Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for research in cosmology and exoplanets

Bryan Dyne

The latter half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st have witnessed an immense growth in humanity’s understanding of cosmology and planetary astronomy, shifting them from fields that were based on either speculation or limited data to those that were decisively placed within a rigorously scientific framework. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics honors James Peebles, Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz for their integral roles in understanding the Earth’s place in the cosmos.

James Peebles, who was born in Canada in 1935, began his career in cosmological studies while a graduate student, and then professor, at Princeton University. Since 1964, he has focused on what is known as physical cosmology, the study of the large-scale structures and evolutionary dynamics of the universe. His work has spanned the breadth of the field, including predicting the cosmic microwave background, leading the work to understand the structure of galactic clusters, making several contributions on the synthesis of elements just after the Big Bang and working to understand dark matter and dark energy.

A sketch of the evolution of the universe, with an unknown beginning on the left, the cosmic microwave background and the development of galaxies in the middle, leading to a darkening cosmos on the right (Credit: Nobel Prize Institute)

Modern cosmology is based on Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which unified space and time as a single dynamic entity, spacetime, which is warped by the local presence of mass and energy. Using those equations, Soviet mathematician Alexander Friedman developed a theory for an expanding universe in 1922, which was confirmed by US astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1929. This led to the realization that if the universe is expanding, it must have originated as a single immensely hot and incredibly dense point. We now call this moment the Big Bang.

These early studies led to further developments in the 1940s which attempted to uncover why protons, neutrons and electrons formed into mostly just hydrogen and helium in the early universe and why matter clumps together to form galaxies and galactic clusters. Astronomers realized that these were related, that the primordial energies from which the building blocks of atoms emerged were also the initial conditions for what eventually became the galaxies, though the exact model to describe this process would not be developed for several years.

Peebles came to prominence after the 1964 discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which confirmed predictions he and others made of the overall temperature of the universe. Peebles then realized that the detected temperature is directly related to the initial density of the universe and thus places constraints on how much and what types of matter were created by the Big Bang.

His major breakthrough occurred two decades later as scientists were working to determine how galaxies formed in the first place, because protons, neutrons, electrons and photons (particles of light) were not heavy enough to make matter coalesce in the early universe. Peebles suggested that it was dark matter, a type of invisible and still largely mysterious type of matter which was earlier theorized by Fritz Zwicky and Vera Rubin, and which makes up about a quarter of the universe. He played a critical role in the research that finally developed a model of sound waves in the early universe, known as baryonic acoustic oscillations, that caused the necessary clumping to eventually form galaxies. These theories have since been confirmed by the COBE, WMAP and Planck experiments.

It should be mentioned that cosmology is an immensely social and international field of study, which is not wholly captured by an award which can at most be granted to three individuals. Peebles himself has said, “It was not a single step, some critical discovery that suddenly made cosmology relevant but the field gradually emerged through a number of experimental observations. Clearly one of the most important during my career was the detection of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation that immediately attracted attention ... [from] both experimentalists interested in measuring the properties of this radiation and theorists, who joined in analyzing the implications.”

While the origins of the universe were relatively well understood by the mid-1990s, a critical question about the evolution of the universe still remained: Was the development of planets around the Sun a fluke or a common occurrence for most stars?

This was partially answered in 1992, when an exoplanet was first detected around a pulsar using the millisecond radio pulses emitted by the dead star. That technique, however, could not detect planets around Sun-like stars, and so astronomers turned to a method known as radial velocity.

This technique was developed by Otto Struve in 1952, and measures the wobble of a star as it travels through the galaxy caused by an orbiting planet. This is done by looking at slight shifts in the star’s color, which becomes red when the star moves away from Earth and blue as it oscillates back toward our planet. These changes, however, are so minute it took four decades until technology was available to make reliable scientific observations.

These developments, primarily the ELODIE spectrograph, allowed Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz to start an observing campaign of 142 stars, a record in the early 1990s. By the fall of 1994, they noted that the star 51 Pegasi had periodic color shifts every four days. More surprisingly, the size of the shifts suggested a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting very close to its star, which had thought to be impossible based on the one data point of planetary formation that then existed, our own Solar System.

That aside, the short orbital period of the planet, dubbed 51 Pegasi b, allowed for many other teams to quickly confirm the discovery, including Geoff Marcy, Paul Butler and numerous others.

A special word should be said about Geoff Marcy, who developed novel experimental techniques that greatly refined our ability to eke out the minute wobbles of star motion caused by their orbiting exoplanets. Marcy and his team confirmed the discovery of 51 Pegasi b along with 70 of the first 100 exoplanets discovered, winning him many awards along with Mayor and Queloz, including the Henry Draper Medal, the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize and the Shaw Prize, as well as being a contender for the Nobel.

He has, however, largely been ostracized by the astronomical community since 2015, when he was forced to resign from his Berkeley professorship through a Title IX procedure which included several anonymous accusations of sexual harassment. To this day, none of the accusations have been proven, much less presented in a court of law.

The discovery of 51 Pegasi b, unofficially known as Bellerophon (the tamer of Pegasus in Greek mythology), opened up a torrent of further exoplanet candidates and confirmations. In the ensuing five years, astronomers used the radial velocity to find dozens more planets, mainly large gas giants close to their parent star, revitalizing the field of planetary formation.

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded for research in cellular responses to oxygen

Benjamin Mateus

In the course of a lifetime, the human heart will beat more than three billion times. We will have taken more than 670 million breaths before we reach the end of our lives. Yet, these critical events remain unconscious and imperceptible in everyday life, unless we exert ourselves, such as running up several flights of stairs. We quickly tire, stop to take deep breaths and become flushed.

With the deepening comprehension by medical science of how our bodies work, we have come to better understand the fundamental importance of oxygen to life. Every living organism relies on it in one form or another. However, how cells and tissues can monitor and respond to oxygen levels remained difficult to elucidate. It has only been late in the 20th century with advances in cellular biology and scientific instrumentation that these processes have finally been explained.

On Monday, the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to three individuals: William G. Kaelin, Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza. Specifically, their discoveries helped elucidate the mechanisms for life’s most basic physiologic processes.

The official announcement of the laureats. Credit: Nobel Prize Institute

They were able to discover how oxygen levels directly affect cellular metabolism, which ultimately controls physiological functions. More importantly, their findings have significant implications for the treatments of conditions as varied as chronic low blood counts, kidney disease, patients with heart attacks or stroke and cancers. One of the hallmarks of cancer is its ability to generate new blood vessels to help sustain its growth. It also uses these oxygen cellular mechanisms to survive in low oxygen environments.

Dr. William G. Kaelin Jr. is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The main focus of his work is on studying how mutations in what are called tumor suppressor genes lead to cancer development. Tumor suppressor genes are special segments of the DNA whose function is to check the integrity of the DNA before allowing a copy of itself to be made and undergo cell division, which prevents cells from propagating errors. Cellular mechanisms are then recruited to fix these errors or drive the cell to destroy itself if the damage is too severe or irreparable.

His interest in a rare genetic disorder called Von Hippel-Lindau disease (VHL) led him to discover that cancer cells that lacked the VHL gene expressed abnormally high levels of hypoxia-regulated genes. The protein called the Hypoxia-Inducible Factor (HIF) complex was first discovered in 1995 by Gregg L. Semenza, a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize. This complex is nearly ubiquitous to all oxygen-breathing species.

The function of the HIF complex in a condition of low oxygen concentration is to keep cells from dividing and growing, placing them in a state of rest. However, it also signals the formation of blood vessels, which is important in wound healing as well as promoting the growth of blood vessels in developing embryos. In cancer cells, the HIF complex helps stimulate a process called angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, which allows the cancer cells to access nutrition and process their metabolic waste, aiding in their growth. When the VHL gene is reintroduced back into the cancer cells, the activity of the hypoxia-regulated genes returns to normal.

Dr. Gregg L. Semenza is the founding director of the vascular program at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering. He completed his residency in pediatrics at Duke University Hospital and followed this with a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins. His research in biologic adaptations to low oxygen levels led him to study how the production of erythropoietin (EPO) was controlled by oxygen. EPO is a hormone secreted by our kidneys in response to anemia. The secretion of EPO signals our bone marrow to produce more red blood cells.

A diagram showing how cells make use of oxygen. Credit: Nobel Prize Institute

His cellular and mouse model studies identified a specific DNA segment located next to the EPO gene that seemed to mediate the production of EPO under conditions of low oxygen concentration. He called this DNA segment HIF.

Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, a physician and scientist, trained as a nephrologist, was head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford until 2016, when he became Clinical Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute. Through his research on the cellular mechanisms of EPO and its interaction between the kidneys and red cell production, he found that these mechanisms for cellular detection of hypoxia, a state of low oxygen concentration, were also present in several other organs such as the spleen and brain. Virtually all tissues could sense oxygen in their micro-environment, and they could be modified to give them oxygen-sensing capabilities.

Dr. Kaelin’s findings had shown that the protein made by the VHL gene was somehow involved in controlling the response to low oxygen concentrations. Dr. Ratcliffe and his group made the connection through their discovery that the protein made by the VHL gene physically interacts with HIF complex, marking it for degradation at normal oxygen levels.

In 2001, both groups published similar findings that demonstrated cells under normal oxygen levels will attach a small molecular tag to the HIF complex that allows the VHL protein to recognize and bind HIF, marking it for degradation by enzymes. If the oxygen concentration is low, the HIF complex is protected from destruction. It begins to accumulate in the nucleus where it binds to a specific section of the DNA called hypoxia-regulating genes, which sets into motion the necessary mechanisms to respond to the low oxygen concentration.

The ability to sense oxygen plays a vital role in health and various disease states. Patients who suffer from chronic kidney failure also suffer from severe anemia because their ability to produce EPO is limited. This hormone is necessary for the stem cells in our bone marrow to produce red blood cells. Understanding how cancer cells utilize oxygen-sensing mechanisms has led to a variety of treatments that targets these pathways. The ability to elucidate these mechanisms offers insight into directions scientists and researchers can take to design or create novel treatments.

US and China reach limited trade deal

Nick Beams

The US and China have reached a partial and very limited agreement on trade following talks held in Washington on Thursday and Friday.

It provides for a pullback by the US of a tariff hike on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods that had been threatened for next week. In return China has increased purchases of US agricultural products and agreed on the need for stabilization of the Chinese currency.

The limited agreement was described by US President Trump as a “substantial phase one deal” following a meeting yesterday with Chinese vice-premier and chief trade negotiator Liu He at the White House. The full text will be finalised in discussions between US and Chinese officials over the next five weeks.

China has agreed to purchase $40 billion to $50 billion worth of additional US agricultural products and gave a commitment to further open its economy to the operation of international financial services. It has also agreed to tighten control of intellectual property in response to continuous US allegations of theft.

In addition, the two sides reported progress on other matters, without providing details, including intellectual property and currency movements. No agreement was finalised on a pact to deal with currency manipulation, but US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said discussions were “almost complete.”

The reaching of a deal is the result of a shift by the Trump administration. In the lead up to the talks, Trump made clear on numerous occasions that he was not inclined to make a limited agreement and preferred a big deal or not one at all.

But facing the possibility of a sharp fall on markets if negotiations had broken down and amid the ongoing pressure created by the Democrats impeachment investigation, Trump appears to have decided to claim a win.

The markets responded enthusiastically with the Dow up 500 points at one point during the day, before finishing up by more than 300 points.

For all the celebrations on Wall Street, however, the agreement is very limited, described by one financial analyst in a comment to the Financial Times as “cosmetic.” While China will make additional purchases of agricultural products, they may not even reach the level attained before the trade conflict broke out.

Overall, the Chinese concessions have been described as “relatively minor”—essentially a repackaging of measures it had agreed to in previous rounds of talks.

The US has made little movement. None of the existing tariffs will be removed or even reduced. The major component of deal is the US decision to suspend the threatened hike in tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods from 25 percent to 30 percent, which had been set to take effect next week.

At this point, the agreement does not appear to include the withdrawal of a 15 percent tariff on more than $150 billion worth of Chinese consumer products, scheduled to come into effect on December 15.

Five dead and almost 1,000 arrested as repression mounts in Ecuador

Andrea Lobo

Police state repression and casualties are mounting in Ecuador as mass protests continue against the IMF-dictated austerity package announced by the Lenín Moreno administration on October 1.

As the main component of the IMF deal involving a $4.2 billion loan, President Moreno eliminated fuel subsidies the following day, leading to a sharp increase in fuel prices and subsequent price hikes in other basic goods. This immediately triggered the protest movement, which has included intermittent national strikes called by the trade unions, widespread roadblocks and mass marches with tens of thousands of indigenous demonstrators, students and workers.

On Thursday evening, the Ombudsman Office of Ecuador confirmed that the repression has left five demonstrators killed, 554 injured, and 929 arrested. These numbers do not reveal the full brutality of the repression. Beyond tear gas and rubber bullets, police and military charges have included wild beatings and the running over of demonstrators with motorcycles.

Marcos Humberto Oto Rivera, a 26-year-old worker, and José Daniel Chaluisa Cusco, another young worker, both died on October 8 from their injuries after anti-riot police caused them to fall off a bridge in Quito where they had set up a roadblock. Oto’s brother told Wambra, “he was not a delinquent, he was a worker.”

On October 6, the demonstrator Raúl Chilpe died on October 6 in the Azuay province when a driver ran over a roadblock.

On October 9, Segundo Inocencio Tucumbi Vega, an 50-year-old indigenous leader from the Cotopaxi province, was reportedly surrounded by police cavalry and beaten to death on the head. According to the human rights group Inredh, he was killed by the “excessive repression carried out by the public forces” in Quito. During the same protests in the capital, another indigenous demonstrator from the same town of Pijulí, José Rodrigo Chaluisa, was also killed.

On Thursday, thousands of demonstrators, including students, workers and peasants, gathered in the Casa de la Cultura building in Ecuador to conduct a wake at the casket of Tucumbi Vega. At the event, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) announced that it had captured ten police officers that morning as prisoners. Four of the officials were forced to carry the casket to the stage of the building.

Jaime Vargas, the CONAIE president, then appealed to the leadership of the armed forces to “join the people” and “don’t obey the orders of that traitor, liar and thief,” referring to Lenín Moreno.

After the funeral, the police officials were escorted by hundreds of demonstrators to downtown Quito where they were handed over to officials of the UN and the Ecuadorian Ombudsman’s Office.

In Pijulí, about 60 miles south of Quito, neighbors captured three officials at the police station on Thursday, with the Interior minister confirming Friday morning that they remain prisoners of the indigenous community. A video from the same town captured Thursday and confirmed by radio station Lacatunga showed indigenous demonstrators intercepting an ambulance and a motorcycle carrying weapons, high-caliber munitions and tear gas cannisters.

According to El País, 47 soldiers who invaded the indigenous community of Cochapamba in the same Cotopaxi province were captured and remain detained inside of the church “until the repression stops” and the “brothers arrested” are freed.

This follows the capture of 50 soldiers and five police officials between Saturday and Monday in the southern Azuay province and the takeover of several power plants and oilfields in the northeast since the weekend, forcing the Ministry of Energy to shut down the country’s main pipeline on Tuesday.

David Cordero, a human rights lawyer of Inredh reported that dozens of detainees are being held in police barracks in Quito, presenting the danger of disappearances and torture. RT reported that the Ecuadorian police raided the headquarters of the Pichincha Universal radio station for “inciting divisions.”

These developments highlight the dangers facing Ecuadorian workers, youth and peasants. The Ecuadorian ruling class, with the full support of Washington, is preparing to employ the same methods of repression used by the US-backed military dictatorship during the 1970s.

Without presenting any evidence, Lenín Moreno has claimed that ex-president Rafael Correa and Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro are financing and orchestrating a “coup,” with the interior minister claiming Friday that 17 people—“mostly Venezuelans”—were arrested in Quito’s international airport “holding information about the movements of the President and Vice-President.”

US sends 3,000 more troops to defend Saudi monarchy

Bill Van Auken

The Pentagon confirmed Friday that 3,000 more US troops are being deployed to Saudi Arabia to defend the blood-soaked monarchy led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and prepare for war against Iran.

The deployment includes two fighter squadrons, one Air Expeditionary Wing (AEW), two more Patriot missile batteries, and one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD).

According to a Pentagon statement Friday, the US Secretary of Defense phoned Crown Prince bin Salman (who also holds the post of Saudi minister of defense) to inform him of the coming reinforcements, which he said were meant “to assure and enhance the defense of Saudi Arabia.”

The Pentagon also acknowledged that the latest escalation brings the number of additional troops sent into the Persian Gulf region since May to 14,000. They have been accompanied by an armada of US warships and a B-52-led bomber task force. The Pentagon has also announced that an aircraft carrier-led battle group will remain in the Persian Gulf.

US soldiers deployed in the Middle East (U.S. Army by 1st Lt. Jesse Glenn)

While initiated as a supposed response to unspecified threats from Iran, the US buildup in the Persian Gulf region has constituted from its outset a military provocation and preparation for a war of aggression. This military buildup has accompanied Washington’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign of sweeping economic sanctions that are tantamount to a state of war. The aim, as the Trump administration has stated publicly, is to drive Iranian oil exports down to zero. By depriving Iran of its principal source of export income, Washington hopes to starve the Iranian people into submission and pave the way to regime change, bringing to power a US puppet regime in Tehran.

The latest military buildup was announced in the immediate aftermath of an attack on an Iranian tanker in the Red Sea, about 60 miles from the Saudi port of Jeddah.

The National Iranian Tanker Co. reported that its oil tanker, the Sabiti, was struck twice by explosives early Friday morning, leaving two holes in the vessel and causing a brief oil spill into the Red Sea.

While Iranian state news media blamed the damage on missile attacks, a spokesman for the company told the Wall Street Journal that the company was not sure of the cause.

Some security analysts have suggested that the fairly minor damage to the vessel could have been caused by limpet mines. Such mines were apparently used last June when two tankers—one Japanese and one Norwegian-owned—were hit by explosions in the Sea of Oman. At the time, Washington blamed the attacks on Iran, without providing any evidence. Tehran denied the charge, saying that it sent teams to rescue crew member of the damaged tankers.

The Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) quoted an unnamed Iranian government official as stating that the Iranian tanker had been the victim of a “terrorist attack.”

“Examination of the details and perpetrators of this dangerous action continues and will be announced after reaching the result,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said.

The National Iranian Tanker Co. issued a statement saying that there was no evidence that Saudi Arabia was behind the attack.

The incident raised the specter of an escalating tanker war that could disrupt shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows. News of the attack sent crude oil prices spiking by 2 percent.

In addition to the June attacks on the tankers in the Gulf of Oman, in July British commandos, acting on a request from Washington, stormed an Iranian super tanker, the Grace 1, in waters off the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. In apparent retaliation, Iranian Revolutionary Guards seized the British-flagged Stena Impero for what Tehran charged were violations of international maritime regulations as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Both tankers were subsequently released.

Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement charging that the Iranian super tanker, renamed the Adrian Darya 1, had offloaded its oil in Syria in violation of European Union sanctions and a pledge made by Tehran to the UK at the time of the vessel’s release. He demanded provocatively that “EU members should condemn this action, uphold the rule of law, and hold Iran accountable.”

Crisis mounts over Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces in Syria

Bill Van Auken

The Turkish military invasion of northern Syria, now in its third day, has unleashed a mounting political firestorm in Washington. Leading Republicans, along with Democrats and elements within the US military, have sharply condemned US President Donald Trump for green-lighting Ankara’s action and abandoning the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which served as Washington’s proxy force in the so-called war against ISIS.

Turkish forces, backed by the largely Sunni Arab and Turkmen militias of the so-called “Syrian National Army” have opened up their offensive with incursions close to the towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al Ain, both east of the Euphrates River.

Heavy fighting was reported between the Turkish military and units of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, along with civilian casualties on both sides of the border. The Turkish advance has been supported by aerial bombardments and artillery fire. The Syrian state news agency Sana reported 16 civilian fatalities in three towns, including that of an 11-year-old boy.

Turkish armored vehicles patrol as they conduct a joint ground patrol with American forces in the so-called "safe zone" on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey, near the town of Tal Abyad, northeastern Syria, Friday, Oct.4, 2019.

The Kurdish forces responded with their own barrages of mortar bombs which claimed the lives of four Turkish civilians, including a baby, in the town of Akcakale, which is separated from Tal Abayad only by the Syrian-Turkish border.

In a speech to leaders of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed that Turkish forces had killed 109 “militants” in the first two days of fighting.

The areas targeted by Turkey are controlled by the Kurdish-dominated SDF, but are populated predominantly by Syrian Sunni Arabs. When the area was previously overrun by the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front—which served as the leading ground force in the US-backed war for regime change in Syria—Kurdish civilians were expelled under threat of death.

Tens of thousands are once again fleeing the area to escape the fighting and in fear of another round of ethnic cleansing, this time at the hands of Turkey and its local allies.

Turkey’s stated war aims include driving the SDF and YPG—which Ankara regards as terrorist organizations and branches of the PKK, the Turkish Kurdish organization against which it has fought a protracted and bloody decades-long counterinsurgency campaign—away from the Turkish border.

In their place, the Turkish regime intends to create a so-called “safe zone” stretching 300 miles long and 30 miles deep inside Syria’s northern border. Its intention is to repopulate this zone with the 3.6 million Syrian refugees now living in Turkey. Such a massive operation would inevitably entail driving Syrian Kurds away from the Turkish border.

Ankara’s decision to launch the cross-border offensive came only after an October 6 telephone conversation between Erdoğan and Trump in which the US president announced his withdrawal of some 50 to 100 US troops that had been deployed in the border area alongside the SDF Kurdish fighters, serving as an impediment to any Turkish incursion.

Fox News, which generally spouts pro-Trump propaganda, carried a report by its Pentagon correspondent citing a “well-placed senior U.S. military source” as stating that the US president went “off script” in the course of his call with Erdoğan. According to the source, Trump had been given talking points that included a demand that Turkish troops remain north of the Syrian border.

Fox also quoted the source as saying that Trump had repeatedly expressed the position that Washington should “Just let the Turks do it” in terms of pursuing their aims in northern Syria.

Trump subsequently issued orders to the US military to stay out of the conflict, even as the SDF requested that the Pentagon provide air support.

In a tweet Thursday, Trump defended his decision to pull back the US troops, while claiming that he was prepared to respond with sanctions against any Turkish war crimes:

“Turkey has been planning to attack the Kurds for a long time. They have been fighting forever. We have no soldiers or Military anywhere near the attack area. I am trying to end the ENDLESS WARS. Talking to both sides. Some want us to send tens of thousands of soldiers to.......the area and start a new war all over again. Turkey is a member of NATO. Others say STAY OUT, let the Kurds fight their own battles (even with our financial help). I say hit Turkey very hard financially & with sanctions if they don’t play by the rules! I am watching closely.”

At a news conference on Wednesday, Trump justified his action by insisting that Washington had spent “tremendous amounts of money” in arming and funding the SDF. He went on to criticize the Kurds for not having fought alongside the US in World War II. “They didn’t help us with Normandy as an example.”

In a closed-door emergency session of the United Nations Security Council Thursday to consider the Turkish invasion of Syria, US Ambassador Kelly Craft did not join European representatives in criticizing Ankara’s intervention, but merely echoed Trump’s vague suggestion that Turkey should “play by the rules”.

For his part, Erdoğan responded to criticisms from Europe Thursday by threatening to “open the doors and send 3.6 million refugees to you.”

Right-wing extremist network behind fascist synagogue attack in Germany

Ulrich Rippert

The day after the right-wing terrorist attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany this week was dominated by hypocritical statements of shock and sympathy from government circles.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democrats, CDU) told the IG Metall trade union congress in Nürnberg that she was “shocked” and “affected” by the attack. Merkel added that she is mourning with the families and friends of those murdered. In confronting hate and anti-Semitism, the state must make full use of all its resourcesm the Chancellor stated. “There is no tolerance for it.”

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democrats, SPD), declared it a “day of shame and disgrace” as he laid a wreath at the site of the attack that killed two people. Anyone displaying even a slight degree of acceptance of right-wing extremism bears a share of the guilt with the perpetrator, he said.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, of all people, even repeated the words of a party colleague, describing some Alternative for Germany (AfD) officials as “ideological inciters” of the terrorist attack.

Similar statements were mouthed in June after Kassel District President Walter Lübcke (CDU) was murdered in cold blood by a fascist gunman. At the time, decisive action against the far-right was also announced, but what followed was the exact opposite. While the wide-ranging network of right-wing extremist terrorists in the police, army and intelligence agencies was left untouched, it was those who oppose them who were targeted for persecution.

The reality is that the “ideological inciters” of the right-wing terrorist attack hold top positions within the state and security apparatus, the intelligence agencies, the military and the federal government. They have not only embraced the AfD’s slogan of “foreigners out!” on refugee policy; Seehofer himself dismissed the rampage of fascist thugs targeting foreigners and Jewish institutions in Chemnitz in the summer of 2018, declaring that if he were not a government minister, he would have joined the right-wing demonstrations.

According to initial investigations, the fascist gunman in the Halle attack had close ties to a right-wing extremist network with intimate connections to the state apparatus. The initial claim that the attack was the work of a single gunman has been contradicted by a growing number of facts.

It is now clear that Stephane Balliet, a 27-year-old German citizen from Saxony-Anhalt, opened fire on the synagogue Wednesday, where over 50 people had gathered to celebrate Yom Kippur, intending to carry out a bloodbath.

He repeatedly sought to use explosives to secure entry to the building, and apparently planned to murder as many participants as possible. After failing to break through the door, he shot a passer-by and another man in a nearby kebab shop. Shortly afterwards, he injured two further people as he fled from the police. He was then arrested and handed over to the federal prosecutor’s office on Thursday.

Balliet wore military fatigues and was in possession of several high-powered firearms. Four kilograms of explosives were found in his car. He communicated with his supporters through a camera on his helmet. He livestreamed footage of the attack on the synagogue and kebab shop, and his killing of the passer-by, on the video platform Twitch.

A die-hard anti-Semite and neo-Nazi, Balliet began his video with a denial of the Holocaust, and continued, “The origin of all problems is the Jews.” Balliet referred to himself as part of an online SS group, declaring, “Nobody expects the internet SS.”

During the attack, Balliet played the music of right-wing extremist Alec Minassian, who carried out an attack in Toronto, Canada in April 2018 by driving his vehicle into pedestrians. He killed 10 people and injured an additional 16. Prior to the attack, Minassian served for two months in the Canadian Armed Forces, and completed his recruitment training a few months prior to the attack. His ideological mentor, in turn, was the mass murderer Elliot Rodger, who shot and killed six people in California in 2014 and injured 14 more.

Australian cyber conference “disinvites” US whistleblower and Assange supporter

Oscar Grenfell

In an act of politically-motivated censorship, the organisers of CyberCon, one of Australia’s largest cyber security conferences, “disinvited” US whistleblower Thomas Drake and Australian academic Dr Suelette Dreyfus just days before they were to deliver presentations at the event.

Drake and Dreyfus had been scheduled to speak at the Melbourne conference, which attracts several thousand participants each year, since November 2018. They were told last week that their talks were “incongruent” with the conference and had been summarily cancelled. Drake was informed of the decision only shortly before he was due to fly from the United States for the event.

There is no question that the cancellation was a political decision, likely involving government agencies. It was undoubtedly motivated by the principled support of Drake and Dreyfus for persecuted whistleblowers and publishers, and their own records of activism in defence of internet freedom.

Drake is a former employee of the US National Security Agency (NSA), who spoke-out in the mid-2000s against what he described as the organisation’s wasteful spending and its turn to procuring technologies aimed at mass communication intercepts.

Drake was charged with 10 felony counts, which the Justice Department was later compelled to drop in 2011. He refused to cooperate with an FBI investigation into other whistleblowers and has continued to publicly denounce mass surveillance and other attacks on democratic rights.

Dreyfus, an academic at the University of Melbourne, is a computer and informations expert who has advocated for decades to improve whistleblower protections.

She was an early collaborator of Julian Assange and is one of the few Australian academics who has consistently condemned the US, British and Australian persecution of the WikiLeaks founder for his role in the exposure of American war crimes and global diplomatic conspiracies.

Drake and Dreyfus have both stated they were told by the Australian Information Security Association, which organised the conference, that the cancellation of their talks was at the request of a “conference partner.”

Partner organisations include the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the country’s electronic eavesdropping agency, which collaborates closely with the NSA and other members of the “five eyes” spying network in mass surveillance operations.

Other government-funded bodies also participated in the event. The powerful Home Affairs ministry, which has been at the forefront of a broader campaign of online censorship, gave a closed-door briefing on its 2020 “cyber-security” strategy, which the media was barred from attending.

In comments to the Guardian, Drake condemned the censorship as “Orwellian.” “This is the first time ever I’ve been censored at a conference. How ironic it is here in Australia,” he said.

The former NSA employee explained: “If you are a whistleblower, you are persona non grata. I think there was significant pressure at the last minute at what appears to be a review of the entire agenda.”

Dreyfus placed the cancellation in the context of a broader assault on whistleblowers in Australia, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “There's now a culture of fear about speaking up. Nothing highlights this quite so much as disinviting speakers who have been confirmed.”

Drake’s planned presentation was entitled “The Golden Age of Surveillance.” An abstract of the talk, posted on a website created to oppose the conference’s censorship, stated: “What does it mean for our society to increasingly live in a virtual matrix where more and more of our lives are under the persistence gaze of the digital panopticon? What does it say when our post 9/11 world has turned surveillance into a global growth industry feeding the demands for data about us of all kinds, no matter where you live?”

The abstract continued: “Mr. Drake has already lived that future and will share his experience from the frontlines of freedom on just how deeply society has backdoored and buried itself in the insatiable appetite to know virtually everything about anybody at any time driven by fear and safety.”

Mexico: 100,000 university workers strike as López Obrador’s vows deeper austerity

Andrea Lobo

About 100,000 university employees went on strike across Mexico Wednesday to protest the bankruptcy imposed by the federal government on nine state universities and to demand greater funds for public education.

At least 30 universities joined the strike, which was called by the National Confederation of University Workers (CONTU). Management at the bankrupt universities have informed workers that they will soon stop paying wages and benefits indefinitely since they have not received money for payrolls since August. Some universities could close before the end of the year.

In his daily morning press briefing on Wednesday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador denounced the strike as “blackmail” aimed at appropriating the “people’s sacred money.” He stated, “We are all obligated to act with austerity, and I can speak like that because I have the moral authority,” citing the cuts in the budget for the Presidency and for other top officials.

While promising a higher budget for universities in 2020, López Obrador sought to scapegoat striking educators for any future regressive policies. “We have to act with discipline,” he added, “because, if money is handed right and left, then it would turn into a deficit and we would have to raise taxes; create new taxes; impose fuel price hikes, like before; ask for loans, increase the debt, like before.”

López Obrador’s filthy tactic is of a piece with the so-called “education reform” implemented under his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and effectively continued under López Obrador’s Morena party. The legislation set up a system of teacher evaluations aimed at charging teachers with “underperformance” to scapegoat them for the social crisis in the country and to justify greater cuts in spending and privatizations.

Social anger against López Obrador’s education policies has escalated since the beginning of the year. In January and February, teachers in the southern states of Michoacán and Oaxaca struck and blocked key railway lines to protest the non-payment of benefits. In February, thousands of workers of the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM) struck to demand a major raise in spending and salaries, and they were soon joined by the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), and the Universities of Oaxaca, Coahuila and Chapingo.

All of these strikes were sold out by the trade unions despite coinciding with the wildcat strikes in Matamoros and strikes by tens of thousands of teachers across the United States and Latin America. The CONTU is doing the same, as demonstrated by its one-day “Hollywood strike” aimed at releasing tensions. At the same time, the leader of CONTU, Enrique Levet, is a proven class enemy of teachers and the working class. As a PRI legislator in Veracruz, Levet eagerly campaigned in favor of Peña Nieto’s education reform during 2012-13.

The bankruptcy of universities and the response by López Obrador exposes the anti-working class character of the Morena administration and the farce of its “austerity” for top officials. Two weeks after his July 1 election, López Obrador presented his plan of “republican austerity” to the incoming congressional Morena majority. The program was sold as a set of measures to eliminate privileges and posts of senior bureaucratic offices, and involved 222,600 layoffs. However, the vast majority of employees fired have been operational workers and technicians.

For instance, two-thirds of the 16,000 employees fired earlier this year from the ministry of environment (Semarnat) were rank-and-file workers. These mass layoffs led to a one-day wildcat strike in February at the Semarnat that spread nationwide.

López Obrador is not only continuing but is escalating the massive transfer of wealth to Mexico’s financial aristocracy and Wall Street under the Pact for Mexico—involving the education reform, oil privatization and massive social cuts—implemented by Peña Nieto. When oil prices fell, Peña Nieto used virtually the same language as López Obrador, declaring in September 2015, “The government is committed to budget austerity. Facing the current economic environment, the government of the Republic must tighten its belt.”

Now, Morena, which grew in popularity during the protests against the Pact for Mexico, has upheld the policies of the previous governments and vowed to pay the massive debt incurred. Under Morena rule, Mexico increased its debt payments to Wall Street and Mexican financiers by 21.7 percent in 2019, dedicating fully 13 percent of the federal budget to servicing the debt.

Furthermore, the Morena administration’s first major policy was the creation of what López Obrador touted as “the largest free trade zone in the country” on the northern border, cutting the value added taxes from 16 to 8 percent and the income taxes from 30 to 20 percent, depriving the federal government of 41 billion pesos or US$2.1 billion per year. Most of this money is going to boost the dividends and stock prices of the investors of the transnational corporations in the region.

India’s state of siege in Kashmir continues

Wasantha Rupasinghe

With the blessing of India’s Supreme Court and the staunch support of big business and virtually the entire opposition, the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government continues to subject Jammu and Kashmir to an unprecedented security lockdown and communications blackout.

Since August 5—for the last 69 days—the 13 million residents of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) region have been denied all cell phone and internet access. Tens of thousands of Indian army troops and paramilitaries remain deployed in cities, towns and villages across J&K to brutally suppress any anti-government actions, and to police curfews and restrictions on people’s movements whenever and wherever they are imposed. Security forces have detained thousands of people without charge, including boys as young as 9 years old, while steadfastly refusing to provide any accounting of the number of detained, their names, and current whereabouts.

This state of siege was implemented to enforce the BJP’s August 5 constitutional coup. Without warning, let alone any consultation with Kashmiris, the government stripped J&K of its special semi-autonomous constitutional status by presidential fiat, and then downgraded and bifurcated what had been India’s only Muslim-majority state. Henceforth, J&K is to be governed as two Union territories, effectively placing the region under permanent central government trusteeship.

Modi’s assault on J&K has multiple reactionary objectives. These include strengthening India’s hand against neighbouring Pakistan and China, and whipping up chauvinism and bellicose nationalism to energize the BJP’s Hindu supremacist activist base and intimidate and divide the working class under conditions of a deepening economic crisis and mounting social opposition.

Government officials claimed that “normalcy” would be quickly re-established in J&K. But long before the security lockdown entered its current tenth week, they stopped giving any clear indication of when cell phone and internet service will be restored or those detained without charge released. Modi’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, who personally supervised the initial phases of the stage of siege from Srinagar, J&K’s largest city, has cynically said that the lifting of the cell phone and internet restrictions “depends on” Pakistan ceasing to use these networks to send “signals” to “operatives.”

For decades, the Indian establishment and especially the BJP has presented the popular alienation from Indian rule in J&K, and the separatist insurgency that has convulsed the region since New Delhi brutally suppressed the protests that erupted in response to its rigging of the 1987 state election, as entirely attributable to the machinations of Pakistan.

The reality is the communications blackout, like the state of siege as whole, is driven by the Indian authorities’ fear of mass popular opposition.

So isolated is the government, that it has detained hundreds of Muslim pro-Indian J&K politicians and activists, including three former Chief Ministers and the leading cadre of the J&K National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party.

Notwithstanding the government crackdown and the complicity of much of the media, numerous reports have emerged documenting massive human rights violations by Indian security forces acting at the behest of Modi and the BJP government.

At the end of September, a team of five women’s rights activists who visited J&K between Sept. 17 and 21 published a report, “Women’s Voice: Fact-Finding Report on Kashmir,” providing evidence of numerous instances of arbitrary state violence, including night-raids and torture.

The report said Indian authorities had arrested an estimated “13,000 boys” in J&K since August 5. “Boys as young as 14 or 15 are taken away, tortured, some for as long as 45 days. Their papers are taken away, families not informed.”

The report adds, “Women in villages stood before us with vacant eyes. ‘How do we know where they are? Our boys who were taken away, snatched away from our homes.’”

UK ruling class considers whether to entrust Corbyn with overcoming Brexit crisis

Chris Marsden

Parliament will meet in extraordinary session October 19 to discuss the almost inevitable failure to reach a Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU).

Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his intention to schedule the Saturday session—coinciding with the end of an October 17-18 European summit—after his proposed alternative to the EU Withdrawal Agreement was rejected because it includes provisions for a customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in the south, an EU member state.

Johnson’s office revealed details of a 30-minute phone call he held with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with a “Downing Street source” citing her saying there could only be a deal if Northern Ireland stays in the EU customs union. If not, then a deal is “overwhelmingly unlikely” by the October 31 deadline, she is said to have commented.

This was denounced as an EU “veto on us leaving the customs union.” Talks “are close to breaking down,” Number 10 said, with an EU-UK agreement “essentially impossible not just now but ever.”

Johnson was backed by the Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster, who praised him for having “flushed out Dublin’s real intentions to trap Northern Ireland in the EU customs union forever.”

The Downing Street statement was denounced by Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer and other pro-Remain MPs—proving that Johnson knew his proposals would be rejected so he could then blame the EU for not reaching a deal.

European Council President Donald Tusk accused Britain of playing a “stupid blame game,” when “At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people.” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has warned that a no-deal Brexit would “lead to the collapse of the United Kingdom.” Then, during a sitting of the European Parliament, its president, David Sassoli, said that any Brexit delay should only be for either holding a second referendum or a general election.

Making things worse for Johnson, according to the Times, five cabinet ministers, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan, Minister for Northern Ireland Julian Smith, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, Health Minister Matt Hancock and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox are poised to resign if it comes to a no-deal Brexit. Moreover, if the Tory Party commits to a no-deal Brexit in an election manifesto, the Financial Times reports that up to 50 MPs and three ministers could quit the party.

Fuel was added to the fire by a Downing Street briefing threatening to cut security ties with EU countries that support a Brexit delay—calling this “hostile interference in domestic politics.”

However insincere, Johnson was forced to reassure Damian Green, leader of the One Nation caucus of Tory MPs, that no-deal would not be in the manifesto.

Parliament was prorogued Tuesday until October 14, when Johnson’s legislative agenda will be outlined in the Queen’s Speech. But debate on this will now run into whatever plans emerge from the opposition parties to stop a no-deal Brexit by the October 19 extraordinary parliamentary session.

The depth of the crisis is indicated by the fact that the Commons has only sat on a Saturday on four occasions since 1939—including to consider the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, during the Suez crisis in 1956 and on the last occasion in response to the invasion of the Falklands/Malvinas Islands in 1982, fully 37 years ago.

Richest 400 Americans paid lower taxes than everyone else in 2018

Trévon Austin

According to an analysis by noted economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, previewed this week by New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, the wealthiest American households paid a lower tax rate last year than every other income group for the first time in the country’s history.

Saez and Zucman, both professors at the University of California Berkeley, detail the phenomenon of declining taxes for the richest Americans in their soon-to-be released book, The Triumph of Injustice .

The pair compiled a historical database composed of the tax payments of households in various income percentiles spanning all the way back to 1913, when the federal income tax was first implemented. Their research uncovered that in the 2018 fiscal year the wealthiest 400 Americans paid a lower tax rate—accounting for federal, state, and local taxes—than anyone else.

The overall tax rate paid by the richest .01 percent was only 23 percent last year, while the bottom half of the population paid 24.2 percent. This contrasts starkly with the overall tax rates on the wealthy of 70 percent in 1950 and 47 percent in 1980.

Los 400 estadounidenses más ricos pagaron menos impuestos que el resto en 2018

The taxes on the wealthy have been in precipitous decline since the latter half of the 20th century as successive presidential administrations enacted tax cuts for the rich, suggesting that they would result in economic prosperity for all. Taxes that mostly affect the wealthy, such as the estate tax and corporate tax, have been drastically cut and lawyers have been hard at work on behalf of their wealthy patrons, planning out the best schemes for tax avoidance, seeking to drive tax rates as close to zero as possible. The impetus for the historical tipping point was the Trump Administration’s 2017 tax reform, which was a windfall for the super-rich.

Supported by both the Republicans and Democrats, the two parties of Wall Street, Trump’s tax cuts were specifically designed to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the working class to the ruling elite.

FISA court documents expose illegal FBI mass surveillance

Kevin Reed

In an unprecedented development, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released redacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) documents on Tuesday that disclose details of the illegal FBI electronic surveillance of US citizens.

The disclosures—contained in 20 documents published on the website of the ODNI—show that since 2017 the FBI has been violating provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as well as the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans by searching through their e-mail, text messages and phone calls.

The ODNI document release stems from a FISC order on April 5, 2018, which found that the FBI’s procedures concerning the “querying of United States persons” were insufficient, resulting in violations of federal law. The Trump administration appealed the decision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISC-R), which then affirmed on July 12, 2019, the original 2018 ruling.

The portion of the FISA law that was found to be violated by the FBI is known as Section 702, which grants authority to US intelligence and law enforcement to search the online communications of non-Americans located outside the US under very specific conditions. Section 702 was adopted in 2008 as part of the FISA Amendments Act that modified the original FISA law adopted in 1976 and it specifically bars the targeting of US citizens for warrantless electronic surveillance.

In one episode reported in the FISC documents, in March 2017 the FBI queried the database of e-mail, texts and phone calls of more than 70,000 FBI employees or contractors. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The bureau appeared to be looking for data to conduct a security review of people with access to its buildings and computers—meaning the FBI was searching for data linked to its own employees.” The documents say that the agency did so against the advice of its general counsel.

In another example from April 2018, the FBI queried the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of 57,000 US individuals. In both instances, the FBI claimed the searches were necessary as part of an effort to uncover foreign intelligence information.

Several other incidents involved querying the data of specific individuals instead of the batch queries. In these cases, the FISC court of Judge James E. Boesberg determined that the FBI had not provided sufficient justification for its belief that the queries would yield foreign intelligence information.

It should be pointed out that the FISC rulings and documents released by ODNI take as a given the existence of the NSA database of e-mail, text messages and phone calls of everyone. The reprimand of the FBI is that the agency did not properly utilize the database, document its reasons for querying it and dispose of the information obtained after it was collected.

This discrepancy was noted by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden in a tweet on Tuesday: “The worst part? The government argues the existence of a warrantless, internet-scale mass surveillance program isn’t the problem, merely the lawless way the FBI uses it against Americans, [because] ‘of course’ the other 93-97% of the human population have no rights.”

Secret US government data collection of e-mail and phone call data has been going on at least since the days following the events of September 11, 2001. The exposures made by Snowden showed that this data collection takes two forms: upstream and downstream (also known as PRISM).

Upstream collection is the interception and storage of communications as they pass through the fiber-optic backbone and infrastructure of the global telecommunications system. This involves the collection of a large mass of data that is filtered based on IP addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses and made available to indexing and analysis based on the queries of targeted individuals.

Downstream collection involves government access to the servers of the telecommunications service providers and tech companies such as Verizon, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Apple and copying the data that resides there. These companies are prohibited from telling their customers that their data has been retrieved by the government.

Trump asserts unchecked presidential powers

Patrick Martin

In the wake of the eight-page letter sent Tuesday evening by the White House to the House of Representatives declaring the Trump administration’s defiance of the impeachment inquiry, the president and his attorneys are elaborating a theory of unchecked executive authority, a presidential dictatorship in all but name.

The scope of presidential immunity from Congress asserted in the letter sent by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone is essentially unlimited. The letter makes the president the decision-maker over whether Congress has the right to bring impeachment proceedings against him and how they are to be conducted, in direct violation of the constitutional separation of powers, which makes Congress a branch coequal to the executive.

As far as legal arguments go, the White House letter amounts to declaring the Constitution null and void. In its claims that the inquiry is not “necessary,” “authorized” or “valid,”

it simply ignores the plain text of the document, which declares (Article 1, Section 2), “The House of Representatives … shall have the sole Power of Impeachment,” and the House (Article 1, Section 5) “may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”

The president has no power to declare an impeachment inquiry “constitutionally invalid” or claim that it “lacks the necessary authorization for a valid impeachment.” He is not the supreme arbiter of constitutionality and has no control over the manner of his own impeachment. If impeached, he may defend himself at the Senate trial, presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

In the letter, Cipollone writes, “Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen.” Aside from the dubious character of Trump’s victory, which came via the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote, this complaint is absurd in a letter about impeachment, which by definition includes the removal of an elected president.

As for the American people feeling “deprived,” Trump’s approval rating has remained in the low 40s throughout his presidency—a first for any US chief executive. Polls published Tuesday, one conducted by the Washington Post and the Schar School of George Mason University, and the other by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, showed support for the impeachment inquiry by a sizeable majority, and a plurality for actually removing Trump from office, both figures having sharply climbed over the past three months.

Particularly disturbing to congressional Republicans were figures showing 28 percent of Republican voters supporting the impeachment inquiry, a figure that rises to 40 percent for Republican-leaning adults ages 18 to 39. Nearly 20 percent of Republicans supported Trump’s removal from office.

Nearly as reactionary as the White House letter was the argument voiced by Justice Department lawyers in federal court in Washington Tuesday. The Trump administration is fighting efforts by House Democrats to obtain grand jury material used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.

Justice Department lawyers argued that judicial actions taken during the impeachment inquiry into President Richard Nixon were wrong. In particular, they objected to the decision of Federal District Judge John Sirica to turn over grand jury materials on the Watergate burglary to the House Judiciary Committee, an action that marked a critical step in the process leading to Nixon’s forced resignation.

According to press reports, Chief US District Judge Beryl A. Howell responded, “Wow, okay,” adding, “As I said, the department is taking extraordinary positions in this case.” The judge made no immediate ruling but appeared to be inclined to reject demands that she overturn a 46-year-old precedent, an appeals court ruling in Haldeman v. Sirica that has long been regarded as a legal milestone.

Simultaneous with Trump’s opposition to House subpoenas and demands for documents in the impeachment inquiry, his lawyers were in court in New York City asserting a diametrically opposed principle: that the president cannot be prosecuted or even investigated by a state prosecutor because only Congress has jurisdiction over misdeeds by a president.

Last week, the Justice Department intervened in a federal lawsuit filed by Trump against the Manhattan district attorney seeking to block a subpoena for his income tax returns. The argument there was that a sitting president cannot be investigated, period—a position that would have shut down the Mueller inquiry before it started.

Federal Judge Victor Marrero issued a ruling Monday dismissing the Trump lawsuit and ordering Trump’s accountants to provide his tax returns to the Manhattan DA. This action has been stayed pending a further appeal. But Marrero wrote in his 75-page opinion that Trump was seeking “a vision of presidential immunity that would place the President above the law,” and declared, “This Court cannot endorse such a categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process.”

The great danger in this political crisis is that Trump’s Democratic Party opponents are aligned with powerful sections of the military-intelligence apparatus and are basing the impeachment inquiry entirely on actions by Trump that offend the CIA and Pentagon, not those that genuinely threaten the democratic rights of the American people.