Failure of America’s Two Parties
The U.S. political process, which fancies itself the world’s “gold standard,” is
ready to foist on the American people two disdained candidates, Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton, raising profound doubts about the two-party system, writes Nat
Parry.
By Nat Parry
For generations, the U.S. public has largely accepted that the two-party system
was the best we could hope for: while perhaps not perfect, this particular brand
of democracy – dominated since the 1800s by the Democratic and Republican
parties – is certainly more democratic than the one-party communist
dictatorships of China or North Korea, and is probably more stable than the
multi-party parliamentary systems seen in Europe.
Yet, many of us struggle every election cycle with a nagging feeling that there
is something wrong with a system that limits electoral choices to just two
political parties but provides choices on consumer products so expansive as to
border on bewildering. How is it, we wonder, that when we go into a voting booth
our choices are limited to “A” and “B” but when we walk into a grocery store, we
must choose between 15 varieties of toothpaste?
As the late great historian Howard Zinn once sardonically said, “we have two
parties, and this proves we have democracy, though two parties is only one more
than one party!”
It’s a good point, actually. While a one-party state would not be considered
democratic by any standards, somehow the U.S. two-party system – with only one
more party than a one-party system – is touted as the crown jewel of the
world’s oldest constitutional republic. But despite misgivings over the lack of
choice in the general election, the two-party system’s saving grace has long
been the ability of voters to influence the nomination process of these two
parties.
Through the primary process, defenders of the two-party system point out, the
people are empowered to determine the leaders of the parties and therefore
shouldn’t complain when the choices end up being between a giant douche and a
turd sandwich, as “South Park” so eloquently described the situation in a
brilliantly subversive critique of Election 2004.
That has always made some degree of sense, deflating criticisms of the two-party
system and enhancing its democratic legitimacy to large degree, but what has
transpired in Campaign 2016 significantly calls into question some of the
underlying assumptions of this argument. While the trends that we have seen this
year may have existed in previous election cycles, the impacts that they are
having in plain sight are leading many to question the basic legitimacy of this
system.
First of all, the ability of party elites to manipulate the process by placing a
“thumb on the scale” has more clearly come into focus, highlighting the
unfairness to “populists” who don’t enjoy support from powerful party insiders.
On the Democratic side, before a primary vote had even been cast, Bernie Sanders
was severely disadvantaged by the support that so-called “superdelegates” had
expressed for his rival Hillary Clinton, with the media routinely reporting her
superdelegate advantage despite the fact that these individuals had not voted
yet – which only happens at the party convention in the summer.
Insisting on Clinton’s Inevitability
At the time of the first “Super Tuesday” in early March, the race was a dead
heat in terms of pledged delegates (i.e. the delegates selected by regular
voters in primaries and caucuses), but because Clinton had already racked
up support from at least 459 superdelegates (the handful of party insiders who
are given a disproportionate voice in the nominating process at the Democratic
National Convention), she was routinely reported as being ahead of Sanders in
the overall delegate count by 503-70.
So, from the beginning, Clinton effectively had what appeared as a seemingly
insurmountable lead in the delegate count. This contributed to what was always
Clinton’s main advantage: the perceived inevitability of her candidacy as the
Democratic Party’s anointed nominee and as the natural successor to President
Barack Obama. Sanders has had to struggle the whole campaign season against this
deficit in both delegate count and public perception, a task that was not helped
by a media establishment systematically sidelining him.
Anecdotal evidence from the beginning of the campaign seemed to indicate that
there was something amiss when it came to media coverage, with Sanders’ campaign
rallies treated as non-events while other candidates’ rallies were given
prominent coverage on the networks.
Over a year ago, in an analysis for Media Matters for America, Eric Boehlert
noted that despite Sanders’ campaign rallies drawing thousands of people –
making them some of the largest campaign events of 2015 by either Democrats or
Republicans – the media chose not to cover them as major news events.
According to Boehlert, writing in May 2015, “At a time when it seems any
movement on the Republican side of the candidate field produces instant and
extensive press coverage, more and more observers are suggesting there’s
something out of whack with Sanders’ press treatment. And they’re right.”
When Sanders did get reported on in the media, much of the coverage portrayed
him as outside the mainstream of American politics, or viewed him solely
through the prism of Hillary Clinton.
“It’s all about how his campaign might affect her strategy and her possible
policy shifts, instead of how his campaign will affect voters and public
policy,” Boehlert wrote. “On the Republican side, candidates are generally
covered as stand-alone entities, not as appendages to a specific rival.”
Discounting Sanders
Beyond that, much of the early coverage unequivocally declared that Sanders had
no chance of winning, an odd role for the media to play in covering a nomination
campaign. The press, after all, is supposed to report on the nomination process,
not determine – or predict – the nomination process.
Yet, this is what a few prominent news outlets have had to say when Sanders
announced his candidacy: “Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be
president,” according to the Washington Post last year. “He Won’t
Win,” said Newsweek, “So Why Is Bernie Sanders Running?” MSNBC: “Why Bernie
Sanders matters, even if he can’t win.”
The coverage went on like that throughout 2015, with Sanders systematically
ignored and marginalized by the mainstream media, with an independent media
analysis finding late last year that the major networks’ evening news broadcasts
between January and November 2015 devoted just ten minutes to the Sanders
campaign. Meanwhile, these same broadcasters (ABC, NBC and CBS) devoted a
whopping 234 minutes to Donald Trump’s campaign.
By April 2016, the disparity in coverage had grown too much for Sanders
supporters to handle, and hundreds of protesters took to the streets outside CNN
offices in Hollywood to voice their frustration with the imbalanced reporting.
“There should be fair and equal coverage for all presidential candidates,” said
one protester at the rally.
“Stop showing Trump so much,” said another. “Stick to the issues.”
Indeed, while the media throughout the primary season has essentially treated
the Democratic race as a non-story in which Clinton was expected to easily
clinch the nomination, the Republican race was seen as a titillating cliffhanger
in which every movement and change in the polls – not to mention every crazy
tweet sent out by Trump at three in the morning – was given headline coverage.
Ultimately, Trump accounted for 43 percent of all Republican coverage on network
news in 2015, out of an initial field of 17 candidates. That means that the
other 16 candidates competed for just over half of the coverage. And this
doesn’t even count all of Trump’s appearances on morning programs and Sunday
talk shows, which would increase his airtime exponentially. With this kind of
saturation coverage, is it any wonder that he emerged as the top GOP contender?
Despised Nominees
Largely as a result of this grossly disproportionate and unfair media emphasis,
not to mention a wildly chaotic and arbitrary primary
process riddled with irregularities, we appear to be ending up with two
candidates who are more or less despised by the general public. The two frontrunners are the most unpopular candidates seen in a generation, or to put it
into numbers, Hillary Clinton has a 57 percent unfavorability rating in a recent
Quinnipiac poll, while Trump gets a 59 percent unfavorability rating.
Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said,
“American voters don’t like either one of the front-runners. The question could
be who we dislike the least.”
Perhaps this is why nine out of ten Americans express a lack of confidence in
the electoral system and nine out of ten young people want to see other
alternatives on the ballot in addition to the Democrats and Republicans.
According to a survey by Data Targeting, which called the results “shocking,” 55
percent of Americans favor having an independent or third party presidential
candidate to consider this year, in addition to the two traditional party
choices. Of those 29 years of age and younger, 91 percent expressed support for
additional choices.
Another survey, conducted May 12-15 by the Associated Press-NORC Center for
Public Affairs Research and published May 31, reported that a full 90 percent of
voters lack confidence in the country’s political system while 70 percent said
they feel frustrated about the 2016 presidential election and 55 percent
reported feeling “helpless.” Forty percent went so far as to say that the twoparty structure is “seriously broken.”
“It’s kind of like a rigged election,” Nayef Jaber, a 66-year-old Sanders
supporter from San Rafael, California, told AP. “It’s supposed to be one man one
vote. This is the way it should be.”
According to the survey, 53 percent of voters say that the Democrats’ use of
superdelegates is a “bad idea” while just 17 percent support the system.
Moreover, most Americans say that neither political party represents the views
of ordinary voters. Just 14 percent say the Democratic Party is responsive to
the opinions of the average voter while eight percent say the same about the
Republicans.
Lost Credibility
Regardless of one’s political views, the historic nature of these numbers should
be appreciated, and in some ways may eclipse any other storyline of Election
2016. Basically, the two-party system is losing credibility in an unprecedented
fashion, accelerating a general trend that has been growing in America for
several years.
For example, five years ago, a Gallup poll found an all-time high of 40 percent
of Americans identifying as independents. In 2014, a new record was set,
with Gallup finding that an average 43 percent of Americans identify politically
as independent, compared to just 30 percent who call themselves Democrat and 26
percent who identify as Republican.
Another Gallup poll last year found that 60 percent of Americans say that a
third major political party is needed because the Republican and Democratic
parties “do such a poor job” of representing the American people.
But despite this growing trend in public opinion rejecting the two-party system,
the Democrats and Republicans enjoy a number of institutional advantages within
the U.S. electoral system that protect the status quo.
In addition to the challenges that minor parties face in securing a plurality of
votes needed to gain representation in the U.S.’s winner-take-all system (as
opposed to proportional representation systems – used in many countries – which
grant representation to any party passing a threshold of, say, five percent),
there are several additional obstacles that tilt the playing field in favor of
the Democrats and Republicans, reinforcing their dominance and their privileged
status.
While the two main parties are guaranteed ballot access in all 50 states, for
example, competing parties must meet rigorous requirements to even be listed on
the ballots, requirements that vary considerably from state to state.
Further, the Democrats and Republicans benefit from taxpayer subsidies in the
form of public funds to hold party conventions and private primary elections,
which in many cases exclude independents from voting. In 2012, taxpayers shelled
out over $600 million for party conventions and primaries, even in states where
they are not permitted to vote in the primaries due to registration
requirements.
Then there is the massive funding advantage enjoyed by the two establishment
parties, which raised over a billion dollars each in the last presidential
election. Compare that to just under a million dollars raised by the Green Party
in 2012 and $2.5 million raised by the Libertarian Party.
Also, the limited public financing system that exists in the United States only
provides funds to parties that receive at least five percent of the popular vote
in the previous election, which no third party achieved in 2012. That means that
while the major party nominees are eligible to receive up to $96 million in
federal funding, third parties receive nothing.
Shutting Out Independents
Further entrenching the two-party system, independents and third parties have no
representation on the Federal Elections Commission or Boards of Elections, which
are instead controlled by the Democrats and Republicans, and therefore have no
voice in setting or enforcing rules of the game. Perhaps even more
significantly, the two main parties enjoy a near monopoly of media coverage, and
in presidential elections, successfully collude to exclude third party
candidates from televised debates.
Despite all of these disadvantages, however, the two biggest third parties – the
Greens and Libertarians – are receiving considerable support this year, with a
recent survey finding Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, polling at
10 percent. This is roughly twice as high as Johnson’s poll numbers from the
2012 election cycle.
Green presidential candidate Jill Stein was not included in that survey, but
with her campaign having succeeded in getting her onto the ballot in states with
290 electoral votes – more than enough to win the presidency – her supporters
are calling on pollsters to include her in future surveys.
“With polls showing a majority of Americans want an alternative to
Clinton/Trump, there’s no way to justify not including Jill Stein in
presidential polls,” states an online petition.
Indeed, with historic and unprecedented numbers of Americans rejecting the twoparty system as a whole, it is becoming increasingly conspicuous for the media
to pretend that this election is just another politics-as-usual affair in which
we are expected to happily choose between “A” and “B.” This is especially the
case this year when both major party candidates are tainted by criminal
investigations and lawsuits.
According to one tally, Trump has been named in at least 169 federal lawsuits
over the years, including the ongoing litigation against his for-profit school,
“Trump University,” described by the conservative National Review magazine as a
“massive scam.” One of the lawsuits against Trump is going after the presumptive
nominee through a provision of the RICO Act, which could lead to criminal
charges being filed.
Meanwhile, Clinton is the subject of an FBI investigation and has just
been reprimanded by the State Department’s Inspector General who found that she
did not comply with the agency’s policies on records in her use of private email
server while Secretary of State. She was also criticized for failing to turn
over records promptly and for refusing to be interviewed for an investigation
into the matter – possible violations of the Federal Records Act and other
criminal statutes.
In other words, we are heading into a general election in which the two major
party candidates are faced with significant legal problems and could conceivably
be facing prison time, and yet for the most part, the media is continuing to
present the two-party system as the only game in town, despite the growing
indications that Americans are hungry for alternatives.
How this all plays out remains to be seen, but one thing for sure is that this
is no politics-as-usual election, and those pundits and pollsters who continue
to discount the role of third parties do so at their own peril.
Nat Parry is the co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W.
Bush. [This story originally appeared at Essential Opinion,
https://essentialopinion.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/campaign-2016-the-two-party-sy
stem-loses-credibility/ ]
Declaring Clinton’s Premature Victory
Exclusive: The mainstream media has run out screaming headlines and saturation
TV coverage on AP’s tally that Hillary Clinton has nailed down the Democratic
nomination, but the claims are misleading, reports Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
Hillary Clinton needs to win 613 of the remaining 775 pledged delegates to
clinch the Democratic Party nomination for president. That’s the math, though
not what you’ve been seeing in the corporate media’s headlines.
With Clinton neck-and-neck with Sen. Bernie Sanders in the opinion polls for
Tuesday’s California primary, where 475 pledged delegates are at stake, it’s
very unlikely she’ll have the required 2,383 pledged delegates going into the
Philadelphia convention next month. That means Clinton will need the votes of
super-delegates, those unelected, pre-selected, party insiders chosen
specifically to prevent a grass-roots insurgent candidate like Sanders.
By a large margin, Clinton leads Sanders in super-delegates who have indicated
how they intend to vote. But unlike pledged delegates, bound by the will of the
voters, the super-delegates can change their minds right up to the convention
night when they must cast their ballot.
That is not what the Associated Press misleadingly reported on Tuesday however.
It has prematurely declared Clinton the Democratic nominee, even though she’s
short of the required pledged delegates. AP and other corporate media are making
a huge assumption that the super-delegates will stick with her until
Philadelphia.
But Sanders has several strong arguments to get them to change their minds.
First, he does much better against Republican nominee Donald Trump than Clinton
does in every poll. Second, Clinton could still be indicted by the Justice
Department before the convention for her mishandling of classified information
on her private email server.
Third, at this point in the 2008 Democratic race, Clinton also trailed Barack
Obama by a large number of pledged delegates, yet she refused to leave the race.
She even floated the possibility that Obama could be assassinated, invoking the
June 1968 slaying of Robert F. Kennedy on the night he’d won the California
primary. There’s probably more chance of Clinton’s indictment than there was of
Obama’s assassination.
Fourth, Sanders has very little baggage. There are virtually no scandals in his
past. There is little that Trump’s opposition research can dig up on him
compared to the library full of dirt they will get on Clinton.
Fifth, in a year of anti-Establishment fervor on both left and right it seems
very risky for the Democrats to put up a quintessential Establishment figure
like Clinton to face the populist Trump.
Given these facts, Sanders would be foolish not to lobby the super-delegates
until that night in Philadelphia. And that’s why he’s staying in the race. Not
because he’s bitter. Not because he wants to damage Clinton. But because he
thinks he can still win.
You wouldn’t know it from corporate media, however. It smears Sanders with both
news and opinion pieces that portray him as an angry, old egomaniac who
stubbornly is staying in the race only because he wants to hurt Clinton out of
vindictiveness, and thus help Trump. And it tries to portray all his supporters
as angry and violent, ready to strike respectable people at anytime.
Even if he suffers a blowout loss in California – possibly made more likely by
the AP’s report on Clinton clinching the nomination – Sanders has several strong
arguments with the super-delegates that Democrats would have a much better
chance with him in November. But his biggest obstacle may be something even more
important to the Democratic establishment than winning the White House:
protecting their privilege.
Sanders has stirred up masses of people who pose a threat to those privileges.
His proposed policy changes could cut into the Democratic establishment’s
entrenched interests. Trump’s rhetoric on the right has made similar appeals to
suffering workers and formerly middle-class Americans. But Trump is a demagogue
exploiting that sentiment, while Sanders may genuinely try to make reforms that
could challenge the moneyed elite.
Sanders is a greater threat to elite Democrat’s class privilege than the
billionaire Trump is. Trump is a better bet not to mess with the status quo and
may even push for more government concessions to the rich.
Therefore it is unlikely, short of a Clinton indictment, that the superdelegates will listen to Sanders. And if she is indicted, there’s Establishment
talk of inserting Joe Biden or John Kerry as the last-minute nominee.
And that could bring a self-fulfilling prophecy by establishment Democrats of a
violent reaction in Philadelphia.
Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990.
He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the
Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other
newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter
at @unjoe.
Israel Covets Golan’s Water and Now Oil
Exclusive: Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is defiantly asserting permanent
control over the occupied Golan Heights, a determination strengthened by
Israel’s extraction of water and now possibly oil from the land, writes Jonathan
Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
On June 1, Israeli police burst into the home of an Israeli journalist,
confiscated his computer and camera, and arrested him for “incitement to
violence and terrorism.” His employer, Iran’s government broadcasting company,
said the Druze reporter had antagonized the Netanyahu government with his hardhitting reports on Israel’s plans for “stealing” oil from the Golan Heights, a
460-square-mile region of Syria seized by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967.
Such reports come at a particularly sensitive time for Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and other right-wing Israeli politicians, who are seeking to take
advantage of the ongoing war in Syria to cement Israel’s control over the Golan.
Their allies include such influential Americans as Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney,
former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers,
all of whom are backing an oil-drilling operation of doubtful legality in the
occupied region.
Besides its strategic value and potential oil, the Golan Heights is a major
source of Israel’s fresh water and agricultural products and a leading tourist
destination. If exploratory drilling unlocks as much oil as some geologists
predict, the occupied region could turn Israel into “an energy powerhouse.”
Ethnic Cleansing
Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, in violation of the United Nations’
1967 General Assembly Resolution 242, which called for the eventual withdrawal
of Israeli forces from the occupied territories. Rejecting Israel’s claim, the
U.N. Security Council immediate declared the attempted annexation “null and void
and without international legal effect.” Within a few months, however, the
controversy was overshadowed by the international crisis following Israel’s
massive invasion of Lebanon.
As recently as January 2010, the U.N. General Assembly once again reaffirmed the
illegality of Israel’s claim to the land and called on Israel to desist from
“changing the physical character, demographic composition, institutional
structure and legal status of the occupied Syrian Golan and, in particular, to
desist from the establishment of settlements” in the area. But that demand came
much too late to stop Israel’s systematic land grab.
The respected Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported in 2010 that “Neglect and ruin
are everywhere. . . . Apart from the four Druze villages at the foot of Mount
Herman, [all Syrian villages] were all destroyed, in most cases down to their
foundations. . . . Most were wiped off the face of the earth in a systematic
process of destruction that began right after Israel’s occupation of the Golan.”
Challenging the myth that the local population simply fled during the 1967 war,
the newspaper reported that the Israeli Defense Forces systematically expelled
villagers and then began destroying their homes. An Israeli commander estimated
that 20,000 civilians “were evacuated or left when they saw that the villages
were starting to be destroyed by bulldozers and they had nowhere to return to.”
Census figures indicate that more than 100,000 Syrians lost their homes and
property.
Israel has no intention of ever letting them return, even if that means putting
aside peace with Syria forever. Instead, Israel today has entrenched more than
20,000 of its own settlers in the Golan. Last year, the right-wing minister and
Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett announced a five-year goal of spending
hundreds of millions of shekels to settle 100,000 more Israelis on the mountain.
Precious Water
This April, Prime Minister Netanyahu hosted a special cabinet meeting on the
Heights, calling it “an integral part of the state of Israel in the new era.” He
vowed that the region “will remain in the hands of Israel forever” rather than
returning to “Syrian occupation.”
As usual, the U.N. Security Council rejected the Israeli claims, to no practical
effect.
Israeli leaders acknowledge that a major reason they will never hand back the
Golan Heights is economic: it provides precious fresh water to Israel.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs states flatly, “The region’s strategic
importance derives from its location, overlooking the Israeli Galilee region,
and from the fact that it supplies Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) – a major
source of water for Israel – with one third of its water.”
But there is another economic motive driving Israeli policy, as the recently
arrested Druze journalist had reported: the smell of oil.
Last fall, an Israeli geologist working for the American company Genie Oil and
Gas reported evidence of a huge oil find in the Golan Heights — with the
potential to supply billions of gallons of crude, enough to make Israel a net
oil exporter. Rejecting complaints by environmental groups, Israeli authorities
granted the company a two-year extension of its right to carry out test drilling
on 150-square-miles of occupied Syrian land.
Genie Oil and the Israel Lobby
Genie Oil is no ordinary drilling company. Its American CEO, Howard Jonas, is a
major campaign donor to Netanyahu. The chairman of its Israeli subsidiary, Brig.
Gen. Efraim Eitam, is a former leader of the National Religious Party who called
for expelling Palestinians from the occupied territories and murdering their
leaders.
He said of the Palestinian people, “These are creatures who came out of the
depths of darkness. It is not by chance that the State of Israel got the mission
to pave the way for the rest of the world, to militarily get rid of these dark
forces.”
The company’s shareholders include at least two billionaire supporters of
Israel: multinational media magnate Rupert Murdoch and retired investment banker
Lord Jacob Rothschild (whose family foundation donated the Knesset and Supreme
Court buildings to Israel).
Murdoch and Rothschild also sit on Genie Oil’s well-connected “strategic
advisory board.” Its chair, Michael Steinhardt, is a prominent Wall Street hedge
fund manager and a major financial backer of the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, a hawkish, neoconservative think tank noted for its fear-mongering
against Palestinian leaders as well as Syria and Iran.
Other advisory board members include former Vice President Richard Cheney; James
Woolsey, former CIA Director and chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies Leadership Council who has called for tougher U.S. military
intervention against Syria; former Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who sponsored
the U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation bill; former Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Potential for Regional Conflict
Genie’s drilling in the Golan is part of an energy boom that is transforming the
outlook for Israel’s economy. Israel has raised “consternation” in Jordan by
claiming a major oil reservoir near the Dead Sea, potentially worth hundreds of
millions of dollars.
Israel has also discovered enormous reserves of natural gas off the coast of
Israel and Gaza in the Mediterranean Sea, and is reportedly close to signing a
huge gas export agreement with Turkey. The latter deal could undercut long-term
plans by Iran and Syria to export gas to Europe.
A report by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, released in
December 2014, noted that recent energy discoveries put Israel “ahead of all
East Mediterranean countries in terms of gas reserves and resource
prospectivity.”
It warned, however, that conflicts over disputed ownership of oil and gas fields
could lead to a regional war between Israel, Lebanon, Syria and other countries.
It cited Israel’s drilling in the Golan Heights, in particular, as creating the
“potential for another armed conflict between the two parties should substantial
hydrocarbon resources be discovered.”
The report added ominously, “U.S. security and military support for its main
allies in the case of an eruption of natural resource conflict in the East
Mediterranean may prove essential in managing possible future conflict.”
Owing to Israel’s expulsion of most Golan residents in 1967, that occupied land
rarely makes the news. Ever since the Six Day War, however, Israel’s conquest
mentality has subverted peace negotiations with Syria. If Israel now succeeds in
tapping commercial oil reserves underneath the Golan, its illegal occupation may
once again fan the flames of regional conflict.
If the United States does help “manage” that conflict by supporting its ally, no
one should be surprised — but it will represent a terrible dereliction of
America’s duty to uphold international law and to seek a just and peaceful
solution in the Middle East.
Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international affairs,
including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International
Drug Traffic (Stanford University Press, 2012). Some of his previous articles
for Consortiumnews were “Risky Blowback from Russian Sanctions”; “Neocons Want
Regime Change in Iran”; “Saudi Cash Wins France’s Favor”; “The Saudis’ Hurt
Feelings”; “Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Bluster”; “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess”;
and “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.” ]