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French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Donald Trump to Paris.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) Someday, maybe somebody will drain the Washington swamp, but it wont be President Donald Trump, at least not anytime soon.

In fact, in the battle between Trump and the swamp, the swamp is clearly winning.

Some of Trumps critics see him as the biggest swamp monster of them all, but however you characterize him or Washington, the president is clearly losing the fight against Congress, the bureaucracy, and the media in the nations capital.

For that matter, comparing official Washingtons environment of runaway egos, rampant sense of entitlement, and disconnect from the rest of the country to a swamp does some disservice to swamps.

Whether or not there was any actual collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to sabotage the U.S. election hardly matters anymore, because the capitals obsession with the issue has, well, swamped everything else and brought government activity to a virtual standstill.

Whats a besieged president to do? Its tempting to say he should hop aboard Air Force One and go to Harrisburg, Pa., or Warsaw, Poland, or Mar-a-Lago anywhere far away from the Washington cesspool.

After all, his address last week to the cheering Poles assembled in Warsaws Krasinski Square was hailed by the Wall Street Journal editorialists as Trumps defining speech. Going to Paris this week for Bastille Day was probably a good idea.

Or Trump could spend more time at his golf courses in Florida and New Jersey, pretending to conduct business or maybe just playing golf. It would be time better spent than fighting the quicksand in Washington.

It certainly seemed to help the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and the younger George Bush that they spent a lot of time at their ranches. Washington, at the end of the day, is a Democratic swamp and Republican presidents are better off somewhere else.

Democrats, however, seem to thrive in the Washington miasma. For someone with Barack Obamas yuppie proclivities, the White House was a hip place to entertain his new Hollywood friends.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, for their part, literally had no place else to call home. The Obamas and Clintons were able to move into mansions of their own only after they left office and could exploit the presidency to make some serious money.

Trump may be far from anybodys notion of an ideal president, but it is Washington that is the gravest threat to our democracy. That was the case under Obama, remains the case under Trump, and, absent some real draining, will remain the case under his successor.

However ineptly, Trump at least is making a show of fulfilling some of his campaign promises. God alone knows what the Republicans and Democrats in Congress think they are doing. It has little to do with the welfare of the voters who elected them.

And the entrenched bureaucracies deep state, shallow state, whatever seem to have free rein for backstabbing, sabotage or just plain sloth. Our intelligence agencies seem more nefarious in reality than in Jason Bournes worst nightmare.

Trump, with all his imperfections, is merely the symptom of this decay, not the cause. Voters supported him because their loathing for Washington denizens was so great. There may be temporary relief in scapegoating him, but replacing him with Mike Pence wont change anything in Washington.

This was the message from the Democratic lieutenant governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who is running for governor of the state in the 2018 election, who urged his fellow party members to drop the Russia issue.

It doesnt do anything for Democrats, he said on MSNBCs Morning Joe, a program not known for its Trump sympathies. Its a loser, and I dont know what more evidence you need. I mean, at the end of the day, even if you game this thing out, you get rid of Trump, youre left with a guy whos out there talking about conversion therapy. It doesnt do anything for the Democratic Party and our agenda.

But Democrats in Congress are frustrated that the Russia story is overshadowing their efforts to block Republican attempts to repeal Obamas health-care reform.

Republicans, for their part, dont seem unduly worried about the Russia hysteria, including the recent disclosures about a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a shadowy Russian lawyer that Trump critics see as a veritable smoking gun for collusion.

FiveThirtyEights Perry Bacon commented that the reaction to these revelations from congressional Republicans has generally been muted criticism and, wherever possible, outright silence.

He goes on to say that the Republican reaction to the Russia stories is what really matters most. Because ultimately any consequences for the president will depend on congressional action, and right now, Congress is led by Trumps party.

In the meantime, one way or the other, the swamp will continue to bog down the administration. What we want simply doesnt matter. The swamp has taken on a life of its own.

Excerpt from:
Opinion: The Washington swamp, not Trump, is real threat to democracy - MarketWatch

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Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, Who Fought for Democracy in China, Dies in Police Custody Wall Street Journal (subscription) BEIJINGNobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, who embodied the hopes of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement long after the protests were crushed, died in detention on Thursday after a battle with liver cancer, according to a government ... Milestones in China's pro-democracy movementABC News Taiwan's President Vows to Help China Achieve DemocracyThe Diplomat Liu Xiaobo's friends renew calls for greater democracy in China in wake of Nobel Peace Prize laureate's deathABC Online PRI -WGNO -BBC News all 941 news articles »

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Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, Who Fought for Democracy in China, Dies in Police Custody - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin todays show in Brazil, where former President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva has been convicted on corruption charges Wednesday and sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison. He will remain free on appeal. Lula has been the front-runner in the 2018 elections and is widely considered one of Brazils most popular political figures. The former union leader co-founded Brazils Workers Party and served as president from 2003 to 2010. During that time, he helped lift tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty. The sentencing of Lula comes a year after his successor, President Dilma Rousseff, also of the Workers Party, was impeached by the Brazilian Senate in a move she has denounced as a coup. Prosecutors allege a construction firm spent about $1.1 million refurbishing a beachside apartment for Lula and his wife in exchange for public contracts. He is also facing four other corruption trials.

AMY GOODMAN: But Lula says he has been the victim of a political witch hunt. Lulas legal team has vowed to appeal the conviction. In a statement, they said, "For over three years, Lula has been subject to a politically motivated investigation. No credible evidence of guilt has been produced, and overwhelming proof of his innocence blatantly ignored," they said.

Meanwhile, many of the lawmakers who orchestrated Rousseffs ouster last year are also facing corruption scandals. Last month, federal prosecutors charged President Michel Temer with corruption, accusing the president of taking millions of dollars in bribes.

We go now to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where were joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald for the hour. Glenn is the co-founder of The Intercept.

Well, Glenn, were going to talk about a lot of issues this hour, but lets start in Brazil. Talk about the indictment of the former president, Lula.

GLENN GREENWALD: Its hard to put into words what an

AMY GOODMAN: The conviction.

GLENN GREENWALD: extraordinary political earthquake this is for Brazil. Lula has been the singular dominant figure in Brazilian politics for more than 15 years. He is identified internationally as being the brand of the country. He was president for eight years, from 2002 until 2010, and oversaw extraordinary economic growth, left office with an 86 percent approval rating, and is currently leading, as you said in the introduction, in all public opinion polls for the 2018 election. Hes a polarizing figure now, to be certain. Theres a large segment of the population that despises him and that doesnt want to see him return to power, but theres a large segment of the population that wants to see him be president again. Certainly, he has more support than any of the other prospective 2018 candidates. And so, to take somebody who is this dominant on the Brazilian political landscape, not just in terms of its recent past, but also its short-term future, the person overwhelmingly likely to become the countrys next president through the ballot box, and convict him on charges of corruption, bribery and money laundering, and sentence him to a decade in prison, just a little under a decade in prison, you really cant get much more consequential than this.

Independent of the merits of the case against Lulaand the extraordinary thing about this case is that theres a lot of different corruption charges and claims against Lula, including being at the center of the Petrobras corruption. This has alwaysthis was always regardedhas been regarded as an ancillary case, not very strong. It involves kind of obscure questions about who is actually the owner of this triplex apartment that received the benefits. Lula insists that he is not even the owner of the apartment, whereas the state insists that that was just a scam, that he really is the owner and these benefits went to him. But leaving aside the merits of the case, which will now be adjudicated on appeal, if you look at actually what has happened, its amazing, in Brazil. You have, first, the leader of the country who was elected president, Dilma Rousseff, impeached on charges that, even if you believe them, are extremely petty in the context of the corruption claims lodged against the people who removed her. So, you took out the elected president of PT, which severely harmed PT, and now you take the next PT candidate, who was president and who likely will be president again, and you convict him on charges and make him ineligible to run for office for the next 20 years. It certainly looks like, whether, again, these claims are meritorious or not, that there is a real attempt to preclude the public from having the leaders that it wants, which are the leaders of PT.

And at the same time that you have that going on, once Dilma was removed from office, you move from a center-left government, with PT, to a center-right government, with her successor, Michel Temer, who formed a coalition with the right-wing PSDB party, and now theyre talking about removing Temer and installing the next person in line, Rodrigo Maia, who is the head of the lower house, essentially the speaker of the house, who is a member of the right-wing Democrats party, which means youll go from a center-left party to a center-right party to a right-wing party without a single vote being cast. And so theres a lot of concern and a lot of perception on the part of Brazilians that this is a further blow to democracy, that this is really just politically driven, that there are all kinds of corrupt figures on the right, including President Michel Temer and Senator Acio Neves, who was the candidate the right ran against Dilma in 2014 and almost beat her, about whom theres much more tangible and concrete evidence of criminality, and yet havent been convicted, havent even left office. Acio is still in the Senate. He was ordered by a court to be removed, and now hes been returned. And Temer remains running the country, even though the whole country heard him on audio approving bribes paid to witnesses to keep them silent.

So, I think it has to be underscored that there is reasonable debate about how strong the case is against Lula. But the way in which these cases are being prosecuted, the people who are paying prices and the people who are being protected, does give a strong appearance of it being politically motivated, whether thats really the intention or not.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Glenn, there have been reports that protestersor people came out on the streets yesterday following the conviction, both in support of the conviction and opposed to it. So could you talk about that and the people who have beenwho have approved, who think this is a good decision made by the judiciary to convict Lula?

GLENN GREENWALD: Sure. So this goes back to the protest movement against Dilma, which the Brazilian media, which is a corporate media very much opposed to Dilma and very much in favor of impeachment, depicted as this kind of uprising on the part of the people. And the reality was always much different. There is a huge segment of the population, primarily the wealthy, the oligarchs, the upper-middle class, that dislike PT because of its socialist policies. PT has become much less socialist over the years. Theyve actually gotten into bed with some oligarchs, the way the Democratic Party has in the U.S. But theyre still perceived as a socialist party. And compared to the right, they certainly oppose austerity more. They favor greater spending on social programs and the like. And so there is a segment of the country that hates PT on ideological grounds. And that is the segment of the population, that has been trying to defeat PT at the ballot box for 16 years now and has failed to do so, that were out on the streets demanding Dilmas impeachment. The same people who wanted to beat her at the ballot box and failed then went to the streets to demand her impeachment, which is not surprising. And so, the people who are out on the streets now demanding that Lula be imprisoned or celebrating his imprisonment are the people who have just always hated PT and hated Lula strictly on ideological grounds. Then there are people, sort of the hardcore loyalists of Lula and Dilma and PT, who are out on the streets protesting his imprisonment.

This is really the big question that continues to lurk over Brazil, which, I should remind everybody, is the fifth-largest or fifth most populous country on the planet. Its a country of 260 million people. So it really matters what happens here. The lurking question is: Are you going to move beyond the kind of hardcore political junkies on the right and the left, when it comes to street protests? We havent seen massive street protests demanding the removal of Michel Temer, and we havent yet seen people pouring out onto the streets in anger over Lulas convictionalbeit its been less than 24 hours since it happened. We might see that.

And the reason is, is that Brazilians are just exhausted. This is not a country where there are isolated corruption cases against specific political figures. This is a country which, for decades, has had a political class that is systematically corrupt. It runs on corruption. And the only thing that has changed is that you now have an independent judiciary, a judiciary thats a little bit more or a lot more aggressive about holding people in political office accountable. Theres more transparency. And so its being exposed. And what Brazilians have seen is that the entire political class in Braslia, virtually, is itself corrupt, that their political system is one based in corruption. And so, they really arent convinced that they should be out on the street demanding Temers removal, as much as the country hates Temer across the board, because theyre not convinced that whoever replaces him is going to be any better, just like Temer replacing Dilma actually made things worse. And I dont know how much loyalty there is to Lula at this point among the broad population, given that people are really disenchanted with and exhausted by political scandal. And so, I dontif I had to bet, I would say there isnt going to be a mass uprising protesting Lula. There will be some people out on the street who are hardcore PT followers, but I dont think youre going to have massive social instability over the fact that Lula got convicted, especially since they havent put him in prison. They said he could remain free pending appeal.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the ousted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was recently here in Democracy Now!s studios in New York. She was talking about Lula.

DILMA ROUSSEFF: [translated] I think that Lula will run for president, unless there is an effort to convict him on appeal, because, today, if Lula were the candidate, well, hes still the only person who has a significant number of votes. He has a 38.5 percent support. The others in the latest polls all had around 10 percent, 9 percent, 5 or 6 percent. So there is that difference. There is a concern on the part of those who carried out the coup. They are very concerned about this situation. Now we have to see how things evolve. I think its very difficult to convict him twice. I dont think theres any basis for that, because the witnesses who were called, when I called him, they did not incriminate him. In addition, I think there could be other efforts to avoid the 2018 elections, because certainly those who carried out the coup and are pushing the coup program are not going to enjoy popular support. I can assure you of that.

AMY GOODMAN: To see the full-hour interview with the ousted President Dilma Rousseff, you can go to democracynow.org. Glenn, your response?

GLENN GREENWALD: So, I think maybe she overstates just a little bit the inevitability of Lulas victory. As is true for polls in the United States a year or more out of an election, polling tends to be about name recognition, and then, ultimately, as the election proceeds and people pay more attention to the more obscure candidates, theyre able to get some traction. But shes definitely right that if you had to bet your money on one person to win in 2018, it would be Lula. Thats certainly who I would put my money on, not just because hes leading in the polls, but because there is no political talent even close to Lula in terms of his ability to just be persuasive and charismatic and to appeal to peoples gut in a way that very few other politicians that Ive ever seen in my lifetime are capable of doing. So you certainly wouldnt bet against him.

And, you know, youIve been on your show many times talking about the impeachment process, and you know what a political upheaval and crisis it was for this country to remove Dilma, to remove a democratically elected president who is part of a party that won four consecutive national elections. It really tore the country apart. Imagine if the elites of this country endured all of that, went through all of that to get her out of office, only for a year and a half later PT to return to power in the person of Lula. So, yes, they are petrified that Lula is going to return to power. They do want to make certain that he is ineligible by making him ineligible through this criminal process.

But there is another aspect to it that I think is important to point out. Its not so black and white, this morality play, because there are a lot of politicians in Braslia across the political spectrumon the right, on the left and on the centerwho are very vulnerable to corruption charges and to having criminal proceedings brought against them. And they are petrified, all of them. They have watched some of the countrys most powerful politicians and its oligarchs go to prison, including Eduardo Cunha, who was the most powerful and feared politician in Brazil over the last several years, whos now sitting in a federal prison without any real hope of getting out anytime soon. Its a serious threat.

And what we see now is them start to unify. Recently, Lula gave an interview in which he actually sort of defended Michel Temer and said, "Lets not jump to conclusions about whether hes really guilty. We need to see the evidence." Theres starting to be a movement on the part of all these politicians who are vulnerable to corruption charges to unify against the Lava Jato investigators, against the corruption investigators.

And so, how much of a threat Lula really poses to the oligarchical class? Hes become very close allies with a lot of the leading plutocrats, a lot of the leading oil and construction executives. Hes made a lot of money by doing business with a lot of these extremely wealthy and powerful financial interests in Brazil. Hes not the Lula from 1986, where he was this firebrand, you know, hardcore socialist union leader. Hes been integrated into the power structure. And so, I do think that they want to make sure PT doesnt come back to power, but I dont think its accurate to depict it as them viewing Lula as some kind of towering enemy of the elite. I think that the elite has found a way to work with Lula and accommodate their interests with Lula. And so I dont know how petrified they are of his return.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Glenn, very, quickly, before we go to break, I wanted to ask you about something else that occurred on the very same day that Lula was convictedthat is, yesterday, Wednesdaywhich is that the Brazilian Senate approved a government-sponsored series of labor reforms. So could you tell us about those reforms and how the approval by the Senate, as reports are suggesting, might boost the Temer governmentTemer himself, of course, facing corruption charges, as you mentioned, and, in fact, Brazils first sitting head of state to be formally charged with a crime?

GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, Im really glad that you ask that, because theres no way to discuss the situation in Brazil without understanding the agenda of international finance and domestic oligarchs, in particular, their desperation to impose extremely harsh austerity measures on an already suffering poor population.

Michel Temer, shortly after he was installed as president, came to New York and spoke to a gathering of hedge funds and foreign policy elites in New York and said that the real reason Dilma was impeached was not because of these budgetary tricks she was accused of using, but it was because she was unwilling to impose the level of austerity that international capital and the business interests in Brazil wanted. Thats why they put Temer into office, to, quote-unquote, "reform" pensions and labor laws, to make people work longer, to extend their retirement rate, to reduce their benefits. This is what the whole thing is about. And its amazing because every time it looks like Temer is going to stay, the real increases in strength, as does the Brazilian stock market. Every time it looks like hes in trouble, the real decreases, and the Brazilian stock market weakens, because international finance wants Temer to stay, because hes the only one willing to impose these harsh austerity measures, because hes already so unpopular and so old that hes not going to run again and cant run again, so he doesnt care. Hes willing to do their dirty work for them.

At the same time, yesterday, when Lula got convicted and it looked like or the court has declared him ineligible to run again in 2018, what happened to the real? It skyrocketed against the dollar. The Brazilian stock market boomed because international finance wants the right to take over and continue to maintain power in Brazil. So, everything is about the underlying attempt to take away the benefits from the nations poor that PT has legislated for them, to make people work longer hours, to make them have fewer benefits, to transfer wealth from the laborers in this country and the poor in this country back to the oligarchs. Thats why Dilma was removed. Thats why Michel Temer is in power. Thats why they want to make Lula ineligible. And so, that is absolutely what lurks at the center of all of this intrigue.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Glenn, please stay with us. Were talking about the former Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison. When we come back, well speak with the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald about the Putin-Trump versions of their meeting at the G20, and also about the latest brouhaha, the Donald Trump Jr.-Jared Kushner-Manafort meeting with a so-called Russian government lawyer. And well also talk about whats happening with NSA whistleblower Reality Winner. Stay with us.

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A Further Blow to Democracy in Brazil? Glenn Greenwald on Conviction of Lula Ahead of 2018 Election - Democracy Now!

Supporters of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkeys opposition Republican Peoples party, wave Turkish flags at the rally in Istanbul. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

Opposition to Turkeys authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, has been re-energised by the success of a month-long, cross-country anti-government justice march and last weekends unprecedented mass rally in Istanbul attended by more than a million Turks.

The show of strength momentarily shocked the government into nonplussed silence. This week is supposed to be dominated by a series of official events marking the first anniversary of the 15 July attempted coup the planned culmination of which is Erdoans address to parliament in the early hours of Sunday morning, exactly a year since the attempt was launched.

Erdoan will stress the perils the nation has faced and his own heroic steadfastness, by way of justifying his subsequent harsh crackdown. But the anniversary is being dominated instead by excited talk of a resurgent Turkish democracy, led by Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the centrist main opposition party, the Republican Peoples party (CHP). He has vowed to fight Erdoans one-man regime and overturn what he calls the second coup the Erdoan power grab that has followed the failed putsch.

Turkey was on the brink of a new beginning after one of the darkest periods in its recent history, Kilicdaroglu told an estimated crowd of 1.5 million people in Istanbul on Sunday. Its a new climate, a new history, a new birth, he said.

A shy, unassuming man, Kilicdaroglu has often been dismissed as a political lightweight. But his show of defiance has transformed his image and that of the CHP, and mitigated the sense of hopelessness many Turks feel about the repressive political climate.

Turkey is no longer the country of 25 days ago, said Murat Yetkin, a columnist for the Hurriyet newspaper . There are signs that the pacifistic but huge action of the justice march has started to change the ruling Justice and Development partys (AKP) stance. It may also have changed the wider political culture in Turkey.

About 190,000 people have been detained, fired or suspended from their jobs since the coup attempt, which Erdoan is accused of exploiting to neutralise opponents. They include judges, army and police officers, lawyers, academics, politicians and journalists. Kilicdaroglu has been widely abused and threatened by AKP officials and supporters, and condemned as subversive and a traitor.

Erdoan went even further, at one point condemning the justice marchers as terrorists. But as people from different, non-political backgrounds rallied to Kilicdaroglus banner, Erdoan was forced to back off. This was partly because polling showed scant public sympathy for his stance. Even AKP supporters were unhappy, particularly over the politicisation of the judiciary, Yetkin said. The march was supported by the main pro-Kurdish opposition party whose co-leader, Selahattin Demirtas, is in jail on terrorism charges as well as trade unionists and other civil society groups, and ordinary citizens.

No one expects an overnight miracle [but] Kilicdaroglu has reinjected hope in millions of Turks who are deeply worried about the rapid deterioration of their democratic and secular system, wrote Semih Idiz, a commentator. The government was caught completely off guard by this act of protest [that] garnered a lot of public sympathy on the way.

Kilicdaroglu is now trying to build on the momentum by pushing a list of 10 demands. They include restoring parliaments authority, lifting the state of emergency, re-establishing judicial independence and releasing detainees. The effect would be to roll back sweeping executive powers granted to Erdoan after he narrowly won last Aprils constitutional referendum.

Kilicdaroglu promised further street protests and warned on Tuesday against AKP attempts to abuse the commemorations. He is also organising what he calls the worlds biggest petition on behalf of the detainees, some of whom are taking legal action in the European court of human rights.

An AKP spokesman, Mahir Unal, said the CHP leader was playing a dangerous game and accused him of encouraging anarchy. If you are calling on people to hit the streets, this is fascism, Unal said this week. But Erdoan has remained unusually quiet.

Increasingly vocal domestic resistance is putting growing international pressure on Erdoan to ease his iron grip on Turkish society. Relations with the EU commission and European parliament are already strained. The US ambassador to Turkey recently urged the government not to abuse its counter-terrorism powers. And the Netherlands and Austria have followed Germany in refusing to allow Turkish ministers to address expatriate Turks on the coup anniversary.

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Talk of resurgent Turkish democracy dominates failed coup anniversary - The Guardian

We are witnessing a striking shift in the global paradigm of how the world views nuclear weapons.

The Titan II ICBM at the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona (Steve Jurvetson, CC BY-NC 2.0)

On July 7, 2017, at a UN Conference mandated by the UN General Assembly to negotiate a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, the only weapons of mass destruction yet to be banned, 122 nations completed the job after three weeks, accompanied by a celebratory outburst of cheers, tears, and applause among hundreds of activists, government delegates, and experts, as well as survivors of the lethal nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and witnesses to the devastating, toxic nuclear-test explosions in the Pacific. The new treaty outlaws any prohibited activities related to nuclear weapons, including use, threat to use, development, testing, production, manufacturing, acquiring, possession, stockpiling, transferring, receiving, stationing, installation, and deployment of nuclear weapons. It also bans states from lending assistance, which includes such prohibited acts as financing for their development and manufacture, engaging in military preparations and planning, and permitting the transit of nuclear weapons through territorial water or airspace.

We are witnessing a striking shift in the global paradigm of how the world views nuclear weapons, bringing us to this glorious moment. The change has transformed public conversation about nuclear weapons, from the same old, same old talk about national security and its reliance on nuclear deterrence to the widely publicized evidence of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from their use. A series of compelling presentations of the devastating effects of nuclear catastrophe, organized by enlightened governments and civil societys International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, was inspired by a stunning statement from the International Committee of the Red Cross addressing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war.

At meetings hosted by Norway, Mexico, and Austria, overwhelming evidence demonstrated the disastrous devastation threatening humanity from nuclear weaponstheir mining, milling, production, testing, and usewhether deliberately or by accident or negligence. This new knowledge, exposing the terrifying havoc that would be inflicted on our planet, gave impetus for this moment when governments and civil society fulfilled a negotiating mandate for a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.

Perhaps the most significant addition to the treaty, after a draft treaty from an earlier week of talks in March was submitted to the states by the expert and determined president of the conference, Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gmez of Costa Rica, was amending the prohibition not to use nuclear weapons by adding the words or threaten to use, driving a stake through the heart of the beloved deterrence doctrine of the nuclear-weapons states, which are holding the whole world hostage to their perceived security needs, threatening the earth with nuclear annihilation in their MAD scheme for Mutually Assured Destruction. The ban also creates a path for nuclear states to join the treaty, requiring verifiable, time-bound, transparent elimination of all nuclear-weapons programs or irreversible conversion of all nuclear-weapons related facilities.

The negotiations were boycotted by all nine nuclear-weapons states and US allies under its nuclear umbrella in NATO, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The Netherlands was the only NATO member present, its parliament having required its attendance in response to public pressure, and was the only no vote against the treaty. Last summer, after a UN Working Group recommended that the General Assembly resolve to establish the ban-treaty negotiations, the United States pressured its NATO allies, arguing that the effects of a ban could be wide-ranging and degrade enduring security relationships. Upon the adoption of the ban treaty, the United States, United Kingdom, and France issued a statement that We do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it as it does not address the security concerns that continue to make nuclear deterrence necessary and will create even more divisions at a timeof growing threats, including those from the DPRKs ongoing proliferation efforts. Ironically, North Korea was the only nuclear power to vote for the ban treaty, last October, when the UNs First Committee for Disarmament forwarded a resolution for ban-treaty negotiations to the General Assembly.

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Yet the absence of the nuclear-weapons states contributed to a more democratic process, with fruitful interchanges between experts and witnesses from civil society who were present and engaged through much of the proceedings instead of being outside locked doors, as is usual when the nuclear powers are negotiating their endless step-by-step process that has only resulted in leaner, meaner, nuclear weapons, constantly modernized, designed, refurbished. Obama, before he left office was planning to spend one trillion dollars over the next 30 years for two new bomb factories, new warheads and delivery systems. We still await Trumps plans for the US nuclear-weapons program.

The Ban Treaty affirms the states determination to realize the purpose of the Charter of the United Nations and reminds us that the very first resolution of the UN in 1946 called for the elimination of nuclear weapons. With no state holding veto power, and no hidebound rules of consensus that have stalled all progress on nuclear abolition and additional initiatives for world peace in other UN and treaty bodies, this negotiation was a gift from the UN General Assembly, which democratically requires states to be represented in negotiations with an equal vote and doesnt require consensus to come to a decision.

Despite the recalcitrance of the nuclear-deterrence-mongers, we know that previous treaties banning weapons have changed international norms and stigmatized the weapons leading to policy revisions even in states that never signed those treaties. The Ban Treaty requires 50 states to sign and ratify it before it enters into force, and will be open for signature September 20 when heads of state meet in New York for the UN General Assemblys opening session. Campaigners will be working to gather the necessary ratifications and now that nuclear weapons are unlawful and banned, to shame those NATO states which keep US nuclear weapons on their territory (Belgium, Germany , Turkey, Netherlands, Italy) and pressure other alliance states which hypocritically condemn nuclear weapons but participate in nuclear-war planning. In the nuclear-weapons states, there can be divestment campaigns from institutions that support the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons now that they have been prohibited and declared unlawful. See http://www.dontbankonthebomb.com To keep the momentum going in this burgeoning movement to ban the bomb, check out http://www.icanw.org. For a more detailed roadmap of what lies ahead, see Zia Mians take on future possibilities in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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Democracy Breaks Out at the UN as 122 Nations Vote to Ban the ... - The Nation.