Citizenry's challenge the police call in the murder case telling them to. Tensions between police and protesters are rising here in Hong Kong and it follows the death last week of a young university student he died in a parking garage fall that many protesters suspect involved the police it's an allegation the police forcefully deny N.P.R.'s Julie McCarthy reporting from Hong Kong you're listening to n.p.r. News from Washington. Bolivian President Evo Morales resigned yesterday after weeks of protests he was the 1st member of Bolivia's indigenous population to become president and had been in power for 13 years although he won reelection to a 4th term a one day delay in the vote counting prompted allegations of fraud and set off demonstrations and clashes between his supporters and his opponents at least 3 people were killed space x. Is attempting to launch a fleet of tiny satellites into space today to provide high speed Internet access worldwide from member station w m f e Brendan Byrne reports around 60 satellites will hitch a ride to space on a Falcon 9 rocket laying the groundwork for Space X.'s Internet satellite constellation called Starlink the company wants to blanket the globe with thousands of these satellites to provide high speed Internet access worldwide in an effort to lower the cost of rocket launches space x. Is using a recycled nose cone that launched on a mission back in April the company is also flying the Falcon once booster for a 4th time space x. Launched around 60 Starling test satellites earlier this year founder Ilan must tested the system using Twitter and confirmed its success by tweeting quote whoa it worked for n.p.r. News I'm Brendan Byrne today is Veterans Day New York City is holding a parade organizers say it's the largest commemoration of service to the nation and is a nonpartisan event that cannot be used for politics President Trump is scheduled to speak he is not a veteran and avoided the draft with multiple deferments I'm nor Rahm n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include Home Advisor committed to helping homeowners find the right pros for their home projects homeowners can read reviews book appointments and check cost guides for home projects at Home Advisor dot com or on the mobile app. From the u n y c in New York it's on the media. And I'm Bob Garfield this week on Capitol Hill another batch of trumpet ministration witnesses corroborating the president's walk across what might be possibly finally be a bridge too far the ambassador to the European Union now tells lawmakers that the Trump ministration held up military aid pushed Crane's government to investigate Democrats including the Biden family allies continue to make the congressional inquiry not about Trump's abuse of power but about the supposed corruption by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter what you have now is you have the beginnings and the building of evidence of circumstantial evidence that there was a crime here so if we want to investigate Rudy Giuliani's financial dealings by all an exclusive interview with Ukraine's then top cop Yuri Sankoh and even though a state Department of Fish. Testified under oath that the interview was quote primarily non-truths and non sequiturs Solomon milked it for a series of articles describing how an official of the Ukrainian anti corruption agency called Nabu interfered in the 2016 election not the Russians the Ukrainians not to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign but Trump's Here's Lutes Sankoh in a taped interview for the hills t.v. Show yes according to the Member of Parliament or trading He guards or decision that not of this show conducted an illegal intrusion into Americans American. Election campaign beyond that convenient counter-narrative to the then still going on investigation into Russian election interference Sankoh also accused then us Ambassador Marie Yavanna of each of providing the Ukrainian prosecutor with a do not prosecute list yet because oceans are not my response of that as it is enough to know its missile nobody in this country neither I want president nor I want problem on nor Ambassador Bolton will stop me from prosecuting whether there is a crime and then came what Solomon called quote Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare a right wing blockbuster creepy crazy Uncle Joe That was creepy behavior is grabbing most of the headlines a possible international corruption scandal is brewing under the surface weeks before the Biden presidential campaign officially launched the anti Biden conspiracy was underway it was just one problem it wasn't true yes that is a problem because let Sankoh a few weeks later he says that the things he told John Solomon didn't happen that way Paul Fahri is a media reporter at The Washington Post it turns out that in bad. Sidor Marie you have on of h. Never handed over any list and after telling Solomon that he would investigate the company that Hunter Biden sat on the board of said later on that there really wasn't any evidence to investigate and that he dropped this whole notion once the story broke Giuliani started peddling it everywhere intil it eventually got traction documents include a package of disinformation and debunked conspiracy theories according to a source Giuliani gave the documents to the White House and they were passed on to Secretary of State Mike Pompei Oh not just Giuliani but the president of the United States it sounds like big stuff it sounds like a very interesting with Ukraine his son Sean Hannity right here with the full report the Hill John Solomon also former u.s. Attorney this creates a whole feedback loop which we are still seeing to this day now that sounds awfully familiar back in the run up to the Iraq War you'll recall Dick Cheney saying this is a story a New York Times this morning. It's now public that in fact he has been seeking to acquire and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a 2nd in the centrifuge is required to take low grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium but the source of the information was administration ally Ahmed Chalo be whose suppose it aluminum tubes smoking gun had already been deemed false within the CIA So the administration and shall it be essentially laundered the lie through the New York Times is that same laundering process what's happening here well in some sense yes and what you're pointing to is how reporters journalists become captive of their sources and. You can further the narrative of their sources now reporting is about getting a variety of opinions it's not about getting one opinion you go down a dangerous road when you rely on just partisans or just a single source to tell a rather important story and it seems that this is the case with John Solomon's reporting in The Hill that really Giuliani left Parnassus and some Ukrainians who were their allies were the source of his stories now when people suddenly leave their jobs often it's to spend a little more time with their family or to pursue other opportunities Solomon is talking about a start up but to your knowledge was there really a start up brewing or is this just a cover story Well 1st I'll say I don't know the internal dynamics of the hill or what his entrepreneurial goals are but John has a lot of prominence in the conservative media sphere he can cash in on that and leverage that yes it does appear that he wrote a bad story but I don't think it's going to harm him among the certain segment of the population the people who already believe let's go back to Judy Miller for a 2nd you know she left a New York Times following like the world's longest correction and you know to some significant degree of shame. I don't see John Solomon much being shamed in the conservative media will there be repercussions there is he just can come out of this a you know a big bright shining star well he already was a big bright shining star among a certain segment of the population and as you're probably well aware we have divided into our camps and John has got the people behind him believing that what he writes is gospel including the present United States apparently would it pass muster at a mainstream news organization I don't think it would Paul Farhi as a media reporter for The Washington Post Paul thank you very much thank you so Jon Solomon wrote a bad story a series of bunk actually but not for lack of help as Pro Publica reporter Mike species and 2 of his colleagues learned last month Solomon's bogus scoops had a key assist from one of the Sagas main characters the ubiquitous left Parness the Ukrainian fellow who seems to be best friends with Rudy Giuliani was intimately involved in helping John facilitate his work we discovered it through e-mails and other records and then ultimately someone himself confirmed so according to Solomon what was Parness doing in the middle of the story including the gathering of the story you know he tried to paint it as if it were within the bounds of normal journalistic behavior he was not quite a source but someone that could be used to facilitate introductions pars is being used setting up key interviews including with that prosecutor acting as a translator wearing many hats so it's a collaboration if he'd been working at the hill he might have been called a researcher in radio we would call him the producer sure if you're foreign correspondent he's a fixer right except he's also an interested party. There is the obvious way in which she was interested party but we did not know until John told us was that he met Parness formally through his attorneys Joe di Genova and Victoria Tenzing who are closely connected to Rudy Giuliani closely connected to spreading Ukraine conspiracy stuff closely connected to this other character Dimitri Firth Tash an oligarchy who seems to be funding a lot of the stuff to protect him from going to prison perhaps it was pretty shocking to see how all these things fit together John also says that he was relying on his 2 attorneys specifically you add a very direct monetary interest because they're representing or eventually we're representing this character Dimitri for Tash to navigate the Wild West of Ukraine to make introductions to people like live part as we then facilitate interviews with people like the former Ukrainian prosecutor who then lay the groundwork for what becomes the counter-narrative to the Russian vest occasion Giuliani took Solomon stories and sent them around some accompanied by documents right to the White House the State Department promoting what would turn out to be the latest birth or story the latest pizza gate right Fox and its ilk began spending the same conspiracy narrative and then it all led to this perfect phone call in which the president put the arm on the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens in exchange for apparently getting their $400000000.00 of defense aid released and this of course now has led to an impeachment investigation so Solomon has found a place in history now he seems to have no regrets whatsoever he thinks that his stories of held up that ultimately what he's reported at least at the time he was reporting it was the best information that was available to him you quote It's all . A-Men to the effect that he just had no idea about the checkered past and the hidden relationships quote No one knew there was anything wrong with Lev Parness at the time but oh my goodness some of the red flags were right it just seems amazing that he could have been so credulous so many axes and he provided the grunter I agree it defies credulity that he was so credulous instead of being a more active participant because you know one of the things you have in the story is an account of him sending files and documents to Rudy in Parness then printed out in the lobby of Trump International Hotel naturally usually as a journalist the documents are coming to you not the other way all right so one possibility is that John Solomon was simply duped along Judy Miller lines to create the news story that his very sources can point to to say Aha here it's independently reported on by the media Another possibility is that it was just a story that comported with his own worldview backed up as far as he knew by supposedly official primary source the prosecutor and the documents and kind of too good to double check right now another possibility is he knew it was phony all along and did it anyway for partisan reasons one can never comment another's intentions but what is certainly clear throughout his time at the helm before that when he was circa the Washington Times that his work began to have a very partisan bent when he got to the Hill and sometime in the summer 2017 he was publishing stories relating to subjects like uranium one the 9 scandal in which Hillary Clinton was secretary of state was self dealing with the Clinton Foundation brand a Canadian company that wanted to buy American uranium assets it's also worth pointing out that. The hills leadership had enough concerns about the way Solomon was operating he could no longer publish Tories under the banner of news they would have to appear in the opinion section you know if you're sophisticated media person you make these distinctions but those stories if you're reading them and you're coming at them just as a person is generally interested in politics or the subject or whatever they just basically read his new stories and that's the way they were taken while there is yet one 3rd possibility which your piece broadly hints at and that is self dealing you know including financial soft dealing and like to dispose of that one Solomon had 2 roles at the hill one on the business side you know and one on the editorial side which would never have happened in the analog old days but it is increasingly common in the age of digital media but nonetheless journalists are journalists and this dual role created a lot of anger internally especially when it appeared that he'd given an advertiser a prominent quote in a news story had this foul we have a quid pro quo. What you're talking about refer to a branded content campaign that Solomon set up which was one of a number of those kinds of things he set up and most publications do it clearly problematic practice but especially problematic if the person who's running those campaigns has a foot in both sides of publication so yes in this particular case the publisher is very concerned because this outside group called job creators network but a branded ad campaign then at the same time there was a news story that covered the issue that the campaign was interested in as John took a quote from the branded ad campaign and sent it to the reporters who were working on a story the publisher used very damning language in her memo saying that he was basically engaged in I think quite a reputation killing behavior something that would she thought quote destroy the Hill is there any evidence that Solomon's participation playing both sides against the middle at the hill was a factor in the Ukraine fiasco. There's no evidence that has materialized yet that suggests that what was going on with the job creators network campaign that there is something similar happening with the Ukraine stuff now that memo was just one of a number of internal concerns that have been wildly raised about how Solomon was working at the hill the buck probably stops with the hills leadership making the decisions that made despite the fact that all these concerns have been raised about John well before those Ukraine stories appeared they kept him in his role change the label of his stories to opinion as if that would fix everything it clearly did not and didn't take any other action it is worth noting that the owner of the hill Jimmy Finkelstein does have a long time relationship with Rudy Giuliani Jimmy Finkelstein was a bundler for Rudy's 2008 presidential campaign I'm not suggesting that that's the reason why this is going on but it's worth pointing out that these relationships exist which I could imagine make it complicated to address once the celebrations broke it took about 5 minutes for other news organizations and other 3rd parties to debunk its central allegations right. Buried in one of those stories there was like a statement where the State Department called this allegation an outright fabrication calling something an outright fabrication cannot be translated any other way than saying like this is a lie we know it's a lie and we can comfortably stand by the fact that it's a lie. Being caught in a lie if you remember when that used to have consequences Yeah I it's been mystifying to watch the publication deal with what happened which is to say to I guess ultimately not deal with it at all Mike thank you thanks so much reverie Mike's piece is a reporter for Pro Publica we once again tried to reach John Solomon and the hill but. Coming up the enduring. Of a Supreme Court justice this is on the media. Is supported by Progressive Insurance with a name your price to providing information on a range of insurance coverage and price options more at progressive dot com or 1800 progressive Now that's progressive. The 1st undocumented medical student to graduate. Now tends to some undocumented patients been afraid to come to the doctor I have a visceral understanding because that was me as my family now he's a plaintiff in the Supreme Court case to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program his story today on Morning Edition here that special report at 622 and again at 822 this morning here on k.q.e.d. Public radio support for k.q.e.d. Comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Netflix presenting I lost my body in this animated feature adventure young love and childhood memories intertwined as a severed hand crosses Paris and search of its owner in theaters November 15th and the Educational Leadership doctoral program at San Jose State University in full. Sessions for the 7th cohort beginning in Sept in summer 2020 now being held more info available at s j s u dot edu slash. On the forum this morning during the 9 o'clock hour our national political news in review 930 we'll hear from San Francisco district attorney elect a chance of buttin and during the 10 o'clock hour Michael Krasny speaks with us Army veteran Eileen Rivers who speaks about her latest book beyond the call 3 women on the front lines in Afghanistan that's forum from 9 to 11 this morning here on k.q.e.d. Public Radio or you're listening to on the move on the media I'm Bob Garfield and I'm broke Gladstone we just heard a story about what could be seen as one variety of situational ethics the ethics of a particular kind of media steam didn't stirred into a Maya this next discussion is of an altogether different strain of situational ethics borne not of greed and willful ignorance but a profound bitterness in cynicism in this case the person who bears them and applies them is the current Supreme Court's longest serving justice also known to be the quietest on the bench the most enigmatic and to many liberals the most for Justice Clarence Thomas here queried by Sen how that's when during his 9091 confirmation hearings what did you major. Who approached I majored in English literature. I think protests. No longer and my baffle having just read the enigma of Clarence Thomas a new book by Corey Robin author and teacher booklet in college and graduate center it's altogether clear that Thomas is not merely a black conservative who always seems to argue against. Leveling America's playing field he's a black nationalist and it's clear in everything he writes every public pronouncement he isn't fact the book opens with an epigraph the famous line from the opening of Invisible Man I'm an invisible man and everybody sees everything and anything but me Clarence Thomas has a very long written record more than 700 opinions where he sets out this conservative black nationalism and it's something that a lot of people have not noticed the very few who have tend to be scholars of color but for the most part the only thing most people know about him is about Anita Hill and the fact that he doesn't ask questions from the bench. Something you observed very early on is that Tom aunts and the man he replaced Thurgood Marshall were both considered in their day to be intellectual light weights whose decisions were written for them by other people and as we later learn in your book the kind of racism that rankled Thomas most was this constant charge that black people weren't as smart exactly he was a student at Holy Cross and then at Yale Law School beginning in 1971 and he discovered what he felt was more insidious kind of racism than what he had known in the south he grew up mostly in Savannah Georgia he was used to and familiar the kind of overt hatred of black people by white people and when he came to the north he found a more genteel kind of racism that was more liberal that was more patrician that was overly solicitous of black interests that hid its deeper assumptions about particular the intellectual inferiority as you said of black people and that's something that Thomas has faced from a very early moment in his career and as taken with him onto the court he told the journalist Juan Williams that. He preferred dealing with an out now racist to one who is racist behind your back as one of his favorite songs went. To. The Undisputed Truth is the band it came out in 1971 I believe and he used to listen to it all the time at Yale Law School and when he was asked about the Reagan administration which he joined in 1901 and about the racism of the reg ministration he said they don't lie to you and also they don't smile at you this is a very resonant notion for him and I should say it also echoes a lot of sentiments and beliefs in the black nationalist tradition Malcolm x. Spoke about the wolves or says the fox and we don't think that it is any worse to be bitten with a smile than just be bitten with a groan and his 1st prolonged confrontation with smiling faces would probably have been at Holy Cross in Massachusetts I was out here riding in 1970 because I was mad at the world that cynicism and negativism eating me up hatred animosity and I felt justified because of all the race issues I was really upset Thomas comes there in 1968 he's a part of a cohort of 18 black men one of the poorest of that cohort recruited by a very liberal judge who had who's seeking to integrate Holy Cross the differential treatment of white and black students becomes very apparent white students or are sent letters in the summer before asking them would you mind having a black roommate the black students don't get any such letter at all the experience of being in almost all white classrooms of reading all white authors of having mostly white music played at a campus events not having black professors spurs them to form the Black Student Union and this is a very deliberate decision and moment. They choose the word black at this time is a kind of more militant affirmation that you hear more on the west coast on the East Coast they have a statement of demands and then they issued a manifesto of their own internal rules nenny of which involve you know that black men should respect black women black men should not be involved with white women and so it's a whole statement incoherent platform that's very familiar among radicalized black students across America is this when he 1st encounters or 1st makes use of the ideas of Malcolm that yes he reads The Autobiography of Malcolm x. In 1968 starts listening to the records of Malcolm x. Speeches it is better for us to go to our own schools and after we have a thorough knowledge of ourselves of our own kind and racial dignity has been instilled within us then we can go to any one school and we'll still retain our race pride and we will be able to avoid this survey an inferiority complex that isn't filled with in most Negroes who receive this sort of integrated education nearly 20 years later when he's giving these interviews to people like Juan Williams Thomas can recite from memory various passages from the autobiography and from those records is this when he comes to the conclusion the crucial conclusion that racism is not really addressable through the courts or through legislation yes we have to remember at this time there's all kinds of political efforts to deal with racism some of it is electoral some of it is legislative and some of it is judicial and some of it is much more militant radical action in the streets and what he comes to by the sort of early to mid 1970 s. Is a belief that white racism is permanent pervasive and in Iraq a couple in the United States it has roots that cannot truly be fattened and because they cannot be fattened we can't pull them up and that once you come to terms with that. Several conclusions follow the 1st and the big important one is that the political process whether it be voting or protest or organizing that all of this is a misbegotten enterprise that black people should get themselves out of this explains in part why he almost always comes down against voting rights he believes that this is a fool's errand The 2nd conclusion is that capitalism the market place while it tends to be geared towards white interests nevertheless offers niches where black people can achieve some kind of measure of autonomy specifically black men Thomas derives this in part from his reading of Malcolm x. I should say a selective reading because Malcolm x. Had a complicated view on this Thomas also derives this from reading black economist by the name of Thomas Sol very prominent conservative and in soul Thomas finds a vision for black people not of emancipation but of a kind of autonomous space where black people can create their own world apart from white people so that's the 2nd conclusion that follows from this bedrock principle of the in erratic ability of white racism he may have been more receptive to this idea because of the examples set by the most powerful Now figure in his life his stern humorless but successful grandfather Myers Anderson My wife had a bust of my grandfather made right after I was confirmed and I put it up on a bookshelf where it looks down on me. Is that brooding on the presence. And he's looking down on me with one of his favorite sayings inscribed on. Oh man can't his dead I help bury him and here's what I wondered on the days when self-pity is consuming me I look up at him how could I complain to him no education no father raised in part by freed slaves in Jim Crow South he never complain my grandmother never complain. How can I tell him that as a member of the United States Supreme Court I couldn't complain part of Meyer's Anderson it's focused Dalt was a refusal to look to any kind of the Netherlands help or aid from white society through that kind of self-reliance that very stern iron discipline he created a world for his family that was relatively safe and spread that protection and large us to other parts of the black community and so this spirit of what in the tradition is called do for self a kind of collective self-reliance looking inward to the community and particularly to very strong powerful black male figures is something that Thomas learns very early on and of course in his college years when you can create something climate in the community where you live it will eliminate the necessity of you and me having to ignorantly industry really boycotting it takes some practice someplace else trying to get your boy was any kind of you have to rely upon your You're being good you're you're in bad shape. In the 1970 s. Thomas makes his right turn toward more conservative principles and the key element is some of those principles that we just heard in Malcolm x. This belief in creating black institutions that are primarily economic and that this creates a kind of autonomy even semi sovereignty separate from the helping hand of white people I guess you can learn something about a Supreme Court justice from their relationship with their clerics he had a couple of traditions at the end of his term they'd all take a trip out to Gettysburg and at the beginning of the term he'd host a required screening of the fountain head by Ann rant there is this whole order or possessed of a great talent but unwilling to. Promises ideals at a price what's to miss teaching and a vision that sees the government as an enemy of progress that the market is the path to salvation these are standard conservative ideas but Thomas influx them with this heavy racial pessimism what Thomas is really trying to do on the court is develop a conservative African-American black nationalist public philosophy his real audience he's said is a potential black community that would embrace his ideas to stop looking to politics to the Democrats to liberalism as the path forward. Coming up how Justice Thomas n.x. Those bleak principles through his decisions and the vision of justice they represent this is On The Move On The Media is supported by Progressive Insurance offering its home quote explore designed to provide information about available home insurance options in one place more information at progressive dot com. I'm making a horse the next time I'm knocking the USA a young woman whose family is undocumented searches for answers about why her family isn't moving forward being stuck and being undocumented in our years of living together we have never spoken openly about her hardships is an immigrant family that's next time on the new USA. Here Latino USA at 1 o'clock about 20 minutes from now here on k.q.e.d. Then at 10 o'clock it's the Ted Radio Hour why are some people better at taking risks than others is it sheer luck and innate instinct or simple strategy it's about being. Honest with yourself the really amazing risk takers they understand their own weaknesses and they look at where they've got things wrong and they learn from those mistakes ideas around risk that's next time on the Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. The Ted radio hour begins at 2 o'clock this morning here on k.q.e.d. Many veterans have come to rely on service dogs after sustaining physical injuries in the military. Fought for the v.a. Is still studying whether dogs help vets with cognitive disabilities and p.t.s.d. What's the hold up we have clones of anecdotal stories of service members so you look but for that dog I would be on the next Morning Edition from n.p.r. News Morning Edition begins at 3 here on k.q.e.d. . This is on the media Garfield and I'm broke let's down. So when Clarence Thomas arrives on the court he carries with him a vision of the nation and its history and of human nature so with more sleep painful that the only way out is through more pain author and educator Corey Robin whose latest book is the enigma of Clarence Thomas explains Sir Thomas believes that black people all black people in the United States are surrounded by a stigma of intellectual inferiority that they are simply not capable is the belief among white people of any kind of achievement or advancement on their own Thomas does not believe affirmative action created that stigma but that affirmative action reinforces that stigma it stigmatizes all black people with that notion that but for the help of white people they could have never gotten where they are and in this regard he thinks that affirmative action stigmatizes in the same way that slavery did it didn't matter under conditions of slavery whether you're free black person or an insulated black person all black people were stigmatized with that sense of inferiority and Thomas believes that affirmative action continues that and that makes his decisions on affirmative action very different from other white conservatives on the court who emphasize this vision of colorblindness that all people are equal and ought to be treated equally for Thomas it's an almost literal continuation of the kind of stigmas that black people have been subjected to throughout the ages of American history and one last point when white liberal say the difference with affirmative action is that unlike Jim Crow or unlike slavery affirmative action is designed to improve the conditions of African-Americans to get us beyond race Thomas will point and cite chapter and verse from white slave holders and defenders of segregation who made very similar claims about their systems that they. Were overwhelmingly for the benefit of black people so Thomas is not impressed by that argument and then the last piece of his attack on affirmative action is that affirmative action is very much a white program for white people that was fascinating in your book basically affirmative action and Mabel's an institution say an Ivy League school to keep its same elitist selective perhaps white supremacist admissions policies in place while tinkering around the edges that it basically offers a fig leaf Yes Thomas makes this very careful argument that the 1st commitment of these elite institutions is to their exclusivity it is to their selectively because he says if you really want to diversify yourself the simplest most effective most efficient way is to change admissions standards not to rely on things like the El Saffar example which Thomas says everybody knows are racially skewed and racially biased so change admissions standards and you could instantaneously become a more diverse institution but those institutions don't want to do that because what they care about most is remaining elite institutions and exclusive institutions and so they come to rely on affirmative action which as you say allows them to tinker around the edges The other thing that affirmative action allows these white elites to do is to choose that black person that they think could be one of us it enhances the discretionary power of white people and to Thomas This has a kind of terrible resonance with America's racial past of the kind of the white paternalist choosing among those black people upon which they choose to cast their favors and that's what affirmative action is for him and then the very last piece of this that this is all part of white elites self conception this is a kind of Cosmopolitan tolerant multicultural aesthetic and that's actually the word the Thomas often uses in his affirmative action. And so it has nothing to do with equality or social justice it's really a way of white elites preserving their discretionary authority over black life and in Hansen a kind of Cosmopolitan multiculturalist that account themselves makes them look better that's exactly what Thomas says let's pivot to God and rights. Most white conservatives and I think people on the left when they think of gun rights think of either white colonial militias defending against the British Empire or white suburbanites gun owners protecting themselves and their homes from black criminals when Thomas thinks of gun rights one of the great freedoms that he thinks was won for black people in the wake of so that the Civil War and Reconstruction was the right to arm themselves and this was also one of the freedoms that white supremacists were the very 1st to take away from black people Thomas sees black arms as a statement of black pride of black self-reliance and particularly black power for black men Elaine Brown in fact has a song about how one could find freedom in the arming of black men. Who want to. Make. A lot. To give back what you already. Gone. It's time to want. To. Change the way. We're done. And what's amazing about Thomas is that he channels this sub training and part of the black radical tradition which is again well known among African-Americans and he turns this into a foundational argument for the extension and the insistence that the right to bear arms is something that should be for of a set throughout the United States let's go to decisions that speak to the 2nd part of your book capitalism he said that money and Mabel rich people to purchase politicians as mouthpieces for their points of view and that this. It is perfectly legitimate and since black people will never be able to dominate power under the system of majority rule money was the only way and that led him to the decision he took on Citizens United in 1987 speech he gives he says what we need to do is to remove the stigma of shabbiness that surrounds wealth particular amongst liberals to make the amassing of wealth almost as sacrosanct as speech itself liberate commercial pursuits and make them seem moral and if you read that speech in 1970 the re description of money a speech is his grandfather who amassed resources and power for himself and his family and the black community and Thomas says you know liberals would essentially dismiss my grandfather as a nothing but this is the kind of black man upon whom the salvation of the black race depends so the 3rd part of your disquisition one Thomas is titled The Constitution you know as others have that really we function under 2 constitutions the one before the Civil War in the one I have yes and I call this the white Constitution and the black Constitution and Thomas says that the 2nd Constitution the one that was created by the Civil War and Reconstruction fundamentally transformed the state in Thomas believes at the heart of that black constitution is this figure of the black man who's most precious freedom is the right to bear arms there is also that 1st constitution that you mentioned a slave document Yes this is the Constitution that Clarence Thomas states forthrightly was created by slave holders and racists Now one would think the Thomas would want to have very little to do with that constitution but that's not the case and I think here we come to the heart of the most unsettling parts of his vision. He said the salvation of the black race depends upon black men and that one of the by products of liberalism was what he calls the rights revolution these rights made life easier and more tractable and black men began to disintegrate they lost their authority they lost their will they lost their discipline and the results for the black community are catastrophic because the burdens they faced were so much greater Exactly so what Thomas believes is that we need to recreate those conditions of existence and constraint and adversity because under the harshest most exit gente conditions black men will rise to their potential greatness they will overcome precisely in the way that his grandfather overcame How does it play out in his decisions in order to recreate those conditions Thomas also tries to enhance the white Constitution the n.t. Belum Constitution and one of the features of that constitution were harsh conditions of punishment and Thomas believes that one of the most terrible things the Warren court did the liberal Warren Court of the mid century was to mitigate the conditions of punishment to introduce the federal courts to oversee the practice of punishment and imprisonment that should be the province of local governments and states and Thomas would like to actually empower the state to punish even if and sometimes it seems particularly if that state is racist. That's prefer if it's the most unsettling part I think of Thomas' vision but it comes from this idea that it was under Jim Crow. When black men rose to the level that someone like his grandfather did and were able to create on claves of Black Autonomy and black separation and black community he talked about black men what about black women there is very little room in this vision for black women black women at best are the recipients of the beneficence of black men but at worst black women he views as very dangerous figures either the dependence upon the welfare state which is how he dismissed his sister that she's so dependent upon welfare she gets mad at the mailman when he's late with her check as black feminists like can barely Crenshaw no painter pointed out at the time of his hearings Thomas' view of his sister was not only extraordinarily ugly and cruel it actually did not account for the fact that she was one of the pillars of the black community and the black family that she maintained the black community in the black family through her efforts with minimum wage jobs but black women as I say they play very little in this romantic fantasy that Thomas has sometimes when they appear they're also perceived to be traitors and that's where I think we come to the question of Anita Hill telling the world is the most difficult experience of my life. But it is very close to having to live through the experience that occasion this meeting Anita Hill a lawyer who worked under Clance Thomas when he was working for Reagan who charged him with a number of incidents of sexual harassment and it's how we mostly remember Clarence Thomas in this country he responded to the charges not simply by denying them but by really going on the offensive and the attack it is a message that unless you count out to an old order this is what will happen to you . You will be lynched destroyed caricature awarded. By a committee of the u.s. Senate rather than hung from a tree while Thomas was definitely lying about what he did and didn't do with Anita Hill I don't think he was lying when he made that charge in the following sense at the heart of Thomas' vision is black male authority and Thomas believes that white liberalism has been an essentially a conspiracy to take down black male authority and so when he saw the Democrats and liberal groups in alliance with this black woman he saw everything that he had been narrating in both public and private about the way that the deck is stacked against black men who are trying to advance the race and in that sense Thomas was telling his truth revealing in very plain terms what is at the heart of his entire constitutional vision which is the attempt to preserve the role of black men and being utterly blind to the even higher barriers faced by black women absolutely. Did you come away from this project with any more sympathy for Clarence Thomas. I think whenever you write about anybody you have to have some degree of imaginative sympathy but actually I think I came away more horrified in a way by Clarence Thomas All Countries like they're monsters but the true horror of a monster is when they reveal a kind of truth about a larger world and I think when Thomas begins with these very deep beliefs and racial pessimism the fact that black people cannot be accommodated by a white society and are better off if unboundedly rip Routh and that's the monstrosity of it all is that he begins with beliefs that I think are widely shared and he follows them to conclusions that are not simply horrifying but which actually do reflect the world that we live in today where people are armed to the teeth where white racism seems almost worse than ever where wealth is accumulated in even more obscene ways and where black men are locked up in jails this in a way is current's Thomas's preparatory vision to some kind of path out of it and it's a very dark vision. Here's Senator Howell have Flynn during Clarence Thomas' confirmation for the Supreme Court has only leave you a closet liberal and zone on the other hand they had to be. Part of the right wing extreme group. Can you give us any ancestor is what the real Clarence Thomas is like today. I don't know that I would call myself a and a name I'm just Clarence Thomas and I tried to do my grandfather said stand up for what I believe and. There's been that measure of independence but. By and large the point is I'm just simply different from what people painted me to be and the person you have before you today is the person who was in those army fatigues combat boots who's grown older wiser but no last concerned about the same problems that young man and army fatigues in Combat Boots who is a black power Devore 10 afficionado has undergone some fundamental changes in terms of his beliefs about capitalism and so forth but at the heart that vision of racial possumus him which Thomas has never been shy about has always been there we began talking about the invisible man one of Clarence Thomas' favorite books in this at least he was certainly right never really was an enigma at all it's just that so many of us liberals were outraged by a black man not pursuing civil rights in a way that made sense. For many white liberals Clarence Thomas doesn't make any sense at all once you look at African-American intellectual history in political history Thomas his views are actually quite legible as part of a tradition so the real enigma that I came to in all of this is not Thomas's beliefs but the fact that white people continuously seem incapable of seeing those beliefs and as I say in the book there is this character in American literature whose experience looks remarkably like that and that of course is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and it's not just the fact that the invisible man is not seen it's that white people think they do know who he is and they haven't got a clue. Corey thank you very much bank you Corey Robin is the author. Of. That's it for this week's show on the movie is produced by a lot of the Burgess my fellow injured lay a federal job. And. We had more help from Charlotte Gartenberg show was. On the Media is a production of studio Gladstone and I'm Bob Garfield. Supported by the Ford Foundation the John James Foundation and the listeners have done the radio Latino USA is just ahead here on k.q.e.d. Support for k.q.e.d. Comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Oakland's Paramount Theatre presenting night of solid gold with the Temptations and the 4 Tops Saturday Nov 16th tickets are available now at ticketmaster dot com and the California Department of Public Health helping parents understand the severity of the vague illness outbreak for c.d.c. Outbreak information go to tobacco free dot com. Past reshow wants us to get better at failing he says building resilience starts with changing the story we tell ourselves about our lives will join us next time on here and now here and now at 11 o'clock this morning here on k.q.e.d. Public Radio. This is k.q.e.d. San Francisco k.q.e.d. North Highlands Sacramento live on line at k.q.e.d. Dot org America chance and good morning it's 1 o'clock. From n.p.r. And. USA. Today we go deep inside the drama of an undocumented family in New York City followed one young woman who confronts her family looking for answers what is our earliest memory you have translating for mom when I was in elementary school. My teacher said I. Did all my stuff and I'm. Plus hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets and we find out why are protesting he took us so long to come together again after the dictatorship and now we're all here and we want the same thing we won the better night 100 for everyone. Coming up on the Team USA. Still with us. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm sure Rahm the congressional impeachment inquiry into President Trump enters its public hearing phase this week the House Intelligence Committee has been taking testimony from witnesses behind closed doors as it considers the president's effort to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats Republicans say they have a list of people they want to hear from N.P.R.'s Frank I don't yes reports they want to call 100 Biden Joe Biden son and the anonymous whistleblower to testify among others they say Trump has a right to confront his accuser the whistleblower but Democrats say they will protect the whistleblower for retaliation and won't allow him to testify they're also raising questions about Hunter Biden who is at the center of Trump's allegations and the Democrats are saying they won't facilitate any already deep conspiracy N.P.R.'s Frank are Donya is today is Veterans Day President Trump will attend New York City's Veterans Day parade N.P.R.'s Quil Lawrence reports President Trump has made. Veterans' issues a priority in his administration and has signed several major bipartisan v.a. Bills into law he's expected to participate in the New York City Veterans Day parade the 1st president to do so Trump is not a veteran and avoided serving in the Vietnam War with 5 deferments and last month he settled a lawsuit with the state of New York in which the president admittedly misusing $2800000.00 of charity money raised for veterans the court has ordered the president to pay $2000000.00 in damages and disbursed the rest of his foundation's assets to actual charities clear Lawrence n.p.r. News New York the private space company Space x. Plans to launch about 60 small satellites this morning using a Falcon 9 rocket the plan is to eventually surround the globe with thousands of satellites to provide high speed Internet access around the world Iran says it's building a 2nd nuclear reactor and it's Boosh air power plant a facility Tehran anxious to supply with Iranian its enriching in breach of the 2015 deal negotiated by the European Union Teri Schultz reports foreign ministers are meeting today to discuss possible sanctions Iran has taken several steps away from compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal that limit.