Friday, April 04, 2025

Trump's War On Everybody

The math is made up, the perceived grievances are just that — perceived — but just like everything he does, Trump’s global trade war makes sense according to the twisted logic that guides him.

He believes this will convince people the world over that he is the most powerful man on the planet.

How much actual power he will end up with remains to be seen, but he at least has proved that he is the world’s biggest bully. (Step aside, Vladimir Putin.)

The problem with Trump’s tariffs is they are predicated on the notion that the U.S. economy is a separate entity when in fact it is completely enmeshed in a globalized supply chain of trade deals that makes every country dependent on every other country.

But Trump is right that the U.S. is by far the biggest kid on the block economically, so the pain will be felt disproportionally depending where in the world you live. While U.S. consumers will pay more for stuff, people in the poorest countries will starve.

And with USAID disbanded, the U.S. under Trump will no longer be there to help alleviate the pain.

With one massive blow, Trump has just reversed 75 years of progress, albeit inadequate, to establish a more equitable distribution of resources worldwide. Although they remain far poorer than the rich countries, Third World nations have for the most part been making progress against the pervasive poverty that holds them back.

Meanwhile, Trump doesn’t care about that or anything else outside of his crazed quest for complete power over everyone and everything.

He won’t achieve that goal, but he will cause a lot of pain all over the world in the process.

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Thursday, April 03, 2025

Belong to Your Dreams

To succeed as an investigative journalist you may have to cultivate your hunter instinct. At first all you may have is a whiff of a possible story, nothing at all concrete.

But as you follow that scent, something deep inside takes over and you can tell when you are the trail of your prey, when the trail has gone cold, and how you can pick it up again.

It's great exercise for your brain, which is hard-wired for this kind of work from millennia of our species hunting as a means of survival.

During my career in journalism, many people told me they considered me a mentor, somebody they could approach for advice about the hunt, especially about which tactics to use and how to find the trail when it goes missing.

Of course, by asking they in turn became my mentors, whether they realized that or not. But I happily play the mentor role with people to this day. And I also know that something’s missing in the process -- both for them and for me. Because succeeding in one more hunt is not necessarily going to satisfy the hunter over the long run.

What I'm talking about is the damage you do to yourself along the way, and this goes way beyond journalism to anybody who pursues a career that involves pursuit.

Put simply, we want and we need more than that kind of success when inevitably we finally confront our own mortality.

When it comes to our private needs, a hunter is not going to find what (s)he needs by following her brain. Logical ability, pattern-recognition skill, the discipline to close the deal -- none of that will bring  happiness or peace.

To attain those, you have to listen to your heart. 

And once you confront this dilemma, you know longer can belong to your career or even the life you have built around it. You have to venture somewhere deeper, scarier, someplace that may feel like uncharted territory.

You have to belong to your dreams.

(The first version of this one was in 2021.)

HEADLINES:

VIDEO:

Hotel California I Eagles farewell I Melbourne tour 2005  

Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Career Beginnings


On an October day in 1971, I drove an old Chevy van up Fell Street to the Fillmore in San Francisco, on the final leg of a cross-county trek, and started my post-college journalism career after a two year hiatus in the Peace Corps.

A small group of us started a magazine called SunDance at 1913 Fillmore Street. It was a large-format magazine, with big graphics and long articles on the intersection of post-Sixties politics and culture.

Actually, it was pure-Sixties in its sensibility; we just didn't know yet that that era was finished. SunDance had an eclectic list of writers and artists, none more famous than John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who also gave us some money. When they came to visit the office and share stimulants with us, we knew we'd been blessed by the gods. 

Alas, none of us knew what a business plan was, and SunDance lasted all of three issues, though glorious issues they were.

A few years later, I landed across town at Rolling Stone, at 625 Third Street, where celebrities of every stripe poured through the office, and the stimulation never ended. Not being a music writer, I rarely hung out with musicians, but a small group of us formed an ad-hoc investigative unit on staff there, and we did some good work until the founder, Jann Wenner, decided to move the operation to New York.

That same year, 1977, Lowell Bergman, Dan Noyes and I started a non-profit, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and our first office was in the Broadway Building in downtown Oakland. Financing ourselves by a combination of foundation grants and contracts with media outlets, we produced newspaper and magazine articles at first, with books, television and radio documentaries coming later on. 

In my mind, the Center would be a place where reporters who worked hard could see their journalistic dreams come true. And for quite a few of us, they did.

(This is an excerpt from a much longer piece I first published in 2006.)

HEADLINES: 

  • Democrats hail major win as Susan Crawford delivers blow to Trump and Musk in Wisconsin (Guardian)

  • Democratic-backed Susan Crawford wins Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, cementing liberal majority (AP)

  • Since DOGE has taken over, the Social Security Administration has made plans to cut thousands of staff and downsize services. One of the biggest changes involves taking away the phone-call option for verifying enrollees’ identities. People will now need to apply for benefits online or in person at their nearest Social Security office, which isn’t convenient or even possible for many people, depending on their circumstances. [HuffPost]

  • The American consumer is on the ropes. Tariffs — and anxiety — could deliver the knockout blow (CNN)

  • Despite data showing tens of millions of Americans don’t have ready access to proof of citizenship documents, Republicans are now pushing hard to require those records nationwide for voter registration. They haven’t been able to make it happen yet. But two efforts, one each from the White House and congressional Republicans, have made the prospect of a national proof of citizenship requirement a real possibility. [HuffPost]

  • Sen. Cory Booker breaks Senate record with marathon 24-hour speech protesting Trump and Musk (ABC)

  • GOP lawmakers take aim at anti-Trump rulings, nationwide injunctions (WP)

  • Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time” (ProPublica)

  • Trump officials say they mistakenly deported Salvadoran migrant but are unable to rescue him (WP)

  • More Republican voters think Pete Hegseth should resign, poll finds (Guardian)

  • Waltz and staff used Gmail for government communications, officials say (WP)

  • Trump Wants Made in America, Musk Wants Robots. That’s a Problem for U.S. Jobs (Barron’s)

  • Stocks Mark Worst Month in Years as Trump’s Tariffs Loom (NYT)

  • A top European Union official warned the U.S. on Tuesday that the world’s biggest trade bloc “holds a lot of cards” when it comes to dealing with the Trump administration’s new tariffs and has a good plan to retaliate if forced to. President Donald Trump has promised to roll out taxes on imports from other countries on Wednesday. [AP]

  • Cantor Analysts Blast RFK Jr., Warn of ‘Dangerous Territory’ (Bloomberg)

  • If Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism, What Does? (WSJ)

  • Massive layoffs, purge of leadership underway at U.S. health agencies (WP)

  • Twenty-three states sue Trump administration over decision to rescind billions in health funding (Guardian)

  • Cutting Off NPR and PBS (NYT)

  • Trump task force to review Harvard’s funding after Columbia bows to federal demands (AP)

  • China staged military drills off Taiwan's north, south and east coasts as a "stern warning" against separatism and called Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te a "parasite," as Taiwan sent warships to respond to China's navyapproaching its shores. (Reuters)

  • Antarctic iceberg the size of Chicago breaks off, reveals thriving undersea ecosystem (ABC)

  • DeepMind is holding back release of AI research to give Google an edge (ArsTechnica)

  • If Anthropic Succeeds, a Nation of Benevolent AI Geniuses Could Be Born (Wired)

  • Ghibli effect: ChatGPT usage hits record after rollout of viral feature (Reuters)

  • The Miyazaki Maelstrom: OpenAI’s Ghibli Craze Signals a Troubling Future for Hollywood (Hollywood Reporter)

  • Are We Taking A.I. Seriously Enough? (New Yorker)

  • ChatGPT isn’t the only chatbot that’s gaining users (TechCrunch)

  • Radio City Music Hall banned him. A T-shirt and AI might be to blame. (WP)

  • Highway Patrol Officer Asks Pete Hegseth To Carry Out Drone Strikes In Straight Line (The Onion)

 

Tuesday, April 01, 2025

Trump's 'Third' Term


(Illustration by my friend, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist 
Mark Fiore.)

Once again, Donald Trump is speaking in code to his insurrection-minded followers. This time, it is to prepare them for the possibility of another January 6th-type riot to keep him in power beyond 2028, when his term ends.

Trump knows very well that the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution prevents him from having a third term. He also knows the scenario floated by some on the right under which J.D. Vance would run for President and Trump for V-P and then Vance would resign after getting elected — all of that is prevented by the 12th Amendment.

Furthermore, Trump knows that to overturn one of those amendments would require a vote by two-thirds of the states and that that simply is not going to happen. So why all the noise about a third term?

It’s a signal to the same crowd who heard his “stand back and stand by” instruction during the 2020 campaign.

I believe the most likely scenario for Trump to retain power is a national emergency of some sort — probably a terrorist attack, perhaps engineered by Trump himself — allowing him to declare a permanent state of martial law and suspend elections.

But in case that set of circumstances fails to materialize, Trump wants his militias to be ready to act again to keep him in power. 

Is this merely a paranoid fantasy? I hope so, but the coded messages Trump is sending suggest otherwise.

(Please consider subscribing to Mark Fiore’s Substack page.)

HEADLINES:

Monday, March 31, 2025

Anger Man

Donald Trump is angry. Stung by the negative publicity surrounding Signalgate, and frustrated by losses in the courts, he spent the weekend making threats and once again declaring that he intends to remain in office beyond the limit on his four-year term.

He basically is acting like the purported dictator he’s long wanted to be.

This is a preview of what’s to come from this guy. He’s faced almost no opposition during his first two months in office, but now the going is getting rougher, the only thing he knows how to do is talk tough.

Besides threatening to invade Greenland, bomb Iran, and even raise tariffs on his buddy Vladimir Putin, Trump openly discussed firing his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and pronounced he “couldn’t care less” what happened to car prices due to his trade war.

Meanwhile, even the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has come out in open criticism of embattled defense secretary Pete Hegseth, whose days are almost certainly numbered. No, it was not a good weekend for Trump and one thing is for sure.

There is more of this kind of trouble for him to come.

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Sunday, March 30, 2025

Sunday Mix

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated. —Maya Angelou

HEADLINES:

Saturday, March 29, 2025

Meaning in Life


 
(Kater Begemot/wiki commons)

When it comes to the physical evolution of the human species over time, our bodies — including our brains — have changed very little. Slowly it seems we get a bit bigger, a lot heavier and somewhat less hairy.

What about our behavior? Are we getting smarter?

Well, we’ve gotten more sophisticated in using tools, building nests, crafting comfortable clothing, inventing vehicles that let us zoom around the planet, and establishing routines that are meant to optimize pleasure.

We’ve improved our medical knowledge and expanded our lifespans.

And we’ve been able to accomplish all these things largely by inventing technologies.

But are we happier?

Technology inherently is neither good nor bad. It is officially neutral like Switzerland, although neutrality also is a relative concept. But if there are imperatives to the evolution of our species they probably include a technological component, i.e., we are going to continue to experiment and develop technologies that extend our reach — physically, mentally and maybe even emotionally.

Artificial intelligence and robotics are the latest examples of this imperative. No government or religion seems able to stop this process.

But technological progress is also inherently disorienting and disruptive. It was becoming commonplace several years ago to describe each new upheaval of our traditional industries in terms that it had just been disrupted by the internet, or by a digital device, or a software application.

Suddenly it seemed that all of the middlemen, all of the intermediaries who held our society together were being thrown out of work. The technical term is that they were getting disintermediated.

Travel agents? Disintermediated.

Secretaries? Disintermediated.

Taxi drivers? Disintermediated.

Publishers? Disintermediated.

Finally, in 2025, this process has reached the federal government in the form of Elon Musk’s DOGE.

Government workers? Disintermediated. Meanwhile, the disrupters always ask the same rhetorical question. Why do we need all these people anyway?

I know the answer.

It turns out that we get something pretty valuable from the intermediaries. Something we need every bit as much as food, water, clothing, and blankets when it’s cold..

We need to be cared for; we need to be taken care of now and then; we need to be helped. At the same time, we need to be able to take care of the people we love. In our jobs, we need to be able to feel that our work matters.

It’s what gives our lives meaning. We need to feel we are helping makes things better, not worse. And a lot of the fired federal workers fit into that category.

That is one of the many things that the richest man in the world just doesn’t understand.

HEADLINES:

  • The forgotten history of the U.S.’s Cold War presence in Greenland (WP)

  • JD, Usha Vance visit Greenland as Trump administration eyes territory (CBS)

  • Danish foreign minister scorns 'tone' of JD Vance in Greenland, Denmark comments (France24)

  • Trump administration moves to formally abolish USAID (WP)

  • Trump Deportation Fight Reaches Supreme Court (NYT)

  • Trump’s Giant New Car and Truck Tax (WSJ)

  • Trump wants to reshape the Smithsonian. Who funds the vast institution? (WP)

  • Trump’s executive order on Smithsonian targets funding for programs with ‘improper ideology’ (AP)

  • The Double Standard at the Center of the Signal Debacle (Atlantic)

  • A federal judge on Thursday said he will order the Trump administration to preserve records of a Signal text thread in which senior national security officials discussed sensitive plans for a U.S. military strike against Yemen's Houthis. [AP]

  • I visited Social Security offices to see if there was any DOGE-fueled confusion (Business Insider)

  • Myanmar quake death toll passes 1,600, as junta lets in foreign rescuers (Reuters)

  • Israel strikes Beirut for first time since Hezbollah ceasefire (Guardian)

  • Earth’s storage of water in soil, lakes and rivers is dwindling. And it’s especially bad for farming (AP)

  • Stanford, Cal and UCLA investigated in Trump's anti-DEI campaign (SFGate)

  • Top US vaccine official resigns over RFK Jr’s ‘misinformation and lies’ (Guardian)

  • Kennedy Turns to a Discredited Vaccine Skeptic for Autism Study (NYT)

  • Texas Never Wanted RFK Jr.’s Unproven Measles Treatment (Atlantic)

  • Hillary Clinton warns Trump ‘stupidity’ will leave US ‘feeble and friendless’ (Guardian)

  • Unburying the Remains of the Third Reich (NYT)

  • Viral Studio Ghibli-style AI images showcase power – and copyright concerns – of ChatGPT update (CNN)

  • How Artificial Intelligence Reasons (NYT)

  • ChatGPT's new image generator blurs copyright lines (Axios)

  • New Law Requires Texans To Show ID To Buy Phallic Foods (The Onion)