Ten areas in the sky were selected as “deep fields” that the Dark Energy Camera imaged several times during the survey, providing a glimpse of distant galaxies and helping determine their 3D distribution in the cosmos. The image is teeming with galaxies — in fact, nearly every single object in this image is a galaxy. Some exceptions include a couple of dozen asteroids as well as a few handfuls of foreground stars in our own Milky Way.IMAGE/Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgments: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)
Why is the expansion of our Universe accelerating?Twenty-five years after its discovery, this phenomenon remains one of today’s greatest scientific mysteries.To unravel it, we need to put the fundamental laws of physics to the test, including Albert Einstein’s general relativity.A
team from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE) and Toulouse III – Paul
Sabatier has compared the predictions of the famous physicist with
measurements based on data from the Dark Energy Survey program.They discovered a slight discrepancy, depending on the period in the history of the cosmos at which the calculations were made.These
results, to be read in Nature Communications, challenge the validity of
Einstein’s theories to explain phenomena at work outside the solar
system, on the scale of the Universe.
According to Albert Einstein’s theory, our Universe deforms under the
influence of the matter it contains, rather like a large, flexible
sheet. These deformations, caused by the gravity of celestial bodies,
are known as gravitational wells. When light passes through this frame
of irregularities, its trajectory is deflected by these wells, as if by a
glass lens. But here, it’s gravitation, not glass, that bends the
light. This is known as the “ gravitational lensing ” effect.
Observation of this effect provides information on the constituents,
history and expansion of the Universe. Its first measurement, in 1919
during a solar eclipse, confirmed Einstein’s theory, which predicted a
deviation of light twice as great as that predicted by Isaac Newton.
This difference is explained by the addition of a new “ingredient” by
Einstein: the deformation of time, in addition to the deformation of
space, to obtain the exact curvature of light.
Theory vs. data
But at the very edge of the Universe, do these equations work? This
is the question posed by many scientists trying to quantify the density
of matter in the cosmos and understand the acceleration of its
expansion. A team from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE) and Toulouse
III – Paul Sabatier, using data from the Dark Energy Survey – an
international program that surveys the shape of hundreds of millions of
galaxies – has come up with new answers.
Tell a man he shouldn’t think of a pink elephant and he can’t get that beast out of his mind!
This quote,
from Curt Siodmak’s 1974 novel City in the Sky, describes how hard it
can be to suppress our thoughts. “Don’t think of a pink elephant” has
become a classic example of how difficult it can be to intentionally
avoid visualising.
Research suggests many of you, having read about a pink elephant, will have imagined seeing one.
However, some people, like us, have aphantasia – we cannot visualise.
So we are a little confused at the idea other people can imagine seeing
things that aren’t there.
In a new study,
we have found evidence the pink elephant problem is not universal. Some
people – including people with aphantasia – can block involuntary
visual thoughts from their minds.
What is aphantasia?
People with aphantasia cannot voluntarily imagine seeing things in
our mind’s eye. So if you ask us not to think about a pink elephant, we
won’t visualise one, because we can’t.
Aphantasia is typically described as a deficit. When people first
learn they have aphantasia they are often upset, as they realise other
people can do things they cannot. It might be nice to imagine seeing the
characters described in a book, for example, or to visualise an absent
loved one.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei (in center) with President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk of Tesla (with a child). IMAGE/Washington Post/MSN
The scariest question that pops up when thinking about a second
Donald Trump presidency is, “How bad can it get?” Many commentators say
it means the end of American democracy as we know it and the end of the
vision of a liberal society—an American Dream of social justice and
economic well-being inaugurated by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Trump himself does not spell out in detail what he might do in practice,
keeping his campaign harangues to racist and anti-“woke” generalities,
promises of tax cuts, personal insults, and standard pro-business talk.
Two sources, however, provide a pretty good indication of what he would
do: first, the right-wing think tanks’ roadmaps for Trump, such as the
Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025; and second, the actions and rhetoric
of Javier Milei, the president of Argentina since his election in
November 2023.
Milei’s Basic Law and Project 2025
Milei, a narcissistic and megalomaniacal libertarian, is the first
Trump administration on steroids—what they both stand for and want to
implement is perfectly portrayed in Milei’s slogan: “Government by Chain
Saw.” Government by chain saw is evident in what Milei submitted for
approval to the Argentine Congress as the Ley de Bases(link is external)
(Basic Law), made up of 234 articles. The Basic Law was approved by the
Chamber of Deputies in June 2024 and by a tie-breaking vote in the
Senate. Opposition by labor unions and street protestors began in
reaction to the quickly worsening economic situation(link is external) for the lower and middle classes(link is external)
brought on by Milei’s measures. The political class, however, faced
with the budgetary and prosecutorial power of the presidency, has chosen
to align with Milei’s policies rather than with the nation’s best
interests.
Given their ideological similarities, much of Milei’s agenda
overlaps with what Trump would likely execute in one way or another if
reelected. In their recent, much-discussed conversation on X, Trump and Elon Musk(link is external)
praised Milei’s economic and social policies, celebrating his mass
firing of government employees and drastic reduction of government
programs. (They failed to mention that the cuts are primarily in
education, health care, and social services.) The Basic Law’s salient
elements are:
Declaration of a state of national emergency for one year to
administratively enact the administration’s new agenda in energy policy,
economic policy, and finance.
Additional executive powers to take whatever actions are necessary to implement the Basic Law.
Privatization of natural resources and major state companies,
including infrastructure, which basically means a fire sale to Wall
Street.[1]
Closing down public institutions like public TV and public radio and
support for other cultural institutions (akin to shuttering NPR, PBS,
and the National Endowment for the Arts in the US).
Defunding public universities and the CONICET (National Scientific Research Council).
Labor reform that would make firings easier and less costly to employers.
Tax reform that would reduce taxes for those with higher wealth and income.
Tax haven pardons, meaning that those who have not reported income
and wealth held abroad, and have thus avoided taxes, will pay only 2.5
percent over five years on what they now declare—basically a lifetime
Christmas gift to tax cheats.
Loss of Argentine judicial sovereignty by granting jurisdiction to
non-Argentine tribunals (read US courts) for any commercial disputes or
investment disputes arising from privatization.
Cancelation of Argentine legislation and judicial standing over all
environmental aspects of investment in mining, oil, and gas by foreign
corporations.
Defunding environmental protection programs, canceling the
protection of native forests, and ending the requirement for public
audiences in granting environmental impact approvals.
Granting the federal executive the right to restructure or close
down provincial or regional government agencies, such as those involved
in environmental protection, as it sees fit.
In addition, Milei and his interior minister, Patricia Bullrich, have
adopted a tough-on-protestors policy, with forceful police crackdowns
against picketing and demonstrations.
Milei ‘s ideology was shaped by the economists Friedrich Hayek and Murray Rothbard(link is external), a founder of the US Libertarian Party(link is external), and it shares libertarianism’s radical distrust of the state and faith that markets know best. On social matters, Milei mirrors Trump in opposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs(link is external) and abortion. He aligns perfectly with the traditional Argentine right’s nationalistic Catholicism and its sympathy for heavy police repression to the point of supporting outright military dictatorship—sympathy echoed in Trump’s desire to deploy the US military(link is external) against domestic civilian protestors. And like Trump, Milei is quick to label as “communist” any political opponent who advocates income redistribution through taxation of the wealthiest or an industrial policy that does not favor carbon-based energy. Of course, the alliance between libertarian economics and authoritarian rule is an old story—the “Chicago Boys,” Latin American economists in thrall to Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economic thought, figured prominently in the regime of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet(link is external).
I’ve
had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question
of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t
do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad
that ran a jillion times. And so on.
These
conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask
incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that.
Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated
rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50
other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him?
And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a
fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic
respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as
president?
The
answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those
things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, “I give up.”
But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it’s the crucial one: Why
didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the
answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess.
The
answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News
(and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the
Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media
(formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon
Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the
news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of
slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to
win.
Let me say that again, in case it got lost: Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post
(which bent over backwards to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled
the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is
set by all the outlets I listed in the above paragraph. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often.
If
you read me regularly, you know that I’ve written this before, but I’m
going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who
are the only people in the world who have the power to do something
about this state of affairs—take some action.
I’ve
been in the media for three decades, and I’ve watched this happen from
the front row. Fox News came on the air in 1996. Then, it was an
annoyance, a little bug the mainstream media could brush off its
shoulder. There was also Rush Limbaugh; still, no comparison between the
two medias. Rush was talented, after a fashion anyway, but couldn’t
survive in a mainstream lane (recall how quickly the experiment of
having him be an ESPN color commentator went off the rails.) But in the
late 1990s, and after the Internet exploded and George W. Bush took
office, the right-wing media grew and grew. At first, the liberal media
grew as well along with the Internet, in the form of a robust
blogosphere that eventually spawned influential, agenda-setting web
sites like HuffPost. But billionaires on the right have invested far
more heavily in media in the last two decades than their counterparts on
the left—whose ad-supported, VC-funded operations started to fizzle out
once social media and Google starting eating up the revenue pie.
And
the result is what we see today. The readily visual analogy I use is:
Once upon a time, the mainstream media was a beachball, and the
right-wing media was a golf ball. Today, the mainstream media (what with
layoffs and closures and the near death of serious local news
reporting) is the size of a volleyball, and the right-wing media is the
size of a basketball, which, in case you’re wondering, is bigger.
This
is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has
more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger.
It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and
liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and
conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense
against your son coming home from school your daughter.
And
that is why Donald Trump won. Indeed, the right-wing media is why he
exists in our political lives in the first place. Don’t believe me? Try
this thought experiment. Imagine Trump coming down that escalator in
2015 with no right-wing media; no Fox News; an agenda still set, and
mores still established, by staid old CBS News, the House of Murrow, and
The New York Times.
“Norman Rockwell: American Freedom” is the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1943 depictions of FDR’s Four Freedoms.
Thankfulness radiates from American artist Norman Rockwell’s iconic holiday scene, Freedom from Want,
in which three generations gather around the dining table to partake in
a mid-afternoon meal. The gleaming bird, presented by the family
matriarch, is the crowning glory of this feast, accompanied by a covered
casserole dish, a plate of celery, cranberry sauce, and a bowl of
fruit. Despite this appetizing spread, the people seated at the table do
not gaze hungrily at the fare before them; instead, they appear to
marvel at one another, rejoicing in the love and togetherness that fill
the room. As the work’s title implies, there is no want.
Four freedoms The 1943 painting traces its inspiration back to the 1941 State of the Union address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which he outlined four democratic values that he considered essential to preserve: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These notions had neither an immediate nor resounding impact on the American public, but 11 months later their significance was transformed by the United States’ entrance into World War II.
Rockwell, a well-established illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post at the time, was eager to lend his talents to the ongoing war efforts. He first pitched his Four Freedoms
idea to the Graphic Division of the War Department’s Office of Facts
and Figures in May 1942, but the unit was unable to commit financially.
He then traveled to Washington, DC, and proposed the series to the
Office of War Information (OWI), only to be told, “The last war, you
illustrators did the posters. This war, we’re going to use fine arts
men, real artists.”
The difference between Democrats and Republicans: when Democrats lose, theycry; when Republicans lose, they attack the Capitol.
Misogyny, racism, sexism
Being a woman, especially a colored one, Harris was bound to be attacked in a misogynistic, racist, and sexist manner. Many of the comments by Republicans are emissions of pure hatred.
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican Rep., told CNN’s Manu Raju about Harris: “100% she is a DEI hire.” In simple English, Harris is unqualified to be either Vice President or President but got her position due to her race because Democrats have this philosophy of diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI.
Valentina Gomez, Republican Missouri secretary of state candidate who lost the race, said, “Kamala Harris is a little wh*re.” See more of this from many others here.
People from right wing media, so many of them, have (falsely) accused Harris of having drinking problem and claiming that they found her under influence at public events.
In 2024 election, Trump received about 3 million more votes than he did in 2020. Harris, on the other hand, got about 6.5 million votes less than Biden did in 2020. Four years back, Trump got over 7 million less popular votes than Biden.
After burning 1.5 billion dollars, Harris not only lost the election but her campaign is in debt $20 million! Democracy is not cheap. Actually nothing is cheap in the US empire, except human life. Bernie Sanders’ senior advisor Faiz Shakir, points out that Democrats just don’t want to analyze what the problem is, for them a 30-second ad is a “cure” for all the issues; so they just put out ads.
Being a woman of color, one expected that Harris would do better with colored people than white Biden, Nope. Her performance with minority voters was not impressive!
Harris got 83% black votes, i.e., 8% less than Biden’s 91% in 2020. On the other hand, Trump gained 8% more black votes in 2024 than he got in 2020.
56% Latinos voted for Harris, that is 7% less than Biden’s 63% in 2020.
She lost badly in Dearborn, Michigan, a Democratic stronghold, where 55% of the population is of Middle Eastern lineage. Arab leaders there had warned Harris that unless she unlinks herself from Biden’s support of Israeli war on Gaza, they won’t vote for her. Harris didn’t; Arabs didn’t vote for her.
In the 2020 election, Biden received 68.8% votes whereas Trump received 29.9% votes. In other words, Harris got over 32% less votes than Biden got in 2020. Trump gained over 12% more votes than he did in 2020. It was nice to see Stein getting good response in Dearborn.
Democrats won all the other elections in Dearborn, except the presidential one. During the campaign, Harris never visited the city, whereas Trump did.
Liz Crampton, writing in Politico, sums up Harris’ blunders:
Contrary to expectations that Harris will gain white women voters, 53% of white women voted for Trump. However, Harris is not an anomaly to lose white-women votes. LZ Granderson reminds us that other women candidates too, white and colored, have never gotten help from white women. The female candidates were: Carly Fiorina, Amy Klobuchar, Nikki Haley, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton. Granderson points out:
“The presence of Geraldine Ferraro on the 1984 Democratic ticket ‘made the South ours,’ said Edward Rollins, President Reagan’s political director.”
The reality seems that Trump is not going to solve their economic woes but will, instead, exasperate them because he is stuck on the idea of imposing tariffs <1> on countries, especially China, to encourage growth and protect US industries <2>. Also, the tariff money will offset some of the huge tax cuts he’ll give to his class, i.e., the very rich.
Nine percent more of those making $100,000 a year voted for Harris than they had for Biden. On the other hand, majority of those earning less than $50,000 preferred Trump.
Bill Clinton’s 1994 triangulation, that is, Democratic Party’s rightward move resulted in more prisons and more blacks ending up behind bars. His regime also embraced neoliberalism which gave free rein to capitalists. All these policies became a noose for Harris in 2024. Blame also goes to Barack Obama who had a golden chance to derail the capitalists’ reckless/ruthless looting spree, but he didn’t. In 2009, when he took power, instead of throwing them behind bars, he bailed them out. Biden is guilty too; he could have lifted Trump’s tariffs providing some relief to commoners but instead he continued, because it was effortless money in government coffers from voiceless and helpless people. Then there is Biden’s evil act of supporting war- in Ukraine and Gaza.
Billionaires
52 billionaires supported Trump whereas 83 billionaires were behind Harris. Did Harris’ billionaires lose or will Trump create trouble for them? No. The rich class, usually, never lose; they change sides as circumstances demand — it’s a very flexible class.
Even some reporters, who were critical of Trump and in turn were called names by Trump, are changing their critical tune to accommodate Trump during his second term. Husband-wife team, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida. NBC didn’t show Errol Morris’ new documentary, “Separated,” about Trump’s inhumane policy of separating family members entering the US at the border.
The billionaire class has not only money to throw for their candidates but, as Sam Pizzigati points out, also have social media to communicate directly with potential voters. A Forbes analysis, covering October 1, 2024 to November 5 period, found over 2,000 comments were posted, related to election, by richest 200 billionaires. The comments were read over 10 billion times.
Then there is billionaire John Morgan who supported Biden but didn’t endorse Harris because she would be “too far left.” Morgan is lying — Harris has not an iota of leftism in her. Morgan told Chris Cuomo that he would support Pelosi any time. Pelosi of the “Hizb al-Shaitan” Party is dangerous, much more so than Harris.
Morgan thinks Harris was chosen by Biden because he was mad at Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and others for forcing him to drop out of the race. Morgan tweeted on X:
“Joe Biden’s endorsement of Kamala is his fuck you to all[such as Obama, Pelosi] who pushed him out.”
Well, actually it has turned into “fuck you” to Democratic Party supporters who will now be at the mercy of the Trash Digger.
Another reason, for sure, is Obama’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016 election instead of his own Vice President Biden who wanted to be the next president.
“Well, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”
“There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of and I have been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”
Many people have criticized Harris for her answer pointing out that this was an exact moment where she lost the game; she was given a chance to define her program but instead she projected herself as Biden 2.0. Donald Trump attacked her during a rally by showing the above clip.
There are others who have defended Harris saying that, compared to Trump, she didn’t get enough time to campaign. Then there are people who say she couldn’t untie herself from Biden, to whom she was obligated for the nomination as the Democratic Party presidential candidate, and was thus careful not to deviate much from Biden’s policies with which she was associated for three and a half years.
Her lament about having less time is not very convincing. Harris had more than enough time, 107 days. ( The last election in England was announced on May 22, 2024, and was held on July 4. Election was over in 45 days.) So, she had a long period to communicate her message to the public. The problem was the relatability of the message to the common people, which she didn’t do — because she didn’t wanted to piss off her billionaire funders.
Democratic strategist James Carville said in US politics, Biden is the “most tragic figure;” “he knows that he f**ked up” by not quitting early and destroying chances of winning the presidency.
“But … if he would have in September of 2023 or August said that he wasn’t going to run, goddamn we would have won this election.” “And it wouldn’t have been that close because we would’ve had so many talented frickin’ people that were running.”
What if in September 2023, Biden would have nominated Harris. Let’s say another candidate was involved, would she/he have gone against the Israeli Lobby? Against the billionaire class? Against the warmongers? ….
Look at the Democratic Party after Trump’s win, no one is talking about the real causes of defeat. The time factor would have made no difference. It would been same outcome with another candidate, unless and until, the message was changed.
Kamala could have won
Being a woman candidate with so much support but then losing by 6.5 million votes, a big loss, says something about Harris’ strategy or lack of it.
There are ways she could have distanced herself from Biden in a friendly manner. She could have talked with Biden, taking him into confidence, and could have told him that despite our best efforts, in the polls, sometime Trump is ahead of us or at other times, the race is close; this requires that we change the strategy and also some policies, if we really want to win this election. She could have made Biden understand her dilemma; if he understood, fine, if not, she could have gone ahead on her own and enumerated things to the people:
If I am elected as your president, I would order, the very first day, Israel’s Netanyahu to stop war in Gaza where people have suffered so much horror. Netanyahu is warring because of our support.
I would invite Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky for a summit to resolve the war between them.
The money we’re giving to Israel and Ukraine will thus be saved and will be diverted to public welfare programs.
I am going to retain the services of FTC chairperson Lina Khan.
I am going to remove tariffs imposed by Trump on Chinese goods, many of them continued by our administration, that will bring down the prices of goods.
I am definitely going to introduce measures to further bring down inflation to help the common people.
She could have said so many more things. This would have endeared her to millions of people, including progressives; anti-war people; inflation-affected segment (a very large one). She would have gotten millions of more votes. She didn’t. She couldn’t. She’s more comfortable in designer suits and in the company of billionaires — who are her role models.
My youngest nephew said she never expressed her own thoughts; she was just parroting the Democratic machine’s philosophy.
The billionaire class and the Israel Lobby‘s power and influence is immense in the corridors of power in Washington DC, and in state governments. Most US politicians would rather lose elections than change the status quo, or annoy the Israel Lobby.
Kamala Harris proved one of those politicians who neither wanted to upset billionaires nor wanted to anger the Israel Lobby. She just wanted to preserve the status quo. Howard Schultz of Starbucks was planning to run in 2020 but then changed his mind. The aim was similar, not to disturb the status quo.
Kshama Sawant former Seattle City Councilmember and a founding member of Workers Strike Back, has summed up perfectly Harris’ loss to Trump:
Harris could have won the election if she would have come out against Israel’s genocidal war and would have shown genuine concern for the common people by making them believe she is their leader. She could have than managed to elicit all of Biden’s voters’ winning easily by more than 4 million votes, instead of losing by about 2.4 million votes.
Notes
<1> Liu Pengyu, Chinese embassy spokesperson in the US, warned Trump
Pengyu is correct. The increased inflation could hurt US consumers more. During his previous rein, Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods which China retaliated with its own tariffs on US products. The result was bad for the consumers. This time, experts point out that China is well prepared to face the trade war.
<2> The problem is that companies are addicted to cheap labor and none or minimal regulations. In 2011, Obama asked Apple’s late Steve Jobs to make Apple products in the US and thus create jobs; his reply was “those jobs aren’t coming back.” Neither are they going to come back now — unless Trump forces his billionaire friends and foes to invest in the US in manufacturing sector rather than minting free money in financial markets.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of immigrants a centerpiece of his plans for a second term, vowing to forcibly remove as many as 20 million people from the country. Historian Ana Raquel Minian, who studies the history of immigration, says earlier mass deportation programs in the 1930s and ’50s led to widespread abuse, tearing many families apart through violent means that also resulted in the expulsion of many U.S. citizens. “These deportations that Trump is claiming that he will do will have mass implications to our civil rights, to our communities and to our economy, and of course to the people who are being deported themselves,” says Minian. She also says that while Trump’s extremist rhetoric encourages hate and violence against vulnerable communities, in terms of policy there is great continuity with the Biden administration, which kept many of the same policies in place.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:
We end today’s show looking at Donald Trump’s threat to deport as many
as 20 million immigrants living in the United States. It’s a threat he
repeated on an almost daily basis on the campaign trail, including at
the Republican National Convention.
DONALD TRUMP:
That’s why, to keep our families safe, the Republican platform promises
to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our
country, even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower from
many years ago. You know, he was a moderate, but he believed very
strongly in borders. He had the largest deportation operation we’ve ever
had.
AMY GOODMAN:
We’re joined right now by a historian who’s closely studied past mass
deportation programs in the United States. Ana Raquel Minian is an
associate professor of history at Stanford University and the author of In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States Their recent piece for Dissent magazine is titled “Trump’s Deportation Model.”
So, Professor Minian, if you can start off by talking about Trump’s
victory, what that model is, and, you know, his famous motto, “Make
America great again”? Go back in history and talk about the mass
deportations of people in the United States.
ANA RAQUEL MINIAN: Thank you.
In many ways, we think that Trump is a new model, a person who
completely goes against the grain of American history in terms of
deportations, in terms of his treatment of immigrants. But as he noted
himself, that is absolutely not true.
What he was referring to when he spoke about Eisenhower was an
operation that occurred in 1954 titled Operation Wetback. And this was a
massive deportation campaign. The tactics were military tactics. They
brought tanks. They brought Border Patrol people all throughout the
border, airplanes. People were grabbed from their houses and taken to
the border, stopped outside of their jobs and taken to the border. Their
families didn’t know where they had been. It was a very cruel
operation. In the year 1954, the year of Operation Wetback, over 1
million people were deported. And this is the model that Trump says that
he is going to expand.
And it comes at huge costs to America, to its communities and to the people themselves. In the United States, when Operation Wetback happened, communities were destroyed. People were left without central members, without churchgoers, without breadwinners. Families came to. Families who relied on some of the folks who were deported had to either rely on welfare or find jobs immediately. Children were left without parents. Many jobs, many employers needed workers who were deported. It was bad for the U.S. economy. It was also bad for American civil rights. Many Mexican Americans, people who were born in the United States, could be walking through the streets and considered to be Mexican just because they, quote-unquote, “looked Mexican,” and their civil rights were not protected. Their constitutional rights were not protected.
The deportation of American citizens is something that we have seen
over and over again. For example, in the 1930s, there was also a massive
deportation campaign against Mexicans. It occurred, of course, during
the Great Depression. We estimate that from 350,000 to a million people
were deported and that over 60% of those were American citizens. These
deportations that Trump is claiming that he will do will have mass
implications to our civil rights, to our communities and to our economy,
and of course to the people who are being deported themselves.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:
And if you could explain? If you could put that in the context of more
recent history? In other words, how does Trump’s proposal — or, in fact,
what is actual policies that he implemented in the four years he was in
power, from 2016 — on immigration, how do they compare with what the
Biden administration did and what Kamala Harris said herself, since it
was also central to her, immigration border security was also central to
her campaign?
ANA RAQUEL MINIAN:
Absolutely. In many ways, the Biden administration also led an
extremely anti-immigrant movement. His administration first continued
the “return to Mexico” policy, continued Title 42. What did these
policies do? These policies meant that either asylum seekers could not
even apply for asylum in the United States, even though asylum is
something that we abide to because of our own national law and because
of international agreements, and it said that — and the “Remain in
Mexico” policy said that if we were to accept asylum seekers to apply
for asylum, they had to wait while their cases were adjudicated in
northern Mexico. While people waited in northern Mexico for either Title
42 to go away or for the “Remain in Mexico” policy to be allowed in,
people lived in terrible encampments where they were regularly raped,
tortured, mugged. It was absolutely brutal, the conditions there. In
fact, I once interviewed a woman who had fostered a child during Trump’s
zero-tolerance policy, the policy that Trump implemented that separated
children from their parents while in detention. And this woman, who had
fostered one of these little kids who was separated from his father
while crossing the border because of the Trump administration, said,
“Right now the Biden administration’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy is
basically a zero-tolerance policy in reverse.” Why? The conditions in
northern Mexico were so brutal that some parents made the
heart-wrenching decision of sending their children across the border,
because unaccompanied minors were the only ones who could get into the
United States while their parents had to wait in northern Mexico. Even
recently, the Biden campaign has dramatically reduced the number of
asylum seekers who can come into the country. These policies have been
devastating to asylum seekers and migrants.
Charities that provide aid to Palestinians are being off-loaded by the banks they work with IMAGE/ Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Photo
The practice of ‘de-risking’ by financial institutions has had a disproportionate impact on Muslim and immigrant-owned businesses, and they are being cut off from access to essential banking services.
As the people of Gaza face famine and the continued bombing of their
homes by Israel, numerous Muslim charities and organisations are
desperately trying to help keep Palestinians alive and help those in
need.
However, many of these organisations have found over the past year
that the banks they rely upon to help get this aid to the people of Gaza
do not want to work with charities that are run by Muslims – especially
if they are focused on Gaza. This has become referred to as “Muslim while banking”.
“We used to joke when we started our company that we had 99 problems
and payments wasn’t one of them, and that quickly changed,” says Amany
Killawi, co-founder of LaunchGood, a crowdfunding platform for Muslims.
“I do feel there’s additional scrutiny on Muslim organisations.”
LaunchGood is one of many organisations that are trying to help people from Gaza who have found their payment accounts closed for no discernible reason over the past year. Killawi says she thinks these banks are afraid of receiving bad publicity for working with Muslim organisations while the highly contentious debate over the future of Israel and Palestine goes on.
“You have two problems in our space: Most banks are very risk-averse.
They don’t want to support humanitarian work, even though it is all
registered charities in good standing that have gone through vetting,”
Killawi says. “The other issue you have is that there’s been a
politicisation of humanitarian aid.”
Killawi says pro-Israel actors will write “hit pieces” in the media
about various Muslim organisations that are sending aid to Gaza, and
this can cause banks to not want to work with them even if they’ve
ultimately done nothing wrong. These charities are sometimes wrongly
accused of aiding armed groups, and those in the financial sector may
not bother to investigate such claims.
A representation of the American flag with the statue of liberty
Trump’s victory is a desperate and historically understandable
gesture by US society to halt the decline of the imperial prosperity it
experienced throughout the 20th century and, above all, after the Second
World War. It is a desperate gesture, because society has to turn to a
president convicted by the US criminal justice system, who has performed
very badly during the Covid-19 pandemic (1.2 million deaths, many of
them avoidable), who has incited the storming of the Capitol on January
6, 2021, and who openly claims to be willing to eliminate the very
essence of US democracy – the limited powers of each sovereign body
(checks and balances) – in exchange for the promise that everything will
go back to the way it was before.
But it is also a historically understandable gesture because all
previous empires have declined and died due to the internal degradation
of their social, economic, political, and cultural life. If anything,
external enemies delivered the final coup de grace. It is difficult to
define what the decline of an empire consists of, when it begins and
when it ends. For example, the Roman Empire began to decline after the
death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD), but only collapsed three hundred
years later. Broad generalizations should be avoided on this subject,
which is prone to determinism and insensitive to historical
contingencies. I can imagine future historians worrying less about the
decline of the American empire than about how long the empire survived
the predictions of its decline.
When I talk about decline, I’m talking about the discourse of decline
as a political weapon for access to power. Trump’s main slogan, MAGA
(Make America Great Again), is clear in this respect. There is decline,
but it can be halted, even reversed. The popular vote given to Trump
shows that this discourse is convincing in the US today.
Halt the decline or fall into the abyss?
Social polarization, the concentration of wealth, the increase in
social inequality, the degradation of the quality of the political elite
and of democratic coexistence, the dominance of financial capital over
productive capital—these are all seen as signs of decline. Decline is a
structural but discontinuous process. It can be halted at times by the
same forces that are responsible for its decline.
Because of its rentier nature, financial capital was the first to
show signs of halting the decline. The day after Trump’s victory,
Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index announced that Donald Trump’s victory had
helped, overnight, to increase the fortunes of the 10 richest people in
the world. According to the index, these fortunes gained almost 64
billion dollars on Wednesday alone. It was the biggest daily increase
recorded since the index began in 2012. Elon Musk, the world’s richest
man, also saw his fortune grow the most. His net worth increased by 10%,
the equivalent of 26.5 billion dollars. He was one of the biggest
supporters of Trump’s campaign and was promised a position in the next
government; the fortune of Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, increased by
more than 3%, which means an increase of 7 billion dollars; Bill Gates,
owner of Microsoft, saw his wealth rise by 1.2% to 159.5 billion; Larry
Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, saw their wealth increase
by 3.6%, each reaching a fortune of around 150 billion.
