginia campus. (“A New Generation of White Supremacists Emerges in Charlottesville,” Pro Publica, Aug. 13, 2017; “Organizer of Charlottesville White Nationalist Rally Has Maine Roots,” Bangor Daily News, Aug. 15, 2017)

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